The punishment of pirates : interpretation and institutional order in the early modern British empire / Matthew Norton.
| Author/creator | Norton, Matthew, 1976- author. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2023. |
| Copyright Date | 2023 |
| Description | 228 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Introduction: meanings and mass executions -- Institutions as cultural systems -- The transformations of empire -- Vagueness and violence on the maritime periphery -- The classification of pirates -- Guns, gallows, and interpretive infrastructures -- "Hung up in irons, to be a spectacle, and so a warning to others" -- Ambiguity lost: temporality and fatalism on the edge of empire -- Conclusion: pirates, adverbs, and institutions. |
| Abstract | "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"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Genre/form | History. |
| LCCN | 2022020185 |
| ISBN | 9780226823119 |
| ISBN | 9780226667881 hardcover |
| ISBN | 022666788X hardcover |
| ISBN | 0226823113 paperback |
| ISBN | electronic book |