Andrew S.

Terrell
HIST 6393: Atlantic History to 1750
Dr. Todd Romero - Fall 2010

Wars Upon All Nations:

Views of Piracy in Historiography

Pirates and their stories remain idolized by audiences of all ages, nationalities,

backgrounds, and creeds. Cunning exploits and drama in the high seas instill values of

independence, rebellion, and self determinism into successive generations. However

entertaining such tales may be, fiction can only divulge half of the real story. Historians have

approached topics of piracy from several vantages in attempts to separate fact from fiction.

Luckily, interest in piracy histories encourage debate and ongoing research. Because of the

overwhelming curiosity in the romanticized lifestyle of pirates, synthesis works in addition to a

plethora of novels have been published in virtually every decade since the seventeenth century.

Historical presentations of pirates changed over time, like most of history, but a large portion of

original assertions by pioneers in the field has remained unchallenged. In the field of piracy

history, then, one sees no large revisionist movement, but rather an expansionist tendency as new

levels of analysis were added that incorporated larger, more complete portrayals of pirates and

the world they inhabited. If any argument was to be made of a revisionist school in piracy

studies, it would likely be found in cases where historical fact, centuries after initial first hand

narratives were published, validated many seemingly unbelievable tales.

In reviewing literature that focuses on seventeenth and eighteenth century piracy, one

inevitably encounters semantics and definitions that invariably lead to ongoing discourse

differentiating between pirates and privateers. It is the view of this author that the two were

distinct and separate. However, as is the case of many pirates such as Captain Kidd, privateers

can easily cross the line from state endorsed piracy into outlawed practices. Robert Ritchie goes

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so far to assert that the difference between pirates and privateers was more than just definitions;

they each lived and worked in different environments.1 In an effort to avoid overextending the

content of this paper, it is the view of this author that in a majority of cases this is a fair

assessment. That said, this paper aims to look at actions committed both by privateers and

pirates, for whether sanctioned or not, said actions were habitually piracy in practice.

The early modern writers, John Esquemeling and Daniel Defoe, were writing amid

periods of state repression towards former privateers and buccaneers at large. Esquemeling’s

Buccaneers of America, though first written in Dutch in 1678 was translated into English

six years later. Esquemeling documented the exploits of a pirate crew that disrupted shipping

and unleashed terror upon Caribbean settlements. The journals of pirates writing under

pseudonyms in hopes of avoiding trial subpoenas--like Esquemeling--were embraced by

audiences in several countries as translations allowed. After all, though primary sources they

may be, they were written as popular literature. A year after its first publication, Esquemeling’s

Buccaneers added a full-length journal of the crew’s move into the South Sea to attack lesser

defended cities of the Pacific Coast of Spanish America. As it turned out, the Anglo pirate

expeditions into the Pacific at the end of the seventeenth century became the most famous and

documented voyages of the age. In some cases their escapades were accepted as maritime feats

of navigation and exploration, but they were always loved for the tales of adventure, violence

and debauchery. However, first hand accounts hardly tended to be without faults of

embellishment as later historians would discover.2

1 Robert C. Ritchie, “Government Measures against Piracy and Privateering in the Atlantic Area, 1750-1850,” in
Pirates And Privateers: New Perspectives on the War on Trade in the Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Centuries (University of Exeter Press - Exeter Maritime Studies), ed. J.A. de Moor,
David J. Starkey and E.S. van Eyck van Heslinga (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997), 10-28.
2 John Esquemeling, De Americaensche Zee-Roovers: Comprising a Pertinent and Truthful
Description of the Principal Acts of Depredation and Inhuman Cruelty Committed by the
English and French Buccaneers Against the Spaniards in America [The Buccaneers of America],
trans. Alexis Brown (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2000), 26-32,120-134,

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 Daniel Defoe, also originally writing under a pseudonym, published A General

