Reviewing crimes of sea piracy within the Mediterranean region between the 16th and 19th century

Abstract

The subject of my dissertation is ‘Reviewing Crimes of Sea Piracy within the Mediterranean Region between the sixteenth and nineteenth Century’. There have been documented accounts of sea piracy since the 14th Century B.C. This phenomenon was very much in evidence after the sixteenth century, especially within the Mediterranean, which was the meeting point of three continents and a melting pot of different cultures.

This dissertation aims to highlight and give a basic view on the importance of the crime of piracy within maritime trade in Malta and the rest of the Mediterranean region throughout the sixteenth and the nineteenth century. A desk research approach was used with the objective of providing the reader with an in-depth view of the social, political and economic situation in Malta, which was the centre of maritime trade at the time and neighbouring countries during those turbulent times in order to contextualise the phenomena of piracy and corsairing. This study also presents the difference between piracy and corsairing and the important role played by these two phenomena and the contribution that corsairing made to the island’s economy.

The legal and punitive measures taken to combat this crime on the high seas are explored. A snapshot of events at sea occurring within the Mediterranean region is given. The study also presents short histories of two notable Maltese corsairs in order to give a different perspective on the practice of piracy and corsairing that takes in the lived experiences of corsairs. This criminal activity on the high seas and the motivations underpinning people’s decision to become pirates are explored in light of a number of behavioural theories that try to explain behaviour by hypothesising a number of reasons underpinning human decisions, in the case of this study the reasons why so many Maltese people chose to resort to this crime on the high seas.