The Punishment of Pirates: Interpretation and Institutional Order in the Early Modern British Empire

An exploration of how the British Empire policed piracy that balances a sociological investigation into maritime state power with epic storytelling.

Early in the seventeenth-century boom of seafaring, piracy was a fertile ground for many enterprising and lawless young men to make fortunes on the high seas, due in no small part to the lack of policing by the British crown. But as the British empire grew from being a collection of far-flung territories into a consolidated economic and political enterprise dependent on long-distance trade, pirates suddenly became a tremendous threat. This development is traced by sociologist Matthew Norton in The Punishment of Pirates, taking the reader on an exciting journey through the shifting legal status of pirates in the eighteenth century. Norton shows us that eliminating this threat required an institutional shift; first identifying and defining piracy, and then brutally policing it. The Punishment of Pirates develops a new framework for understanding the cultural mechanisms involved in dividing, classifying, and constructing institutional order by tracing the transformation of piracy from a situation of cultivated ambiguity to a criminal category with violently patrolled boundaries-ending with its eradication as a systemic threat to trade in the English empire. Replete with gun battles, executions, jailbreaks, and courtroom dramas, Norton’s book will offer insights for social theorists, political scientists, and historians alike.