Layton, Simon. "Discourses of Piracy in an Age of Revolutions". Itinerario, Vol.35, No.2 (2011): 81-97.

Layton, Simon. "Discourses of Piracy in an Age of Revolutions". Itinerario, Vol.35, No.2 (2011): 81-97.

• This article questions the narrative of the natural criminality of pirates, the use of combating piracy as a justification for maritime imperial violence and expansion, and the distinction between pirates and state navies (81).
• The presence of piracy and the attempt of states to combat it, particularly the British Empire, has undoubtedly had an effect on all aspects of maritime history in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. A particular example would be the designation of slavery as a form of piracy in the 1800s, resulting in the legal right of British ships to stop and search any ship they accused of trafficking slaves in almost all states by 1851 (82).
• By the late 1700s, Britain regarded itself as a the modernizer and protector of the Indian Ocean and the commercial trade which passed through it. As such, part of its liberal modernizing mission was the suppression of anti-commercial piracy (82).
• The practice of piracy, despite its prevalence decades before in the European world, was otherized and made an essential characteristic of Asian cultures and proof of their backwardness. Since the culture of piracy was historical and 'organic', the solution had to come through British force and imperial domination of pirate havens (83).
• There are strong connections in the contemporary imperial literature between the climate and geography of the pirate zones of Malaya and the Gulf of Kutch, and the prevalence of piracy. It is suggested that the landscape explains why piracy is common there and not in Europe, again implying that piracy is a 'natural consequence' and cannot be changed without outside [read: European] intervention (84).
• The particular focus on geography of pirate areas as an issue meant that the solution, in addition to force, was the increased acquisition of geographical and nautical knowledge about those areas, so that the natural advantages of the pirates could be countered (84-85).
• British imperial discourses on piracy share a number of key traits with similar discourses on other nomadic or semi-nomadic groups in India. Particularly notable is the emphasis placed on the pirates or nomads as a class of people -- a people group rather than a profession -- and the role of geography in enabling that behavior; Thugs in South India were enabled by labyrinthine ravines, just like pirates were by sandbars (85-86).
• Throughout South and Southeast Asia, pirates and other criminal groups were differentiated into racial categories, with ideas of genealogy and racial essentialism that 'made' that group pirates as opposed to other 'civilized' groups (86).
• In other parts of the Indian Ocean, Islam is used as an explanation for piracy and criminal behavior, particularly blaming natural brutality and cruelty towards outsiders as a characteristic of Islam. This religious focus encourage the spread of Christianity to Southeast Asia, as the removal of Islam would also weaken piracy (87).
• British discourses on piracy set up a distinction between pirates, degraded as non-state actors because of their purely economic motives, and the British Navy, celebrated as a defender of the sea, despite that furthering its own economic interests. This artificial dichotomy legitimized some forms of political organization, commercial interest, and violence, while delegitimizing others based on unclear, racist criteria (88).
• The British simultaneously denied political legitimacy to groups of pirates, claiming that they were private individuals, and recognized some form of political leadership and statehood when they wanted a clear political leader to hold responsible for piracy (89).
• The dichotomy between pirate and state was extremely unclear and reflected political allegiances more than anything else. Often anti-British states were considered piratical by nature, whereas similar action could be largely excused to states with British embassies (90-91).
• Liberal discourse in the Anglosphere during this time criticized both piracy and British anti-piracy practices as barbaric. In particular were accusations that piracy placed individual economic goals over the wider political good of free trade. This meant that British monopolies on trade through the East India Company were as much a crime as the piracy they combated, because they used violence to exclude free trade to their own benefit (90).
• The definition of piracy, though contested and deeply political, had its limits in justifying violence. A particularly brutal incident by a British agent massacring natives in Sarawak on the claim that they were pirates caused humanitarian outcry, demonstrating a limit on the term's ability to legitimate violence (91-92).