The Act for the More Effectual Suppression of Piracy (1700)
That it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Qur’an, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman [Muslim] who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise
H/T: Volokh Conspiracy
In the years before 1536 England tried pirates in its Admiralty courts under the civil law. Convicting an accused pirate proved very difficult, however. Civil law rules required an accused pirate to confess his guilt or two eyewitness, neither of whom could be accomplices, to testify to his piracy. Such eyewitnesses were hard to come by, and pirate confessions, even harder. Thus many pirates escaped conviction.
To rectify this problem, in 1536 England introduced the Offenses at Sea Act, which kept piracy a crime at civil law but allowed pirates to be tried via common law rules. Under this procedure the fate of accused pirates was decided by a jury of 12 men and, crucially, accomplice testimony was permitted.
The Offenses at Sea Act was helpful but eventually proved insufficient. In the 17th century, pirates were increasingly active in and around England’s distant and growing colonies. Under the 1536 law, accused pirates and potential witnesses had to be shipped to England for trial at the capturing colonial government’s expense. Rather than bear this cost, many colonial governments simply let pirates go instead.
Out of this unfolding of events emerged the Act for the More Effectual Suppression of Piracy, initially introduced by parliament in 1700. This act permitted colonial governments to try and execute pirates on location. (It also eliminated jury trials for pirates, placing their fate in the hands of colonial-appointed commissioners, but continued to permit accomplice testimony). No longer constrained by the need to send pirates to England for trial, the 1700 law proved to be a critically important legal change for bringing pirates to justice.
The initial act was set to expire seven years after its introduction but was made permanent in 1719 when the pirate population began exploding and when various additions to the act, such as rewards for capturing pirates, and punishments for pirate consorters, were also introduced. In 1721 further modifications were made, including a provision for punishing armed merchantmen that refused to fight their pirate attackers.
The effect of these early 18th-century legal changes was to significantly increase the risk, and thus the cost, of pirating after 1719 and 1721 in particular. Whereas only 31% of all pirates hanged between 1704 and 1726 (for which I have data readily available) were hanged in the 15 years spanning 1704-1718, 69% were hanged in the mere seven years spanning 1719-1726 (with the vast majority of these occurring in the years spanning 1721-1726). This posed a significant problem for pirates because as the legal cost of piracy rose, pirates’ ability to find willing recruits declined, threatening the viability of their criminal enterprise.
International Law in the recent past declared Pirates are outside of the law – if captured are summarily hung – if seen approaching any vessel they are killed. PERIOD. They were PIRATES, not bandits, not criminals: they got no due process … This Legal Response protects ALL ships and killing ALL pirates is the Loving thing to do as this proves. Steve Klein, bio available.
—Captain Steve Klein (ret .)
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... for the Barbary Pirates, the end could be seen quite clearly from their telescopes. In the past, they had terrorized as far North as Iceland, England, and Ireland, raking in large amounts of protection and ransom money from individuals up to the great powers of Europe. However, when the Barbary states were humiliated by the defiance of the nascent United States, other powers began to take note that the feared Corsairs of North Africa had been bested by a tiny, third-rate power that was only at the time thirty years old.
Another factor to the downfall of the Barbary Coast was that by the 1810s, Europe had been at war in the Napoleonic Wars for around twenty years. This left the now-exhausted powers with a sizable, technologically-advanced and disciplined navy. And to veterans of Trafalgar, Camperdown, and Cape St. Vincent, the Barbary Pirates were poor matches for the professional naval crews of Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands, France, and Great Britain. And they were operating in concert instead of against each other.
Another side effect of the humiliations of the Barbary Pirates was that their reputation declined. They could no longer compete with Western navies in a fair fight, and as such, their tribute declined astronomically. To Kleptocracies like the Barbary States, which relied heavily on piracy, this was quite possibly one of the worst things that could have happened.
So, whether Terrorists by land or Pirates at sea, historically, the best remedy is to dramatically raise the stakes of being either a Terrorist or Pirate and pay back to them in spades, what they visit upon the innocent.
