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Book Review: Seawolves: Pirates and the Scots

Nothing can be less correct. These disputes were all about contraband that was being transported under a questionable flag. Lunsford is also incorrect when she refers to legislation of 1599 while discussing matters relating to the year 1705. Indeed, this is a recurring problem with the book: there is no consistent chronology. The reader carried from 1585 to 1700 and back time and time again. Lunsford also argues [188] that Zeeland policy links medieval ideas to patriotic tenacity. In fact, by 1700 Zeeland privateering was the product of decades of continuous warfare and thus of modern Realpolitik which was anything but patriotic. Financial gain, pure and simple, was the aim. How else can one explain how Zeeland manoeuvred itself in such a stubborn position towards Holland? According to Lunsford, nearly every privateer exceeding its authority was a pirate, which of course is the question quite often it turned out that the cargo of a seized ship was being transported with false papers to disguise the fact that it originated in a prohibited harbour. Overall, this study is more a narrative analysis than the systematic and structured research that its subject needs. Discussion of its thesis tends to be superficial, while Lunsford is occasionally somewhat pedantic and repetitive. In the final analysis, is her study successful? On the one hand, it is. Lunsford has uncovered much material that was previously unknown about privateering and piracy in the Netherlands; on the other hand this study does not offer as clear an explanation of its subject as one would wish. And, as already mentioned, for a new study this book has already been outdated by recent works of which several provide better and newer statistics (as, for example, data on the average size of a privateering crew). Lunsford's work does, however, have one important advantage over others it is the first general work on Dutch privateering written in English and, as such, it is more accessible to a broader and larger audience.