Page 172 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

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of work. While the state was unable to suppress smug- Further Reading
gling at sea, imperial authorities attempted to check the Cordingly, D. (1995). Under the black flag: The romance and the reality
of life among the pirates. New York: Random House.
pirates on land. In the ensuing round of reprisals vio-
De Souza, P. (1999). Piracy in the Graeco-Roman world. Cambridge, UK:
lence became endemic. Many of the pirates—perhaps Cambridge University Press.
forty thousand in all—operated out of bases in Japan. Ellen, E. (Ed.). (1989). Piracy at sea. Paris: International Maritime
Bureau.
This period of piracy ended when the ban on trade was Exquemelin,A. O. (1969). The buccaneers of America (A. Brown,Trans.).
relaxed and other economic reforms were instituted in Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
Johnson, C. (1972). A general history... of the most notorious pyrates.
the 1560s.
... (M. Schornhorn, Ed.). London: Dent.
Privateering and corsairing are forms of intrinsic or Lane-Poole, S. (1890). The story of the barbary corsairs. New York: C. P.
institutionalized piracy. In the early modern period, Eur- Putnam’s Sons.
Pennell, C. R. (Ed.). (2001). Bandits at sea: A pirates reader. New York:
opean navies routinely commissioned merchant ships to New York University Press.
sail as privateers against enemy commerce. These were Petrie, D. A. (1999). The prize game: Lawful looting on the high seas in
the days of fighting sail. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press.
issued letters of marque that outlined the scope of their
Rediker, M. B. (1987). Between the devil and the deep blue sea: Mer-
operations and afforded captured privateers legal protec- chant seamen, pirates, and the Anglo-American maritime world,
tion. The degree to which these niceties were observed 1700–1750. New York: Cambridge University Press.
So, K. (1975). Japanese piracy in Ming China during the 16th century.
depended on the strength of the legal authority. During East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.
the American Revolution, privateering in the Gulf of Walsh, P. G. (2001). Cicero, on obligation (p. 121). New York: Oxford
University Press.
Maine degenerated into indiscriminate violence by “pri-
vateers” who owed allegiance to neither crown nor
colonies.
Corsairing is another example of state-sanctioned
“piracy,” as American Federalists called it. The North Plagues
Africa regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli raised
money by capturing merchant ships and ransoming their See Diseases—Overview; Diseases, Animal
crews, passengers, and cargoes. Many governments
found it expedient to pay the regencies for safe conduct
passes, but this practice ended in 1816 when European
powers decided to take advantage of their overwhelming Plastics
superiority and the state of peace prevailing at the time
to put an end to it. Privateering was formally outlawed lastics are everywhere, yet the term plastics is not
by the 1856 Declaration of Paris. Pwell defined. The adjective plastic means pliable
Piracy has by no means been eradicated, and since (from the Ancient Greek plassein, to mold), yet many
2001 there has been growing concern over the potential plastics (notably Bakelite) are rigid. As a group, the met-
collaboration of pirates, whose motives are essentially als are more “plastic” than plastics. Natural materials
economic, and terrorists with political aims. The trend such as wax or horn are pliable but are not thought of as
toward privatizing certain military and security under- plastics. Rubber is usually considered separately from
takings also suggests that a return to some form of pri- plastics (as in this encyclopedia) but hard rubber
vate naval warfare is a distinct possibility. (ebonite) is a plastic. Any attempt at a technical defini-
tion usually ends up including adhesives and synthetic
Lincoln P. Paine
fibers, but excluding an important group of plastics such
See also Maritime History as the silicones. Our use of the term plastic usually