Overview

Rather than looking at different manifestations of early modern piracy as geographically and temporally isolated cultural phenomena, Practices and Narratives of Early Modern Piracy: Connecting the Seas (1550–1800) pursues a comprehensive approach to this field of study. This volume investigates the spatial, temporal, and economic connections between pirates and other seafarers who navigated the North Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic, and the Indian Oceans in the early modern period, and the cultural products they inspired. With a specific focus on historical practices and cultural narratives it addresses issues such as the appearance of pirates and piratical protagonists in diverse geographical locations, changing negotiations of pirate identity, the fluid boundary between illegal piracy and state-sanctioned privateering, and the (trans)national economic entanglements of different forms of maritime predation. By bringing together the discussion of literary, cultural, and historical aspects of piracy and seafaring, the volume explores the cultural as well as the ideological impact and function of the pirate figure in early modern historiography, literature, and popular culture.

Full Product Details

Author:   Susanne Gruss ,  Marcus Hartner
Publisher:   Amsterdam University Press
Imprint:   Amsterdam University Press
ISBN:  

9789463724043

ISBN 10:   9463724044
Pages:   282
Publication Date:   22 September 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Practices and Narratives of Early Modern Piracy - Susanne Gruss and Marcus Hartner Part I. Political and Economic Entanglements 1 Pirate Marts and Knockdown Prices: Piracy, Class, and Economics in Early Modern England - Claire Jowitt 2 Piracy and Sovereignty in the Indian Ocean: The British East India Company’s Campaign against Atlantic and Angrian Maritime Predation, 1717–24 - David Wilson 3 Connecting Seas and Epochs: George Walker and Britain’s ‘Privateers of Force,’ 1744–48 - David J. Starkey 4 Surviving Scarcity: Reconceptualizing Tunisian Corsairing during the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries - Lama Elsharif Part II. Pirate Mobility 5 Interconnected Identities: Seventeenth-Century ‘Barbary’ Pirates, Christian Captives, and Geo-Cultural Mobility - Jo Esra 6 “Confinde to No Limits”: John Ward, a Renegade Life in Print - Sue Jones 7 “Wrestling with the Restless Sea”: Piracy, European Expansion, and the Further Beyond - Kevin P. McDonald 8 “Anchors Found on High Mountains”: Terraqueous Traffic and Pirate Mobility in Walter Ralegh - Johannes Schlegel Part III. Literary Accounts 9 Setting the Stage: Transnational Piracy and the Ambiguity of Pirate Identity in the Stukeley Plays - Susanne Gruss 10 Commerce, Conflict, and Intercultural Contact: Figurations of Polyvalence in Thomas Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West, Part I - Marcus Hartner 11 From Captive to Privateer: William Rufus Chetwood’s The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle (1726) - Stefanie Fricke About the Contributors Index

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Author Information

Susanne Gruss is Professor of English Literature at the University of Bamberg. Her research and publications focus on contemporary British literature and culture as well as on early modern England. Within these broad areas, her specialisms include gender studies and feminist theory, neo-Victorianism, and (film) adaptation; as well as collaboration and/in theatre, piracy, and (early modern) law and literature. Marcus Hartner is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Bielefeld University. His main areas of expertise include early modern English travel literature and (cognitive and historical) narratology, particularly the study of literary character. He is currently working on a monograph on early modern English captivity narratives and co-edits the Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (de Gruyter, with Nadine Böhm-Schnitker).

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