Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article offers an original and insightful contribution to our understanding of early modern piracy through close examination and analysis of the understudied 1609 pamphlet The liues, apprehensions, arraignments, and executions of the 19 late pyrates. The article successfully utilises this pamphlet to draw conclusions about the ways in which the figure of the pirate could be redeemed, successfully contesting previous assertions that this pamphlet represented a “state celebration” by providing a closer and more nuanced reading of the pamphlet. This sheds new light on the complexities and subtleties shaping popular perceptions of piracy in the early modern period and how these were reflected in print. Particularly welcome is the focus on Jacobean piracy here, which has received considerably less focus than studies focused on the Elizabethan period as well as the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. By focusing in on the discussion of pirates’ treatment in print during the Jacobean period, this article offers significant new insight into a particularly transitional phase in the history of early modern maritime predation and will be a very welcome addition to the historiography.  

 

I would recommend that this article is accepted following minor revisions. These suggestions are intended to help emphasise the originality, contribution, and argument being made here. Namely:

 

·      Some more focused discussion of the literature surrounding early modern piracy in print as well as Jacobean piracy more generally in the introduction to better situate this article within the broader body of work.

·      A brief paragraph on the geography of Jacobean piracy in Section 2 would help to set up the subsequent decision of the crew being discussed here.

·      In Section 3, include some more detailed discussion situating this pamphlet within the broader context of pirate-focused pamphlets in and around the same period. Were there others? Were these common at this time? Some greater contextualisation of this by linking in with the existing literature around pirates and print more explicitly would help here.

·      In Section 3 or 4, spend some greater time discussing the problems and potential of the pamphlet as a source. For example, in Section 4 Footnote 12, you mention the problems around verifying the claim that Harris’ account was written in his own hand. This is important discussion but is relegated to a footnote. Consider bringing this into the body of the article and deconstructing this a bit further to discuss how pamphlets utilise and frame these different testimonies to form a particular narrative, being more explicit about the challenges in verifying whose voices are actually being accessed through the pamphlet despite its framing but emphasising how this framing can tell us a lot about the intentions of the pamphlet and the broader popular perceptions that it reflects. Some more explicit discussion about this framing in the context of the overall argument would be useful too.

·      I would suggest adding more overt concluding paragraphs to each section, emphasising the main argument of each section and linking this to the overall argument. For example, being more precise on the ‘sensibilities’ that each of the narratives emphasises and how these are purposefully framed side by side in the pamphlet to advance a particular narrative about the qualities in a ‘pirate’ that are to be ‘vilified’ or otherwise. You make this argument well but could be more direct in pushing this argument throughout each section.

Author Response

Thank you! These comments have proven very helpful, and highlight key areas for expansion of the article. I have addressed them in order of bullet points, as below:

1. I agree that this would be a profitable addition to the article, and have added some lines to the 'Introduction' section in order to more clearly situate this article within the historiography: "Historical studies of Jacobean piracy, such as those by Senior, Appleby, and Kelleher, have relied predominantly on High Court of Admiralty (HCA) records to depict a “growing menace fast gaining momentum” (Senior 1976, p. 11), organised into a loose “confederacy” or “alliance” (Senior 1976, p. 30; Appleby 2007, p. 49; Kelleher 2020, p. 3). The legal footprint attributed to this “growing menace” serves to underline the seriousness of the English state’s response to the problem of piracy. However, Jowitt – and others working on histories of culture – have approached the phenomenon from a different angle, emphasising popular responses to Elizabethan and Jacobean maritime depredation and highlighting attitudes to piracy as “an especially rich cultural signifier” (Jowitt 2010, p. 16). The 19 late pyrates, as both an account of both the pirates’ legal trials and their public executions, provides an opportunity to synthesise these two approaches."
2. A valid point. I have added a paragraph to the 'Jacobean piracy' section briefly discussing the confederacy's seasonal movements, citing Kelleher and Earle. Have also incorporated relevant citation to the letters of Arthur Chichester, although constrained the latter to an endnote.
3. Added reference to Baer's suggestion that 19LP was "the first printed piracy trial". Brought reference to other contemporaneous examples of piracy in popular culture (eg. Daborne) forwards to this paragraph too.
4. This is a pertinent point; although I don't feel there is evidence to offer any further certainty to aspects of the pamphlet's authorship, I have worked to highlight the issue both in sections 3 and 4 in accordance with this feedback.
5. I think this is a valid criticism of the article. I have added further concluding work to sections 4&5, which were the areas most lacking.

