Dr Oliver Finnegan
Prize Papers Records Specialist at The National ArchivesAbout the author
Oliver is a historian of overseas exchange, maritime empires, seafaring and piracy during the early modern period (around 1500–1800). He works on the Prize Papers Project, a collaboration between The National Archives and the University of Oldenburg, which is currently digitising around 500,000 letters and papers taken from ships between 1652 and 1815.
His work at The National Archives also extends to the criminal records of the High Court of Admiralty, which detail thousands of cases of piracy dating back to the sixteenth century. He is currently writing a book on the global history of piracy, based on these largely unknown records.