Pirate States

The term Pirate States refers to a broad collection of Seranian polities established primarily around the edges of the Dovgor and Coactian Seas during the long 18th century. It was first officially used in a Messenian language (Savamese) in the 1889 Treaty of Ūsilinna, following well-established Joriscian usage originating in the 1760s with the Acquisition of Ondolu. Some of the Pirate States, in particular Keymaros, were indeed notorious as bases for piracy, but the usage of 'pirate' was intended primarily to deny any of these functionally independent entities legitimacy as anything other than colonial outposts of Outer Joriscian Vaestdom. Numerically, most of the Pirate States were small religiously-motivated heretic colonies established far beyond the long reach of Vaestic orthodoxy. Often included under the title, however, were the independent Seranian Trade Leagues.

The existence of the Pirate States as remote outposts of heresy and crime, as well as the practical threat that piracy presented to imperial power, made them a source of perennial anxiety for Outer Joriscian colonial policy. As the metropolitan empires flexed their muscles in the 19th century and discovered an ability to project power far abroad with the help of new technology, the Pirate States' days were numbered. Of some sixty or seventy different entities once existing along the Seranian coastline, the much-reduced rump of the New Zaavic League is the only contemporary survivor.