Reviewer 2 Report

 

As its title indicates, the article concentrates on the anonymous 1609 pamphlet The liues, apprehensions, arraignments, and executions of the 19 late pyrates. Next to a close reading, which compares and contrasts the representation of piracy in the pamphlet to contemporary legal accounts, the article offers a contextualisation of the text into early Jacobean culture. The analysis revolves around two contrasting representations of piracy and demonstrates how a pirate, despite his status as criminal, could be portrayed positively and worthy of Christian redemption. Thus, while from a legal point of view, piracy always remains a crime that needs to be, and is, punished by the law, the depiction of piracy in early Jacobean (print) culture is shown to be an ambiguous one.

The pamphlet’s choice as focal text for the article is explained in the first part by a short literature review which reveals that the chosen primary text has hitherto not received a lot of scholarly attention. This is quite interesting for two reasons: first, as the author points out, the pamphlet describes the trials of 19 pirates, 18 of whom were executed on the same day, which was an exceptionally high number for the Jacobean period. Secondly, while it is true that pirate narratives from the Jacobean era have hitherto attracted less academic attention than pirate texts from or about the “Golden Age of Piracy” (1650s to 1730s), the first two decades of the twenty-first century saw the publication of a number of well-researched articles and monographs on Elizabethan and Jacobean pirates, among them the cited collection Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550-1650, edited by Claire Jowitt (2007). Therefore, the selection of a hitherto neglected primary text is an apt one, offering new insights into the representation of early Jacobean piracy and thus adding to the academic discourse. The article furthermore engages with earlier academic works on Jacobean piracy, by authors such as John Appleby, Joel Baer, and Claire Jowitt, and clearly indicates whenever its argument is diverting from earlier works.

The article is well-structured and thus easy to read and follow. It first briefly provides to the reader some essential information on the historical context, such as the 1604 peace treaty between Spain and England and the resulting unemployment of many seafarers. In addition, it includes information on the legal status of piracy in the first decade of the seventeenth century and on the existence of a British pirate confederacy (lines 166-209). This point is quite interesting, since less well-known, and some of the information provided in the corresponding footnote vi on the research of the confederacy’s size could be integrated in the article’s main text.

The next section gives an overview of the pamphlet’s origin and accessibility, before the article moves on to offering a well-written close reading of the portrayal of two diametrically opposed pirate stories from the pamphlet: that of the redeemable James Harris and the irredeemable John Downes. By juxtaposing these two narratives and highlighting how in each case the authorial voice subtly modifies the historical representation of the pirates as stated in court records, the article aptly demonstrates how the figure of the pirate was employed in the text to discuss ideas of a shared English identity, Christian values and the possibility of redemption. Especially interesting is the article’s argument of how redemption is tied to emerging ideas of a shared English nationality and identity. In a convincing manner, the article illustrates how James Harris’ portrayal as an Englishman and his choice of foreign victims are directly linked to the fact that he is offered the chance to repent his sins and be redeemed, while the vile pirates explicitly refer to themselves as belonging to the sea – and thus to no state or nation.

The close reading offers a number of interesting insights into the early Jacobean treatment of piracy in law, culture and print. However, as far as the latter is concerned, and since some readers might be familiar with other contemporary fictionalised accounts of piracy, as for example Daborne’s play A Christian Turned Turk (1612) or Rowley’s play Fortune by Land and Sea (1607-09), it would be good to briefly contextualise the pamphlet in relation to these texts as well. The article repeatedly highlights the accuracy of the pamphlet and compares it to court records, but also stresses how the authorial voice subtly modifies them. While this is an highly interesting point, it also leads one as reader to ask oneself whether, and in how far, the pamphlet should be considered as fiction. The article provides some information on the pamphlet’s publisher Busby, and mentions related genres, such as pirate narratives (line 267), criminal biography (line 531) and trial literature (line 901). Briefly contextualising and situation the pamphlet The late 19 pyrates within these other (Jacobean) genres could help shed further light on its place in early Jacobean culture and pirate literature in general.

The final section then turns to the executions of the pirates. By invoking Jowitt’s famous phrase of executions functioning as “scaffold dramas” (Jowitt 2007, p. 152; line 770), the author shows that the main purpose in this part of the pamphlet was a didactic and moralising one, emphasising to its readership the importance of redemption. The article furthermore draws attention to an ambiguity inherent in these descriptions but often neglected in discussions, namely that between the enactment of the power of the state on the criminals’ bodies and the public sympathy created for the repentant sinner.

Overall, the article clearly poses its thesis and questions in the opening sections and provides ample answers to them in the concluding section. The only argument that is introduced quite late, namely in the final paragraph, but might be important to justifying the selection of the pamphlet as primary text, is the number of executed pirates.

One minor point of critique is that some of the information contained in footnotes iv (on the avoidance of the term privateer), vi (on the pirate confederacy and its numbers), x and xii (on the annotations and production of the pamphlet) are quite relevant to an interested reader; if possible, some of the facts should be included in the running text. For example, the choice of not using the term “privateer” in the article was well-argued, but only appears in the footnote; the same goes for the argument on whether Harris and Downes wrote down their own stories or not. Another point noted is that in line 256, Busby’s year of birth is given as 1651, which most likely should read 1551.

The article will definitely draw scholarly attention to the hitherto neglected pamphlet and help to fuel further analysis into the construction of the pirate motif in literature. Its close reading clearly reveals and analyses the ambiguity that is typical of the pirate motif throughout the centuries. As the analysis of the pamphlet demonstrates, even within one text, it is possible to encounter both positively and negatively connoted pirate characters. In the Jacobean era, the judgement of a pirate, was closely tied to the question whether the character explicitly transgressed boundaries that defined them as belonging to the same community as their readers.

Author Response

Thank you for such an extensive and thoughtful review. I have sought to address the points raised in approximate order, as below:

1. Another reviewer flagged up the need to better contextualise the pamphlet within the context of other contemporary print/popular treatments of piracy. For this purpose, I have employed Baer's suggestion that 19LP constituted "the first printed piracy trial" in the 'The 19LP pamphlet' section, and brought forward mention of Daborne to that section too. This also provided an opportunity to begin addressing your other note re: the extent to which the pamphlet should be considered fictional. I agree with your note that this bears greater discussion, and have extended the explicit treatment of "fictionalization" (or lack thereof) to part 5 (Downes).
2. re: Rowley/Heywood - I have made a point of utilising Jowitt's 2002 article throughout the text, the previous omission of which was an oversight on my part!
3. re: number of executed pirates: I have altered a sentence in the 3rd section (introducing the pamphlet) in order to better highlight this earlier on. I have also slightly amended a sentence in the first para of section 1 (introduction) in order to highlight this as early as possible.
   1.  Endnote iv: This is a valid criticism, as readers unfamiliar with recent historiography regarding the use (or not!) of terms like 'privateering' may find it odd that I avoid it. Footnote remains, but have added a sentence to the main body text noting (gently) the anachronistic nature of the term 'privateer': "English maritime warfare in the sixteenth century was supported by private venturers sailing under general letters of reprisal, who may be understood as natural precursors to the later phenomenon of privateering (Rodger 2014, pp. 9, 12)".
   2.  Endnote vi: It is very reassuring to me that you, too, find the research on the numbers of Jacobean pirates as interesting as I do! I'm hesitant to include too much discussion of the confederacy's numbers within the main body, as I think a proper analysis of the numbers would divert attention away from the main focus of this particular article. I've moved the majority of the more relevant content from the endnote to the body.
   3. Endnote x: moved interesting info from this endnote to the main body, as per suggestion. More extraneous info (the annotations' location, and the version they can be found in) remains in the endnote.
   4. Endnote xi: also moved interesting info (discussion re: provenance of Busby's quartos) to body text. List of the specific quartos remains in endnote.
4. Have amended the error in Busby's probable birth year, which now reads 1551 - thank you!

Reviewer 3 Report

This is an interesting article, discussing the representation of the image of pirates and piracy in one anonymous pamphlet from 1609, and the way it constructs sympathy (or doesn't) around the men convicted of piracy. I thought the argument was convincing and discussion clear, although some of the interesting archival research and comparison with the HCA depositions was buried in the endnotes a bit too much (if footnotes are used this might not be such a big issue). I thought the piece is publishable with minor revisions which can make it stronger. My suggestions for revising are as follows: 

 

1)    The pamphlet is anonymous but there are different narrative voices, which could be discussed earlier than pages 11-13, by foreshadowing the pamphlet’s authorship and perspectives already in the beginning. Lift some of the note xii to the main text as well? 

 

2)    The author could maybe take a stronger or at least clearer stance towards some earlier scholarship, like Claire Jowitt’s and Sharpe’s (and Foucault’s) work. How does the author’s work contribute to existing scholarship on the topic, and how is this particular perspective novel and fruitful (the comparison of court record and pamphlet literature, and their perspective). One big and possibly un-answerable question is how ‘popular’ is this pamphlet and whose voice and ideology is visible in it? The author makes a case for the pamphlet not being a straightforward Foucauldian example of the ‘theatre of gallows’ but a more subtle representation of pirates as criminals and their intersecting identities. Maybe the author could engage with newer work on seaborne crime and punishment (than that of Sharpe and Foucault) to bring this forward more and discuss it in one place (even if word limits might limit it a bit).

3)    In some sections discussion could be linked back to overall argument a bit better. Also pay attention to some wordings. Is the article tackling the ‘reception’ (p. 1, line 35) or representation of these pirates? What is the ‘public’ and popular here, and does it need more definition? Maybe some of the first introductory section which contextualises seventeenth century piracy could be condensed and used for the discussion of changing research trends? The author could also place all their critique of Baer in one place and explain what they do differently (I thought that the ‘I respectfully disagree’ was a bit unnecessary, nothing wrong with disagreement, just follow your own argument and concentrate on developing it). 

4)    The claim on page 8, that the pamphlet ‘should be understood as tapping into 308 a wider dissatisfaction with aspects of King James’s foreign policy’ could do with more backing with literature. How widespread was it, and what was at stake?

Author Response

Thank you for these comments - they have proven very helpful! Revisions are below.

1. Have moved some of endnote xii to the main body.
2. 1. Another reviewer also suggested placing the article more clearly within existing historiography re: Jacobean piracy and piracy in popular culture. I have added some lines to the Introduction section to this end.
   2. I agree with your suggestion that the question of 'popular' voice in the pamphlet is, to an extent, unanswerable. 
   3. I've tried to avoid drawing anachronistically on historiography addressing maritime discipline/punishment in later periods, but must say I agree that there is something of a gap in the article's bibliography when it comes to certain aspects of maritime-focused punishment. In order to combat this I have included further use of citations to Earle 2003, which does address authority's response to maritime misdemeanour (albeit focusing still on piracy).
3. .
   1. Regarding reception vs representation - primarily the latter, as the discussion is focused on the text and how it constructs the pirates' biographies. I think this criticism is quite valid, whereas the article does not address sufficient evidence to actually state what the popular reception might have been - only what is shown in the pamphlet and can be derived from that. I have amended some wording to reflect this.
   2. I hope that the improved discussion of relevant historiography, as per  2.1, might go some way to aiding discussion of research trends. I have also added some phrasing in the introduction to better place it within these developments, and hope that movement of some discussion regarding HCA records from endnotes to body text may also help.
   3. I've retained 'respectfully disagree', as it provides a reasonably brief means of introducing a counterpoint to the referenced part of Baer's argument. That said, I hope that it does not come across as an aggressive phrasing - this is not the intent!
4. Another reviewer highlighted the fact that including some discussion of Rowley/Heywood's A Fortune by Land and Sea would be beneficial, and this has neatly enabled me to address the 'dissatisfaction' element by drawing on Jowitt 2002. Not initially including that article was, I admit, an oversight on my part - it is pertinent here! Jowitt's work provides additional backing for the concept of 'coded' dissatisfaction in Jacobean representations of piracy, and also allows for further discussion of "Elizabethan nostalgia" alongside Netzloff. I believe this begins to address item 4.