Piracy In Waters Research Articles

Hostis humani generis: Pirates and global maritime commerce

Maritime piracy is a pressing global economic and security challenge, posing significant threats to international shipping and global trade. Contemporary piracy is intrinsically linked to matters of governance and economic marginalization fostered by the globalization of the world economy. The first and second order costs of piracy are not inconsequential. It is estimated that they cost the global economic community about $18 billion a year. Indeed, during their peak the Somali pirates clearly demonstrated the vulnerability of global maritime commerce to aggressive and effective pirate attacks. Using data from the International Maritime Bureau, this paper aspires to provide an understanding of important trends in contemporary maritime piracy, shedding light on the core issues that enable their persistent geographic reach and permanency on the global security landscape. The results indicate that maritime piracy is a global problem but is spatially concentrated in five regions. Geography, political instability, a lack of capacity, and economic marginalization creates conditions conducive to piracy, together with factors such as corruption and poor regional cooperation. The overarching problem is one of governance. First, ineffective governance on land is a primary reason for piracy at sea. Second, the international legal structure provided by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is inadequate and does not provide the necessary framework to control piracy in international space or territorial waters. Ultimately, this paper contributes to the academic discourse on maritime piracy by providing a holistic analysis of contemporary trends using Indonesia and Nigeria as case studies thus offering insights into common underlying drivers and dynamics. Finally, international maritime patrols and regional security efforts appear to have reduced the effectiveness of pirates during the past few years, however, these efforts do little to reduce factors of economic marginalization, societal fragmentation, and political instability on land that enable maritime piracy at sea.

Littoral Piracy in Colonial Nigeria: The Lagos Lagoon in The Interwar Years

Abstract: The antiquity of piracy in Nigeria's coastal waters has been traced to the precolonial period, especially the nineteenth century. However, the period of British colonial rule, specifically, the interwar years, has been neglected in the literature. This paper examines piracy on the Lagos Lagoon during the interwar years in the framework of concurrent concepts of piracy. It contributes to the literature on piracy by reclassifying piratical acts in association with specific water bodies. Hence, this case study of "littoral piracy" is situated in the geography, population movements, economic activities, and colonial policing in the Lagos Lagoon system. Several incidents reported between 1918 and 1937 highlight the incidence of piracy, the attendant human and material toll, the consequent police operations, and judicial adjudication of these incidents. The paper demonstrates how littoral piracy evolved as organized (state-backed) and haphazard (freelance) enterprises in changing contexts of contested and uncontested hegemonies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Measuring the global impact of destructive and illegal fishing on maritime piracy: A spatial analysis.

Maritime piracy constitutes a major threat to global shipping and international trade. We argue that fishers turn to piracy to smooth expected income losses and to deter illegal foreign fishing fleets. Previous investigations have generally focused on cross-national determinants of the incidence of piracy in territorial waters. These investigations neglect piracy in international waters and ignore its spatial dependence, whereby pirate attacks cluster in certain locations due to neighborhood and spillover effects. We conduct a geographically disaggregated analysis using geo-referenced data of piracy and its covariates between 2005 and 2014. We demonstrate that the incidence of piracy in a particular location is associated with higher catch volumes from high-bycatch and habitat-destroying fishing, even when controlling for conditions in proximate coastal areas. We find, additionally, that illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing exerts an especially pronounced effect on piracy. These findings highlight the need for anti-piracy solutions beyond enforcement to include the policing of fishing practices that are illegal or are perceived by local fishers in vulnerable coastal areas to be harmful to small-scale fishing economies.

Piracy and reprisal in Byzantine waters: resolving a maritime conflict between Byzantines and Genoese at the end of the twelfth century

In 1192, Genoese and Pisan pirates under the command of a Genoese corsair pillaged Venetian ships carrying merchandise and valuable gifts for the Byzantine emperor from the Sultan of Egypt. This paper examines the escalation and resolution of this maritime conflict between the Byzantines and the Genoese. Following Genoa’s failure to resolve the incident as requested, the emperor implemented measures against the Genoese residents of Constantinople. The solution chosen by the Byzantine emperor bears striking resemblance to the practice of ius represaliarum, a practice familiar in Western Europe that would later evolve and influence international law in medieval and early modern Europe. The case in focus demonstrates how a merchants’ custom linked to Western Europe was first ‘introduced’ into Byzantine practice.

We are Not Pirates: Portugal, China, and the Pirates of Coloane (Macao), 1910

After pirates abducted seventeen school children and dozens of other men and women on the island of Coloane to the south of the Portuguese enclave of Macao in the summer of 1910, the Portuguese government sent a military expedition to rescue the hostages and exterminate the pirates. Although a minor footnote to the larger events of the republican revolutions that were unfolding in both Portugal and China at this time, this incident on Coloane nevertheless attracted local, national, and worldwide attention and has been the subject of debate ever since. While the Portuguese viewed their success over the pirates as a great victory of Western civilization over barbarism, the Chinese viewed the event as another expression of Western imperialism that resulted in the massacre of countless innocent Chinese. Based on historical and literary sources as well as ethnographic fieldwork, this article takes the events on Coloane in 1910 as a point of departure to explore larger issues of Portuguese and Chinese representations and perceptions of piracy in Asian waters and of one another over the last four hundred years.

