Abstract
Over the last thirty years or so, the study of early modern Irish history has made significant advances. Areas of that society previously unexplored have been dragged into the historian's remit. Thus subjects such as climate history, the history of death and gender history have all been drawn into the ambit of mainstream history. Moreover, geographical foci have expanded from individual countries (or parts of them) to new entities such as ‘Atlantic history’ or the history of the British Isles. In parallel with this some new types of sources, such as material culture and environmental evidence, have been drawn into the historian's armoury as these new questions are grappled with. This book is a product of these recent trends. While piracy may have hovered on the edge of the historical imagination, usually in a rather fanciful way, in the past it was never a central historical issue. However, as the framework of the seventeenth-century economy has been progressively sketched out, historians have begun to ask questions about the workings of regional economies that functioned within the larger framework. The result has been a realisation of the regional economic importance of piracy in the early seventeenth century. Parallel to this has been the investigation and making more accessible (by John Appleby and others) of the High Court of Admiralty papers in the National Archives at Kew. All this has contributed to a revival of interest in piracy.
As an underwater archaeologist, Dr Kelleher brings to the subject a unique dimension and a set of technical skills that are not usually present in traditional historical research. The focus of this book is not the problem of piracy in the early seventeenth century as a whole. It deals with the activities of pirates operating out of west Cork in the early seventeenth century but does not deal with the piracy on the Irish Sea that was such a problem for travel between Ireland and Scotland nor does it deal with the privateers of Waterford and Wexford whose activities were important in financing the Confederates of the 1640s. However, as a case study of piracy in a local context, this book is exemplary. The approach is essentially chronological, tracing the origins of pirate activity in west Cork from the late sixteenth century and the formation of the ‘Alliance’ of the main figures involved in the business of piracy to the dissolution of that ‘Alliance’ from about 1615. That was not, of course, the end of piracy for the locally reared men were to be replaced by Algerian pirates after this. Of the eight chapters in the book, perhaps the most important is that dealing with ‘the business of piracy’ that tries to examine the significance of piracy for the economy of west Cork. Here Kelleher offers interesting evidence for the value of plunder being traded and holds out the possibility of documenting some of that plunder through the work of underwater archaeologists. Unfortunately, no ship that can be clearly identified as a pirate ship has yet been found off the Cork coast but one hopes the prospects are good for such a revelation in the future.
If there is no pirate treasure to offer the hopeful reader, there is a remarkable narrative (in chapter five) of the importance of piracy in shaping a local economy, controlled mainly by the collaboration of local officials and local residents not to mention royal officials. Thus, Kelleher's argument focuses on two individuals who were central: the pirate Richard Bishop and the lord admiral, the earl of Nottingham whose collusion allowed the piracy to function, largely through the connivance of William Hull the local admiralty official. The resulting scale of pirate activity was staggering with large profits to be made for those engaged in the trade. Most of this profit was returned to west Cork where it funded a lifestyle characterised by conspicuous consumption of much of the population of west Cork (detailed in chapter six). This was often the result of collaboration between pirates and locals (both native and newcomer). Dr Kelleher's ingenuity with the evidence is both innovative and convincing revealing aspects of life that might have been thought impenetrable for the seventeenth century. Thus, there is evidence for family structure, the role of women (including the sex industry), the presence of slaves, the role of taverns and brothels and safe houses.
What this book forces us to do is to think more clearly about the importance of regional economies and their working. In particular, it should make us think more deeply about national trade statistics and the ways in which the ‘informal’ economy of institutions such as piracy impacted those figures. One example might suffice. As Susan Flavin has documented in her Consumption and Culture in Sixteenth-Century Ireland (2014) the Munster spice trade in areas such as pepper shrank in the late sixteenth century (p. 152) at just the point when the Munster plantation should have been causing it to expand. Yet as Connie Kelleher points out (pp. 168–70) pepper was one of the main goods traded by the Cork pirates (and known by them as ‘black gold’). Is there a connection between these two pieces of information? Surely a problem worth pondering given its implications for our understanding of trade data.
This is a book that raises a myriad of fascinating questions for the social and the economic historian of early modern Munster, and indeed for Ireland generally. It genuinely breaks new ground and is a fine example of interdisciplinary research.