The years between 1715 and 1725 saw the British Government alarmed by the rise of two phenomena. Overseas, unemployed sailors were turning in large numbers to piracy while, at home, the peace of the realm was threatened by the growing popularity of Jacobitism. In 1715 and 1719 armed rebellions were mounted by Jacobites in England and Scotland with the assistance of troops from France and Spain, but Jacobite activity was not limited to military action. The Jacobite movement attracted supporters from all sections of society, including a number of criminal gangs, and the practitioners of all forms of Jacobite protest have been seen collectively as a ‘subculture’. British mercantile interests were threatened by the number of Anglo-American pirates, first basing themselves at New Providence in the Bahamas, and then expanding their operations throughout the Caribbean, north along the American coast to Newfoundland, across the Atlantic to Africa and round the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean. At their peak the pirates mustered several thousand men, a significant number of whom were members of the ‘Flying Gang’ that originated in the Bahamas in 1715. This study argues that many pirates were also Jacobites, and that they should therefore be considered a part of the Jacobite subculture. Further, it argues that Jacobitism was not just the political inclination of individual, politically inactive pirates, but that it existed as a definite, cohesive and continuous movement for several years in many pirate crews, each of which was associated with other Jacobite pirate crews in a loose community connected with the Flying Gang. By establishing the nature and extent of pirates’ Jacobitism, and assessing pirates’ place in the Jacobite subculture, this study challenges the stereotype of pirates as politically isolated and disinterested outlaws.

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.

Listening to what she terms 'unruly pirate voices' in early modern English literature, in this study Claire Jowitt offers an original and compelling analysis of the cultural meanings of 'piracy'. By examining the often marginal figure of the pirate (and also the sometimes hard-to-distinguish privateer) Jowitt shows how flexibly these figures served to comment on English nationalism, international relations, and contemporary politics. She considers the ways in which piracy can, sometimes in surprising and resourceful ways, overlap and connect with, rather than simply challenge, some of the foundations underpinning Renaissance orthodoxies-absolutism, patriarchy, hierarchy of birth, and the superiority of Europeans and the Christian religion over other peoples and belief systems. Jowitt's discussion ranges over a variety of generic forms including public drama, broadsheets and ballads, prose romance, travel writing, and poetry from the fifty-year period stretching across the reigns of three English monarchs: Elizabeth Tudor, and James and Charles Stuart. Among the early modern writers whose works are analyzed are Heywood, Hakluyt, Shakespeare, Sidney, and Wroth; and among the multifaceted historical figures discussed are Francis Drake, John Ward, Henry Mainwaring, Purser and Clinton. What she calls the 'semantics of piracy' introduces a rich symbolic vein in which these figures, operating across different cultural registers and appealing to audiences in multiple ways, represent and reflect many changing discourses, political and artistic, in early modern England. The first book-length study to look at the cultural impact of Renaissance piracy, The Culture of Piracy, 1580-1630 underlines how the figure of the Renaissance pirate was not only sensational, but also culturally significant. Despite its transgressive nature, piracy also comes to be seen as one of the key mechanisms which served to connect peoples and regions during this period. Contents: Introduction; Subversive pirates? Representations of Purser and Clinton 1538–1639; The uses and abuses of 'piracy': discourses of mercantilism and empire in accounts of Drake's 'famous voyage' 1580–1630; 'Et in arcadia ego': piracy and politics in prose romance 1580–1603; Pirates and politics: drama of the 'long 1590s'; Jacobean connections: piracy and politics in 17th-century drama and romance; Politics and pirate typology in John Fletcher and Philip Massinger's late Jacobean pirate drama; Bibliography; Index.