History of the Pyrates in 1724 in an effort to capitalize on the commercial popularity of

pirate tales. His, however, was the first large synthesis meant to be non fiction and as such did

not receive immediate gratification by the public. However, it is now regarded as one of the

pivotal syntheses over piracy history and is cited in just about every article and monograph that

discusses seventeenth and eighteenth century piracy. Defoe used several pirate trials during the

period to compose History, but also collected stories told him by other sailors while he owned

his own ship. Defoe was an early journalist-historian and had a tendency to take people at their

word and he realized this weakness after the first publication of History. He corrected stories

as he learned more and added content to biographies in each successive edition throughout the

1720s. Defoe also had a tendency of interweaving political satire into his chapters sometimes

likening the pirate culture and society to the corruption of contemporary politicians such as

Captain Misson’s biographical chapter. The eventual embracing of Defoe’s History illustrates

how even documented, factual literature about pirates was popular early on. Because of their

contemporary origins and sheer breadth of piracy history, the works of Esquemeling and Defoe

remain the most often cited early accounts of Anglo piracy.3

These two early vantages of piracy marked the beginning of a culture within another; fans

of piracy flocked to fictive stories and seeming factual narratives with desires to expand

romanticized views of the high seas and learn much of the pirate culture that was different than

society at home, on land. Other writers expanded on the story of pirates with their own

anecdotes and blended popular histories. Authors realized the enormous potential for capital and

http://www.loc.gov/flash/pagebypage/buccaneers (accessed November 11, 2010); Daniel Defoe, A General

History of the Pyrates, ed. Manuel Schonhorn (1724; repr., Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1999), xvi-xx.
3 Defoe, A General History of the Pyrates, xxii-xl, 383-418; Marcus Rediker, “Under the Banner of King
Death: The Social World of Anglo-American Pirates, 1716-1726,” The William and Mary Quarterly 38, no. 2
(April, 1981): 203-27.

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sincere intrigue surrounding the counterculture of pirates and turned out hundreds of literary

works and historical monographs for centuries. Though condemned by state governments of

most European countries in maritime, literature on piracy allowed imaginations to expand as man

took to the sea in the colonial period. In defense of allowing piracy literature to expand as it did

was the scientific perception that pirates were navigators and explorers. Thus, stories on piracy

not only included cruelty, but sincerely embraced the romanticized image of the undiscovered

regions and uncharted seas of the world.4

In the early twentieth century, historians began to seek out evidence to defend or disrupt

traditional narratives or piracy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An early study by

George Francis Dow and John Henry Edmonds in their 1923 The Pirates of the New

England Coast 1630-1730 substantiated many of the early tales from the contemporary era

of piracy. They began their monograph by stating “With so much corroborative evidence at hand

it is only fair to concede the probability that other portions of his [Defoe] History, not verified

at this time, are also based upon fact.”5 For historical merit, scholars tend to assess sources even

before evaluating content, to this end Dow and Edmonds use largely primary sources from the

Massachusetts State Archives, Vice-Admiralty Court, Courts of Assistants and the Quarterly

Courts, and the Massachusetts Historical Society library and archives. The authors did more

than confirm early narratives, however, they began a trend for twentieth century piracy
4 Peter Kemp and Christopher Lloyd, The Brethren of the Coast: the British and French Buccaneers
in the South Seas, 1st ed ed. (London: Heinemann, 1960), 238-40; Though a study of Pacific escapades,
Willliams alludes to similar instances in the Atlantic Basin and similar reactions in Britain to exploration, Glyndwr
Williams, ed., Buccaneers, Explorers, and Settlers: British Enterprise and Encounters in the
Pacific, 1670-1800 (Variorum Collected Studies) (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing, 2005)Larger
studies of piracy and the era included surveys, chronicles, edited journals, examinations of differing facets of pirate
life and fantasy legends based on famous actors. Aside from Defoe and Esquemeling were William Dampier’s A
New Voyage ‘Round the World, 1729, Raveneau de Lussan’s Voyage to the South Seas 1856, Robert
Drury’s Madagascar 1890, Pere Labat’s Memoirs 1693-1705, 1970 print release of a Jesuit minister who
spent time among buccaneers and recorded his experiences, and Woodes Rogers’s A Cruising Voyage Round
the World, 1712.
5 George Francis Dow and John Henry Edmonds, The Pirates of the New England Coast 1630-1730
(New York, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1996), v-vi.

