Ottoman Algeria in Western Diplomatic History with ... - Bibliothèque

“commission of war from some foreign prince” and the robbed “be a lawful
enemy of that prince.” 97 The Dutch jurist Cornelis Van Bynkershoek (1673-
1743) even widened the field of activity of a pirate. He defines Pirates as
“persons who depredated on sea or land without authority from a sovereign,” 98
thus extending the principle of sovereignty from land to sea. Finally, William
Edward Hall (1835-1894), an English lawyer who contributed influential works
on international law, considers that “most acts which become piratical through
being done without due authority are acts of war when done under the authority
of a state.” 99 So, according to these definitions, the blurry line between piracy
and corsairing becomes clearer. Two prerequisites, therefore, are needed to
cross the line from illegality to legality: the existence of a state or polity which
delivers a commission authorizing the pirate to prey on an enemy’s shipping
and the existence of a lawful enemy. When these two conditions are secured,
robbery on the high seas is no more considered as piracy but a lawful act of
war. The line, however, remains thin and is liable to be crossed easily
especially at times when transitions from peace to war were quite frequent.
More than just definitions, the medieval statutes further clarified the
distinction between pirates and corsairs. The Italian state-republics enacted
statutes that assigned capital punishment to “individuals who robbed
indiscriminately at sea,” i.e.: the pirates. This indiscriminate maritime robbery
as practiced by pirates, however, was different from “selective maritime theft,
97 As cited in Barry H. Dubner, The Law of International Sea Piracy (Brill Academic Publishers,
1980), p. 48.
98 Hall, International Law, p. 252.
99 Ibid., p. 254.
93