Piracy

Four Views of Piracy: A Sociological Examination of 17th and 18th Century Organized Nautical Crime and its Relevance to Contemporary Issues of Deviance

By:
Evan Mowry

For:
Sociology of Deviance: SOC 3141
Inst: Jennifer Rothchild
University of Minnesota: Morris
12/13/05
Introduction
The relevancy of colonial-age piracy to today’s sociological issues is easily questioned; it seems difficult to draw parallels to our lives from fanciful odes to buccaneering like Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and movies such as Pirates of the Caribbean. However, as with all forms of deviance both contemporary and historical, the underlying causes of piracy extend far beyond characteristics commonly attributed to criminals. Greed, lust, and rejection of social authority are certainly both present in ancient piracy and current deviances, but are those really the factors that determine deviance, especially deviance incorporating violence? In essence, what causes those characteristics and therefore the social structures they encourage? SOC 3141 was given seemingly with the goal of learning to critically analyze information and the past in order to determine, as close as is possible, the truth about commonly distorted concepts of social deviance, their causes, and their cures. The best exercise for this course, therefore, would be to take phenomenon that bear little resemblance on the surface to their contemporary incarnations and describe how they are actually very reminiscent of their contemporaries. This paper takes four different routes in exploring historical piracy; that of Anomie-Strain Theory, Differential Association Theory, Social Control Theory, and Social Conflict Theory, attempting to find connections between the conclusions reached at the end of each route and everyday contemporary phenomenon. In order to analyze piracy and its associated terms, one must first define and describe their historical and empirical qualities.


History and Statistics
The first recorded acts of piracy were around 1400-1300 BC, when Lukka raiders attacked shipping from the coast of Asia Minor. Since then, it has steadily increased in frequency as nautical shipping has become more common, seeing a sharp increase during the 17th and 18th centuries due to the vast riches to be had on shipping lanes from the New World and Europe, and to the geographical nature of the West Indies, which are far remote from the heavily patrolled border-waters of the colonial powers. Pirate careers generally began in one of two ways. Either a merchant ship would be captured by existing pirates and its crew, eager to make up the loss of months of labor, would turn to piracy as a means of subsistence, or naval/civilian mutineers would turn to piracy as one of few choices left after turning on their captain (both civilian and military mutiny was punishable by death, regardless of the circumstances, in many European countries at the time). Military and even civilian recruiting practices were less than humane, and the vast majority of sailors in the British navy had been pressed into service (a policy called impressments) against their will (Percival, The European Nations in the West Indies, 1493-1688).
Spanish galleons carrying gold bullion, French and English shipping transporting slaves from the Ivory Coast of Africa to North and Central America, whalers off the coasts of South, Central, and North America, and colonial ships laden with supplies all provided a rich hunting ground for pirates. Fierce military enforcement of anti-piracy laws during the decades preceding the American Revolution severely decreased the number of pirates operating in the Western Hemisphere, but the coming upheavals of the American and French Revolutions and the Napoleonic Wars provided many new opportunities for pirates.
During these wars, countries hired pirates, giving them a Letter of Marque, which allowed certain immunities from attack if the pirates did not attack their employers’ shipping. Almost all pirates during this time quit piracy for privateering, as you could still plunder most civilian shipping, and it’s likely that they had just neutralized the biggest threat to their business in the area. Later, colonial territories like Canada used privateers almost exclusively in their naval defense, as paying the pirates was much less destructive than not. Most privateering was eradicated with the Declaration of Paris in 1854, which was an attempt at “sanitizing” inter-continental cargo shipping from intervention by other nation states, as other nations would supply Letters of Marque in times of peace with the intent of disrupting their rivals industry. With the advent of steam ships, and later steel and iron hulls and hence technologically superior national navies, and the elimination of privateering from the foreign policies of world powers, piracy and privateering were pretty much eradicated in the Western Hemisphere, but modern forms of piracy flourish to this day.
The ICC reported 93 incidents of nautical theft and 30 instances of murder on the high seas in the first half of 2004 (http://www.icc-ccs.org) alone, although other information seems to indicate this is an optimistically conservative estimate. Recently, pirates based in Somalia chased and fired upon a Seabourne Cruise Ship in an attempt to board it. The International Maritime Bureau chief cited “25 pirate attacks [reported] in the past six months” in the area (http://www.CNN.com, Nov. 12, 2005). Pirate attacks have tripled from 1993-2003, with the first half of 2003 bringing “234 pirate attacks, 16 deaths, and 52 people injured worldwide; there were also 193 crew members held hostage during this period.” (http://www.reference.com) While piracy is no longer the primary fear of marine merchants, it is still prevalent, especially against tourists.
Background/Analysis
Four sociological perspectives of deviance seem relevant to piracy, the first being Anomie-Strain Theory. Anomie-Strain Theory’s basic premise is that social structures exert a definite pressure upon certain persons in the society to engage in nonconforming rather than conforming conduct (Merton, Readings in Deviant Behavior). But what structures would have encouraged piracy, especially when it was so obviously detested by the governments of the time (evidenced by mandatory death penalties for piracy, entire wings of national navies devoted to the combating of piracy (Karraker, Piracy Was a Business), etc.)? The first requirement to answering this question is to identify the primary social structures of the time, and to identify any conflicts between them that caused potential pirates to interpret their influences in ways neither of those structures intended.
For inhabitants of 16th and 17th century European countries and their colonies, there were two main social influences that ruled their laws, customs, and mores; the Church, and the State. However, frequently individual states’ policies or those of their rulers were at odds with the wishes of the church. The most dramatic example of this would be the creation of the Church of England, by Henry VIII, as an explicit rejection of the Vatican’s monopoly over God (and divorces)(Hooker, WSU). Further, the cited example indicates not only a conflict of authority but of moral direction; frequently, the morals and social beliefs the church preached were at odds with those of European policy-makers and their explicit goals of wealth and power.
Viewed through the lens of Anomie-Strain Theory, the conditions leading to piracy are perceived to be a function of moral confusion among potential pirates. The church was held as an ideological authority and the state a realistic one. When these two authorities both required different behaviors in the same situation, cognitive dissonance occurred, as potential pirates were required (by the state) to behave in morally inappropriate (by the church’s standards) ways, a pressure to engage in what was perceived by them as non-conformist behavior was exerted. Combined with the low value placed on the life of a sailor’s life during this time period, and the strict and predominantly corporal (and frequently capital) discipline common at sea, this pressure resulted in dissatisfied individuals who viewed non-conformist behavior as positive, even necessary. Given this view, one asks less why pirates decided to plunder and more why all of them did not turn to piracy.