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historians: looking at the lives of common pirates. They saw populations of pirate vessels as a

commonwealth where everything was held in common and all had input in decisions great and

small. The Pirates made a well grounded assertion that the pirate commonwealth was a well-

ordered government and as such elected leaders. However, the authors also noted the existence

of a checks-and-balance system between the crew and its leaders, largely the captain of the boat.6

The captain of a pirate vessel “was generally chosen for his daring and dominating

character.”7 Below the captain, there usually existed a council composed of other officers and

veteran sailors. This balance system gave the captain supreme authority when in battle, but

legislative control to the council who represented the crew in a more egalitarian sense. Dow and

Edmonds found articles that acted as a code of law sometimes referred to as the Jamaica

Discipline. In essence, the commonwealth aboard pirate ships and haunts had executive,

legislative, and judicial aspects all used in maintaining some sense of order which was quite

different than previous condemnations and demonizations from European governments. The

articles stated that each man had a vote in all affairs including provisions, listed reprimands for

fighting aboard and other disorderly conduct, outlined requirements for the upkeep of personal

weapons, outlawed women on ship, and set up a distribution system of loot. This is where pirate

ships differed from merchant vessels and military man-of-wars: the captain and quartermaster

received two shares; the master, gunner, and boatswain, a share and a half, and other lower

officers a share and a quarter; all other men were given a share each.8 The findings from Dow

and Edmonds also appeared outside of New England pirates suggesting the reasonably defined

egalitarian system was part of all pirate vessels.9

6 Ibid, 353.
7 Ibid, 354.
8 Ibid, 354-358.
9 See Marcus Rediker, “Hydrarchy and Libertalia: The Utopian Dimensions of Atlantic Piracy in the Early
Eighteenth Century,” in Pirates and Privateers, 29-46.

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 A popular view that extended the idea that pirates existed in a largely egalitarian culture

was pioneered by Marcus Rediker from his works in graduate school well into published works

later in life as a tenured professor. By far, Rediker published more work on pirate life than any

other historian in recent times. In 1975, the International Commission of Maritime History

organized a conference specifically on topics of piracy and privateering. The common thread in

submitted papers there called for “further research on the important, but neglected dimensions of

trade, shipping and naval history.”10 Rediker added a new layer to the traditional historiography

of pirate culture in 1987 with Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea where he

asserted the ideas of individualism and adventures were hiding struggles at the bottom that were

cooperative and collective. He saw piracy as also as an egalitarian utopia, but added that the

sailors had to work together to survive conflict from the elements, themselves, and the landed

society they were opposed to. He maintained that pirates were an early proletariat and their ships

were vanguards of factories. In doing so, Rediker began the trend toward looking at pirates on a

more localized level giving agency to the common sailor. When dealing with mutinies, he noted

how only half of documented mutinies succeeded in seizing control of a ship and that the

mutineers were usually a determined minority dependent upon neutrality from the majority. He

uses examples such as drinking, gambling and other activities as means to calm the greed of both

individuals and collective unrest.11 However, pirate crews frequently separated despite oaths to

each other so one has to question how strong a collective conscious was at times. Nevertheless,

Rediker’s early works including his famous article, “Under the Banner of King Death,” in 1981

created a new strand of piracy studies.

10 David J. Starkey, “Introduction,” in Pirates and Privateers, 1-2.

11 Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and
the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700 - 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 1-5,
41-44, 155, 259, 255-269.

