"The Punishment of Pirates is an absorbing examination of how societal views toward piracy transformed from acceptable and tolerated to immoral and intolerable. It provides readers with a better understanding of this change, and allows them to view pirates and the fight against them in a new and intriguing light."

Pirates and Privateers

"Matthew Norton's The Punishment of Pirates: Interpretation and Institutional Order in the Early Modern British Empire looks at the figure of the pirate both for its own sake and 'as a case that can shed its specific light on the more general social scientific question of how groups create, maintain, and enforce social orders' . . . Undoubtedly a mark of an excellent book is that, in addition to a wealth of insights across several disciplines, it throws up questions for further study, research and consideration."

KULT Online

"A ground-breaking text in two regards: first, in terms of its historical narrative, and second, through its theoretical synthesis."

Social Forces

“Brilliant and innovative, Norton bridges literature on social coordination (which is often in economic or political science) to cultural sociology. Providing a wealth of information about piracy, privateering, and attempts at policing both, The Punishment of Pirates is certain to be read and enjoyed by cultural sociologists, comparative historical sociologists, state-theorists, theorists of power, and scholars of empire.”

Emily Erikson, Yale University

“Highly original and based on a detailed examination of primary documents, The Punishment of Pirates explains how the English state gained control of piracy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In addition to providing an innovative cultural explanation for how the English were able to quash piracy, Norton points the way toward a richer understanding of the sources of institutional power, and the problems of coordination inherent in them that economic approaches tend to overlook.”

Damon Mayrl, Colby College