The second sociological perspective, Differential Association Theory, maintains that an excess of definitions favorable to deviant behavior over an excess of definitions favorable to non-deviant behavior results in a learned disposition towards deviant behavior, and that these definitions are derived primarily through interactions with intimate, personal groups (Cressey & Sutherland, Readings in Deviant Behavior). Differential Association Theory, then, explains piracy as a learned disposition towards acts of violation and violence against others outside of the intimate group; the intimate group being, in this case, the crew of a naval ship.
While pirates are frequently viewed as brutal and bloodthirsty, they certainly held no monopoly on these characteristics. In fact, many common beliefs about pirates, such as the concept of “walking the plank” were never actually documented. Navies, however, adopted a strategy of extreme violence in their nations’ bids for nautical supremacy. Survivors of military conflicts at sea were hardly ever taken prisoner, as the expense of keeping them on a ship was usually deemed to be too high, and they were commonly marooned on a barren sandbar, thrown overboard, or merely left to their burning, sinking ship. Civilian shipping seldom fared better. Because of the extreme cost of mounting an entrepreneurial voyage overseas, frequently merchants surviving pirate and privateer attacks, and those of an enemy nation’s navy, would limp into port, their hull barren, and their economic prospects bleak. Because of this, defense of valuable cargo was fiercely mounted against both pirate and military raiders, and many would die in the conflict or be reduced to extreme poverty after. In essence, very little concern was shown for any life at all on the high seas by state-sponsored ships.
That emphasis on violent behavior fostered an environment rich in favorable definitions of violent deviance, as crews would be encouraged to rape, murder, and plunder; activities we associate with pirates, while in service on military ships. This kind of encouragement goes far beyond what is today considered acceptable military practice. These attitudes were not confined to the nautical sphere: rape (albeit more acceptable then than now), robbery, and arson were employed against “others” by all the militaries of the time, engendering a popular perspective of delinquency (read: devaiance) in the military, from which the first pirates diverged, and was the source of much of the piracy of that age.
This encouragement wasn’t considered non-deviant behavior, either: the penalties for murder and theft were much more severe during this time period than they are now. The difference lies in the spheres they were engaged in: penalties were only enacted against deviant actors in their own social sphere, and sailors were encouraged to perform acts they themselves considered deviant against members of other social spheres. The situational application of concepts of right and wrong to certain acts twisted sailor’s previously held beliefs that the acts themselves were wrong, and resulted in their belief that they were not.
The third perspective to be used in my sociological analysis of piracy is that of Social Control. Social Control theory holds that individuals, over the course of their socialization and their lives, receive many checks on deviant behavior, and were it not for these checks, there would be a much higher incidence of behaviors considered deviant (for they would not be). Control Theory also holds that deviant acts are always an attempt to obtain socially acceptable goals through socially unacceptable means (Hirschi, Readings in Deviant Behavior). These checks each fall into the categories of commitment, involvement, and belief. The testing of commitment is merely that of a cost/risk analysis: are the rewards of piracy greater than the consequences of being caught? Involvement asks whether the actor is involved enough in socially acceptable endeavors to have no time or resources to commit to socially unacceptable means of fulfillment; essentially, does the actor have time to pillage and plunder? Belief is unlike the other two categories, in that it attempts to separate deviants into two categories, those that reject social mores governing behavior, and those that rationalize deviant behavior within the framework of those mores. Basically, when examining the “belief” of pirates, one must determine if they rejected the social stigma of piracy as immoral, or if they attempted to rationalize piracy as a legitimate means of achieving goals that did not clash with commonly held morals.
Commitment: did pirates view the advantages of piracy as more weighty than the consequences of it? I think the answer is most certainly yes. First of all, for the average sailor, piracy had the operational definition as robbery on the high seas by a ship and crew not of his nationality. The acts were the same, the only difference being the victims. Thus, a switch from legitimate sailing to piracy had all the obvious benefits of naval service with less of the arbitrary, strict discipline and rigid structure. Second, a pirate ship entered into combat only for defense or profit. Naval ships could be ordered into combat for really any reason at all. By removing oneself from naval service, a pirate removed the possibility of apparently senseless risk of his life fighting a foreign warship for little or no personal profit.
It is true, however, that the sacrifices of piracy were great. Becoming a pirate forfeited your life were you captured. A pirate could seldom return home to his family (if he had any). Pirate ships did not have the advantages of ports of call as much as military ships did, and were frequently in disrepair and outgunned by naval vessels. Make no mistake; a pirate certainly chose one sort of risk over another, but at least there was an amount of control, of personal efficacy over the progress of one’s life, something that would be non-existent in naval service, and very rare even as a civilian, and a pirate might end his criminal career at the end of any voyage, whereas very seldom would stock-crew in navies graduate from military serviceman to civilian alive, as the age of discharge was at the tail end of life duration expectancy.