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 Rediker again refined his thesis in 2004 with Villains of All Nations. He looks

particularly at the decade-long “golden age of piracy” where he splits the years into three distinct

eras. After the War of Spanish Succession, and the Peace of Utrecht, former privateers found

employment hard to come by. Former sailors of European navies also could not find suitable

work and those that remained in the service during maritime were not paid well. By 1717, pirate

populations began attacking vessels of all nations. For five years, piracy expanded and Rediker

saw this as “a moment when common men of the deep gained control of the enterprise of piracy

and used it for their own purposes.” However, in 1722, European governments began extensive

operations aimed at ending pirate’s supremacy of the seas. The strategies, however, backfired

and instead of cutting down on pirate populations by fear, large pirate fleets moved toward even

more violent actions. Rediker’s sees a direct correlation in escalation by the state and escalation

of brutality of pirate forces. This built on his earlier theses that largely agree with the traditional

historiography of pirates: an egalitarian social order rejected hierarchy and the growing

mercantilist capitalism of the colonial era. There is no deviation, even into twenty-first century

publications, from early exemplifying narratives of a collective pirate crew and counterculture.12

Localized studies of piracy have allowed historians to utilize geography and climate as

another level of analysis for piracy studies. In Pirates, Privateers, and Rebel Raiders of

the Carolina Coast, Lindley S. Butler reaffirms traditional views of egalitarian structures and

concedes that pirates were “all skilled seamen and decisive, imaginative leaders who possessed a

deep thirst for adventure, at time pursuing danger with a reckless abandon.” However, the bulk

of her study focuses on how different pirate leaders were connected by their strategic use of

geography. They all used “rivers, estuaries, tidal marshes, great sounds, barrier islands, and

12 Marcus Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston: Beacon Press,
2004), 34-38, 170-176.

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offshort Outer Banks” throughout North Carolina. They knew how to hide their ships, where to

offload loot, and how to use geological and geographic situations to benefit them in battle and

chases.13

Butler described the migration of pirate populations from the Caribbean to Carolina as

rigorous retreat from British naval efforts in the opening decades of the eighteenth century.

Along the coasts of Carolina the pirates found temporary refuge in the “labyrinth of tidal streams

and obscure inlets.”14 The lack of government control throughout Carolina at this time allowed

the infamous Blackbeard to roam the waters freely molesting the public. As incidents multiplied

across the region, merchants and farmers realized their governor was powerless to police

Blackbeard and other pirates. A group of frustrated settlers sent representatives then to the

Governor of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood, who had two Royal Navy ships and a personal

history with Blackbeard himself. Based on the reports of the concerned settlers, Spotswood

became convinced that Blackbeard had fortified Ocracoke Inlet, Blackbeard’s camp, and was

setting it up to be a pirate rendezvous. Ocracoke Inlet was the entrance through the Outer Banks

to North Carolina’s interior sounds and ports of Bath and New Bern. If a pirate base was

established there it would give control of trade to the pirates. Spotswood conceived a plan to

invade the pirates base but had to negotiate the shallow waters by luring Blackbeard out. To

acoomplish this, a land force would attack Ocracoke and the pirates were expected to run to the

open seas where two sloops would be waiting for Blackbeard. The plan succeeded and so ensued

“the bloodiest six minute fight in Carolina.” Though Blackbeard was a strategic leader as

13 Lindley S. Butler, Pirates, Privateers, and Rebel Raiders of the Carolina Coast (Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press, 2000),xiii-3, 43-48.
14 Ibid, 6.

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demonstrated by his fortification and maneuvering through the waters of Carolina, the British in

this instance were able to overcome geographic and geological barriers.15

Peter Galvin released a Geographic study of pirates operating in the Caribbean from 1536

to 1718 around the same time as Butler’s monograph. Pattern of Pillage, guides readers

through the impact geography had to play in pirates’ decisions for land bases and shore time. He

divides popular locations for haunts and other strongholds into three categories. The first were

small, remote islands and archipelagos teeming with fruits, fish, game, wood and water that

largely served as refuges. Such places became favored spots for “careening, making rendezvous,

dividing the spoils, or marooning prisoners and dissenters.” A second favored spot consisted of

swampy, serpentine shorelines that worked as hideouts along Caribbean waterways and Gulf

coasts. These were good spots for safety and provisions and oftentimes were the sites for

logging that fed into the lucrative dye trade. The final place was the fortified port that tended to

secure a small island outpost. These were few and far between, the most of which was Tortuga.

