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Old 15-04-2009, 18:09   #106
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According to "Bill" (per to "Monica's" tell all journal), "she" might as well be a he, so the error us understandable.
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Old 15-04-2009, 21:33   #107
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I was riding in a taxi yesterday, I always get my world news and opinion from taxi drivers, and the driver stated that America was crazy.

I always ignore this kind of baiting but he continued, "You send your troops around the world to fight and kill people, you spend billions of dollars in fights. Then after the fight you send billions of dollars in aid and medicine to rehabilitate everyone. In the meantime you are in a huge economic crisis and people all over America are losing their homes. America is tremendously rich. Why don't you ignore the rest of the world, save your money and take care of your own people. Screw everyone else, you guys are rich."

Like I said I always get my world news and opinion from taxi drivers. BTW - Not that it matters but he was a Malay muslim.
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Old 16-04-2009, 00:37   #108
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pelagic View Post
Iin

The Muslim nations in the 17th Century were by far richer than anything European or in the growing European colonial occupations around the world. The Red Sea contained far more floating prizes to steal among the more advanced and more highly developed Muslim countries than anything to be found between newly emergent European countries and their barely functioning colonial enterprises.
These words -- by Burgess, not by our fellow forumer -- are claptrap. They might have been true 600 or 700 years earlier, but the 17th century was the last century of the Renaissance, and by this time various Western European states, especially Holland, which was in its Golden Age, had far surpassed the declining Muslim world in wealth, learning, and technology.

And what "Muslim countries" is he talking about? There was only one Muslim country in this region in the 17th century -- the Ottoman Empire, which controlled the entire Red Sea and extended through all of what we think of today as the Middle East plus the Balkans and Transcaucasia (except for Persia). The Ottomans were never great sea traders; they built their fortunes on controlling land routes. One of the key reasons for decline of the Ottoman Empire was the development of martime trade routes and improvements in merchant shipping, which gradually made the caravan routes controlled by the Ottomans obsolete. It was the Dutch, in particular, who transformed world trade and by doing so became the wealthiest nation in the world by the 17th century. The Ottomans never had anything like the Dutch East India Company; in fact Turkish merchants trading by sea often chartered (by the 18th century -- usually) French or other European ships to carry their goods.

I can't say anything about Red Sea piracy, because I am not knowledgeable on this subject. But does the author think that no one has ever heard of privateers, letters of marque, Sir Francis Drake, and so forth? Of course piracy was state-sanctioned. I seriously doubt that the Red Sea was ever the most intense area of piracy -- in the 17th century, there was no Suez Canal and so the Red Sea was just an Ottoman lake with no ports of major significance, and not the major world trade transit route it has been since the Suez Canal was built. Pirates would have had no place to hide and the Ottomans did have a navy.

As to Europe's "barely functioning colonial enterprises" -- what is he talking about? The Dutch East India Company? The Spanish treasure fleets? The British East India Company? These enterprises were in full swing in the 17th century, and were hardly "barely functioning"; they were transforming the world economy.

So I am very skeptical about every word in this article. Now of course it's true that a lot of people see the world in a Eurocentric way and don't quite imagine that Western Europe was pretty barbaric in what we call the Dark Ages, when there was a great flourishing in the Muslim world. But that was then; the 17th century was the end of the Renaissance when everything was very different. Nonsense is no less so just because it's being used to make an important point.
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Old 16-04-2009, 12:41   #109
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Here's a link to Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoonists Index - specifically a group of cartoons based on the Somalian pirates:

Crazy Pirates

Good stuff!

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Old 16-04-2009, 12:51   #110
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Good clarification, Dockhead
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Old 16-04-2009, 15:07   #111
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Pirates???? Where
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Old 16-04-2009, 16:25   #112
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Dockhead, there were many, many Muslims in the far east during those times. In India, China, Malaysia right up to New Guinea. So to say there were no other Muslim countries in that area is being a little simplistic.

The trade routes of Asia had spread incredible wealth across Asia and so many Muslims would have made the pilgrimage to Mecca across the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea.

I don't know if the article referenced is entirely correct, but I certainly would not rule it out by your assumptions.

There is an interesting article here on privateers, or legal pirates.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj11n1/cj11n1-8.pdf
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Old 17-04-2009, 00:59   #113
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Thanks for replying.

By "that area", I mean the area mentioned in the article -- the Red Sea. Malaysia and New Guineau are all the way across the Indian Ocean -- a different area altogether.

