From Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island to Errol Flynn in <em>Captain Blood</em> on to today's <em>Pirates of the Caribbean</em>, the romantic image of pirates in modern Western popular culture has long been with us. But of course pirates come in many guises, and not all of them as charming as Johnny Depp. Thracians and Thyrennians, Cilicians and Illyrians terrorised traders in the Mediterranean of the ancient world. Julius Caesar was captured by Cilician pirates in 75BC, and Pompey was given sweeping powers throughout the Roman Empire to help drive them out. His success was temporary.</p>
Pirates are outlaws who move quickly, a form of lawlessness based on the application of immense short term power by mobile forces which fade away, similar to guerrilla warfare. The Vikings were pirates that raided far into Russia, travelling up the Volga and Dniepr and into the Mediterranean. The Barbary Pirates in their Xebecs raided ships and towns all around the Mediterranean and Europe's Western seaboard, as far north as Iceland. Cornish and Irish villages were raided regularly by them.</p>
In <em>Pirates and Privateers</em> Tom Bowling offers a lively history of piracy, from ancient times through the Renaissance 'privateers' such as Drake, with their Letters of Marque (an early example of State-sponsored terrorism), to the still real and flourishing threat of contemporary pirates that patrol the less well-regulated shipping lanes of the world today.</p>
