Piracy (Lat. pirata; Gr. peiratēs, 'an adventurer,' 'a pirate'), robbery on the high sea, was apparently very much mixed up with early maritime adventure, the sea-rover being frequently pirate as much as trader: thus, the Phœnicians often combined piracy with more legitimate sea-faring enterprise. In Homeric times piracy was accounted a reputable or even dignified calling; and the Greeks, especially the Phœcians, long displayed a natural genius for piracy. This aptitude was cherished by the constant warfare between small states, it being difficult sometimes to decide what was public and what was private war. Cilicia was long the headquarters of Mediterranean piracy, until in 67 B.C. Pompey made his memorable expedition against the pirates with great naval and military forces. From the 8th to the 11th century the Norse vikings were the terror of western coasts and waters (see NORTHMEN). The Hanseatic League (q.v.) had its origin in the desire for mutual defence against Baltic and other pirates. At a later date the Moslem rovers scourged the Mediterranean, commingling naval war on the large scale with peddling, thievery, and the abduction of slaves: Algiers was a piratical stronghold till well into the 19th century (see CORSAIRS); and in the 17th century the English Channel swarmed with Algerine pirates, who snapped up in one prize £500 worth of linen belonging to the Lord Deputy of Ireland, and blockaded him, the king's representative, for weeks in an English port while he waited for a ship-of-war to convey him across the Irish Sea. In 1635 they actually entered Cork harbour, and carried off a boat with eight fishermen, to be sold as slaves in Algiers. The Buccaneers (q.v.) preyed mainly on the Spanish commerce with the Spanish American colonies. Lundy Island (q.v.) was long a nest of pirates, English and other. Captain Kidd (q.v.) is in the popular mind the chief representative of the picturesque type of pirates, whose career of reckless bloodshed and rapine under their 'Jolly Roger' or black flag, alternating with luxurious debauchery, has come to be surrounded with a halo of romance, reflected in E. A. Poe's Gold Bug and R. L. Stevenson's Treasure Island. The prototype of Scott's Pirate was John Gow, who in January 1725 boldly anchored in Orcadian waters, and entered into friendly relations with the islanders, till, recognised as an atrocious villain, he was with his crew captured and carried to London to be tried. He and eleven of his comrades were condemned a month or two after, and the pirate captain and nine of his men were executed together. So late as 1864 five men were hanged in London for murder and piracy. National prejudices tend to obscure the distinction between Privateering (q.v.) and piracy: Paul Jones was called a pirate in England, and the commanders of the Confederate ships Alabama, Shenandoah, and Florida, which preyed on northern commerce, were in northern eyes practically pirates. Of late the pirates tried by admiralty courts are rather naval mutineers than pirates in the old sense. The African slave-trade was not considered piracy by the law of nations; but the municipal laws of the United Kingdom and of the United States by statute declared it to be so; and in or after 1841 it was declared to be so by Austria, Prussia, and Russia. The home of professional piracy, happily now on a small scale, is the Malay Archipelago and the China Seas; Sea-Dyaks and Malays disputing with Chinamen the palm of hardihood as sea-robbers.
Piracy is recognised as an offence against the law of nations. It is a crime not against any particular state, but against all mankind, and may be punished in the competent tribunal of any country where the offender may be found, or into which he may be carried, although committed on board a foreign vessel on the high seas. It is of the essence of piracy that the pirate has no commission from a sovereign state, or from one belligerent state at war with another. Pirates being the common enemies of all mankind, and all nations having an equal interest in their apprehension and punishment, they may be lawfully captured on the high seas by the armed vessels of any particular state, and brought within its territorial jurisdiction for trial in its tribunals; but it is not permitted to put pirates to death without trial save in battle.
The infringement of the Copyright Acts is often spoken of as literary piracy; and the word is not unfairly extended to cover the case in which the publishers of one nation issue unauthorised reprints by authors of another nation—especially the case of American reprints of English works (see BOOK-TRADE, Vol. II. p. 316). Thus, several pirated reprints of the first edition of this Encyclopædia were issued and were being sold in 1890, in which obsolete facts and statistics twenty years old were reproduced with marvellous fidelity.