PIRACY

any robbery or other violent action, for private ends and without authorization by public authority, committed on the seas or in the air outside the normal jurisdiction of any state. Because piracy has been regarded as an offense against the law of nations, the public vessels of any state have been permitted to seize a pirate ship, to bring it into port, to try the crew (regardless of their nationality or domicile), and, if found guilty, to punish them and to confiscate the ship. A key point in a definition of piracy according to international law is that the act takes place outside the normal jurisdiction of a state, without state authority, and that the intent is private, not political. Thus, although acts of unlawful warfare, acts of insurgents and revolutionists, mutiny, and slave trading have been defined as piracy by national laws of various countries or by special treaties, they are not, in most cases, piracy by the law of nations. Piracy has occurred in all stages of history. In the ancient Mediterranean, piracy was often closely related to maritime commerce, and the Phoenicians appear to have engaged in both, as did the Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians. In the Middle Ages, Vikings from the north and Moors from the south also engaged in piracy. At the conclusion of European wars during the Renaissance and after, naval vessels would be laid up and their crews disbanded. From among these men, pirates recruited their crews. A common source of piracy, for instance, was the privateer, a privately owned and armed ship commissioned by a government to make reprisals, to gain reparation for specified offenses in time of peace, or to prey upon the enemy in time of war, with the right of the officers and crew to share in prize money from captured vessels. The temptation was great to continue this profitable business after the war without authorization. During the Elizabethan wars with Spain in the late 16th century, treasure-laden Spanish galleons proceeding from Mexico into the Caribbean were a natural target for privateers, and the line between privateering and piracy became difficult to draw. From the 16th to the 18th century, after the weakening of Turkish rule had resulted in the virtual independence of the Barbary States of North Africa, piracy became common in the Mediterranean. Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli so tolerated or even organized piracy that they came to be called pirate states. In the early 19th century they were suppressed by successive actions of American, British, and French forces. The increased size of merchant vessels, the improved naval patrolling of most ocean highways, the regular administration of most islands and land areas of the world, and the general recognition by governments of piracy as an international offense resulted in a great decline in piracy in the 19th and 20th centuries. Piracy has, however, occurred in the 20th century in the South China Sea, and the practice of hijacking ships or airplanes has developed into a new form of piracy. See also hijacking.