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.
Déjà Vu All Over Again: Back to Afghanistan
A while back I blogged about Great Britain's first disastrous attempt to invade Afghanistan.
That post barely scratched the surface of the story, so I was delighted when Shelf Awareness sent me Diana Preston's The Dark Defile:: Britain's Catastrophic Invasion of Afghanistan, 1838-1842 to review.
In The Dark Defile, Preston tells the story of Great Britain's ill-fated attempt to interfere in Afghani politics in the early years of Queen Victoria's reign, handling the inevitable parallels between the 19th-century British experience and modern events with a light touch and solid historical research.
Paranoid about Russian expansion into Central Asia, the British government sent the Army of the Indus into Afghanistan in 1838 with orders to overthrow the existing ruler and replace him with a British puppet. The expedition ended with the slaughter of the British forces as they retreated from Kabul.
Reading The Dark Defile is like watching an impending train wreck in an old movie: You are at turns horrified and fascinated, all the while hoping for a last-minute save that never comes. Preston uses diaries, letters and official accounts by both major and minor figures to illustrate the series of personal, political, and military errors of the First Afghan War. While politicians in London suppressed reports in which the British representative in Kabul argued against the political coup, one elderly general was given command of the expeditionary force because the climate of Kabul would be good for his health. Troops were housed in indefensible cantonments; subsidies to Afghani tribal leaders were cut. And when Afghan forces rebelled in the streets, British leaders hesitated to send out their troops. In the end, only one member of the expedition survived.
The Dark Defile is more than just an account of Britain's "Great Game" in Central Asia gone wrong. Preston ends with a critical assessment of Britain's "conspiracy of optimism" in Afghanistan, and its impact on future relationships between Afghanistan and the west.
I talked so much about the book that My Own True Love read it after I was done. His review was pithier than mine: "That was a hell of a book. Heartbreaking."
Pretty much sums it up.
The heart of this review first appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers
Prince Henry, the So-Called Navigator
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.