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The Gulf of Aden holds one of the strategic chokepoint along the important Eurasian maritime trade route. On both sides of the Gulf of Aden lie countries in need of political stability. In the south lies Somalia, one of the worlds longest failed states and hosts of pirates violently disrupting maritime trade in the region. On its northern shores lies Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world and home to the terrorist movement Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This thesis aims to look deeper into what effect on piracy another failed state in the region would have and to illustrate that the thesis describes a scenario where Yemen has followed Somalia’s footsteps and developed into a failed state. Applying Lindgren and Bandhold’s method of scenario planning and through a quantitative analysis, recent trends affecting piracy development were identified. Through a scenario cross four different scenarios were developed to illustrate the effects a failed state Yemen would have on piracy leading to which new challenges the EU might be faced with in the region. The overall conclusions are that a failed state Yemen would have a negative effect on the efforts in mitigating piracy and pirates, driven by opportunity and profit, would benefit from further instability in the region. The thesis supports previous research regarding the connection between maritime piracy in the Gulf of Aden and failed states and illustrate the multifaceted challenges the EU could face as a consequence of the new development of piracy. / <p>Erasmus</p>

This paper deals with current status of maritime transport and emphasizes its importance for the World economy. It shows some of the current trends of this mode of transport. A characteristics of the maritime transport development and its classification is given in the theoretical part of this paper.

This study reconceptualises Sri Lanka's external trade and interactions from the middle of the first millennium BC to the early second millennium AD. Unlike earlier analyses, mine draws on the excavated material culture from three port-cum-urban centres - Mantai, Kantharodai and Kirinda - which were linked to major urban complexes, interior resource bases and Indian Ocean maritime networks. The scale and intensity of their external trade and connectivity, crafts and industries varied greatly over time and location. My findings illustrate Sri Lanka's earliest cultural-commercial connections with India from the middle of the first millennium BC. By the beginning of the CE, islanders were trading with the Middle East and the Mediterranean in the west and Southeast Asia and China in the east. The Middle East was a particularly strong connection from about the mid-3^rd century. Materials from Southeast Asia and China arrive by the late 7^th/8^th centuries, with the focus of external trade shifting away from the Middle East to the Far-East around the end of the 10^th century, lasting until the 12^th/13^th centuries and beyond. My findings demonstrate that internal developments in irrigated agriculture, iron technology, crafts, industries and procurement-distribution networks were crucial for external trade and connectivity. Contrary to the traditional view, I identify local agency as an important driving force behind both internal and external trade in ancient Sri Lanka. The island's external connectivity did not depend on a single factor but was based on specific historical realities which were constantly redefined and reformulated in response to the changing dynamics within and outside Sri Lanka.

This dissertation is a study of early Islamicate commerce in natural luxuries of the tropical Indian Ocean and Western Pacific Rim, such as spices, ambergris and pearls, between the ninth and eleventh centuries C.E. I approach this topic by looking at a wide array of textual sources, from geographies, anecdotes, travel narratives, inscriptions, and the records of embassies, to materia medica and the oldest surviving Islamicate cookbook. I analyze these sources alongside material culture, archeological evidence from ports in Iran, Oman, and Southeast Asia, and newly-discovered shipwrecks from the Java Sea. Adapting the work of environmental scientists to the thesis, I locate this early Islamicate commerce within a bio-geographical space, the tropical "Indo-Pacific." I argue that desires for the tropical luxuries of the environmentally-distinct Indo-Pacific helped to define the cosmopolitan culture of early Islamicate societies, from Iran and Iraq to Egypt and Spain. These desires promoted an expanding Islamicate maritime commerce across the Indo-Pacific, which led to the flourishing of port-cities in southern Iran and Oman. This maritime trade expanded Islamicate geographical horizons, as reflected in the evolving "wonders" and geographical literature of the era. It also led to early contacts between the Islamic world and the peoples of the tropical Pacific Rim, a phenomenon that contributed, in time, to the formation of Islamicate societies in maritime Southeast Asia. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

This thesis focuses on the economies of Roman ports and their role in the facilitation and organization of maritime trade, combining both terrestrial and maritime archaeological evidence as well as literary and epigraphic material. The first half of the thesis examines Mediterranean ports from a panoptic level in order to address questions of systems of trade, connectivity and economic development. In doing so, I focus on three particular areas of material culture: ceramics, shipwreck cargoes (typically composed of amphorae, metal ingots or stone) and epigraphy. The second half of the thesis focuses on two case studies, southern Turkey and southern France. For each region, I explore the economic factors which led to the development of each region and the ways in which ports enabled this development. I consider the impact of landscape, the usage of natural resources and the extent of production for both local consumption and export. Importantly, I examine the regional connections of the two regions and their interactions within the wider Mediterranean. I develop a model for the development of ports along each coastline and their degree of integration into the trading network of the Roman Mediterranean. Building on this, it becomes possible to assess the extent and scale of extra-regional interaction and market integration. From the evidence presented in this thesis, I argue that ports were at the core of the Roman market economy and that the development of a port network allowed for the integration and interdependence of Mediterranean markets. This allowed for regional economic growth through the specialization in the production of goods for which a region had a comparative advantage.

L’objectif de cette thèse est d'envisager la piraterie ancienne dans la longue durée, à la lumière des recherches menées par N. Purcell et P. Horden sur la Méditerranée antique. Elle s’appuie en premier lieu sur une étude des mots grecs et latins liés à la piraterie et de ses représentations dans les sources écrites anciennes. Ce travail est complété par une relecture de l’historiographie moderne qu’il est aussi nécessaire d’analyser dans son contexte historique afin d’écarter toutes les images afférant à notre notion. Alors qu'elle a été jusqu'à présent abordée dans un cadre événementiel, on entend mettre l'accent sur les structures du raid antique, en s'inscrivant dans le long terme. Ainsi, les pirates n'apparaissent plus seulement comme la face négative du commerce maritime, mais comme des agents d'échanges et de production de richesse. L’étude approfondie de deux régions de la Méditerranée (Cilicie, mer des Baléares) permet enfin de mettre en évidence les structures micro-locales et les dynamiques économiques, sociales, territoriales, géopolitiques qui ont permis et entretenu l’activité de prédation. Au terme de cette étude, nous proposons d’analyser la piraterie dans toute sa diversité grâce à une typologie nouvelle : le pirate imaginé, le pirate commerçant et le pirate opportuniste. / The purpose of this doctoral work is to consider ancient piracy over a long period of time, in the new light of the research recently carried out by N. Purcell and P. Horden on the ancient Mediterranean. This dissertation begins with a study of the Greek and Latin words related to piracy, and of the representation of the latter in ancient written sources. This work is completed by a new reading of the modern historiography, which needs to be examined in the light of its own historical context in order to dismiss the images commonly related to the notion of piracy. While piracy has so far been studied from a factual angle, this dissertation aims at focusing on the structures of ancient raid through a long-term perspective. This shift in perspective enables to consider pirates not simply as a negative side of maritime trade, but more deeply as agents of trade and as agents in the production of wealth. Through the in-depth study of two regions of the Mediterranean (Cilicia and the Balearic Sea), I wish to highlight the micro-local structures and the economic, social, territorial and geopolitical trends that enabled and sustained piracy. By the end of this study I wish to analyze piracy in all its diversity thanks to a new classification: the imagined pirate, the trading pirate and the opportunistic pirate.