Yo-ho, jihad !

By Adrian Tinniswood

If you instinctively object to the fashionable (in some quarters) assertion that modern Islamic terrorism can be laid to Muslim reaction to the West's racial oppression, this book is a must read.

What this book is not is a collection of ripping yarns about hearty sea dogs bent on plunder under the banner of the Jolly Roger.

Rather, it is a thoroughly researched and highly readable account of how and why the tiny, impoverished enclaves that hugged the Mediterranean coast of North Africa turned to piracy in the 1600s and subjected the powerful merchant nations of Europe to robbery of their cargos and enslavement of their sailors for nearly 250 years before anyone had heard of Somali pirates seizing oil tankers or of al Qaeda.

British historian Adrian Tinniswood makes a valid point that one man's piracy is another nation's foreign policy. During the Crusades, the religious knights who sought to free the Holy Land did not scruple to grab an errant Ottoman merchant vessel and enslave its crew.

And almost from the time the New World was discovered, most of the exploring powers took great joy in seizing one another's treasure ships; Elizabeth I ennobled some of the more rapacious of her sea dogs. Our own hallowed War of Independence was financed largely by doughty privateers such as John Paul Jones who captured British merchant vessels and took them into French ports so Benjamin Franklin could swap them for vital war materials.

Piracy was thus a well-established fact of seagoing life, and Mr. Tinniswood has made good use of the archives that he trawled through in Britain's dusty maritime records. There are plenty of sea battles and daring exploits to satisfy the taste of the armchair admiral. But this is a story of timeless politics that has a timely ring to it.

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