Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550-1650

This inter-disciplinary study is the first to consider how representations of pirates addressed both national political issues and the agenda of particular interest groups. Looking at a variety of well-known and neglected figures and texts, as well as canonical ones, it shows how attitudes to piracy and privateering were debated and contested between 1550 and 1650. This collection of broad-ranging essays by international figures offers a new perspective on an early modern cultural phenomenon, and satisfies the need for a scholarly, in-depth analysis of this important topic in Renaissance history.

Introduction: Recent Trends in Pirate Studies--C.Jowitt * PART ONE: PIRACY? SOME DEFINITIONS * 'Hostis Humani Generis' - The Pirate as Outlaw in the Early Modern Law of the Sea--C.Harding * Pirate Envy: An English Dis-Ease--K.Parker * PART TWO: PERSPECTIVES ON PIRACY: NATION, REGION, RELIGION, POLITICS, GENDER * The Problem of Piracy in Ireland during the later Sixteenth and early Seventeenth Centuries--J.Appleby * The Pirate, the Monarch, and Order in Ireland: Spenser's Faeries Queene, Book 5--J.Fitzpatrick * Christian Masters, Muslim Slaves in the Early Modern Mediterranean--N.Matar * Crusading Piracy? The Curious Case of the Spanish in the Chanel, 1590-1595--M.Dimmock * Acting Pirates: Converting Robert Daborne's A Christian Turned Turk--M.Hutchings * 'Não somos roubadores' ('We are not Pirates'): Piracy and Navigation in The Lusiads--B.Klein * 'A Measure of Civility (and Happie Robberies)': Constructions of Drake and Englishness in The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake--E.Brennan * The Poetics of Piracy in Thomas Churchyard's A Pirate's Tragedy (1579)--L.Oakley-Brown * Virolet and Martia in the Pirate's Daughter: Gender and Genre in Fletcher and Massinger's The Double Marriage 1620--L.Munro * PART THREE: PIRATE AFTERLIVES * Sir Francis Drake's Ghost: Piracy, Cultural Memory, and Spectral Nationhood--M.Netzloff * Scaffold Performances: The Politics of Pirate Executions--C.Jowitt * Of Pirates, Slaves and Diplomat: Anglo-American Writing about the Maghrib in the Age of Empire * Index Introduction: Recent Trends in Pirate Studies--C.Jowitt * PART ONE: PIRACY? SOME DEFINITIONS * 'Hostis Humani Generis' - The Pirate as Outlaw in the Early Modern Law of the Sea--C.Harding * Pirate Envy: An English Dis-Ease--K.Parker * PART TWO: PERSPECTIVES ON PIRACY: NATION, REGION, RELIGION, POLITICS, GENDER * The Problem of Piracy in Ireland during the later Sixteenth and early Seventeenth Centuries--J.Appleby * The Pirate, the Monarch, and Order in Ireland: Spenser's Faeries Queene, Book 5--J.Fitzpatrick * Christian Masters, Muslim Slaves in the Early Modern Mediterranean--N.Matar * Crusading Piracy? The Curious Case of the Spanish in the Chanel, 1590-1595--M.Dimmock * Acting Pirates: Converting Robert Daborne's A Christian Turned Turk--M.Hutchings * 'Não somos roubadores' ('We are not Pirates'): Piracy and Navigation in The Lusiads--B.Klein * 'A Measure of Civility (and Happie Robberies)': Constructions of Drake and Englishness in The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake--E.Brennan * The Poetics of Piracy in Thomas Churchyard's A Pirate's Tragedy (1579)--L.Oakley-Brown * Virolet and Martia in the Pirate's Daughter: Gender and Genre in Fletcher and Massinger's The Double Marriage 1620--L.Munro * PART THREE: PIRATE AFTERLIVES * Sir Francis Drake's Ghost: Piracy, Cultural Memory, and Spectral Nationhood--M.Netzloff * Scaffold Performances: The Politics of Pirate Executions--C.Jowitt * Of Pirates, Slaves and Diplomat: Anglo-American Writing about the Maghrib in the Age of Empire * Index