Involvement: were pirates previously involved in socially acceptable means of achieving the common social goals of the day (wealth, power, survival, etc)? The answer would appear to be no, for a number of reasons. First, pirates were hardly ever drawn from the ranks for the privileged elites; the vast majority of pirate crews were poor men who had been poor all their life (Karraker, Piracy Was a Business). The socially acceptable means of pursuing goals in 17th Century Europe were constructed with the primary effect of keeping those who were poor in poverty, and those who were poor in comfort. There were few (and no easy) ways to pursue the goals of wealth and power without resorting to illegal means. Second, due to the incredibly limited amount of social and economic mobility during this time period, pirates generally had very few pathways leading to a guarantee of socially acceptable goals. Finally, as was mentioned in the analyses for Social Differentiation and Anomie-Strain Theory, environments pirates were in before their turn to piracy were especially morally vague. Violence was considered a matter of course by both nautical civilian traders and navies, and without a framework of pacifistic involvement, they had no framework for socially acceptable involvement; because much of a pirate’s life was devoted to theft and violence before becoming a pirate, there were no pacifistic checks on his behavior.
Third, the question of belief: did pirates rationalize their behaviors or reject social norms? The answer to this is not one or the other, but a combination of the two. Pirates rejected the mores of the social sphere, but I don’t believe they actively did so. There was enough violence in their environment before piracy that they felt no need to rationalize their behaviors; they simply viewed them as normal. Also, in the naval socialization process, many pirates were taught to reject their previous social moral structures. By the time many pirates actually became pirates; they had finished with the rejection and were now working on the plundering.
However, the similarities between common versions of the “Pirate Code” and common naval discipline many, a common punishment being “Moses’ Law”, or “40 Stripes, lacking 1”, 40 being the number of whippings believed to be necessary to kill a man, and 39 being as near to death as possible. These similarities were likely due to the severely mortal nature of life at sea, and strict obedience being necessary to safeguard the lives of everyone on board a ship, but the parallels seem to suggest that pirates were merely following what they thought to be a legitimate courses of action within the framework of morals taught by their situation, which would imply an internal, personal rationalization of their deviance.
The fourth and last perspective, Social Conflict Theory, states that crime, as officially determined, is a definition of behavior that is conferred on some people by those in power. Definitions of crime are formulated according to the interests of those who have the power to translate their interests into public policy (Quinney, Readings in Deviant Behavior). Piracy, therefore, was not considered deviant for any reason other than that it negatively effected the rich and powerful.
Pirates primarily paid on shipping, and overseas trading was so expensive that investors were needed to finance capitalistic missions. A single voyage could bankrupt or make hideously wealthy a single person, firm, or family and the people who stood to gain the most from this situation were the already wealthy. Piracy, therefore, only negligibly affected the lower classes, and greatly affected the upper. Because the benefits of shipping were so great to the powerful class, and invasion of that benefit was perpetrated primarily by those outside the nation and the lower classes within the nation, violating that privilege rapidly became a severely taboo act, with the harshest penalties imaginable. Social Control theory states that: “Because it is not the quality of the behavior but the action taken against the behavior that gives it the character of criminality, that which is defined as criminal is relative to the behavior patterns of the class that formulates and applies definitions.”(Quinney, Readings in Deviant Behavior). We see a perfect example of this statement in the utilization of privateers. They were still pursuing acts of piracy, but because the piracy was not perpetrated against the “behavior patterns of the class that formulates and applies definitions”, it was not considered criminal.
Today, the law is slightly different. A radical proponent of Social Control Theory would argue that our perception of piracy has changed only because there is more international cooperation in trade, and that it is not that laws against piracy are Jus Cogens (“compelling law” in Latin, a fundamental principle of international law that is to everyone’s universal benefit) that piracy is labeled a crime against humanity but because it violates the capitalist system that benefits primarily the upper-class of all countries (due to our new, cooperative system of trade) that those practicing it may be tried in any competent court, regardless of nationality.
Conclusion
Piracy bears many resemblances to social problems that plague our contemporary society, just as pirates plagued the shipping lanes of the 17th and 18th century. All four of the analyses undertaken in this paper arrive at the conclusion that different factors converged on sailors to cause them to engage in piracy, all of them out of their reasonable control. That is not to say pirates and modern criminals like them are devoid of any personal responsibility, but that it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to give a “fair trial”, in some sense, to those whose lives have been influenced by factors we have not experienced. Basic elements that exposed sailors to the concepts of piracy and positively reinforced those concepts into beliefs are far beyond the grasp of most of us today.
How does this conclusion apply to contemporary issues? First, it causes the realization that crime can be, but seldom is, a personal choice made in a vacuum. People will do what they see as acceptable, learning from others around them. They will refrain from doing that which interferes with socially acceptable habits, but only so far as the perceived benefits of those socially acceptable habits outweigh the costs of deviance, and their perception of the benefits of deviance is only as great as their perceived mistreatment within the current social structure. Any number of current deviance issues such as gangs can be better understood when we view the rise and decline of the Golden Age of piracy in hindsight. Limited social mobility and a sense of deprivation relative to the rest of society are quite obvious contributing factors to many sorts of violent deviance.
Further, by analyzing the impact of moral (and other forms of cognitive) confusion on the circumstances leading to the creation of break-away countercultures and deviant groups we can further understand ourselves, our society, and our history. The Declaration of Independence springs to mind.





References

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International Chamber of Commerce; Commercial Crime Services Division (http://www.icc.ccs.org)

CNN (http://www.CNN.com)

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