Maritime Piracy

"In 1603, Dutch Admiral Jacob van Heemskerk plundered a Portuguese merchantman, the Santa Catarina, travelling from Macao to Melaka. The sale of the cargo at a public auction made traders across Northern Europe aware of the riches to be reaped from Asian trade. However, the episode raised legal questions and the United Dutch East India Company (VOC) commissioned the young Hugo Grotius to defend Heemskerk's actions. Grotius produced two classic legal texts, The Law of Price and Booty and its spin-off, The Free Sea, among the greatest works in the history of international legal and political thought. His observations dealt with free trade in the East Indies, the Dutch Republic's military conflict with the Portuguese and Spanish in Asia, and the legal and moral grounds for attacking and plundering Portuguese and Spanish mercantile shipping.

This book considers the background to the treaties then content and significances, and what Grotius actually knew about Southeast Asian politics and Portuguese institutions of trade and diplomacy when he wrote them.

Grotius' work on the freedom of the sea was a cornerstone in his enduring reputation as one of the founders of modern international law. The present book provides a valuable resource for historians of Southeast Asia and for students of international relations, political theory, maritime history and public law.
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"Four hundred years ago, the Dutch humanist and jurisconsult Hugo Grotius was commissioned by the United Netherlands’ East India Company (VOC) to write a defense of Admiral Jakob van Heemskerk’s seizure of a Portuguese merchant carrack in the Straits of Singapore (February 1603). At the time he was twenty-one years old. What Grotius produced between 1604 and 1606 is a comprehensive political and historical exposé on war. Today, this work is known as De Jure Praedae Commentarius, or “Commentary on Law of Prize and Booty”. Only part of this comprehensive manuscript was published during its author’s lifetime and is known as Mare Liberum or “The Free Sea” (1609).
Mare Liberum is essentially a propagandistic treatise and argues for Holland’s merchants to freely access emporia in Asia by unimpeded navigation across the high seas. The freedom of navigation forms a subset to the overarching arguments on the freedom of access and trade. This particular assessment of Mare Liberum stands in sharp contrast to past interpretations, insofar as these have placed the ‘freedom of the seas’ - and not the broader issues surrounding ‘free trade’ - at the forefront of scholarly attention. From this vantage point, Grotius was surprisingly consistent in his thinking on the broader issues of maritime trade and navigation.
During the first two decades of the seventeenth century, Grotius lent a helping hand in the process of forging political and commercial treaties between the VOC and Asian rulers. Far from championing peace and the freedom of navigation on the high seas for which the Dutch humanist is best remembered in modern times, Grotius should also assume a place among the intellectual fathers of Dutch colonial rule in Asia."""""

"The UN Security Council has issued ten resolutions dealing specifically with piracy off the coast of Somalia. There has since been a growing concern among international, regional and maritime actors about the potential threats posed by the phenomenon of piracy as long as Somali waters remain in a state of lawlessness. Academics and international maritime actors have analysed the several dimensions of the threat to the global economy and global security that piracy off the Horn of Africa constitutes. However, there is a considerable gap in analysing the implications of piracy within Somalia and the broader local consequences. The present thesis addresses this gap and offers a Somali perspective on the dynamic challenges of piracy. Such analysis will inform the debate on prospects for long-term eradication of Somali piracy and propose pragmatic local solutions to confront the piracy problem within Somalia.

The main body of this thesis is divided into three parts: Part I analyses the political and social context of piracy to understand why it has flourished practically unfettered; Part II investigates its core characteristics to identify internal stakeholders; Part III proposes to re-think the counter-piracy approach to allow Somali people themselves to be at the forefront of tackling and eradicating piracy."

