JULY 26 — Anyone who even begins to study the history of commerce and economics very quickly becomes aware of the pivotal early role played by the Mediterranean Sea.

It is well documented how, ever since the classical Egyptians ventured beyond the mouth of the Nile around three thousand years ago, the exchange of raw materials and manufactured goods was significantly facilitated by those who dared to cross this great expanse of water.

Greeks, Phoenicians, Etruscans, Romans, Turks, Arabs, Berbers, Catalans, Venetians, Spaniards, French and British… they and many others pushed along the global economy by heading out upon the waterway that links Europe to Africa and Asia and beyond.

But on a family vacation in Menorca last week — and with the assistance of a well-timed holiday read, historian David Abulafia’s exhaustive study The Great Sea — I discovered two specific and closely-related elements of the sunny Med’s commercial history which don’t receive nearly as much recognition as they probably should: piracy and smuggling.

Piracy, according to misplaced modern perceptions, appears to have been a faraway phenomenon restricted solely to the dangerous New World — it was no accident that the movie is called Pirates of the Caribbean, not the Mediterranean. Such unruly lawlessness simply didn’t happen close to the shores of the “civilised” old continent, surely.

In fact, however, rampant piracy made sailing the waters of the Mediterranean a terribly risky business for many centuries and, to further dispel any lingering racist-tinged stereotypes, it wasn’t only the vaguely well-known Barbary Corsairs from North Africa who were responsible.

The obvious appeal in attacking a defenceless commercial vessel, plundering everything worthwhile on board and selling its occupants into slavery was eagerly exploited by all and sundry, with renegade clans from Genoa and Pisa in modern-day Italy among the very worst of culprits.

And this is where I was surprised to discover the tiny Balearic island of Menorca, located between Italy and Spain, entering the picture.

Such a small and barren patch of land does not immediately present itself as a valuable site, but the advantages of possessing a friendly port which could offer several safe natural harbours to provide running repairs and protection from pirate attacks were immeasurable.

Captain Jack Sparrow as played by Johnny Depp... but there were pirates not just in the Caribbean but all over the Mediterranean region as well. — Picture courtesy of Disney.com

The same benefits were, naturally, also perceived by pirates themselves, who periodically succeeded in establishing bases on the island in order to ready themselves to launch attacks on unsuspecting passing fleets.

Consequently, Menorca was bitterly fought over on many occasions, frequently changing hands over the years between Greek, Roman, Catalan, French, British and, eventually, Spanish forces who were eager to secure themselves a safe haven in the middle of the sea — even if it was only a patch of land barely measuring 700 square kilometres where nothing much could grow.

Nowadays, Menorca is a Spanish territory with an economy largely based on tourism thanks to its calm, warm waters and a proliferation of gorgeous sandy beaches.

But the island’s mixed heritage remains evident in its architectural variety, the survival of a form of Catalan as the official language and a profusion of locally distilled gin, a skill first granted to the natives by British occupants more than two centuries ago.

Among the chief attractions for tourists is the opportunity to explore Menorca’s rocky, jagged coastline, which is particularly easily accessible along the sheltered southern coast. Even for unskilled novices such as myself, it is perfectly easy to jump in a kayak and paddle away for a couple of hours, exploring the beaches and caves which once provided a safe marketplace for the other under-regarded element of Mediterranean commerce: smugglers.

The vast network of caves, invisible from land, were particularly important for those daring entrepreneurs who chose to maximise their profits by exchanging their goods “off the books”, thereby avoiding the steep taxation rates which were habitually imposed upon officially sanctioned traders.

Many of the traders, of course, were pirates or their associates, who needed to find a way to dispose of their ill-gotten gains under the shadow of darkness.

Even now, after paddling across the gently lapping waves and discretely turning a corner into an eerily quiet cave, it requires little imagination to appreciate how easy it much have been to carry out shady, undetected transactions in illicit goods.

Eventually, piracy in the Mediterranean was brought to an end by none other than the American Navy, which offered an insightful foretaste of that nation’s future foreign policy by ruthlessly crushing the last significant pirate force, the Barbary Corsairs, exactly two hundred years ago in 1815.

It would be nice if this story was simply a history lesson, but sadly that is not the case because evolved forms of smuggling and piracy are still thriving in the very same Mediterranean waters.

Just this week, for instance, Italian police claimed to have seized assets of more than €2 billion held by a leading Mafia operation in the Cantabria region of south-eastern Italy, attempting to strike a blow against the organisation which is believed to run much of Europe’s cocaine trade.

The Mafia is one of Italy’s most famous exports, of course, and if this week’s reports are anything to go by it is still thriving and capable of generating colossal wealth under the cover of supposedly respectable “front” operations such as restaurants and gambling businesses.

Meanwhile, one of Europe’s most serious and high-profile current issues is people trafficking from North Africa, with thousands of desperate refugees being smuggled into the continent and thousands more dying in the process of trying. Combating Mafia gangs and people traffickers is the contemporary equivalent, you could say, of the age-old battle against pirates and smugglers.

This paints a familiarly depressing picture of the human condition: however sophisticated we like to think our systems of government are, and however transparent contemporary capitalism claims to be, there are still plenty of opportunities for those sufficiently motivated by the prospect of vast wealth to take their chances and operate outside the law.

The pursuit of money is a dirty business, and it always has been.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.