The Contested Sea: Regimes of Maritime Violence in the Pre-Modern Indian Ocean

Rulers on the Indian Ocean littoral are generally portrayed as having been uninterested in the pursuit of sea power until the coming of the Europeans. This article examines a series of case studies from this earlier period to argue that maritime violence had long been a part of expansionist political projects centered on the control of trade routes and coastal waters. In their sum, they show the Indian Ocean to have been an arena of active political competition and legal contestation, which were waged through private and semi-private agents commonly denoted as pirates.