Grappling hooks to plowshares
About the book:
Piracy at sea is a topical subject whose roots go back to early human history. But as familiar as pirates may seem to us, the buccaneers of the seas are contradictory and dazzling on closer inspection. Are they heroes of freedom or organized criminals? Avengers of the disenfranchised or murderous agents of imperial superpowers? Robbers at sea or entrepreneurs with political ambitions? The contributions in this volume are not limited to the history of pirates from antiquity to the present day, but also look at the literary, mythological and cinematic treatment of piracy. They also pay attention to the changing roles of pirates – between hero and pirate in the Odyssey, between pirate and mercenary in Byzantium or Venice, between privateer with state authorization and free pirate in the early modern Caribbean.
