Related Papers
Life Under the Jolly Roger
elalegre roger
The British Contribution to the Development of Piracy in the Golden Age of Piracy
Martin Mares
This work analyses the public perception of the role of privateers and their transition to pirates and examines both negative and positive outcomes in various areas like diplomacy, international trade, legal, racial and gender issues. The entire topic is examined through various cases of pirates including Bartholomew Roberts, Sir Henry Morgan, Thomas Tew, William Kid, Jack Rackham, Stede Bonnet, Edward Teach, Samuel Bellamy, Mary Read, Anne Bony or Henry Avery as well as historical records including letters, trials and pamphlets. Further, this essay discusses an interesting development of piracy from state-funded expeditions into utterly illegal activity driven by various reasons. Particularly the transition between legal, semi-legal and illicit separates England and Great Britain (from 1707 onwards) from other colonial powers such as France, Spain or Dutch. Despite the fact that they all issued privateering licenses and therefore they had to face similar problems connected to privateering, the outburst of piracy in the case of England was so dangerous that England (Great Britain) during the late 17th and early 18th century was called a “nation of pirates”. Hence, this work analyses both legal and practical actions against pirates in British colonies and their effectiveness after 1715. The last part of this essay is dedicated to piracy regarding an alternative way of life for disadvantaged social groups in the 17th and 18th century and contemporary negative or positive portrayal of piracy. The role of liberated “Negroe” and “Mullato” slaves is also examined throu
Çanakkale Araştırmaları Türk Yıllığı
“A Foe to All Christians”: The Notorious English Corsair Captain and Ottoman Reis John Ward in Early Seventeenth Century English Literature
2020 •
SILA ŞENLEN GÜVENÇ
Privateering in England, permitting private ships to attack enemy merchant ships and confiscate their crew and goods was only ‘legally’ possible under a licence known as a ‘letter of marque’, commissioned by a sovereign. In the Elizabethan Period (1558-1603), it proved to be an effective and less expensive way of dealing with Catholic Spain, especially during the Spanish War (1585-1603). When King James I ended the war with Spain in 1604, however, privateers such as John Ward –left without valid licenses– had to find other means of support. Under these new circ*mstances, the former Captain John Ward first became a pirate, and then a Barbary corsair (Yusuf Reis) and Muslim operating from Tunis. This study will provide a survey of early seventeenth century texts in English literature that deal with the EnglishOttoman ‘pirate’ John Ward, someone who has been both glorified and condemned in literary texts. In this respect, early seventeenth century ballads, Samuel Rowlands’ poems, and R...
Monsters of Their Own Making: Understanding the Context of the Rise of the "Golden Age of Piracy"
Stephen Barnett
This paper examines in larger historical context the state of affairs that precipitated the “Golden Age of Piracy.” After considering recent scholarly answers to the causes of the upswing in piratical violence and terror in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the need to provide a larger scope of study became apparent. Through examining the cases of Richard Hawkins, Sir Francis Drake, and the Governorship of Thomas Modyford in Jamaica, this paper explores the context within which the English Crown purposefully promoted and encouraged the growth of piracy in the New World. Their expedient use of piracy to the greater benefit of financing and expanding the English Empire resulted in the rise of the “Golden Age of Piracy.” This paper was the result of an undergraduate seminar.
Flying the Black Flag: A Brief History of Piracy
meriem tulip mekemeche
Bugajska Monomyth of a Pirate
Anna Bugajska
City upon the Atlantic Tides: Merchants, Pirates, and the Seafaring Community of Boston
2015 •
Steven Pitt
“Well-Behaved Pirates Seldom Make History: A Reevaluation of English Piracy in the Golden Age” In Governing the Sea in the Early Modern Era, Edited by Peter C. Mancall and Carole Shammas
Mark G . Hanna
Pirates, Slaves, and Profligate Rogues: Sailing Under the Jolly Roger in the Black Atlantic
Pirates in the Black Atlantic
2019 •
Victoria Barnett-Woods
The age of piracy in the Atlantic world spanned nearly a century, beginning in 1650 and ending in the late 1720s. The rise of Atlantic piracy coincides with the rise of the increasing maritime trade, particularly with the establishment of the transatlantic slave trade between the African continent and the American colonies. There are multiple accounts of pirate ships that have attacked slavers along the littoral states of either side of the Atlantic. In these moments of piratical enterprise, the “thieves and robbers” of enslaved Africans themselves become themselves the victims of robbery and violence. Also, in these moments, the very embodiment of liberation (the pirate) encounters the distillation of oppression and disenfranchisem*nt (the enslaved). This chapter will discuss the significance of these encounters through the lenses of both transatlantic commerce and the human condition. At the intersection of piracy and the slave trade, there are dozens of stories to be told, and with their telling in this chapter, a new vision of the maritime world demonstrates what it may cost to truly be free. In a series of case studies, this chapter will examine an arc of Atlantic piracy during its golden age. I will establish piratical views toward the enslaved with a close reading of Dampier’s New Voyage Round the World specifically focusing on his time on the Bachelor’s Delight (1697), to then discuss the accounts of four pirate captains at the height of piracy’s “golden age.” These men—Hoar, Kidd, Roberts, and Teach—all gained significant notoriety during their exploits, but also represent the ways in which pirate captains viewed men of African descent within their framework of being “gentlemen of fortune.” For Bartholomew Roberts, for example, one-third of his crew was composed of formerly enslaved men. Both Hoar and Kidd, with unique visions of the capacity of the formerly enslaved, had black men as their Quartermaster-- one of the most critical administrative positions of any vessel. The stories of these men and pirates will be at the heart of this discussion, hopefully illuminating the raw and powerful intersection of trade, slavery, and freedom on the high seas in the early eighteenth century.
Radical History Review
"Nothing but Noyse": The Political Complexities of English Maritime and Colonial Soundscapes
2015 •
Johan Heinsen
On early modern ships on the Atlantic Ocean, the sounds that the maritime lower classes produced with their tongues led the captains and officers to consider members of these classes as savage as the colonial others. The ar- gument presented here explores the ship as a world of sound and its lower classes' place within larger colonial soundscapes. This demonstrates how the sailor inhabited an ambivalent place between self and other. He lived within ships, which signified both the triumph of empire and potentially threatening aural spaces in themselves. The article then turns to English voyage narratives from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century in order to show how sailors were conceived as making “noise.” Such descrip- tions worked anxiously toward silencing sailors by delineating what they had the ability to articulate on the basis of their social position. Hence, the sailor was thought by his superiors as unable to speak politically because such language was outside of what experience had taught him.
