A Sea of Profit

From 2007-2012, the waters off the coast of Somalia saw an unprecedented upsurge in incidents of maritime piracy with over 150 ships and 3,000 crewmembers being held hostage. Understood as a legacy of state failure and criminality, maritime piracy has largely been seen as a law and order problem. This chapter reframes piracy outside a narrative of failure— of governance, of states, and of other international institutions. By emphasizing the centrality of capture—and notions of bounty, payment, and redistribution nested within it—this chapter illuminates shifts in relationships of property and profit across scale and time and suggests that understanding the transformation of fishermen into pirates requires an exploration of the long and complex interplay between sea and land and between fishing and pastoralism in Somalia and the Western Indian Ocean.

Business · Corporate governance · Economics · Economy · Geography · International waters · Narrative · Political science · Profit (economics) · Redistribution (election) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Finance · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Law · Maritime Security and History