'Pirates' hold enormous popular appeal as swashbuckling rogues performing feats of daring on high seas. Yet 'pirates' possess deeper meanings as they undertake a rich variety of cultural work: as allegories of religious and political issues; as actors in the theatre of empire; in terms of gendered behaviour, national, legal and racial identities. Even the application of the term itself is contested since one person's 'pirate' is another 'privateer'. The new, inter-disciplinary essays in this collection work together to show how various, and how important, were the figures of the 'pirate', the 'corsair', the 'buccaneer' and the 'privateer' in the years 1550-1650. This period is one of the most lively in maritime history as it marks the beginning of the Age of Empire when, for example, the English nation seriously attempted, for the first time, to express ambitions for an empire to rival that of Spain and Portugal in the West and the Ottomans in the East. The discussions of the politics of plunder in this book by noted historians, lawyers, and literary scholars, provide an illuminating, previously neglected window on the cultural meanings of 'pirates' at the start of the Age of Empire.

The word “pirate” stems from the Classical Greek word “peirates”, which means an attempt or attack. Some scholars have defined it as “violent maritime predation” or “the indiscriminate taking of property with violence”, whereas others have focussed on the economy to understand it as “tribute taking”, “commerce raiding”, or as “a business”. There is substantial debate between maritime historians regarding the main representations of and motives for piracy. Rediker’s Marxist and bottom-up interpretation has inevitably caused controversy, following on from that surrounding historian Eric Hobsbawm with his suggestion of “social banditry” some decades earlier. Several historians, such as Dawdy & Bonni and Curtis, have supported Rediker’s view on piracy as social banditry. According to them, it was an ideologically-driven undertaking that directly challenged the ways of the society from which they had excepted themselves. Many others on the other hand have either criticised or contradicted Rediker’s assertion. Starkey has argued in favour of economic factors as being the main motive for pirates, and that there were “cycles” with this phenomenon. This essay considers the “Golden Age” of piracy – lasting roughly from the start of the eighteenth century until 1730 – and its Atlantic theatre. Overall, it seems that piracy was not social banditry – as suggested by Rediker, but rather a response to economic factors.

Humanities, 2020

This essay contrasts scholarship on printed authority within buccaneer ethnographies, contemporary apologetics for colonial enterprise, and the role of publicity in the delineation of piracy within print to ask: ‘when is a pirate not a pirate?’. Beginning with the ethnographies relating to the buccaneers’ crossing of the Isthmus of Darien during the ‘Pacific Adventure’ (1679–1682), this paper describes how the buccaneers escaped prosecution through their literary materials and became socially rehabilitated as credible explorers. Drawing on materials which highlight the diverse readings of piracy within the different ‘news-cultures’ and maritime traditions which existed in the Atlantic archipelago, this paper develops an argument for a ‘popular’ conception and interpretation of piracy within publicity and periodical print which reflects its utility within competing political and maritime enterprises. Using contrasting examples of the negotiation and renegotiation of what constituted ...

Undergraduate survey of piracy-related historiography in the British Caribbean, exploring the conflict between fact and pop culture. Written for an undergrad course at UNH in 2006.

2020

Many years ago, J. H. Overton drew a fine line between Non-Jurors on the one hand and Jacobites on the other. The former, according to Overton, were 'in no active sense of the term Jacobites' because they were 'content to live peacefully and quietly without a thought of disturbing the present government'. Overton was correct in the sense that relatively few Non-Jurors actively participated in Jacobite conspiracies and revolts. (1) In today's Western society, we place relatively little emphasis on oath-swearing. It is therefore easy to underestimate the feelings and emotions which surrounded a person's status as a Non-Juror during the 18th century. A refusal to swear the oaths of allegiance was tantamount to saying that the individual occupying the English, Scottish or, ultimately, British throne had no right to be there. As Paul Monod argues convincingly, the Non-Jurors were 'Jacobites by definition'. Moreover, their 'political statement' was a 'very strong' one.(2) Thus, it is unsurprising that Non-Jurors faced much opposition during the 18th century. Of course, a willingness to take the required oaths did not always mean that one was freed from suspicions of Jacobitism. Throughout the 1710s and 1720s, there was considerable overlap between the political and religious agendas of Jacobites and conforming Tories. Thus, to many Whig politicians and clergymen, conforming Tories were simply Jacobites in disguise (an accusation which sometimes proved to be true).(3)