""This book offers annotated translations of documents touching on Dutch admiral Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge and his voyage to Asia between 1605 and 1608. These translations are aimed at a contemporary English-speaking Asian readership interested in the early modern history of European trade, warfare and expansion in Southeast Asia with a focus on Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Researchers specialising in early European colonialism, international law, international relations, security studies, and diplomatic history will also find that the documents translated in this volume offer new and unfamiliar perspectives. Materlieff’s business acumen, military and diplomataic prowess as well as his vision of empire all have implications for examining not only European expansion into Southeast Asia, but also into other regions at large, including especially south Asia, Africa and the Americas.
Admiral Matelieff was a director of the Rotterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) formed in 1602. He was appointed fleet commander on one of the company’s first voyages to Asia. Matelieff’s mission was both commercial and military: he launched a major sea-borne attack on the Portuguese colony of Melaka, arranged for the signing of treaties with the rulers of Johor, Aceh and Ternate, and founded the first Dutch fort on the island of Ternate. His endeavours, however, to open the Chinese market for the Dutch company proved unsuccessful.
Following his return to the Dutch Republic in September 1608, Matelieff penned a series of memorials and letters. In these he advanced recommendations for changing the way the company organized its fleets and conducted business. More importantly he offered  his Dutch contemporaries a vision of empire in Asia. The materials contained in this volume offer important observations of a perceptive analyst who was also determined to grasp the political and economic structures of Asia, and also of inter-state relations in across this vast region. At a time of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, French and English engagement in Southeast Asia, Matelieff sought to critically assess and strategize on the ways in which Europeans were increasingly engaging with Asian polities and their rulers.
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"The Singapore and Melaka Straits are a place where regional and long-distance maritime trading networks converge, linking Europe, the Mediterranean, eastern Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent with key centres of trade in Thailand, Indochina, insular Southeast Asia, China, Korea and Japan. The first half of the seventeenth century brought heightened political, commercial and diplomatic activity to this region. It has long been clear to both the Portuguese and the Dutch that whoever controlled the waters off modern Singapore gained a firm grip on regional as well as long-distance intra-Asian trade. By the early 1600s Portuguese power and prestige were waning and the arrival of the Dutch East India Company constituted a major threat. Moreover, the rapid expansion and growing power of the Acehnese Empire, and rivalry between Johor and Aceh, was creating a new context for European trade in Asia.

Drawing on maps, rare printed works, and unpublished manuscripts written in Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and Latin, Peter Borschberg provides new information on the diplomatic activities of Asian powers, and shows how the Portuguese and Spanish attempted to restore their political fortunes by containing the rapid rise of Dutch Power in the region. Key documents, transcribed and translated into English for the first time, make up a series of appendices.

The product of more than two decades of research in European libraries, archives, The Singapore and Melaka Straits will be of great interest to readers in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, where little is known about this pivotal pre-colonial period. It is also an invaluable resource for historians and other students of early modern Europe and of the European presence in Asia.
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"The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established to prosecute crimes that ‘‘threaten the peace, security and well-being of the world’’. Maritime piracy has a long history as a threat to international security and was in fact the first international crime. Yet piracy was excluded from the Rome Statute. In the years since the drafting of the Rome Statute, piracy has increased dramatically to become more like the threat it was in the ‘‘Golden Age of Piracy’’. Criminal accountability for piracy has been minimal, due to logistical and jurisdictional difficulties. This paper offers an analysis of the potential of the ICC for prosecuting pirates: why it should be considered as a potential forum for
ensuring criminal accountability for piracy, how piracy fits within the ICC’s jurisdiction, and whether or not piracy should be added to the Rome Statute as a stand-alone crime or under the rubric of crimes against humanity."

The rise in pirate attacks in the proximity of the Horn of Africa and particularly off the Somali coast contributed to increasing international concern over the issue of piracy. In this article, instead of localizing and de-historicizing piracy in the Gulf of Aden as a problem of ‘state collapse’ and ‘insufficient international aid’, I argue that both piracy and international responses to it must be read as part of a much longer history of conflict, by which market institutions and respect for private property have been globalized at the point of appearing today as Universal, natural and eternal. I show how, since the eighteenth century, European empires often posed as a necessary bastion of law and order in the oceans of the world, legitimizing their violence as a form of neutral policing against depoliticized native ‘pirates’. Reducing the colonized Other to a ‘pirate’ lacking any political motive and/or legitimacy allowed European empires to depict imperialist wars as benign operations of international policing, and the colonization of entire communities as necessary for the civilization of the gangsters and criminals in their midst. In light of this history, I question the contemporary international mobilization against Somali piracy. In particular, I show how it risks banalizing and depoliticizing the complex issues that have contributed to the transformation of the sea in a zone of violence, in which different forms of plunder operate side by side.

