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

may be seen as “a cost-efficient mode” of warfare. 103 It may also be assimilated
to an act of war that consisted of “plundering the merchant cargo of rival
powers in raids not easily distinguished from actions of what might be termed
‘conventional’ wartime fleets.” 104
The border between ‘indiscriminate sea
robbery’—act of the pirates and ‘selective maritime theft’—act of corsairs is
clearly set. In the first case, the pirate is punished whereas in the second, the
corsair is sanctioned because the pirate acts individually for personal profit
while the corsair is authorized by a sovereign to act against rivals to defend the
interests of the state; this very reason gives corsairing legitimacy.
As a result, defining the legal status of the commissioned pirates,
whether Mediterranean corsairs or Anglo-Saxon privateers, depends much on
distinctions one may make between legality and illegality. These distinctions
can be traced back to two pre-modern legal traditions. A first tradition can be
found in Three Books on the Law of War (1598), work of Gentili who is
considered today as the founder of the science of international law. Gentili
defines piracy as any seizure at sea not authorized by a sovereign; when so, it is
merely analogous to robbery on land. In this, he does not differ from his
predecessors’ definitions. But for him, more important than the simple
definition of piracy is the legality of seizure authorized by lawful sovereigns. 105
Authorizing seizure by “merely declaring enemy states piratical would not
legally make them so. Consequently the Barbary states could not be defined as
103 Fontenay, “La course dans l’économie portuaire,” p. 1323-24.
104 Tai, “Marking Water,” par. 7.
105 Hall, International Law, pp. 64-74.
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