Pirate Imperialism

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<B>This first truly global history of the suppression of piracy links maritime raiding to empire building in the nineteenth century</B><BR /> &#160;<BR /> In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, imperial powers around the world came into direct confrontation with local resistance in the form of maritime raiding. From the Atlantic basin to the western Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa, and Southeast Asia and China, imperial powers claimed that progress was being held back by the barbarity and greed of pirates, who repeatedly attacked imperial vessels. The suppression of piracy, justified under the banner of spreading civilization and free trade and abolishing slavery and the slave trade, provided both western and non-western powers with a back door for territorial expansion and the enforcement of imperialist agendas.<BR /> &#160;<BR /> Historian Manuel Barcia tells the story of these conflicts