From Corsairs to Private Military Contractors. Nonmilitary Maritime Actors and the Historical Continuities of Naval Warfare
Since late 2023, several Houthi attacks on commercial shipping have involved privately contracted armed teams conducting defensive engagements and coordinating immediate response efforts, often in the relative absence of regular naval forces during the immediate hostilities at sea. These cases highlight a strategic tension that increasingly confronts modern navies. On the one hand, they are expected to conduct persistent, low-intensity maritime security tasks such as counterpiracy, maritime policing, and the protection of commercial shipping. On the other hand, they face renewed pressure to prepare for high-intensity conflict against peer and near-peer adversaries amid the return of great power competition.
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Key Takeaways
The resurgence of nonmilitary and irregular actors, including private maritime security companies (PMSCs), is not a historical anomaly but a recurring feature of maritime security whenever states face enduring economic, political, and military-strategic pressures.
To understand the rise of PMSCs, policymakers should look beyond the actors themselves to the structural conditions that enable them. While historical contexts differ, the underlying drivers have recurred remarkably consistently over time.
The resurgence of Somali piracy and renewed Houthi attacks suggest that these structural pressures are intensifying. As navies balance persistent low-intensity maritime security missions with the demands of great-power competition, nonmilitary and irregular actors are likely to play an increasingly prominent role.
States have often faced similar dual pressures throughout history, frequently leading them to delegate certain maritime security responsibilities to nonmilitary or irregular actors—actors licensed or commissioned by the state, but outside its standing naval forces. The contemporary rise of private military contractors (PMSCs) is therefore not unprecedented but reflects a deeper structural pattern in maritime security and naval warfare. While naval historiography often treats the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as the natural era of centralized, state-controlled naval power under a strict monopoly of violence, this memo argues that this period, from the Paris Declaration of 1856 to the end of the Cold War, was historically exceptional rather than foundational. For most of maritime history, states exercised maritime power through delegation, sharing coercive functions with privateers, chartered trading companies, and other irregular maritime actors.
Situating PMSCs within this broader historical context challenges the assumption that their emergence signals a deviation from established international norms and instead highlights longer-term historical continuity in the organization of maritime violence. Understanding this continuity is essential for both academia and contemporary maritime strategy, as it prevents scholars and practitioners alike from mistaking a contingent normative moment for a timeless principle of maritime order. In line with Admiral Castex’s emphasis on flexibility, asymmetry, and the contested nature of sea control, such a historically informed perspective helps explain why maritime security has repeatedly been a shared and delegated endeavor, and why such arrangements are re-emerging today.
This paper won first place in the 2026 "Admiral Castex Prize", awarded by the French Navy, in the category "Naval Warfare".
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From Corsairs to Private Military Contractors. Nonmilitary Maritime Actors and the Historical Continuities of Naval Warfare
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