From the Archives: When Is A Pirate Not A Pirate?
I currently have my head down trying to finish a big project that I'm excited about. Instead of driving myself crazy trying to write blog posts at the same time or, worse, "going dark" I'll be running some of my favorite posts from the past for the next little while. Enjoy. And I'll see you soon.
When is a pirate not a pirate? When he's got a license to steal.
From the 16th through the mid-19th centuries, governments issued licenses, called letters of marque, to private ship owners that gave them permission to attack foreign shipping in times of war. Called privateers, these government-sanctioned pirates were an inexpensive way for governments to patrol the seas. Private investors outfitted warships in the hope of earning a profit from plunder taken from enemy merchants.
Unlike pirates, privateers had rules they had to follow. They were only allowed to attack enemy ships during times of war. Sometimes their commissions limited them to a specific area or to attacking the ships of a specific country. In exchange for following the rules, they would be treated as prisoners of war if they were captured.
In fact, it was sometimes hard to tell a privateer from a pirate. If a privateer attacked foreign shipping in peace time, interfered with the ships of neutral countries, or was just too violent, he was sometimes treated as a pirate if he was captured. Some privateers, like Sir Francis Drake, became national heroes. Others, like Captain William Kidd, were hanged as pirates.
Privateering was made illegal in 1856 by international treaty.
Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.
From the Archives: Building Baghdad
I currently have my head down trying to finish a big project that I'm excited about. Instead of driving myself crazy trying to write blog posts at the same time or, worse, "going dark" I'll be running some of my favorite posts from the past for the next little while. Enjoy. And I'll see you soon.
Today we think of Baghdad in terms of tyranny, terrorism and mistakes. A sinkhole for American troops. A sandbox for suicide bombers.
In the eighth century, Baghdad was the largest city in the world--and the most exciting. Like Paris in the 1890s, Baghdad was a cultural magnet that drew scientists, poets, scholars and artists from all over the civilized world. (Just for the record, that didn't include Europe, which was having a bit of trouble on the civilization front in the centuries after the fall of Rome.)
Baghdad was a brand new city, built to replace Damascus as the capital of an Islamic empire that was no longer the sole property of the Arab tribes. The Abbasid caliph al-Mansur had his architects draw the outer walls of his new capital in a perfect circle, using the geometric precepts of Euclid.
Completed in 765, the Round City grew quickly. Within fifty years, it had a population of more than a million people: Muslim and Christian Arabs, non-Arab Muslims, Jews, Zoroastrians, Sabians and an occasional Hindu scholar visiting from India. It had separate districts for different trades, including a street devoted to booksellers and papermakers.
Most important of all, Baghdad had libraries. Encouraged by an official policy of intellectual curiosity, scholars in Baghdad collected works of literature, philosophy and science from all corners of the empire. (Baghdad reportedly negotiated for a copy of Ptolemy's Megale Syntax as part of a peace treaty with Byzantium.) Ambitious nobles followed the caliphs' example and created their own libraries, many of which were open to scholars. Working in a culture that encouraged learning, Abbasid scholars in the eighth through the tenth centuries not only transcribed and translated the classical scholarship of Greece, Persia and India, they transformed it, pushing the boundaries of knowledge forward in mathematics, geography, astronomy and medicine.
From the Archives: Prince Henry the So-called Navigator
I currently have my head down trying to finish a big project that I'm excited about. Instead of driving myself crazy trying to write blog posts at the same time or, worse, "going dark" I'll be running some of my favorite posts from the past for the next little while. Enjoy. And I'll see you soon.
I've been thinking about Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal today, and re-reading bits of Peter Russell's excellent biography, Prince Henry "the Navigator": A Life
You remember Prince Henry. He's the first in a series of names that you learned in grade school: Prince Henry the Navigator, Columbus, Dias, Magellan--maybe Henry Hudson if your teacher was into the Great Explorers and the Age of Discovery.
If you got hooked, you trotted down to the school library and checked out a biography--or three. (Not that I admit to having done anything of the sort.) They introduced you to the princely scholar who founded a school on the coast of Portugal where he taught new arts of navigation to his sailors. The visionary who sent men out explore the cost of Africa with the goal of reaching India. The gifted mathematician whose theories made oceanic navigation possible. The dynamic symbol of Portugal's imperial destiny. In short, a heroic figure a nerd could love.
Not surprisingly, the story told in a biography suitable for a ten-year-old is little more than a series of half-truths. Even the nickname "the Navigator" is a misnomer, invented by nineteenth century historians eager to establish the Portuguese grandson of John of Gaunt as the forefather of British maritime success. In fact, the prince's only personal experience of seafaring was trips along the Portuguese post and the occasional short hop to Morocco.
Henry was an ambitious prince, a would-be Crusader, a celibate Christian knight, a talented administrator, and a shrewd businessman. For more than forty years he funded expeditions of exploration along the west coast of Africa, pushing Portuguese seamen to sail further than they ever had before. By providing the financial support and intellectual stimulus for Portugal's voyages of discovery, Prince Henry the Navigator transformed Portugal from a small, impoverished nation into Europe's first maritime empire. Now that I think about it, a hero that a grown-up nerd can still admire.
Go, Henry.