Pantomime villains, box office gold and famous (or infamous) shadowy figures of fiction and non-fiction, pirates are familiar stereotypes in popular media. But these common images hide a critically important group of men (and occasionally women) who were socially, economically and politically significant in shaping the European maritime empires of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Therefore, pirates and piracy have become increasingly recognised as an important focus for historical research and analysis. This challenge has been taken up by Dr Richard Blakemore of the University of Reading in his book, Enemies of All: The Rise and Fall of the Pirates.
In this programme, Dr Blakemore discusses the real economic and social significance of piracy and introduces Publisher Mike Gibbs to the role pirates played in the forging and growth of Britain’s maritime empire.
