Piracy emerged when humanity began to explore the sea. Piracy at sea is reported in the ancient Greek and Roman chronicles and is mentioned in the naval histories of Egypt, India, and China. In the Middle Ages, piracy entered the oceans and became widespread. By attacking merchant ships, the pirates remained unpunished. They were often supported by heads of State, who encouraged attacks on the merchant fleets of rival maritime powers by rewarding the pirates with the highest military ranks. Socio-economic reasons, political reasons, and globalization all played a role in the emergence of piracy.
Piracy appeared at the same time as seafaring and trade. Maritime robbery existed near major trade routes in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Its purpose was to make a profit at someone else’s expense and eliminate trade competitors. Piracy was an effective foreign policy tool and an integral part of the medieval economic system. Official privateer’s patents began to be issued in Europe, which soon became widespread to legalize this practice from the second half of the XII century.
The lack of clear rules when issuing and the arbitrary content of the retaliation license allowed it to be used as a kind of permanent permission to commit attacks, robberies, and murders. Since privateers were individuals, most often pirates, who, with the permission of the authorities, outfitted a vessel at their own expense to seize merchant ships of enemy or even neutral powers, the term “privateers” was used in England in addition to this term.
In France and Italy, privateers were called corsairs. They were issued a royal corsair patent, which provided the opportunity, under the protection of royalty, to rob and kill those named among the enemies of the French crown. The relative simplicity of the procedure and conditions for obtaining a privateer’s patent in the Middle Ages, led to the fact that almost anyone could become a privateer regardless of his previous activities, social and property status, religion, and nationality. It was enough to submit an application and take an oath.
Not only was the owner of a privateer ship considered a privateer, but also any person hired by a privateer-ship-owner who had received a privateer’s patent. This order was immediately taken advantage of by most of the pirates who became privateers due to obtaining patents or being employed on privateers’ vessels. In the 18th century, the major maritime powers finally decided to end privateering, which hindered the development of international trade. England and other maritime powers began a fierce fight against pirates, using their naval fleets. In addition, sanctions against privateers were tightened; for example, defeated pirates were allowed to hang directly on the mainsail. Thanks to such measures, the world had forgotten about pirates by the end of the 19th century.
Like any era, maritime piracy had its heyday, producing living legends such as Bartholomew Roberts, Blackbeard, and Henry Avery. The Golden Age lasted a little less than 80 years, and began in 1650 and ended in 1726. The last decades were very turbulent because they included the War of the Spanish Succession and an active period of privateering when privateers used warships to seize the ships of other powers. Three maritime specializations were in the Roman law books – seamanship, merchantmen, and piracy. Be that as it may, it is piracy that many civilizations owe their commercial and technological advances. The need to protect their lives and property drove people to improve weapons and ships, develop new trade routes and develop many necessary sciences, such as navigation and cartography. In the beginning, piracy contributed to the development of all of the above, but as soon as there were too many pirates, they began to hinder development. In this case, the state would launch raids, and then the number of pirates for a time would be within reasonable limits. These two regulation processes alternated from century to century until useful piracy had finally exhausted itself.
Piracy was about propaganda, the idea of plunder, and the slave trade. True, by the time of the Great Geographical Discoveries, European pirates had lost their leading role as the main suppliers of enslaved people to the world market. Portuguese, followed by Dutch, French, and English service voyages of slave hunters, quickly weaned piracy from this lucrative market sector. On the other hand, free and captured negro slaves essentially became a good addition to the pirate crew, especially since such crews themselves were partly composed of former negro enslaved people known for their endurance and fortitude in battle: they had something to avenge.
However, an important parameter that shaped the main features of the Golden Age was the discovery of America. When the newly minted maritime nations of England, Holland, and France began to seep into the oceans, the world was already divided between the first powers of the day: Spain and Portugal. Usurpation by force was also impossible since the war with countries like Spain or Holland was doomed to failure for purely economic reasons. The only way out of this disposition was authorized piracy along national lines.
Thus, the famous institution of privateering flourished, which was induced to undermine the economy of the great world powers and the colonial omnipotence of the Spaniards and the Portuguese. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of European pirates, having adjusted to the situation, shifted to the Caribbean Sea and the African coast. Pirate headquarters began to emerge in Tortuga, Providence, and Madagascar. By the middle of the 17th century, Caribbean pirates had outnumbered their forces to such an extent that they attacked Spanish treasure galleons and took over entire cities on the Isthmus of Panama and Drano. Moreover, thus the history of piracy began with the Golden Age.
