Speaker
Description
This paper examines the re-emergence of private maritime security companies (PMSCs) in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, situating their rise within both recent developments in maritime security and a broader historical context. Since the early 2000s, PMSCs have become a visible feature of global shipping security, particularly in response to piracy and other low-intensity maritime threats. Their growing role as non-state actors operating in the maritime domain raises important questions about the organization of coercive power at sea and the boundaries of state authority.
Drawing on my ongoing PhD research, the paper focuses on the structural conditions that enabled the expansion of PMSCs rather than treating their emergence as a purely novel or exceptional phenomenon. It highlights how the globalization of trade, the rapid growth of the merchant fleet, and the post–Cold War contraction and reprioritization of naval forces created persistent capacity gaps in maritime security provision. Within this context, PMSCs emerged as a practical solution to long-standing challenges of securing vast and dispersed sea lines of communication, particularly in regions where states lacked the resources or political willingness to provide continuous protection.
The paper then briefly situates contemporary PMSCs within a longer historical trajectory of delegated maritime violence, comparing them to earlier non-state and semi-state actors such as privateers and chartered trading companies. This historical perspective demonstrates that the involvement of non-state actors in maritime security has been a recurrent feature of naval warfare and maritime order rather than an anomaly of the contemporary era. By placing PMSCs within this longer continuum, the paper contributes to discussions on non-state actors and security governance by showing how states have repeatedly adapted the distribution of authority at sea in response to changing economic, strategic, and technological conditions.
| If you are submitting an Open Panel proposal, have you included all four abstracts in attachment? | No, I am submitting a Closed Panel abstract |
|---|---|
| Would you like to be considered for travel funding through the NetSec COST Action? | Yes |
| Are you a member of the NetSec Management Committee? | No |
| What discipline or branch of humanities or social sciences do you identify yourself with? | History |
| Which of the following best describes your stage of the career? | PhD Candidate |
| In which country is your home institution? | The Netherlands |
| What is your gender? | Male |