BOOK: John D. FORD, The Emergence of Privateering (Leiden: Brill, 2023). ISBN: 978-90-04-54140-5, € 148.40

(Source: Brill)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Series: 

• Legal History Library; 
• Studies in the History of International Law, Volume: 62/24

Privateering was legal whereas piracy was illegal. That much everyone knows. But what exactly was privateering? Answering this question turns out to depend not so much on the relationship between privateering and piracy as on the relationship between privateering and other forms of maritime raiding that had been considered legal long before the word ‘privateering’, or the practice it denoted, came into existence. This book clarifies all these relationships and explains how privateering emerged as a new legal category in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The subject is approached from a British perspective, in the light of developments elsewhere, including the movement towards a new understanding of the law regulating relations between nations.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J. D. Ford is Professor of Civil Law at the University of Aberdeen. His edition of Alexander King’s Treatise on Maritime Law was published by the Stair Society in 2018.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

1 Seizures of Ships and Goods at Sea before Privateering

 1 Seizures of Ships and Goods at Sea as Plunder

 2 Acquisition of Prizes in Sixteenth-Century Scotland

 3 Seizures of Ships and Goods at Sea as Reprisal

 4 Authorisation of Reprisals in Sixteenth-Century Scotland

 5 Seizures of Ships and Goods at Sea as Piracy

 6 Apprehension of Pirates in Sixteenth-Century Scotland

2 From Licit Plunder towards Licensed Privateering

 1 Regulation of Maritime Warfare in England

 2 Innovation during the Reign of Elizabeth

 3 Justification in Terms of the Practice of Nations

 4 Justification in Terms of the Law of God

 5 Justification in Terms of the Law of Policy

 6 Condemnation of Pirates as Common Enemies

3 Privateering in Theory and Practice avant la lettre

 1 Licensed Raiding in Jacobean Scotland

 2 Licensed Raiding in Jacobean England

 3 Towards a New Theory of Prize Acquisition

 4 Towards a New Theory of International Law

 5 Prize Litigation in Caroline England

 6 Prize Litigation in Caroline Scotland

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index