The golden age of piracy marks their greatest activity, divided by historians into three intervals. The first period from 1650 to 1680 was the era of piracy when colonists(settlers) from France and England settled in the Caribbean islands and began hunting for Spanish treasure. In addition, they also went on land raids to plunder the Spanish colonies. The second period is called the “Pirate Circle” (1690). Long voyages with many stops in various parts of the world, covering Bermuda and North and South America. The purpose of this voyage was to plunder Muslim ships and the ships of the East India Trading Company. The third period is the phase following the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession, continuing from about 1716-1726 when sailors and privateers lost their jobs. Eventually, piracy became their only option.
Historians believe that the rise of piracy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries may have been partly due to an increase in maritime trade and the weakening of the military presence of European powers in certain regions. Factors contributing to piracy during the Gilded Age included the increasing number of valuable cargoes being shipped to Europe across vast areas of the ocean, the shrinking European naval forces in certain regions, the training and experience that many sailors had gained in European fleets, especially the Royal Navy, as well as the corrupt and ineffective government in the European overseas colonies.
The colonial powers at the time constantly fought pirates and were involved in several famous battles and other related events. During these years, such legendary pirates as Bartholomew Roberts, Henry Avery, and Edward Teach, nicknamed Blackbeard, operated at sea. The sea bandits flourished after the end of the Golden Age, with a marked decline in their rampages towards the end of the eighteenth century when the world realized that piracy was too costly and had to be dealt with. But social and economic reasons played the greatest role in the spread of piracy in the 17th century.
The decisive reasons that contributed to the development of piracy during the Golden Age are:
- The abundance of valuable cargo that was shipped to Europe across the oceans.
- The dwindling numbers of the European squadron.
- The training and coaching received by sailors in European flotillas.
- Unproductive policies of the government in the European and foreign colonies, in which both pirates and enemy nations were confronted simultaneously.
The earliest references to the Golden Age are attributed to 1894, provided by the English journalist George Powell. In 1897, historian John Fiske introduced a more planned application of the phrase “Golden Age of Piracy” and attributed to this period the activities of Berber corsairs and the pirates of eastern Asia. There were many differences of opinion among the late nineteenth-century historians who extensively delineated the piracy phenomenon in their writings. However, they all agree that the golden age occurred around 1650-1730.
The uniqueness of the medieval pirates lay in their ex-communication. The purpose of European pirates was not simply profit and religious concerns–the maritime plundering was an expression of the world’s strife that swung between France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Portugal, and Spain. The first period of the golden age began with the revival of colonization. The international economy and maritime trade international economy and maritime trade began to progress.
On the other hand, fearing annihilation by the Spanish, the buccaneers migrated to Tortuga. After Great Britain seized Jamaica, a new phase began – the privateer patents that could be free from the governor himself. Being near Port Royal allowed for faster and more profitable marketing of the loot. The first thirty years were entirely characteristic of the buccaneers, the natives of the English and French settlements, plundering ships that sailed between the Spanish colonies and Europe.
The times from 1680 to 1716 were referred to as the “pirate circle.” Which by its very name denoted the sea routes that ran from the western Atlantic to Asia. Pirates sailed along the same route, plundering East India Company and Muslim ships. The feud between Britain and France broke out with renewed vigor after the Stuart dynasty ended with the death of Anne Queen Great Britain and the partnership that had lasted many years between France and the English. Moreover, after the earthquake of 1692, which flooded Port Royal almost entirely, the pirates realized that now was the time to start looking for other lucrative avenues. Not least of all, the Spanish Empire was by then almost the Spanish Empire had been almost entirely plundered. However, the less wealthy British colonies, such as New York, Bermuda, and Rhode Island, not only did not discourage pirate raids but supported them in every way they could.
Most of the pirates, however, were more attracted to Indian shores than to the British colonies in America. Luxury goods, which were brought to India in large quantities, were attractive trophies. Moreover, on the other hand, the Indian Ocean was not protected by anyone, making merchant ships helpless against pirates.
By the early eighteenth century, the cup of patience with the privateers of many European countries had run out. After the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, the abundance of unemployed trained sailors was both a blessing and a curse for all pirates. Initially, this surplus allowed the number of pirates to increase significantly, leading to the plundering of large numbers of ships, creating an impressive strain on trade for all European countries, which responded by organizing squadrons to protect merchant ships and hunt down pirates. The surplus of untrained sailors allowed the flotillas to recruit crews for free. Piracy was in decline by the end of 1720. The “Golden Age” did not last a century. Without their base and under the pressure of the European fleet, the pirates had already lost their incentive. By early 1719, the surviving pirates were on the run. Many of them had gone to West Africa to capture vulnerable slave ships.