"This article examines the transition of the Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) from a policy of self-defense into its full espousal of large-scale privateering and plundering. I argue that this shift was driven by both economic and political factors, and can be traced to the very formation of the Company as a unified trading venture. The taking of prizes became a cornerstone not only of the economic fortunes of the company, but the establishment
of the Dutch colonial empire in Asia. Of particular interest is not only the instructions emanating from the company directors and the Dutch government in the metropolis, but especially the implementation and adaptation of these directives on the ground. It is this local context that adds a crucial dimension to interpretations of the eager espousal of maritime violence by the VOC and its agents in Asian waters."

""The article revisits the “Santa Catarina incident”, the famous episode of the first Portuguese ship captured by the Dutch in Asian waters, placing it within the broader context of Luso-Dutch rivalry in the Malay world, particularly the Straits of Singapore and Malacca. Through a careful analysis of European sources, the author assesses the broader consequences of this event and the ensuing international implications. After 1603, the VOC directors and the regents of the Dutch Republic were alerted to how profitable the policy of freebooting and despoiling the enemy could be, while the Portuguese authorities of the Estado da Índia became aware of their vulnerability in the face of geographical constraints. There is also a discussion of the legal defence of the Dutch interests as presented by Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist who has frequently been upheld as the “father of modern international law”. What becomes very transparent in the course of the present account is how important the Macao merchants really were to the Estado da Índia, how far their networks of trade spanned deep into Southeast Asia, and how, despite suffering a number of severe setbacks as a result of VOC freebooting activities, they managed to recuperate from these blows with amazing agility and perseverance.

You can download this paper from
http://www.icm.gov.mo/RC/TextPE.asp?No=11&ID=555""

The main thesis of this presentation, and of this article, is that Charles Johnson's book, The General History of Pyracy, is an example of early eighteenth-century 'Factual Fiction.' In examining this work as a piece of period literature, answers are provided to the question of, "why are parts of this notorious "primary source" on pirate history inaccurate, fictional, or undocumented?"

“La reunión en un solo volumen de textos que, hasta ahora, se encontraban dispersos en varias publicaciones especializadas, nos permite descubrir –una vez más– el genio investigador del profesor Max Liniger-Goumaz (bien conocido como el principal bibliógrafo de Guinea Ecuatorial), pero que, por sus estudios históricos, sus ensayos y crónicas sobre el devenir reciente de Guinea Ecuatorial, se nos revela también como uno de sus mejores historiadores. La historia, sin embargo, solo es útil si los pueblos saben extraer de ella lecciones utiles con el propósito de sentar las bases de un futuro mejor. Desde esta perspectiva, la lectura de los textos aquí reunidos se muestra rica en enseñanzas. Y, precisamente, entre las muchas lecciones que podemos extraer de su lectura están, como una de las mas importantes, los mecanismos que desvelan la degeneración patrimonial dinástica del poder del Estado guineano, a partir de una experiencia que, en 1968, sin embargo, había comenzado como una democracia. Desde este punto de vista, los textos reunidos aquí por el profesor Max Liniger-Goumaz son, como sucede con todas sus obras, una mina de información sobre el periodo que aborda. Capítulo tras capítulo, descubrimos que esta época no fue solamente la del franco CFA, que convirtió a nuestro país en una nueva colonia más de Francia, sino también, a partir de los años 90, como una neocolonia de las petroleras americanas.” [Texto: Valentín Oyono Sa Abegue]

In this article I provide the first systematic investigation of the justification of Somali pirates. Drawing on a practice theoretical perspective I show how piracy is justified by a grand narrative that projects piracy as quasi-state practice of the protection of sovereignty against foreign intruders. Paying attention to narrative provides an explanation for the persistence of piracy and assists us in understanding the phenomenon. Relying on publicly available interviews with pirates, I deconstruct this grand narrative, show which elements are aligned and detail the different functions of the narrative in the light of the situation in which it is told. The article develops an alternative perspective on piracy based on the study of practice, narrative and situation which will also be useful to understand other forms of illicit or violent practices.