2014

"ABSTRACT ATLANTIC PIRATES: THE PAWNS OF RIVALRY IN THE MODERN WORLD-SYSTEM, 1650-1713 Alptekin, Onur M. Sc., Department of Latin and North American Studies Middle East Technical University Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Sheila Pelizzon January 2014, 179 pages This thesis is a survey through a specific relation of two continents, namely Latin America and Europe between 1650 and 1713. This specific relation was piratical activities that European countries conducted in the trade routes in Atlantic Ocean. Yet, in this study, piracy in these trade routes is not perceived as just a criminal activity, but a paramilitary tool used by European states in a rivalry for control over the Atlantic trade routes. "

This article focuses on one particular transition between the foreign policies of Elizabeth and James, the state's attitude to piracy. By focusing on the representation of piracy in a dramatic text, Fortune by Land and Sea (1607–9), by Thomas Heywood and William Rowley, I explore the extent to which such seaborne activities are aligned with the oppositional discourses which were critical of Jacobean policies. I argue that Fortune by Land and Sea uses values and activities associated with Elizabeth in James's reign as a contrast to those promulgated by the new monarch. In the play we have two spheres represented—one at sea with young Forrest, one on land with Philip—and the contrasts between the brave and adventurous young Forrest and the passive, arguably weak, Philip can be seen as tapping into a nostalgia for Elizabethan values that threatens to undermine Jacobean policies. In what follows, then, I test the extent to which Fortune by Land and Sea should be read as expressing a growing, but coded, sense of dissatisfaction with the king.

AI

Voces Novae, 2016

In September 1717, King George I issued a royal proclamation calling for the suppression of piracy and offered amnesty for those individuals who would abandon their ways. For decades, pirates were the scourge of the Atlantic, committing the most heinous acts of robbery, murder, and terror at sea. The result of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) and the Whig Ascendancy in 1715 placed Britain in the prime opportunity to expand its commercial markets while its imperial rivals attempted to recover from war. This study explores the relationship between the campaign against pirates and state building by examining the British government’s efforts of publicizing its anti-piracy campaign through books, newspapers, and pamphlets in order to affirm state power that maintained the Whig Oligarchy. I argue that the discursive formation of piracy emerging in the public sphere reveals the state’s exercise of power in reclaiming political dominance over both the center and periphery. Pirates threatened the relationship between Britain and its colonies. Discourse became the principle means of changing the subjectivity of piracy, which influenced how the inhabitants of colonial communities came to regard pirates. By altering the piratical subject position—from legitimized marauders to criminal others—Britain would force the alignment of political values and customs between the periphery with the metropole, thereby, moving in the direction of realizing its larger goals of further imperial expansion.

International Journal of Maritime History, 25:2, pp. 159-72, 2013

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

Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740, 2015

Humanities, 2022

The threat of death hung over every aspect of pirate life during the Golden Age of piracy. They threatened governors and governments who dared to capture, prosecute, and hang their fellow buccaneers. They threatened their victims for running away, for fighting back, or for hiding their money. They even threatened death on each other should any of them suggest leaving off their chosen course or for betraying their company. Even the iconic skull and crossbones "Jolly Roger" pirate flag was a visible, physical symbol of a threat of death: for victims it was a reminder that surrender may mean mercy, but resistance would be fatal; and for the Pirates themselves, a grim reminder that capture or failure could mean their end. Many pirate crews in the Golden Age took this menace of death to the extreme by threatening to blow up their ship to avoid the noose, promising to take prisoners and pirates, captives and captors, and gold and galleon to the bottom of the ocean, going "merrily to Hell together". Yet despite their boasts and despite embracing the symbols of death, when the time came to make good on their oaths, few of these crews took that final explosive step and fewer still succeeded. This paper examines twenty incidents from the Golden Age of piracy in which pirates or their victims threatened or attempted to blow up their ships and themselves to avoid capture. Witness statements, period newspaper accounts, and trial testimony reveal that the threat was frequent but the attempt was not. In the end it was often prevented by the pirates themselves after a change of heart, despite promising one another that they would "live & dye together".

Itinerario, 35:2, 2011

Journal for Maritime Research, 2016

The English Historical Review, 2017

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