The present chapter is an attempt to respond to recent attempts at questioning the Eurocentric bias in depictions of maritime power and violence in a period of European expansion. It takes its cue from new and significant work done on the idea of legal pluralism in maritime spaces, on non-European conceptions of power and jurisdiction at sea, and on the value of using piracy as a lens for understanding the articulation of sovereignty. As the title indicates, the chapter focuses on both the materiality of maritime violence and predation as well as of its representation in Asian and European sources to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon in the context of India's western littoral, conventionally understood as the “pirate coast” par excellence. It was a dubious and inglorious reputation for sure and not necessarily the sole construction of the British colonial state, although the latter's intervention as the policeman of the seas to protect free trade lent additional semantic and political overtones to the bundle of activities that came to be designated as piracy.

In keeping with the underlying rationale of the present volume, namely, to look at non-European understandings of maritime violence, this chapter will draw attention to three important sub-themes that constituted the phenomenon of predation and raiding, as it was pursued actively by littoral society, as it was described by the early colonial state and, subsequently, by imperialist and nationalist historiography.