131-035 Pirates and their Enemies

Formerly available as 131-221/321. Students who have completed 131-221 or 131-321 are not eligible to enrol in this subject. Strict enrolment deadlines apply to subjects taught during the Summer Semester. Any enrolment in, or withdrawal from, this subject for the Summer Semester must be made in line with HECS census dates, see HECS census date.

Usually 25 points of first year history, see Prerequisites.

This subject will investigate a very old phenomenon: maritime raiding, or 'piracy'. Students will look at a few defined areas and times: in particular, the Mediterranean during the high-periods of Christian-Muslim sea raiding, Elizabethan England, the Red Sea and the Atlantic. Students should complete the subject with the ability to address issues such as how different definitions of piracy have arisen; the social economic and political motivations underlying piracy; the relationship between pirates and other individual sea-raiders and the states; the personal social and sexual strategies that pirates adopted; and methods of stopping piracy, both by their victims and by state action. We will also examine the ways in which pirates have been presented in fiction and film and the uses to which popular culture has put the phenomenon of piracy.

Written work totalling 4000 words.

A subject reader will be available.