CLAIRE JOWITT. The Culture of Piracy, 1580-1630: English Literature and Seaborne Crime.

Abstract

We think we know pirates. The mass appeal of Captain Jack Sparrow flows out of a vast reservoir of terrifying but enticing villains, leading up to Long John Silver, Captain Hook, and Captain Blood. We sometimes need to be reminded, however, that pirates also have a serious history. The meanings of these elusive icons have seldom been as rigorously pursued as in Claire Jowitt's study. In a thorough examination of historical and literary pirates over a half-century of early modern English culture, Jowitt uncovers the political and cultural importance of these violent mariners. These figures, under various names—pirates, privateers, corsairs, buccaneers, filibusters, ‘men of the Sea’—undergirded British maritime expansion in the early modern period. At times challenging but also supporting various orthodoxies, these figures were, in Jowitt's term, ‘ambiguously serviceable’ to the state, particularly during the pirate-friendly foreign policy of Elizabeth's reign. Pirates comprised, in short, the outlaw vanguard of England's maritime empire. At the same time as they were demonised and hanged ‘for three tides’ at Wapping Pier, pirates created an ‘alternative political entity’ (p. 6) that would help bring England into a global maritime economy and serve as ‘one of the key cultural mechanisms that was able to connect disparate regions and diverse cultures’ (p. 198). If ‘oceans connect’, as the catchphrase goes, pirates were crucial in bringing the pieces together.