Several reasons contributed to the development of piracy in the second half of the 17th century:
- Significantly more valuable goods began to be shipped to Europe by sea;
- The military presence of European powers in certain regions weakened;
- Large numbers of well-trained and experienced sailors came into being;
- The British Royal Navy was a true training ground for pirates;
- Many of the leaders of foreign colonies sent by their governments were inept administrators;
- The colonial powers were at war with each other, so there was no possibility of a concerted fight against piracy, although there were some attempts.
All in all, because of the discovery and early exploration of the New World, the world suddenly expanded so much that the states no longer had enough power or attention to do everything at once. They shared colonies, exported treasures, fought wars, and established new trade channels. In this tumultuous period, there was also a place for piracy.
Piracy cannot be considered in isolation from the social and political context of the era. A global world was taking shape between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which gave rise to the age of industrialization. The first international link uniting the world was the ocean. The dominant concept in a world fighting against the Spanish crown’s monopoly on the world’s oceans was the idea of the free sea by the Dutch legal philosopher Hugo Grotius. It was that state restrictions should not bind the sea and that he who goes out on a ship to the ocean should see no boundaries because trade is a worldwide trade.
People who find themselves at sea politically become part of this free world and begin to define themselves independently of the territorial boundaries drawn on land. Their world is an international system with racial tolerance and cosmopolitanism. The pirates were called people of no nationality: Black Sam Bellamy’s ship alone brought together Brits, Dutch, French, Spaniards, Swedes, natives of America, and African Americans – in particular, the crew included 25 enslaved Africans taken from a slave ship.
It is possible to defy the world by seizing a ship, killing a man, or somewhat differently by taking advantage of the world. Studying, for example, how the people on the pirate ships ate, one can see how food embodies the hedonism of the marginalized, the joy of being, the need of the poorest, the most wretched, the discarded strata of society to show that they too can experience the joy of life, the pleasures that, in the opinion of the upper classes, only they can have.
Not only the impoverished people of Bristol, London, or Portsmouth-even the lords would never have been able to taste the expensive foods that their fellow citizens, who had become sea robbers, were fed daily. Turtle meat, avocados, and tropical fruits were unavailable to European people, but the pirates ate them in huge quantities. The hedonism inherent in pirates can be seen as another version of the challenge to a “land-based” society.
Finally, historians see piracy as a radical society with direct democracy in an anti-democratic era. The core of the economic life of the pirates was in no small measure predetermined by plebeian egalitarianism, to a certain extent inherent in the sailors of merchant ships. Some scholars, however, go further and find in piracy tendencies characteristic of the principles of American democracy of the Enlightenment age. It is necessary to assume that these characteristics are transformed by the periods to understand what kind of people became pirates and how it happened. Things can change dramatically in just one decade.
Suppose we take the maritime robbery of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a single concept. In that case, we see a marine mobile social structure based on people prone to constant movement. They live by the sea, move from port to port, and cannot stay in one place for long.
Maritime robbery attracted people for various reasons: some were tired of a miserable existence in the provinces, some needed fame, some needed profit, and some were running away from debts, hiding from criminal punishment, or simply changing their place of work. In addition, piracy became a refuge for thousands of people who had been exploited during the wars on privateer ships, the British and French Royal Navy ships, and who found themselves at the bottom of the social ladder as the War of the Spanish Succession came to an end. The sheer number of merchant ships that began active commerce after the peace treaties promised great potential opportunities for enrichment.
One of the enduring characteristics of the pirate world is anonymity. Piracy historians usually get their hands on summaries of seafarers captured by the authorities, interrogation reports, and court bills. These documents present a one-sided view of piracy from the administration’s point of view, and these people’s characteristics and portraits do not reach modern researchers. Historians have only dozens of names, while hundreds and hundreds of people remain unknown. Unfortunately, information about them will never appear due to the specifics of police reports which mainly record the fact of the crime but are rarely interested in the personality of the perpetrator. Thus, piracy appears to modern researchers as an impersonal, scattered community.
The underlying principles of pirate associations were that all positions were elected and decision-making was democratic. The captain – the bravest and luckiest sailor – had absolute power only during battle. The general assembly decided all other matters by majority vote. For example, I can cite a case from the life of J. Morgan, one of the most famous and successful pirates. After a successful attack on a small seaside town on the island of Cuba, a domestic conflict arose between the French and the British in Morgan’s international crew. Morgan was unable to convince the French to stay in his flotilla.
Moreover, he used all the arguments at his disposal: he sentenced to death the instigator of the dispute – the Englishman, allocated to the aggrieved party a bonus share of the spoils from the captured, promised the further successful continuation of the campaign. The captain’s opinion was not decisive, and the recruited team broke up; Morgan was forced to return to his base, interrupting the successful event. The risky nature of the activity, the socio-ethnic specificity of the personnel, and the tradition of democracy contributed to a pronounced internal turnover of pirate personnel.
