Crimes Against Feeling: Piracy, Sympathy, and Ocean Politics in Antebe

Crimes Against Feeling: Piracy, Sympathy, and Ocean Politics in Antebe, Volume 1, explores the complex intersection of law and literature in nineteenth-century America. Mark B. Kelley examines how the charge of piracy was applied to diverse figures, including foreign leaders and abolitionists, who challenged established authority. This legal history demonstrates that piracy was often defined by emotional judgment rather than political ideology. By analyzing legal documents and sentimental fiction, the text shows how concepts like sympathy and domestic vulnerability shaped American maritime law.

This work in the categories of law, legal history, and history and criticism traces how emotional frameworks helped manage oceanic violence and transnational disorder. The book investigates how figures like Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Beecher Stowe used affective logic to interpret the pirate as a threat to social norms. Crimes Against Feeling: Piracy, Sympathy, and Ocean Politics in Antebe, Volume 1, provides a scholarly look at how gender, family, and nation were negotiated through the lens of maritime crime.