Browse Hierarchy HST6393: Piracy and Empire: Sea Power, Race and Modernity

Sea power was essential to the rise of the British Empire and the making of the modern world. From the mid-eighteenth century to the present day, the spectre of 'piracy' haunted those states that sought to project power in a globalising, international order premised on notions of 'civilisation' on the one hand, and merciless state-violence on the other. This module begins by examining how the British encountered (and transformed) seafaring communities in Asia¿in Indian, Arabian, Southeast Asian and Chinese waters¿before examining piracy¿s postcolonial role in shaping both international law and countercultures of resistance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.