Pirate Imperialism: A Round-Table Discussion with Prof Manuel Barcia

Glasgow's Global History Cluster and Strathclyde's Communities, Societies and States Research Group are delighted to welcome Professor Manuel Barcia (University of Bath) for a roundtable conversation with Dr Lloyd Belton, Dr Valeria Mantilla, Dr Jesus Sanjurjo-Ramos, and Dr David Wilson. We will discuss Professor Barcia's latest book, .

Professor Manuel Barcia is a world-leading scholar in Atlantic and Global History, who has authored 6 books, several book chapters and is a regular contributor to The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, and Al Jazeera in English. Prof Barcia is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Global Engagement) of the University of Bath, with responsibility for developing and leading the university’s international engagement. Manuel joined Bath from the University of Leeds, where he was Dean for Global Engagement and Chair of Global History in the School of History.

is the first truly global history of the suppression of piracy, linking maritime raiding to empire building in the nineteenth century. In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, imperial powers around the world came into direct confrontation with local resistance through maritime raiding. From the Atlantic basin to the western Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa, and Southeast Asia and China, imperial powers claimed that progress was being held back by the barbarity and greed of pirates, who repeatedly attacked imperial vessels. The suppression of piracy, justified under the banner of spreading civilisation and free trade and abolishing slavery and the slave trade, provided both Western and non-Western powers with a back door for territorial expansion and the enforcement of imperialist agendas.

Professor Barcia tells the story of these conflicts, showing how imperialist powers frequently used anti–maritime raiding efforts as excuses to cement Western supremacy in various parts of the world, while simultaneously resorting to violent means that were indistinguishable from the methods of those they accused of being pirates.

Please direct any queries to Dr Sanjurjo — [email protected]

—Marcus Rediker, author of The Slave Ship: A Human History

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