Piratical attacks have become more frequent, violent, costly and increasingly threaten to undermine order in the international system. Much attention has focused on Somalia, but piracy is a problem worldwide. Recent coordination efforts among states in South East Asia appear to have helped in the area, but elsewhere piracy has expanded. Interestingly, international law has long recognized piracy as a crime and provided tools for universal suppression, yet piracy persists. In this book, a handpicked group of leading experts in the field of International Relations use maritime piracy as a means to expose the incongruities in our understanding of global governance. Using broadly constructivist approaches to understand international actors’ responses to the challenges created by maritime piracy, the contributors question a number of myths and misconceptions around piracy and analyze the various ways that international law and organizations channel actors’ understandings of maritime piracy and their efforts to respond to it. In doing so, they expose some shaky foundations for IR theorists: how do we conceive of governance and legitimacy when they are delinked from the territorial aspect of the modern nation-state? What happens to prospects for cooperation when we get to the nitty-gritty questions of practice related to paying for trials, imprisoning and maintaining captured pirates, bearing the burden of policing sea-lanes, or even determining what constitutes a pirate? Does anyone have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force at sea, and how is that legitimacy constructed? Maritime Piracy and the Construction of Global Governance offers an improved theoretical understanding of the response of the international community to maritime piracy and broadens our understanding of the complex and sometimes countervailing motivations of all the actors involved, from international organizations and states down to the pirates themselves.

Many people in the western world maintain the contradictory notions that the pirates of old were romantic social bandits while their modern brethren are brutal thugs, thieves, and villains. In Global Piracy, James E. Wadsworth compiles and contextualizes a wealth of primary source documents which illustrate the global phenomenon of piracy through the eyes and voices of those who experienced it: both the pirates or privateers themselves and their victims. The book allows us to confront our stereotypes by giving us access to “real” pirates in a wide range of historical periods and global regions, from ancient Greece to modern day Nigeria, unfiltered as much as possible by authorial voice or interpretation. Global Piracy seeks neither to romanticize nor vilify pirates, but simply to understand them in the context of their times and the broader world they inhabited. Departing from run-of-the-mill narratives, it selects documents which provide new and fascinating insights into piracy around the globe. With documents introduced by contextual information, and supplemented by study questions, suggested reading lists, illustrations and maps, this book is an essential companion for anyone studying the history of piracy.

Maritime Piracy is now a pressing global issue, and this work seeks to provide a concise and informative introduction to the area. Never truly having receded into a romanticized past, seaborne banditry’s rapid growth was stimulated by low risks and increasingly high rewards. Currently, obsolete, incomplete and complicating structures and norms of governance, together with advances in technology, enable a lucrative business model for pirates, as they effectively operate with impunity and claim increasing ransoms. Beginning with an overview and historical development of piracy and the relevant maritime governance structures, this work progresses to examine how 20th century shifts in global governance norms and structures eventually left the high seas open for predatory attacks on one of the worlds fastest growing and essential industries. Moving through contemporary debates about how to best combat piracy, the work concludes that the solution to a chronic global problem requires a long-term, holistic, and inclusive approach. Examining militaristic, legalist and humanitarian strategies and offering a critical evaluation of the various problems they bring, this work will be of great interest to all students and scholars of international law, international organizations and maritime security.

Spanning from the Caribbean to East Asia and covering almost 3,000 years of history, from Classical Antiquity to the eve of the twenty-first century, Persistent Piracy is an important contribution to the history of the state formation as well as the history of violence at sea.

Piracy: the background -- The political development of Somalia -- Stateless territories and clandestine networks -- The pirate coast -- The geography of piracy -- Pirate operations -- The impact of the shipping industry -- Legal and insurance issues -- Vessel defence -- Are there answers?.

Non-Commercial digital piracy has seen an unprecedented rise in the wake of the digital revolution; with wide-scale downloading and sharing of copyrighted media online, often committed by otherwise law-abiding citizens. Bringing together perspectives from criminology, psychology, business, and adopting a morally neutral stance, this book offers a holistic overview of this growing phenomenon. It considers its cultural, commercial, and legal aspects, and brings together international research on a range of topics, such as copyright infringement, intellectual property, music publishing, movie piracy, and changes in consumer behaviour. This book offers a new perspective to the growing literature on cybercrime and digital security. This multi-disciplinary book is the first to bring together international research on digital piracy and will be key reading for researchers in the fields of criminology, psychology, law and business.