Pirate Imperialism: Trade, Abolition, and Global Suppression of Maritime Raiding 1825-1870

296 pages

Capt M K Barritt Royal Navy

As a Past President, and hence permanent member of the council, of the Hakluyt Society, I am perforce familiar with the displacement of the narrative of ‘discovery’ with which many of us will have grown up. Instead, we must speak of ‘encounter’. This transition has been accompanied with an, at times, somewhat desperate attempt to find voices of the other parties in the encounter, who are silent in our ‘Western’ narratives. For any NR readers unfamiliar with this process, this volume may be a suitable introduction, set in familiar campaigns to combat piracy and slave-trading. It will be necessary to absorb some uncomfortable home truths. We may, however, have some questions with which to challenge the author.

A substantial introduction sets the author’s pitch in a wider school which condemns colonial powers for aggression and suppression of indigenous cultures under the cover of extension of ‘civilisation’ and the imposition of “the Law of Nations.” His focus is on vulnerable “amphibious communities” which relied on “hunting and fishing, and to a lesser extent on agriculture and maritime predatory activities.” With that last phrase we may begin to sense some special pleading. In the five chapters that follow he argues that aggressive ‘armed suppression’ to extinguish ‘piracy’ and “abolish slave-trading and slavery” were cover for imposition of imperial/colonial trading policies. He has no difficulty in finding instances where the armed forces of the ‘civilised’ powers committed the very atrocities, or worse, that they attributed to their victims. Hence the opprobrious label is transferred to ‘pirate imperialists’. Those whom we have dubbed ‘pirates’ are ‘marine raiders’.

The chapter on anti-slave-trade operations may present the least challenge to the reader. Those familiar with standard texts on the operations of the RN West Africa Squadron do not need to be told of the difficulties of bringing the slave-traders to justice. The purpose of the author here is to compare the lax treatment of offenders in the Atlantic with that meted out against other cultures further afield; by James Brooke, for example, in the Eastern Archipelago. There, he argues, action against slave-trading was an excuse for access for trade and acquisition of territory. He is swift to quote instances where the colonial powers turned a blind eye to the activity of regional states where diplomatic considerations were at stake, and to high-light evidence that the colonial powers themselves became involved in exploitation of enslaved or indentured labour. By contrast, his coverage of indigenous activity in the slave trade and impact on other local communities is thin and rather grudging.

The other chapters turn the spotlight more on the exploitation of the label ‘piracy’ to impose ‘Free Trade’ and to acquire colonies. Here the author draws on a classification which enables him to emphasise increased volume of traffic and the disruption of normal trading patterns as stimuli for maritime raiding activity, and to say little about “intrinsic raiding” as part of the local “fiscal and commercial fabric.” An early target of his criticism for “reproducing nineteenth-century imperialist tropes” is Sir Charles Belgrave’s The Pirate Coast. It stands on my shelves as a sound reference for Royal Naval intervention which was measured, and made at local request. The author declares that the Persian Gulf was turned by Britain into “a de facto mare nostrum.” Yet the subsequent appellation ‘Trucial States’ speaks of a British relationship that did not entail territorial acquisition. Certainly, this was not the case in other regions ‘East of Suez’, where Britain rivalled the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and French in seizing colonial footholds. The author does acknowledge the voices, including RN officers such as Sherard Osborn, who both challenged grounds on which some coastal communities were classed as pirates, and went further and declared that the action of the colonial powers drove some local people to maritime raiding.

There is certainly no room here for claiming British moral superiority over other colonial powers. British activity in China, the ‘Opium Wars’ and the acquisition of Hong Kong, present open targets. Here the author has free reign with the themes of ‘armed suppression’ and ‘mechanised killing’ aided by steam-powered, iron ships and advanced weaponry. RN personnel in their ‘gunships’ play “a central role in pirate imperialism against amphibious communities standing in their way.” Claims of a civilising imperative prove hollow when set against well-documented atrocities, including candid records of RN participants. Here the author includes quotations from the private illustrated journal of Surgeon Edward Cree, held in the National Maritime Museum. Only a glimpse of his record of heavy-handed force is given in the accounts of descents on ‘pirate nests’ in the profusely illustrated, published selection edited by Michael Levien with which many NR readers will be familiar.

In summary, this is a densely argued account, supported by extensive references. It is thought-provoking. The discussion of excessive force and the influence of attitude to those experiencing it, often classed as ‘savages’, might, for example, stimulate reflection on controversial cases rising from more recent conflicts. It is, however, by the author’s own acknowledgment, an unbalanced treatment. He has not examined “those who were labelled as ‘pirates’ but has focussed instead on ‘those who labelled and suppressed them.” There are certainly some questions which might usefully have been addressed. In particular, it would be valuable to establish whether a new chapter was opening post-1815, with parallel changes in attitudes in society with impact on the Royal Navy, notably enhanced class consciousness. Whilst 18th century admiration of ‘the noble savage’ may be substantially mythological, there are striking examples of sympathetic and deep interest in those ‘encountered’. Matthew Flinders’ account of an amphibious community, namely the Malay trepanners deploying to the north coast of Australia is a heartening example. Perhaps there is a more nuanced picture to be painted than we are offered in Pirate Imperialism.