Therefore the contingent of pirate communities was not distinguished by constancy. The team’s stability depended on its luck and the activity of pirate raids. Except for a few bright legendary names, all other captains remained in their positions for very little time. Thus, Charles Jones cites the example of Captain Bartholomew Roberts, who could hold his position as captain for an exceptionally long period of three years.
The second specific feature of pirate communities is the main regulator of relations – a set of legal customs common to the entire filibuster world. The seventeenth-century filibusters were not subject to official authorities and were guided by their customs and decisions. Mostly, the rules concerned the system of relations within the ship’s crew during a raid or a combat operation and the division of the spoils after an attack on a ship or a settlement. The interests of the entire pirate collective were placed above the personal interests of each of its members.
A third important feature of filibustering formations, which has also manifested itself in modern international terrorism, is the ability of communities to unite to commit joint large-scale international actions. For example, in 1662, no less than 600 Jamaican and Tortuga filibusters took part in C. Mings’ expedition against Santiago de Cuba. In the detachment of Morgan in 1669, there were 960 pirates, and a year later – in 1670 – 2000 people. With this army, Morgan crossed the Isthmus of Panama by land in 1671, Reached Panama, where he fought with Spanish cavalry and infantry, stormed the city, seized the gold reserve, and prepared for shipment to Spain. For this operation, Morgan was knighted by the English crown and made Jamaica governor. Because of Morgan’s proactive campaign, the 1670 peace treaty between England and Spain was terminated.
All pirate actions were of a targeted, short-term nature. In the seventeenth century, pirates, as in earlier times, retained an important feature of their social and political organization – the ability to cooperate with official authorities constructively. This feature becomes constitutive in the system of characteristic features of the pirate community. Thanks to the official authorities’ support, the filibusters could openly deliver their loot to the ports, sell it, repair their vessels, and stock up on provisions and ammunition. Cooperation was mutually beneficial.
England, France, and Spain issued the filibusters caper and retaliatory licenses, which gave them the right to plunder the ships and settlements of the opposing state in hostilities. In return, the pirates provided the authorities with intelligence information, shared part of their loot, and were responsible for protecting the colonies from enemy invasions. The “golden age” of piracy ended in 1856 with the adoption of the Declaration of Maritime Neutrality at the Paris International Congress. One of the most important points enshrined in the Declaration was the prohibition of all forms of pirates.
However, socio-economic reasons such as lack of social growth/movement, lack of jobs combined with neglected working conditions, and the desire for fame to be on top remain the main reasons for the emergence of piracy. In the first instance, the poor were the first to join the pirates. If a man could not feed his family and himself, he had no choice but to plunder. Another reason was the desire for easy profit. From the beginning, pirate ships sailed alone or in small numbers hoping for luck. However, over time, piracy became somewhat organized. The desire to get rich made more captains join the pirates’ ranks. Economic reasons are the main ones that drive piracy. In some parts of the world, piracy is an integral part of the local way of life and culture, a common, though illegal, way of making money. More often than not, piracy in such is the only means of survival because the area’s economic conditions do not allow for it.
Economic reasons also reveal the concealment of pirate attacks by captains and ship owners. If the ship’s captain informs the local authorities about the piracy facts, it will entail an official investigation, taking testimonies of the crew members, and conducting other investigative actions. This means loss of time, vessel demurrage, and, consequently, loss of money.
However, even the few biographies that have survived into modern times are striking. In particular, among the sea robbers were not only members of the lower classes but also people of noble birth. It follows that one of the reasons for the emergence of piracy is the thirst for fame and recognition. There were especially many of them in the 1670s-1680s, the classic period of filibustering, when free corsairs, filibusters, and privateers attack Spanish and Dutch ships, acting not as pirates but as real “soldiers” in the service of France and England. For them, legalized plunder was the most important part of building a career. The bands of buccaneers and filibusters (French and English corsairs) were led by noble and titled men. In the 1680s, the commanders of corsairs on Tortuga were Michel de Grammont, Jean de Bernanos, Lambert, and Pinel. Charles-François d’Anjou, Marquis de Maintenon, stood out in particular. Descendant of an ancient Norman family, he was born in 1648 into the family of the Marquis Louis de Mentenon and Marie Leclerc du Tremblay, daughter of Bastille governor Charles Lecler and niece of his famous father Joseph – the largest French diplomat, nicknamed the “gray cardinal,” the closest adviser to Cardinal de Richelieu.
