Pirates: The History, Origins, and Current Status of Pirates around the world - Essay Example

(1) Roman pirates possessed much strength than Greeks that's why when Greek pirates Illyrian attacked on Roman's ships in the Adriatic Sea, the Romans attacked twice after that. Another name since 10th century BC in the history of Greek piracy is the 'Dorian Greek Pirates' based in Crete who lasted for 800 years. Since eastern Mediterranean was under the supervision of Rhodeans along with several possible attempts to stop piracy, Crete no longer remained a safe shelter for the pirates, so the pirates scattered in different directions (1).

Another name in the world of ancient piracy after Romans and Greeks were the 'Lycians', who belonged to the Antalya Providence today known as Turkey. Lycian pirates were affected by the Ramses The Third who destroyed them in 1194, but after some time Lycians recovered from the destruction and become even more active and took vengeance from the Roman pirates by attacking and eliminating them in 67 BC. The fall of Romans lead the Lycians to carry on with piracy till the patrols of the British warships suppressed piracy in the 18th and 19th century (1).

How amazing is the fact that Maritime ancient piracy was one of the factors of destruction of the Roman Empire, but it is also true that Cilician pirates from Turkey are best known for capturing Julius Caesar in 78 BC. (1) One of the most complicated and persistent problems stemming from the practice of privateering emerged in the seventeenth-century Mediterranean. The issue was whether the Mediterranean corsairs were pirates or privateers (naval soldiers). The practical difficulty in distinguishing between the privateer and the pirate, understated by the clear-cut, legal definitions, is illustrated by the corsairs of Malta and the Barbary Coast.

On the one hand, like privateers, these corsairs were duly authorized by public officials to attack commerce in the area. On the other, while privateers were licensed only in time of war to capture or destroy enemy shipping, the situation of the corsairs was more complex. (Thomson, 1994, p. 45) Today, piracy is much more managed as it has taken the form of 'Organized Piracy', this concept started when there was nothing new about piracy in the early European state system except for the scale and scope of the piracy that emerged as the political nature of European infrastructure.

In several instances, groups of pirates formed communities or quasi-states based on the democratization of politics and violence. This organized piracy presented a threat not only to property but also to the developing national state and its way of organizing politics and society. It is not surprising, that neither resistance to European states and society was fierce nor that it took the form of an attack on property. Piracy is not always an economic crime like the theft of private property. It is also a political act, a protest against the obvious use of state institutions to defend property and discipline labor.

In the seventeenth century, French political and religious refugees settled on Hispaniola and started a new business, they used to eke out a living providing hides, tallow, and dried meat to visiting ships in exchange for guns and ammunition. (Rankin, p. 59) Spain drove these buccaneers from Hispaniola for both the reasons, first because their settlement was illegal and secondly because they provisioned non-Spanish ships, all of which