Somali piracy: No fishing, no trade, no hope

The recent capture and subsequent freeing of Capt. Richard Phillips has, once again, drawn world attention to Somalia. The beleaguered African nation, which has an ineffective central government, has become a regional staging-ground for piracy, and has emerged as a major threat to shipping in and out of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.

While contemporary depictions of Caribbean piracy suggest a sort of romantic, water-borne version of Robin Hood's Merry Men, the truth is that it had little to do with personal freedom and everything to do with commerce. After the War of Spanish Succession, many English and Dutch seafarers went to work as privateers for England, which essentially meant that they were authorized by the crown to attack Spain's shipping. Rather than the anarchic free-for-all portrayed by movies, real-life pirates were often little more than government contractors who were paid to undermine Spain's economic base in the New World.