Piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean: Maritime Marauders in the Greek and Ottoman Aegean

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Description

Did British, French and Russian gunboats pacify the notoriously corsair-infested waters of the Eastern Mediterranean This book charts the changing rates and nature of piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean in the nineteenth century. Using Ottoman, Greek and other archival sources, it shows that far from ending with the introduction European powers to the region, piracy continued unabated. The book shows that political reforms and changes in the regional economy caused by the accelerated integration of the Mediterranean into the expanding global economy during the third quarter of the century played a large role in ongoing piracy. It also considers imperial power struggles, ecological phenomena, shifting maritime trade routes, revisions in international maritime law, and changes in the regional and world economy to explain the fluctuations in violence at sea.

Reviews

"Nineteenth-century Mediterranean piracy ended with the elimination of the threat from the Barbary states. At least that was the consensus among historians. But no longer. In this deeply-grounded, transnational study, Mylonakis convincingly demonstrates that piracy, albeit in a different form, continued throughout the century. Piracy in the Eastern Mediterranean is a must-read for Greek and Ottoman historians and students of comparative banditry and piracy." * Thomas W. Gallant, Professor of History and Archaeology, UC San Diego, USA *

Author Bio

Leonidas Mylonakis is an independent scholar whose research focuses on piracy in Greece and the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century. He holds a PhD in History from the University of California San Diego, where he has also served as a lecturer.