Practices and narratives of early modern piracy : connecting the seas, 1550-1800 / edited by Susanne Gruss and Marcus Hartner

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Gruss, Susanne, 1976- editor.

Hartner, Marcus, editor.

Series:

Maritime humanities, 1400-1800

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Piracy--History.

Piracy.

Pirates in literature.

Pirates in popular culture.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations

black and white

illustrations

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press, [2025]

System Details:

digital

Summary:

Rather than looking at different manifestations of early modern piracy as geographically and temporally isolated cultural phenomena, <cite>Practices and Narratives of Early Modern Piracy: Connecting the Seas (1550-1800)</cite> pursues a comprehensive approach to this field of study. This volume investigates the spatial, temporal, and economic connections between pirates and other seafarers who navigated the North Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic, and the Indian Oceans in the early modern period, and the cultural products they inspired. With a specific focus on historical practices and cultural narratives it addresses issues such as the appearance of pirates and piratical protagonists in diverse geographical locations, changing negotiations of pirate identity, the fluid boundary between illegal piracy and state-sanctioned privateering, and the (trans)national economic entanglements of different forms of maritime predation. By bringing together the discussion of literary, cultural, and historical aspects of piracy and seafaring, the volume explores the cultural as well as the ideological impact and function of the pirate figure in early modern historiography, literature, and popular culture

Contents:

Introduction : practices and narratives of early modern piracy / Susanne Gruss and Marcus Hartner

Pirate marts and knockdown prices : piracy, class, and economics in early modern England / Claire Jowitt

Piracy and sovereignty in the Indian Ocean : the British East India Company’s campaign against Atlantic and Angrian maritime predation, 1717–24 / David Wilson

Connecting seas and epochs : George Walker and Britain’s ‘privateers of force,’ 1744–48 / David J. Starkey

Surviving scarcity : reconceptualizing Tunisian corsairing during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries / Lama Elsharif

Interconnected identities : seventeenth-century ‘Barbary’ pirates, Christian captives, and geo-cultural mobility / Jo Esra

“Confinde to no limits” : John Ward, a renegade life in print / Sue Jones

“Wrestling with the restless sea” : piracy, European expansion, and the further beyond / Kevin P. McDonald

“Anchors found on high mountains” : terraqueous traffic and pirate mobility in Walter Ralegh / Johannes Schlegel

Setting the stage : transnational piracy and the ambiguity of pirate identity in the Stukeley plays / Susanne Gruss

Commerce, conflict, and intercultural contact : figurations of polyvalence in Thomas Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West, Part I / Marcus Hartner

From captive to privateer : William Rufus Chetwood’s The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle (1726) / Stefanie Fricke

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (De Gruyter Brill, viewed July 17, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version: Practices and narratives of early modern piracy

ISBN:

9781003701927

1003701922

9781040776407

104077640X

9789048573011

9048573017

9789048552610

9048552613

OCLC:

1523011002

Publisher Number:

CIPO000297519

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license