Along with the geographic strategy for pirate outposts came a reiteration of earlier work that

concluded pirates were prime agents in the processes of “discovery, exploration, and the

advancement of geographic knowledge.” Maps and charts ended up being more useful to future

generations, and Galvin goes so far as to contend that these maps were the real treasures of the

Caribbean pirates.16

Amid the new layer of analysis remains biographical sketches that acquiesce to a popular

demand for pirate stories. In the case of Blackbeard, his short history is vague and constantly

changing. Even stories of his early years in Defoe’s several editions of A General History of

15 Ibid, 42-49.
16 Peter R. Galvin, Patterns of Pillage: A Geography of Caribbean-Based Piracy in Spanish
America, 1536-1718 (American University Studies Series Xxv, Geography) (New York: Peter Lang
Publishing, 1998), 8-19, 75-108.

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Pyrates changed with each revision. What we do know is that he was real and quite celebrated

in his day. Aside from the traditional stories of his plundering, rape, and molestation of the

Carolina settlers, there are also cases of him trading extensively. Legends of Blackbeard were so

widespread even a young Benjamin Franklin in Boston was noted as singing the ballad of a

Sailor Song on the Taking of Teach. Well into the turn of the twenty-first century, Blackbeard’s

story pushed an excavation team that found the wreckage of Blackbeard’s beloved ship, Queen

Anne’s Revenge off the coast of Beaufort, North Carolina in 1996. Renewed interest and

intrigue over Blackbeard spurned many popular histories that brought back the mystery behind

one of the most infamous pirates of the modern era.17

In attempts to remove fantastical stories from pirate lore, historians have largely found

evidence in support of narratives; the obvious imaginative works notwithstanding. What has

been lacking in a readable forum for public--perhaps popular--history was a synthesis that delved

equally into the facts and folklore of piracy concluding what was indeed accurate. David

Cordingly accomplished this in 1996 with the publication of Under the Black Flag. He

guided his readers through several aspects of the fantasy pirate world including minute topics

such as treasure maps, walking the plank, peg legs, and again reaffirms the traditional image of

the captain not as a ruthless despot, but a representative leader of his ship. He bridged the gap

between academia and the public for piracy studies which was an achievement on its own. He

stated openly how pirates have become a romantic, idolized fantasy in today’s world, much like

the contemporary era of classic piracy. Cortingly was also made famous with his exhibition,

“Pirates: Fact and Fiction” at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. His

17 Lindley S. Butler, Pirates, Privateers, and Rebel Raiders of the Carolina Coast, 25-29, A list of
some of the publications since the discovery of Queen Anne’s Revenge include: Jean Day, Blackbeard And The
Queen Anne's Revenge (Newport, NC.: Golden Age Press, 2007; Dan Perry, Blackbeard: The Real
Pirate of the Caribbean (New York: Basic Books, 2006); Angus Konstam, Blackbeard: America's Most
Notorious Pirate, (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley, 2007) among many others.

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monograph is a testament to public history as a field and its core value of reaching out to the

public who need history just as much as academics.18

In the latest major release of a historical monograph, Colin Woodard also reaffirmed the

notion that pirates were afforded a surprising amount of democracy, especially when compared

to their British navy counterparts. Though not an academic historian, Woodward is part of the

popular journalist-historian trade that, like Cortingly, actively seeks to publish popular history.

