Unwanted Heroes? British Privateering, Commerce, and Diplomacy in the Mid-Eighteenth-Century Eastern Mediterranean

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article argues that the legitimacy and the effectiveness of privateering in the mid-eighteenth-century Mediterranean were determined by high politics beyond the indispensable war status. After the presentation of four distinctive privateering stories involving individuals of different backgrounds, there follows an analysis of the Ottoman, French, and British factors that determined national and private interests in wartime Archipelago (the Aegean Islands). As the Ottoman Empire was the major commercial partner and a potentially desirable ally for both the French and the British, especially for the Levant Company, privateers were trapped between conflicting interests, beyond their own comprehension.