My sophmore year in college I took a class entitled European Imerialism: 1500-1800.  I actually enjoyed the class and really liked the professor.  While other students were comparing and contrasting religions and clothing I wrote papers on Piracy and El Dorado.  Below is my piracy paper.  I received a C+ on it for "grammatical errors", which in my college means the professor has a different version of the English Language than the campus Writing Center who approved the entire thing. Other than that, and I agree with what he said, I left information as "given" regarding mercantilism and the economic situations of the time.  Below is the paper as I turned it in, with some of the "grammatical" changes.  It should provide some background about the Golden Age of Piracy but lacking in the economic conditions.

Please do not steal my paper from me, but give proper credit.

Parker, Shannon. "Pirates and the New World."  Washington College. European Imperialism 1500-1800. November 7, 1997.  Http://www.brennalinsworld.com/pirates2.html

        Pirates have been terrorizing the seas since humans learned how to sail.  They existed in moderate numbers all over the world until the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus.  The imperialistic tendencies of the time caused conditions to rise in the Western Hemisphere where piracy would flourish.  Three specific types of piracy can be defined based on those conditions that appeared in the New World: officially sanctioned piracy, commercial piracy and buccaneering.  "Columbus has opened the way west and in his wake came the seafaring adventurers of many nations" (Black 2).

        The West Indies were divided between Spain and Portugal in a proclamation issued by Pope Alexander VI (Black 3).  Soon other European countries would challenge this decision and fight for a piece of he wealth Spain found.  England, France and the Netherlands pried on the imperial powers of Spain and Portugal to further their own imperialist interests.  Declared and undeclared wars were fought between these nations on the seas over this European greed.

        This imperialistic approach brought about new techniques to reach their objectives of gaining land and material wealth.  The rising powers in the world did not have the resources to achieve these goals.  Instead of using their navies, they hired privateers.  "Officially sanctioned piracy comprises acts that are clearly piratical under any system of law but that go unpunished because a particular government finds it convenient to ignore such activities or even secretly to sponsor them (Ritchie 11).  In wartime, professional privateers were given a letter or permit to raid enemy ships.  During peacetime a letter was given with the authority to raid ships on the basis of compensating for losses from past raids.  Privateers would seize the property of anyone trading with the enemy and sought commissions from other princes, depending on the bounty and who was at odds with another.

        Although piracy was illegal, weak governments and greed contributed to piracy’s success and profitability.  Local magnates lived on the profits of brigandage and the Lord High Admiral was also involved with pirates, paralyzing the governments where piracy flourished.  When the navy was sent to patrol the seas, they stayed away from the better armed and larger pirate vessels. (Ritchie 12)

        More predominate government officials, including the monarchy, supported the pirates against the complaints of other countries.  When Sir Francis Drake ravaged the Spanish in the Pacific, " Queen Elizabeth protected him from an irate Spain, in the process taking her own share of the spoils" (Ritchie 12).  Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, financed the exploits of pirate Richard Gifford and used his influence to have Gifford released when captured. (Ritchie 13)

        England, France and the Netherlands used their hired privateers to acquire land in the West Indies.  "As early as 1506 French ships appeared in the Caribbean, attacking small Spanish settlements and capturing Spanish vessels" (Black 3).  The three rising world powers began settling on the islands surrounding the main colonies of Spain.  Due to the Pope’s proclamation, Spain controlled a vast area that was almost impossible to defend, and defended very poorly.  "Up to the end of the sixteenth century the only settled colonies in the Americas were those of Spain.  So far the challenge by other European nations to Spanish claims in the area had taken the form of raiding and smuggling, but soon a more serious threat appeared when the intruders began to colonize the forbidden territory&ldots;" (Black 3).

        "After forty years of raiding, the French decided to create a colony on the Florida Peninsula, from which they could raid Spanish ships sailing through the Florida strait" (Ritchie 14).  In 1624 the French had control of St. Christopher and Guadaloupe in 1635.

        The first permanent English settlement was in St. Kitts in 1624.  Soon thereafter the English occupied Bermuda, Guiana, Barbados, Nevis, Antigua, and Montserrat.   The English settlement of Providence Island off the Honduran coast in 1638 changed its main source of income from farming to raiding Spanish colonies.  The Spanish fought to take over this island three years later.  They disliked having the English so close to them.  The English then seized Jamaica in 1655 through a "Cromwellian privateering expedition" (Black 3).

        Not one of these great imperialistic empires had the means to defend their colonies and relied heavily on these "private navies" as a means of defense.  "Piracy, which had helped to create the new empires, now defended and financed their operations" (Ritchie 15).  The English feared future attacks after their seizure of Jamaica and as soon as treaty proposals were rebuffed, commissions were sent to privateers to raid Spanish towns and vessels.