In 1669 the young Marquis sold his estate to King Louis XIV, who granted it to his mistress, known as the Marquise de Maintenon, and as part of a naval squadron, sailed to the West Indies, where he participated in the wars against the Dutch and has made several successful raids against the British and Spaniards. After the Franco-Dutch war, d’Angène became the “sugar king” of the West Indies: he acquired the largest refinery and plantation in Martinique, took the post of governor of Marie-Galante Island, and concentrated in his hands the entire sugar trade between France and Venezuela.
During the period of classic piracy (1714-1730), glorified by Robert Stevenson, Washington Irving, and Arthur Conan Doyle, piracy went through three stages in just 15 years, from relatively law-abiding privateering to monstrous banditry that claimed the lives of thousands of ships and untold numbers of people. The pirate crews of the time were a bizarre mix of people of different classes, professions, and ethnicities. In 1714, the War of the Spanish Succession ended Thousands of men who had previously fished for decades on privateer ships and served on British and French navy ships found themselves out of work, abandoned to the mercy of fate. Former privateers and privateers like Britons Benjamin Hornigold and Henry Jennings decided to continue maritime robbery but without the support of the authorities. They attacked the ships of their traditional enemies, the French and Spaniards. In 1717 the situation changed: pirates began to attack the ships of their fellow citizens. In particular, Hornigold’s crew demanded to seize any ships of their choice, regardless of ownership. Hornigold rejected the ultimatum and left the crew with a handful of like-minded men; he was later amnestied and even became a “pirate hunter”-although he did not succeed. His place on the team was taken by the Black above Sam Bellamy.
Another former member of Hornigold’s crew, Edward Teach, nicknamed Blackbeard, also became famous. His ships, flying a black flag depicting a devil piercing a human heart with his spear, attacked and plundered every merchant ship they came across. A year later, Teach was caught unawares in his lair by a British naval detachment and tried to resist but was killed in action. Teach was thought until recently to have come from a simple seaman’s family. However, publications suggest that his relatives were wealthy and influential in the North American colonies. Teach’s partner was Stede Bonnet, who was executed in 1718. Steed’s grandfather had been one of the first settlers to America and owned a large house on Main Street and a huge fortune.
At age six, Steed lost his father and inherited the family property. Subsequently, he married a girl from a planter family, and they had three children. Bonnet fought in Barbados against the French. No one knows why this wealthy and respected man became a pirate in 1717. Contemporaries wrote that Steed’s wife was grumpy, so he supposedly ran away from her at sea. However, modern research shows that it was not his relationship with his wife but politics: the Hanoverian dynasty came to power in Great Britain, and Steed Bonnet supported the Stuarts. Thus, such and not the only path to piracy can also be seen as a political challenge.
An odious figure was Bartholomew Roberts, nicknamed Black Bart, who seized 350 ships in just three years. He died in 1722, marking the end of the golden age of piracy. During this period, the government launched a large-scale hunt for pirates who, knowing they were certain of death, became desperate, seizing huge ships, killing crew members, and brutally raping the women who fell into their hands. One of the most egregious thugs was the Edward above Lowe, born in London and raised in a family of thieves, spending his early years in abject poverty. He led a life of crime on land, became a pirate, and acted cruelly.
During his short career, Lowe seized over a hundred ships and is remembered as one of the bloodiest pirates. Piracy is one of the oldest threats facing humanity. In the ancient world, the first acts of piracy were identified with the division of labor. There was no legal distinction between trade and piracy, and pirates were an integral part of the economics of the slave-owning mode of production. This substantiates the conclusion that piracy already existed in antiquity, but there was no collective state system of measures and mechanisms to combat it. The view of piracy as maritime robbery and the organization of the struggle against it was later formed.
For a long time, piracy was equated with robbery, robbery, murder, and other crimes of a similar nature. On the way of globalization, world trade is becoming an integral part of the life of the entire world community. Moreover, thanks to the sea trade, there is increasing cooperation in most states. The problem of combating maritime piracy has become particularly important due to the active development of world trade and the strengthening of contacts between countries. From the beginning, this phenomenon has threatened maritime navigation and commerce and combating it has been a priority for the international community. The history of this issue is deep and multifaceted and still needs to be fully understood.
Undoubtedly, the social and economic situation at that time influenced the emergence and development of piracy. People saw no other way out but to sail to the sea in search of wealth. The poor inhabitants of the coastal states were forced to engage in taking, as they had no other option. People had no money for food, let alone the minimum human needs. Because piracy had its morals, it was not just the lower class attracted to it. The maritime robbery was interesting, and for many, it was an adventure.
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