system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Whatever happened to piracy?

Seemed like a few years ago every few months we'd hear about pirates capturing a ship and holding the crew for ransom.  When did that stop being a thing and why?

Also, why wasn't piracy a problem for ~150 years between the age-of-sail and the Somalia pirates?  Back in the 1700's - early 1800's there were all kinds of famous pirates, and state-sponsored piracy like impressment, Barbary corsairs, letters of marque and reprisal, etc.  Then it's like suddenly there are no pirates from like 1850 to 2008, then piracy is in the news for three years, then it stops again.  Why?
gpt
It's still very much a thing, although it has slacked off a bit. There was a huge surge in piracy around the Horn of Africa/Gulf of Aden/Indian Ocean region a few years back. Most of the pirates were based out of Somalia.

Since then there has been a large multinational effort ongoing to interdict pirate ships and protect merchant shipping in the region. The US has also conducted a number of strikes against suspected pirate headquarters ashore.

Somalia's situation has also improved a bit in the last few years which helps to divert people away from piracy which was a really last-ditch option for many.


What killed historical large-scale piracy was the advance of effective government into the New World. (North and South America). Pirates need places to repair and refit their ships and markets on which to sell their stolen goods. Once the colonial governments in the Americas became strong enough to control their territory pirates ran out of safe havens. This also coincided with the major powers in the Caribbean having a prolonged period of peacefulness and thus no incentive to support pirates.

Privateering continued through to the end of the 19th century when the Declaration of Paris laid out a framework for international maritime law that forbade signatories from engaging in privateering.

Small-scale piracy is still incredibly common in places like the Gulf of Aden and Straits of Malacca but is cracked down on pretty hard due to it's detrimental effects on trade and commodity costs.