Taming the Tide of Maritime Piracy in Nigeria's Territorial Waters

The rising spate of piracy in Nigeria's territorial waters has become a burden on the economic development of the country. It has adversely affected the exportation of crude oil, which is the mainstay of the country's economy. Pirates target and hijack vessels carrying oil and gas, thus reducing the revenue accruable to the country from selling these resources. Piracy also affects the fishing industry which is another source of revenue to the country. Nigeria, as an import dependent country, relies on the importation of finished goods, and this is seriously affected by piracy. This study briefly examines the root causes of piracy in Nigeria. Further, the study interrogates the effects of piracy, identifies the challenges in the suppression of the crime and proffers suggestions toward suppressing the crime in the country. Against this backdrop, the study argues, among other things, that an expansive definition of piracy is key in the fight against this maritime crime in Nigeria, because the present legal regime is restrictive and limited in scope, thus, it does not reflect the modern piratical acts. More importantly, Nigeria must criminalise piracy in its domestic law in other to police its territorial waters, capture and prosecute pirates in its local courts.

Fighting maritime piracy: three lessons from pompeius magnus

Piracy in international waters is on the rise again, in particular off the coast of Somalia. While the dynamic game between pirates, ship-owners, insurance firms and the military seems to have reached some kind of equilibrium, piracy risks generating significant negative externalities to third parties (e.g. in terms of environmental hazards and terrorism), justifying attempts to contain it. We argue that these attempts may benefit from a look back – through the analytical lens of rational choice theory – to the most successful counterpiracy campaign ever undertaken, namely, the one led by the Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) in 67 BC.

Communities of Security Practice at Work? The Emerging African Maritime Security Regime

ABSTRACT Maritime security has been a long-neglected issue on the African security agenda. This situation is changing incrementally, not the least because of the attention to the problem of piracy in the continent's waters. The “piracy momentum” has led to a significant intensification of maritime security cooperation. This article analyzes current processes, strategies, and institutional responses to maritime security challenges. Drawing on a practice-theoretical constructivist reading of regime convergence, this article investigates how continental actors interact, develop a common repertoire, and engage in joint enterprises to address maritime security challenges. It argues that several nascent transnational collectives are developing that can be interpreted as providing the nucleus of maritime security communities.

Piracy in Asian Waters Part 2: Piracy, Sovereignty, and the Early Modern Asian State—An Introduction

Abstract This is the second of a two-part special issue on piracy in Asian waters. Part 1 (vol. 16, no. 6) explored the social and economic dynamics of pan-Asian piracy, and here in Part 2, contributors delve into the political dimensions of piracy by focusing on its interrelationship with notions of sovereignty, the changing nature of states in early modern Asia, and the rise of global seaborne empires. The four articles here challenge the conventional wisdom that Asian waters were great voids in indigenous political imagination and that Asian polities never regulated maritime space before the arrival of the West. Piracy played a significant role in the intense economic rivalries and competing political claims over sovereignty, not just between Western imperial powers but also among indigenous polities. Maritime space, therefore, was actively contested by both European powers and by various Asian states. In this contestation the early modern Asian pirate served as both instrument and contender of nascent projects of empire-building and sovereignty.

Efficiency of Law Enforcement Measures against the Act of Piracy under International Law: Focusing on Piracy in Waters off the Coast of Somalia

Efficiency of Law Enforcement Measures against the Act of Piracy under International Law: Focusing on Piracy in Waters off the Coast of Somalia

Piracy in Asian Waters

Abstract Seafaring, and especially the use of seaborne violence, in the early modern period is strongly associated with European naval activity. In this issue and the next, this perspective is challenged through a sustained interrogation of indigenous piracy in Asian waters. A series of studies highlight the persistence, sophistication, and breathtaking scale of Asian piracy. They show how piracy was deeply ingrained in the social worlds, commercial exchanges, and political contestations across the Asian littoral. Based on these insights, it is argued that the study of piracy reveals the significance of an often-overlooked dimension of Asian maritime enterprise in the early modern period.

ROUGH SEAS?

The shipping industry regards several parLs of the world as piracy 'risk areas'. Within Asia, these include the Singapore Strait, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Philippine waters, and to a lesser extent the whole of the South China Sea.' From 1990 to 1992, the most 'risky' of these areas was the Riau Archipelago, that is, the waters around Singapore and the Indonesian islands to its south. The frequency of pirate attacks appeared to increase suddenly at the beginning of 1990 and to continue until mid-1992, when they just as suddenly ceased. These observations lead to one general and one specific question. The general question is: why are there pirates in the Riau Archipelago, but not (or not any longer) in Penzance? The more specific question is: why was there a sudden wave of attacks? In answer to both questions I shall offer two propositions. The first is that contemporary piracy occurs where three factors are in place; economic dislocation brought about by rapid development, recognition of piracy as an available cultural or subcultural possibility, and opportunity. The second is that some proportion of piracy in Asian waters appears to be condoned or conducted by state agencies. Piracy, like smuggling and corruption, may be a source of unofficial income for military or law enforcement personnel or indeed their agencies. It may flourish as long as provincial or local units can shield their staff from investigation and sanctions, but other things being equal, will become less common when the central authorities threaten to crack down. The next section provides background information and sets the scene for a more theoretical discussion. While data is drawn from a variety of sources, much of the empirical material is drawn from one area, the Riau Archipelago of Indonesia.2