Pirates And Privateers
New Perspectives on the War on Trade in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Those travelling on the seas have always been vulnerable to the attacks of predators acting within or without the law. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries such assaults reached new heights as the development of trans-oceanic empires increased massively the wealth and extent of sea-borne trade, and with it the potential for prize-taking.

Pirates and Privateers focuses on the character of pirate communities in the Caribbean, the East Indies and China, and on the scale and significance of privateering operations based in the principal European maritime states. It brings together the latest work of an internationally renowned group of scholars to shed fresh light on the fascinating, frequently misunderstood subject of violence at sea in the age of sail.

Contributions by
J. L. Anderson, Patrick Crowhurst, Ole Feldbaek, Corrie Reinders Folmer, Erik Goebel, Els van Eyck van Heslinga, Faye Kert, Ghislayne Loyré, Jaap de Moor, Dian Murray, Goncal López Nadal, Jan Parmentier, Marcus Rediker, Robert C. Ritchie, David J. Starkey and Jan van Zijverden

E.S. van Eyck van Heslinga is Director of Collections, Netherlands Maritime Museum, Amsterdam. J.A. de Moor is Associate Professor in History, University of Leiden. David J Starkey graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in Economic History. He then gained an MA in the History of the Atlantic Economy at the University of Exeter, which led to doctoral research into the character, scale and significance of British privateering in the eighteenth century. Having gained his PhD, Dr Starkey was appointed Research Fellow in the Maritime History of Devon project at the University of Exeter, an appointment that was followed by two further research fellowships in maritime history at Exeter.

In 1994, Dr Starkey joined the History Department at Hull when he became the holder of the first permanent lectureship to be dedicated to maritime historical studies in the UK university sector - the Wilson Family Lectureship in Maritime History.

Dr Starkey is Director of the Maritime Historical Studies Centre at the University of Hull.