Anyway, I found the stuff which inspired the writer. There was a route called the "Pirate Round" which was in fashion for just a few years (see Pirate Round - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), where pirates would basically follow the route of the East Indiamen around the Cape of Good Hope and up the East coast of Africa and hit Dutch and English ships trading with India, and sometimes (once, maybe) Indian ships sailing with Muslim pilgrims into the Red Sea on the way to Mecca.

This was exaggerated into this supposed orgy of piracy exceeding what was happening for centuries in the Caribbean, committed by Americans against India and the Ottoman Empire, which were at the time infinitely wealthier than Europe. Right. This is all just the product of a very overheated imagination.

By the way, Henry ("Long Ben") Avery as not an American pirate. He was from Plymouth, England, and apparently never set foot in America.


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Originally Posted by DeepFrz View Post
Dockhead, there were many, many Muslims in the far east during those times. In India, China, Malaysia right up to New Guinea. So to say there were no other Muslim countries in that area is being a little simplistic.

The trade routes of Asia had spread incredible wealth across Asia and so many Muslims would have made the pilgrimage to Mecca across the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea.

I don't know if the article referenced is entirely correct, but I certainly would not rule it out by your assumptions.

There is an interesting article here on privateers, or legal pirates.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj11n1/cj11n1-8.pdf
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Old 17-04-2009, 07:58   #114
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Brits were Americans during that period Dockhead! The war of independence had not yet been fought. The article does talk about that. Did you read it?

The article you referenced states "The Pirate Round was a sailing route followed by certain Anglo-American pirates, mainly during the late 17th century..." then:
"The Pirate Round was briefly used again during the early 1720s." then:

"This was the ideal position for intercepting and robbing Mughal shipping, especially the lucrative traffic between Surat and Mecca, carrying Muslim voyagers on the Haj pilgrimage."

One incident? Who was counting?
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Old 17-04-2009, 15:17   #115
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I too was puzzled by the claim that the Muslim countries were far wealthier than Europe in the 17th century. The Ottoman Empire was far flung and lasted for hundreds of years. It began when the last crusaders were expelled from the Middle East at the end of the 13th century. But it wasn’t until the end of the 15th century that it was able to consolidate real power in much of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and North Africa. The result was displacement of the Italian City States, and the Empire effectively became partly a European power in its own right, controlling not only the western terminus of the caravan routes, but also the sea routes in the eastern Mediterranean. The way I learned it, it is not coincidence that at about the same time, the Spanish sailed west and conquered the Caribbean; and the Portugese rounded Good Hope and established sea routes to the Far East.

In the 17th century Ottoman power and wealth was in decline as both a direct and indirect result of the burgeoning wealth, power, and technology of the European powers. As for other wealthy 17th century Muslim countries, I agree with Dockhead - what were they? What was then called India had a significant Muslim minority, but it had more Buddhists and was an overwhelmingly Hindu country. China has always had a relatively large population and you can find just about anything there - the Portuguese discovered a Torah. But, its religion was overwhelmingly Confucian, folk/animist, and Buddhist; and it has never been a Muslim country. Indonesia is the most populace Muslim country, but in the 17th century it was more or less a Dutch colony.

What all this has to do with piracy escapes me at the moment.
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Old 17-04-2009, 17:04   #116
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What all this has to do with piracy escapes me at the moment.
At this point I'm wondering what it has to do with Cruising. Perhaps the Hostory Channle wouod be a better venue. We really do want to be what we are about. Yes, we are all alive and living on the same planet. We really do want to be about boating.

We didn't close this thread yet mostly because there is a tiny amount of substance to it. I don't see it getting bigger. Given this is post 116 I don't see people reading the whole thing - would you?
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Old 17-04-2009, 18:39   #117
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Given this is post 116 I don't see people reading the whole thing - would you?
Most are lazy huh?

I always start at the beginning and read the whole thing before I open my trap.
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Old 17-04-2009, 21:16   #118
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Yes ... by all means ... let's make sure people don't discuss anything of substance.

jeeeez.
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Old 18-04-2009, 02:37   #119
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I think the "substance" of the argument here would change rather dramatically if we recognized the fact that the word "piracy" in this case is a spin on what should be labeled organized crime and/or terrorism.

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Old 18-04-2009, 08:27   #120
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Dutch commandos have freed 20 fishermen whose vessel was hijacked by Somali pirates and used to launch an attack against a tanker in the Gulf of Aden.
Then they let the pirates go! What is that about? What kind of Dutch law would demand they let the pirates go after they have taken 20 fishermen hostage and attacked a tanker? Sounds to me like the politicians just don't want to deal with reality.
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