Posthegemonic Comments
The graph neglects the growth of intellectual property piracy, would would result in an altogether different curve.
I also suspect that there are in fact more than 17 pirates of the old-fashioned kind at work right now...
But I have previously jotted some notes on the differences between classical piracy and modern piracy.
I love a good pirate tale, but isn't there some strong connection between pirates and the English Navy of the 'Rule Britannia' thing? I admit, my knowledge of this is sketchy, but ...
Indeed there's a connection, but it's a complex and ambivalent one: privateers were employed by the state before the rise of national navies, i.e. before the "Rule Britannia" era. They were never, however, completely dependable or completely trusted. The shift from the use of pirates such as Drake in the sixteenth century to their elimination in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century is also therefore the process by which the state asserted its monopoly on martime violence.
The time is nigh (that's a pirate term, I think) for a new cross/inter-discipline: "Pirate Studies". Who wants to get a SSHRC Strategic Grant in order to institute and Institute and get down to it?
Well, there's already a Pirate reader. Rather mixed in quality, though, me hearties.
Makes me think of Schmitt's discussion of the seas, which I should re-read.
Also, the other thing that pops to mind is the piracy that besetted those fleeing Viet Nam and Cambodia in the 1970s/80s - which maybe complicates the sense of a two-way conflict between the state/s and pirates over a monopoly over maritime violence.
Schmitt's discussion of the seas, which I should re-read
And which I should read...
As for twentieth-century and contemporary piracy, I have the feeling that that's even more complex, perhaps partly because it's much less visible.
Here, however, is another dichotomy: pirates as predators or pirates as (at least potentially) autonomous. Gloss that as you wish, in terms of non-productive labor or whatever.
www.talklikeapirate.com
Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth.
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