Pillaging the Empire

by Kris E Lane, Robert M. Levine

Between 1500 and 1750, European expansion and global interaction produced vast wealth. As goods traveled by ship along new global trade routes, piracy also flourished on the world’s seas. Pillaging the Empire tells the fascinating story of maritime predation in this period, including the perspectives of both pirates and their victims. Brushing aside the romantic legends of piracy, Kris Lane pays careful attention to the varied circumstances and motives that led to the rise of this bloodthirsty pursuit of riches, and places the history of piracy in the context of early modern empire building. This second edition of Pillaging the Empire has been revised and expanded to incorporate the latest scholarship on piracy, maritime law, and early modern state formation. With a new chapter on piracy in East and Southeast Asia, Lane considers piracy as a global phenomenon. Filled with colorful details and stories of individual pirates from Francis Drake to the women pirates Ann Bonny and Mary Read, this engaging narrative will be of interest to all those studying the history of Latin America, the Atlantic world, and the global empires of the early modern era.

Genres: History

272 pages, Paperback

First published August 11, 2015

Reviews

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting study of piracy in its Golden Age. I appreciated Lane’s mission of “de-mythologizing” legends and accounts of famous pirates, putting things in context with political and cultural goings-on of the broader world. Piracy always had a certain “Treasure-Island/Peter-Pan-ish” golden hue in my imagination, and it was interesting to see this fetishized idea we have of piracy juxtaposed with the concrete evidence of it that exists. Part of why this romanticized idea of piracy persists is because of ambiguity of source material and accountability of resources — there’s still room for the myth even with all the facts.

[Jindřich Zapletal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very happy with this book. It covers most of the Age of Sail, it connects all variations of piracy with their social context, with some discussion of investors, legal repercussions, relevant war etc. There are chapters on the famed far eastern and Muslim pirates, providing global balance to the work. In several boxes interspersed throughout the book, the author shares insight about practicalities of early modern seafaring life, even providing cooking recipes and directions to use an astrolabe (I would add a box about common diseases and medical treatments). The bibliography contains many interesting pointers towards further study.

The author concentrates on actual events as opposed to analysis. Correspondingly, large parts of the book are just extracts from published 17th century pirate voyage reports, and the added value is the hindsight, brevity, and comparison with Spanish colonial perspective. I read it together with Lane's Anthology of sources, which provides complementary primary source reading in a university course setting.