Disrupting Mughal Imperialism: Piracy and Plunder on the Indian Ocean

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines five distinct events from seventeenth-century South Asia: a pirate raid, two battles and two more pirate raids, all of which represent varying acts of defiance committed against the great Mughal imperium. Perpetrated by the Portuguese, the Marathas and the British, on land and by sea, these events seen in sequence shed light on the evolution of geopolitical players and the aqueous shifts in power dynamics related to maritime supremacy in the western Indian Ocean. By taking a broad view of this area over the span of a century, this paper seeks to explore the how notions of piracy, privateering, imperialism and colonialism evolved and changed in correspondence with a diverse, vital and hotly contested seascape.