Woodard contended the popular imagery of pirates falls to the Caribbean pirates between 1715

and 1725. The Republic of the Pirates was more than a title, it was Woodards image of the

egalitarianism explored at many levels throughout piracy historiography. He showed how the

deemed “Golden Age of Piracy” was a decade where a handful of pirate commodores knew and

associated with each other actively. Woodard also expressed interest in the geographic strategies

employed by many pirates. However, when it comes to Blackbeard he adds a more apologetic

view of the fierce brute noting that Blackbeard was actively seeking an alliance with the

governor of North Carolina which explains the lack of action against him from Carolina. He

spends time in secondary literature as a journalist by trade, perhaps too much time, but many of

his sources have been vetted by academic studies so it remains difficult to fault public, popular

historians in their choices for sources. Primary sources for his monograph extend to a few

choice archives in Britain and the United States and are largely letters or legal testimonies;

nothing new to the academic studies.19 These newer public histories of piracies serve their

purpose, but surprisingly reiterate academic findings.

18 David Cordingly, Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the
Pirates (1996; repr., New York: Random House, 2006), 3-41, 125-140, 241-244.
19 Colin Woodard, The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean
Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down, Reprint ed. (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Books, 2007), 7-9,
268-272, 291-296.

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 In the research of this brief survey of materials pertaining to the historiography of pirates,

one does not see a definite revisionist version of tales documented amid the active years of

Atlantic piracy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Piracy history seems to remain

steady aside from obvious fantasy epics that now are spread in youth stories. The trend toward

adding onto the consensus evoked by Defoe, Esquemeling and their contemporaries has,

however, allowed factual history to become as entertaining as the fictive adventure tales. The

historiography of pirates lends historians a curious case where new findings expanded original

beliefs and contentions of the pioneering scholars. Ultimately, pirates engaged in wars upon all

nations, and they did so as a largely egalitarian counterculture with a legitimate sense of

collective well being.

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Bibliography

Butler, Lindley S. Pirates, Privateers, and Rebel Raiders of the Carolina Coast.
Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Cordingly, David. Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life
Among the Pirates. 1996. Reprint, New York: Random House, 2006.

Defoe, Daniel. A General History of the Pyrates. 1724. Reprint, Edited by Manuel
Schonhorn. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1999.

Dow, George Francis, and John Henry Edmonds. The Pirates of the New England Coast
1630-1730. New York, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1996.

Esquemeling, John. De Americaensche Zee-Roovers: Comprising a Pertinent and

Truthful Description of the Principal Acts of Depredation and Inhuman
Cruelty Committed by the English and French Buccaneers Against the
Spaniards in America [The Buccaneers of America]. Translated by Alexis Brown.
Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2000.
http://www.loc.gov/flash/pagebypage/buccaneers (accessed November 11, 2010).

Galvin, Peter R. Patterns of Pillage: A Geography of Caribbean-Based Piracy in

Spanish America, 1536-1718 (American University Studies Series Xxv,
Geography). New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1998.

Kemp, Peter, and Christopher Lloyd. The Brethren of the Coast: the British and
French Buccaneers in the South Seas. 1st ed ed. London: Heinemann, 1960.

Rediker, Marcus. “Under the Banner of King Death: The Social World of Anglo-American
Pirates, 1716-1726.” The William and Mary Quarterly 38, no. 2 (April, 1981):
203-27.

_____. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates
and the
Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700 - 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987.

_____. Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. Boston: Beacon
Press, 2004.

Starkey, David J., ed. Pirates And Privateers: New Perspectives on the War on
Trade in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (University of Exeter
Press - Exeter Maritime Studies). Edited by J.A. de Moor, David J. Starkey and E.S. van
Eyck van Heslinga. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997.

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Williams, Glyndwr, ed. Buccaneers, Explorers, and Settlers: British Enterprise and
Encounters in the Pacific, 1670-1800 (Variorum Collected Studies). Burlington,
Vermont: Ashgate Publishing, 2005.

Woodard, Colin. The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of
the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down. Reprint ed.
Orlando, FL: Harcourt Books, 2007.

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