        The governments in the Indies welcomed the seafarers since there were no navies to protect them.  The pirates kept attacking the Spanish, making their claims in the New World weaker and open for others.  In times of war, pirates were used to help defend the colonies by supplementing the naval fleets.  Also the colonies whose home countries commissioned pirates profited from seized bounty and contraband that was needed.  Spain seemed the only world power of the time on the losing end of New World profits.

        The desire for wealth and an expanded empire created conditions that helped make piracy profitable and defined "commercial piracy".  The Spanish Crown wanted a total trade monopoly with its colonies in the West Indies.  Other Europeans wanted a share of the wealth Spain had found&ldots; so they raided and stole it.  A monopoly, from an economic standpoint, caused high prices because the goods can not be obtained anywhere else, there are no other alternatives.  Those holding the monopoly can charge any price they choose, obviously trying to charge the highest price possible and reap the highest profits.  The prices of necessary and luxury goods in the Spanish colonies were extremely high and the people could not afford them.  The colonists welcomed the illegal goods stolen and sold at lower prices by pirates.

        The Navigational Acts passed by the English in 1651, 1652, and 1660 were aimed at the Dutch, but created the same trade monopoly issues that the Spanish had.  "The principals [of the Navigational Acts] were clear and consistent.  The colonies were to be given a monopoly of the home market for their characteristic products.  Conversely, having been founded for the benefit of the mother country, they were to produce goods which England could not produce&ldots;" (Parry 263).  The English colonists were trading low priced, agricultural products for higher priced, manufactured, imports from Europe.  This caused an unfavorable balance of trade for the colonists and a lack of necessary goods, as well as a lack of income.

        Poor merchants began to invest in piracy.  So did the major trading companies like the Dutch India Company.  The world the colonists found here was definitely a "New World" in that those who first came here had nothing to work with but raw materials.  Laws like the Navigational Acts limited the resources from abroad that were a necessity to make a new economy thrive.  Merchants, and sometimes entire communities (like Providence Island) turned to piracy as a living or began supporting the raids of pirates.  The pirates would bring the captured bounty back to the colonists who would receive their share and have the opportunity to purchase goods that were scarce in the colonies.

        These same economic conditions allowed the buccaneers to thrive, but buccaneers were different type of pirate.  Their livelihood was a form of revenge and they did not begin as seafarers.  Buccaneers began as traders and hunters living in the uninhabited Northern and Western parts of Hispaniola.  Those who colonized the Indies brought with them social undesirables who created their own society.  They were French, English, and Dutch men mostly and were criminals, free and unfree slaves, political and religious undesirables, and wanderers. (Kemp 3)

        "The Spanish, however, resented their presence in Hispaniola and tried to round them up with the help of lancers, without much success.  An attempt to starve them into subjection by destroying or dispersing the animals they hunted had more effect, but the Spainards were to pay dearly for their success" (Black 5).  They were forced to move to Tortuga in 1630 and again driven away by the Spanish.  They returned to Tortuga, united together into the Brethren of the Coast, and took to the sea with the Spanish their most hated enemy.  Their first acts of piracy were to seize Spanish ships, and they achieved this from simple canoes.  The ships aided them and the canoes were left behind.  As the wealth of the buccaneers grew so did the colonies who did not turn them away.

        The buccaneers who began in Hispaniola were the predecessors of the most famous pirates in History: Morgan, Roberts and Kidd, as well as the most ruthless.  The pirates who originated in this way were also the most brutal and tortuous.  Buccaneers also had a very strong code, one of the characteristics that attracted the thousand who would sign on.

        It was a hard life, but a very profitable one, and a free life if a man (and a few women) was and escaped criminal, slave or indentured servant.  The colonial governments relied on the buccaneers for protection and scarce goods so prosecution was unlikely.  Although many pirates were executed for their cruel, criminal ways, they were also praised as patriots and heros.  Some were even knighted.

        The thought of the word pirate created a romantized illusion of jewels and gold, or of terror and torture.  The peak of piracy during the age of imperialism in reality contains all these images.  What is not normally seen on the surface is the importance of them in history.  What might boundary lines be like if privateers were never licensed to raid ships or take over islands in the West Indies?  Would the first colonists have perished in the undeclared wars that raged over expansion?

        Pirates existed and helped shape America into what it is today, whether they had a letter of marque from the government legalizing their actions, or whether they were sanctioned by a desperate peoples cut off from the civilization they once knew and the goods they needed for survival, or whether they were shunned by the world and forced to survive any way they knew how.  They were a type of people who could adapt to their environment and most importantly - survive.

 

Bibliography

Black, Clinton V. Pirates of the West Indies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Kemp, P.K. and Christopher Lloyd.  Brethren of the Coast: Buccaneers of the South Seas.  New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1960.

Parry, J.H. The Age of Reconnaisance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement 1450-1650.  Berkley: University of California Press, 1963.

Ritchie, Robert C. Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates.  Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Wilkinson, Clennell.  Dampier: Explorer and Buccaneer.  New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1929.

Class notes, November 3, 1997.

 

Created 11/11/01, Updated 2/10/05

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