Where Empire Meets Outlaw in the Age of Piracy, History is Written in Blood and SaltBy Sean Patrick Sayers
Listen with 1,000+ voices
Length13h 3m
About this audiobook
"Epic, exciting, and highly recommended."
— Midwest Book Review
"A detailed, vivid, and often sobering history of life at sea."
— Independent Book Review
In the wake of empire, the black flag was born.
Black Meridian: Piracy & Empire reveals piracy not as rebellion outside power, but as a force tied to it. Across four centuries of conflict, pirates, privateers, and empires shaped one another through violence, ambition, trade, slavery, and the struggle to command the seas.
From Constantinople’s fall in 1453 to the industrial age, this vivid narrative crosses the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and South China Sea, showing how empires encouraged, funded, and fought piracy when it served their interests. Drake, Morgan, Blackbeard, and Ching Shih appear not as myths, but as figures within a global system of conquest and commerce.
Grounded in historical analysis, Black Meridian shows how piracy helped shape navies, ports, maritime law, global trade, and the modern world itself.
