MURALIKRISHNA M G
Piracy was once a far more serious problem than it is today. In a history of piracy published
in 1907, Colonel John Biddulph, a retired British army officer, wrote of
the early 1700s: In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, pirate
communities flourished in and around the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
Pirates were also prevalent in East Asia, with the seas around the
Malay.
In the early sixteenth century, Algiers alone was estimated to have a
hundred sailing ships manned by thousands of sailors all engaged in
privateering. With such a formidable force at its disposal, Algiers was
able to hold 30,000 Christian captives (including, at one point, the
Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes).
Beginning in the 1690s, further south, not far from where today's
Somali pirates lurk, the "Red Sea men" attacked not only ships belonging
Famous Pirate of 16 th Century:
to the British, Dutch, and French East India Companies but also those
Bartholomew Roberts
belonging to wealthy Indians
and other Asians. The ships
targeted were often full of
gold, cash, and jewels -- booty so rich that it drew aspiring pirates from
as far away as New York.
But by the seventeenth century, when overseas trade became a primary
source of the British Empire's wealth, the state's attitude began to
change. Piracy and privateering became less tolerable to a nation that
had much to lose from such attacks. Authorities began to remove
corrupt officials who were in cahoots with the brigands. Governor
Nicholas Trott of the Bahamas was deposed in 1696, followed the next
year by Governor Benjamin Fletcher of New York.
The threat from Barbary pirates lingered until European colonists
began to occupy North Africa, starting with the French conquest of
Algeria in 1830. States realized that the surest way to create peace at
sea was to impose the rule of law on the land where pirates hid. That
still holds true today.
Similarly, on the other side of the globe, the threat from Malay pirates
was not suppressed until the mid-nineteenth century, when the region fell under the sway of Europeans such as
Sir James Brooke, "the White Rajah of Sarawak."