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By 1550, Spain controlled the West Indies and large areas of the South American mainland. As a result, bands of English, Dutch, and French pirates robbed Spain's ships and looted its settlements. Other European countries were eager to colonize the newly discovered Americas led to an outbreak of piracy on the Caribbean Sea. Pirates sailed the Caribbean for over 300 years.
During the early 1600's, French, English, Dutch, and other European sailors settled on Hispaniola, Tortue Island (also called Tortuga Island), and other Caribbean islands. They raided Spanish ships and towns and soon became known as buccaneers. Their numbers grew, and eventually no town was safe along the Spanish Main, an area that included the coasts of what are now Colombia and Venezuela. The Spanish could not afford a sufficient military presence to control the area or enforce their trading laws. This led to constant smuggling and colonization in peacetime, and if a war was declared there was widespread piracy and privateering throughout the Caribbean. To combat this, from the 1560s the Spanish adopted a convoy system — a treasure fleet (flota) would sail annually from Seville (and later from Cádiz), carrying passengers, troops, and European goods to the colonies of the new world. The classic route in the Caribbean was through the Lesser Antilles to the ports along the Spanish Main, then northwards into the Yucatan Channel to catch the westerlies back to Europe. Pirates were more likely to shadow the fleet to attack stragglers than try and seize the main vessels.
Among these robbers were the "sea dogs" sent by Queen Elizabeth I of England to raid Spanish fleets. They included such famous English captains as Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins. These raiders committed acts of piracy before the queen declared war on Spain and made them privateers. A Privateer is a privately owned armed vessel. Before the development of strong navies, many nations commissioned privately owned ships to assist them in time of war. Such commissions, first used in the 1400's, were known as letters of marque and reprisal, and ships and crews acting under them were called privateers. The privateers attacked merchant ships of the enemy nation and sank or robbed them. Unlike pirates, privateers operated with their government's permission. The officers and crew of such a privateer could keep a large part or all of the money from the captured vessels. When a privateer was less succesfull the temptation to become a pirate, and attack every ship in sight regardless of what nation, was often great. There was not much difference between pirates and privateers in the Caribbean at that time. The distance between the Caribbean area and the European nations prevented the latter from exerting much control on the privateers.
The Spanish Caribbean empire was in decline from the 1600s. In the 1620s and following the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War in 1618 the Spanish presence in the Caribbean began to decline at a faster rate, becoming more dependent on African slave labour and with a reduced military presence. Meanwhile, other nations began to become more established — Barbados, the first truly successful English colony, was established as was a colony on Providence Island, which soon became a haven for pirates.
The end of widespread conflict in Europe left most of the nations in a dreadful state, especially Spain which had bankrupted the state. This was reflected in the Caribbean with both a constant influx of European refugees and the shrinking of Spanish power. While the major cities of the region were still Spanish the peripheries were being overrun by other nations' more aggressive expansion. The English had expanded beyond Barbados, with successful colonies on St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua, Montserrat, and Bermuda. The French were well established on Guadeloupe, Hispaniola and Martinique and they nominally held Tortuga, a noted pirate base from the 1640s. The Dutch had remained an almost baseless trading presence in the area but following the Spanish decline they became established at Curaçao and St. Eustatius.
The Caribbean continued to reflect European policy shifts. As England, France and Holland became stronger they moved from fighting the Spanish over religion to fighting each other over economics. The English began economic sanctions against the Dutch in the 1650s and the two nations were at war three times in the next two decades. Louis XIV was pursuing an aggressive expansionist policy in France. In the 1660s the Spanish Empire had a brief revival with boosted silver output. Basically everyone was fighting all the other nations present in the Caribbean on-and-off. These vagaries were apparent in the Caribbean — St. Eustatius changes hands ten times between 1664 and 1674 and many other settlements were damaged by repeated conquest and reconquest. With the warring European nations providing almost no military support for the colonies, this was a bonanza for privateers and pirates. Competing interests and ambitions of colonial powers made it easy for ambitious sailors to always find a way to legalize the most cruel acts of piracy. English privateers could for instance attack and rob, with impunity, Spanish shipping. Another category of pirates (at least by name only) quickly emerged. They were so called Buccaneers hired by their governments to fight in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). At first the headquarters of the buccaneers was on the island of Tortuga, off the northwestern coast of Hispaniola (now Haiti).
With the appearance of Henry Morgan, an outstanding leader, they began to organize themselves into powerful bands that captured Portobelo in 1668. In 1671, Morgan led 2,000 other buccaneers in the looting and destruction of Panama City, Panama, the largest Spanish city in Central America. Port Royal in Jamaica joined the piracy bases, following the islands capture by the English in 1655. As the Treaty of Madrid (1670) had only recently been signed to compose Anglo-Spanish differences in those parts, the news of his success at Panama was not officially welcome. Morgan was brought back to England under arrest, but, on the renewal of trouble with Spain, he was knighted and sent out as deputy governor of Jamaica. He and his superiors attempted to suppress buccaneering, a task impossible without adequate naval patrols. The last great buccaneering enterprise was the unsuccessful attack on Panama in about 1685 by a force of about 3,000 men led by Edward Davis, John Eaton, Charles Swan, and others.
During the late 1600's, the buccaneers sought new targets. Some of them carried out raids in Spanish-controlled areas of the Pacific Ocean. About 1690, the buccaneers and other European pirates began attacking the ships of any nation. Some of the pirates sailed to waters near the slave-trading stations of west Africa. Reports of great wealth lured others to the Indian Ocean. Once there, they ambushed ships that carried rich cargoes of silks, spices, jewels, and ivory. Many of these pirates settled among the people of Madagascar, an island that lies east of the African mainland. Perhaps the best known of the pirates associated with Madagascar was the Scotsman William Kidd. Kidd had been sent by England to capture pirates, but instead he became one himself.
On the outbreak of the War of the Grand Alliance in 1689, these freebooters became legitimate privateers in the service of their respective nations, and buccaneering came to an end. The historical importance of the buccaneers lies chiefly in the influence that they had on the founding of the abortive Scottish colony at Darién, on the Isthmus of Panama (1698). Their stories also influenced such important authors as Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, and Robert Louis Stevenson.
European pirates also turned their attention to North America. By 1700, English colonists had established successful trade routes between North America and Europe. A number of pirates set up a base in the Bahamas and attacked many of the ships that followed these routes. The pirates' leaders included Benjamin Horni-gold, "Calico Jack" Rackham, and Charles Vane. Pirates who sailed with these men included the women Anne Bonny and Mary Read.
The colonies were more important and the adverse economic effects of piracy were more apparent. The English were becoming a much more significant presence and stationed a naval squadron at Port Royale from the 1680s. Armies were codified and brought under Royal control and privateering was largely ended; the navies were expanded and their mission was stretched to cover combating piracy. The elimination of piracy from European waters expanded to the Caribbean in the 1700s, West Africa and North America by the 1710s and by the late 1720's, the British Royal Navy had put an end to most of the activities of European pirates throughout the world.
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