About

About Global Privateering

Global Privateering is a database of information related to the (premodern) capture of ships by privateers worldwide.
We depart from judicial documentation surrounding these captures, to gain insights into serial historical data about shipping, trade, labor, property rights over war at sea, and formation of local, regional and global markets.
We will also include similar serial information from other than judicial sources only, but systematized according to the primary information contained in judicial documents.

The database currently reflects the pilot that focuses on the c. 170 Dutch ships captured by privateers from St. Malo (France), most notably for the periods of the Nine Years’ War (1688-1697) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714).
Students and researchers can find data on the crews, the cargoes, the privateers, the auctions, and the relevant ports of departure and destination of most ships. Using the search function, one may isolate specific variables or combine them according to pre-existing research questions.

Intellectual Property Rights

The current data has been collected by Mr. Siem van Eeten and remains his intellectual property. Therefore, when citing the series on St. Malo – Dutch ships, his contribution needs to be acknowledged by students and researchers. For annotation please use: data set (Global Privateering), serie St. Malo - Dutch ships (Siem van Eeten), consulted on [date of consultation].
Future data sets that will be deposited in Global Privateering will be indexed in the author’s information on the website and will be used in annotation in a similar fashion. For researchers and students using all the resources of Global Privateering, please refer to annotation as (Global Privateering), consulted on [date of consultation].

Partnerships

Global Privateering is a collaborative project between Leiden University, vocational schooling (Nova College in Beverwijk) and citizen scientists.

The data presented on the website was gathered by citizen scientist Mr. Siem van Eeten at the Archives Départementales d’Ille-et-Vilaine in Rennes, France.
The photos of the original documents from which the data is extracted belong to Mr. van Eeten, and permission to publicize them was kindly granted by the Archives Départmentales.

The data was entrusted to the Institute for History at Leiden University, the Netherlands, whose members evaluated the possibilities of making the data available for open access in a user-friendly digital environment, resulting in the Global Privateering platform.
Global Privateering continues to be based at Leiden University’s Institute for History.

The Global Privateering platform was constructed according to a set of research questions borrowed from methodological approaches to Global History by a team of IT students and their instructor at the Nova College in Beverwijk, the Netherlands.
This has been an inspirational collaboration that all parties wish to set forth.

Disclaimer

Global Privateering is a work in progress, and its functionality is currently being evaluated and expanded.
Future releases of datasets and new functionalities will be announced on this page.
We welcome any suggestions for functions, filters, options or data sets that could enrich the platform’s data presentation and research content.