Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550-1650

CLAIRE JOWITT is Professor of English Literature at Nottingham Trent University. She is author of Voyage Drama and Gender Politics, 1589-1642: Real and Imagined Worlds (2002) and co-editor of The Arts of Seventeenth-Century Science: Re-presentation of the Natural World in European and North-American Culture (2002). She is currently finishing a monograph, Alien Nation: Piracy and Empire in Early Modern Culture 1580-1630.

'Pirates? The Politics of Plunder is a first-rate collection of essays on a perennially interesting topic. Drawing on a wide variety of source materials, the contributors explore how piracy was legally defined and culturally interpreted in the early modern period. Striking for its geographical and generic reach, the book explores texts as different as Portuguese epic, English drama, and narratives of North African Muslims enslaved by Christians. Fresh scholarship and lively writing make Pirates? The Politics of Plunder both an outstanding contribution to current scholarship and a pleasure to read.' - Professor Jean E. Howard, Columbia University, USA '...this collection of essays not only cogently draws together some outstanding samples of current work on piracy and its representations during the early modern period but also offers a rich vein of new ideas and approaches for further research on this culturally eclectic and highly stimulating topic.' - Michael G. Brennan, Notes and Queries '...the collection is exemplary for a productive dialogue between literary, historical and cultural approaches, all aiming to locate the questionable figure of the pirate and all based on careful tracing of its textual evidence.' - Tobias Doring, Journal for the Study of British Cultures 'This compact but wide-ranging collection of essays on early modern piracy in the East Atlantic and Mediterranean should appeal to students of history, literature and international law...this collection represents the vanguard of piracy studies.' - Kris Lane, The Mariner's Mirror

• List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors PART I: PIRACY? SOME DEFINITIONS Introduction: Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550-1650; C.Jowitt 'Hostis Humani Generis' - The Pirate as Outlaw in the Early Modern Law of the Sea; C.Harding PART II: PERSPECTIVES ON PIRACY The Problem of Piracy in Ireland, 1570-1630; J.Appleby Piracy and Captivity in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Perspective from Barbary; N.Matar Crusading Piracy? The Curious Case of the Spanish in the Chanel, 1590-95; M.Dimmock Acting Pirates: Converting A Christian Turned Turk ; M.Hutchings 'We are not Pirates': Piracy and Navigation in The Lusiads ; B.Klein Virolet and Martia in the Pirate's Daughter: Gender and Genre in Fletcher and Massinger's The Double Marriage ; L.Munro PART III: PIRATE AFTERLIVES Sir Francis Drake's Ghost: Piracy, Cultural Memory, and Spectral Nationhood; M.Netzloff Scaffold Performances: The Politics of Pirate Death; C.Jowitt Of Pirates, Slaves and Diplomats: Anglo-American Writing about the Maghrib in the Age of Empire; G.MacLean Select Bibliography Index