Guy Chet__the persistence of piracy

The Limits of Naval Power and the Persistence of Open Piracy in the Atlantic, 1688-1830
The rise and decline of Atlantic piracy has been used to gauge the level of commercial, naval and diplomatic control that Britain exercised in the Atlantic. Indeed, naval historians have suggested that by 1730, British policing of maritime trade routes had eradicated piracy in the region. Yet statistical data and anecdotal evidence indicate that transporting cargoes in the Atlantic remained risky well into the nineteenth century. These data suggest that Britain’s constabulary command of the region was not nearly as thorough as some have suggested. Piracy was eventually ushered out of the Atlantic indirectly and inadvertently, not through forceful confrontation at sea, but in response to the reduced profitability of contraband.
Britain’s ineffective anti-piracy campaign reveals the limits of British power at sea, but also on land, vis-à-vis its constituents. Violence and property losses at sea were useful to authorities in their efforts to articulate differences between the illegitimate violence of pirates and smugglers, and legitimate force wielded by the government. And yet, the government’s attempts to extend its jurisdiction beyond coastal waters, monopolize violence, and sanction some forms of maritime commerce while delegitimizing others, were consistently resisted, ignored and thwarted by large swaths of English society on both sides of the ocean.