The Punishment of Pirates - by Matthew Norton (Paperback)

About the Book

"Sociologist Matthew Norton's The Punishment of Pirates takes us on an exciting journey through the shifting legal status of pirates in the eighteenth century. Initially, piracy was a fertile ground for many enterprising and lawless young men to make fortunes on the high seas, due in no small part to the lack of policing by the British crown. But as the British empire moved away from a collection of far-flung territories toward a consolidated economic and political enterprise dependent on long distance trade, pirates suddenly became a tremendous threat. Norton shows us that eliminating this threat required an institutional shift toward first identifying and defining piracy, and then toward brutally policing it. The Punishment of Pirates develops a new framework for understanding the cultural mechanisms involved in dividing, classifying, and constructing institutional order by tracing the transformation of piracy from a situation of cultivated ambiguity to a criminal category with violently patrolled boundaries-ending with its eradication as a systemic threat to trade in the English empire. Replete with gun battles, executions, jail breaks, and courtroom dramas, Norton's book will offer insights for social theorists, political scientists, and historians alike"--

Book Synopsis

A sociological investigation into maritime state power told through an exploration of how the British Empire policed piracy.

Early in the seventeenth-century boom of seafaring, piracy allowed many enterprising and lawless men to make fortunes on the high seas, due in no small part to the lack of policing by the British crown. But as the British empire grew from being a collection of far-flung territories into a consolidated economic and political enterprise dependent on long-distance trade, pirates increasingly became a destabilizing threat. This development is traced by sociologist Matthew Norton in The Punishment of Pirates, taking the reader on an exciting journey through the shifting legal status of pirates in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Norton shows us that eliminating this threat required an institutional shift: first identifying and defining piracy, and then brutally policing it. The Punishment of Pirates develops a new framework for understanding the cultural mechanisms involved in dividing, classifying, and constructing institutional order by tracing the transformation of piracy from a situation of cultivated ambiguity to a criminal category with violently patrolled boundaries-ending with its eradication as a systemic threat to trade in the English Empire. Replete with gun battles, executions, jailbreaks, and courtroom dramas, Norton's book offers insights for social theorists, political scientists, and historians alike.

Review Quotes

"A ground-breaking text in two regards: first, in terms of its historical narrative, and second, through its theoretical synthesis."-- "Social Forces"

"Matthew Norton's The Punishment of Pirates: Interpretation and Institutional Order in the Early Modern British Empire looks at the figure of the pirate both for its own sake and 'as a case that can shed its specific light on the more general social scientific question of how groups create, maintain, and enforce social orders' . . . Undoubtedly a mark of an excellent book is that, in addition to a wealth of insights across several disciplines, it throws up questions for further study, research and consideration."-- "KULT Online"

"The Punishment of Pirates is an absorbing examination of how societal views toward piracy transformed from acceptable and tolerated to immoral and intolerable. It provides readers with a better understanding of this change, and allows them to view pirates and the fight against them in a new and intriguing light."-- "Pirates and Privateers"

"Brilliant and innovative, Norton bridges literature on social coordination (which is often in economic or political science) to cultural sociology. Providing a wealth of information about piracy, privateering, and attempts at policing both, The Punishment of Pirates is certain to be read and enjoyed by cultural sociologists, comparative historical sociologists, state-theorists, theorists of power, and scholars of empire."--Emily Erikson, Yale University

"Highly original and based on a detailed examination of primary documents, The Punishment of Pirates explains how the English state gained control of piracy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In addition to providing an innovative cultural explanation for how the English were able to quash piracy, Norton points the way toward a richer understanding of the sources of institutional power, and the problems of coordination inherent in them that economic approaches tend to overlook."--Damon Mayrl, Colby College

About the Author

Matthew Norton is associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon.