The sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries were the "age of piracy" all over the world. European and Asian piracy and privateering were rampant among them in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and Southeast Asian seas.
European pirates declined in the early eighteenth century, and North African corsairs were suppressed in the early nineteenth century. From the late eighteenth century onward, there were many incidents of Asian piracy, resulting in European anti-piracy campaigns in Asian seas. This workshop discusses the piracy incidents and the subsequent anti-piracy campaigns in the abovementioned places, arguing that they were globally connected
phenomena.

It seems that the surge of large-scale piracy and the state suppression of piracy around the world were phenomena at the beginning of the modern era. In many cases piracy became rampant when large-scale trade was booming, while some parties were excluded from commercial opportunities. When some people violently took part in such opportunities, states called them pirates
or privateers because of their use of force, although most of them were in fact strongly involved in trade, which boosted local and regional "shadowy economies."

When some states attempted to suppress piracy, they seem to have held new ideas about their state building. Many of them embraced an idea that they were bringing something "modern," either an embryonic nation state or the idea of "free trade." As large-scale commerce and colonies had become national objectives for some European states, the states came to conclude that they should punish piracy and privateering, which had undermined state
efforts to develop trade and colonies. Emerging nation states outlawed piracy, because a state now became the only authority to monopolize violence and decision-making. The "national objectives" soon led to imperialism. Asian piracy was condemned as an obstacle to "free trade," and Western suppression of Asian piracy justified their advancement as a part of their "civilizing mission."

In reality, however, the actual causes, practices, and results of piracy and anti-piracy campaigns were diverse in different places, and they were not at all a simple story of the victory of "modern"
states over "premodern" pirates. The relationship between state authorities (either central or local) and local elites, traders, and pirates usually involved extremely complicated interactions, conflicts, compromise, and networking. Nevertheless, from these interactions, some sorts of "modern" systems and ideas, such as modern territorial control, modern trade order, or racial/religious stereotyping of local people, took shape. This workshop aims to discuss the cases of such diverse developments, dynamisms, and
results of global piracy and anti-piracy campaigns, which resulted in the emergence of "modern" systems and ideas in Eurasia.