Piracy in Colonial North America

Piracy in Colonial North America Piracy in Colonial North America Mark G. Hanna Subject: Colonial History, Revolutionary History, Slavery and Abolition, Legal History, Political History, Economic History Online Publication Date: May 2020 DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.813 Summary and Keywords Historians of colonial British North America have largely relegated piracy to the margina­ lia of the broad historical narrative from settlement to revolution. However, piracy and unregulated privateering played a pivotal role in the development of every English com­ munity along the eastern seaboard from the Carolinas to New England. Although many pirates originated in the British North American colonies and represented a diverse social spectrum, they were not supported and protected in these port communities by some un­ derclass or proto-proletariat but by the highest echelons of colonial society, especially by colonial governors, merchants, and even ministers. Sea marauding in its multiple forms helped shape the economic, legal, political, religious, and cultural worlds of colonial America. The illicit market that brought longed-for bullion, slaves, and luxury goods integrated British North American communities with the Caribbean, West Africa, and the Pacific and Indian Oceans throughout the 17th century. Attempts to curb the support of sea marauding at the turn of the 18th century exposed sometimes violent divisions between local merchant interests and royal officials currying favor back in England, leading to debates over the protection of English liberties across the Atlantic. When the North American colonies finally closed their ports to English pi­ rates during the years following the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), it sparked a brief yet dra­ matic turn of events where English marauders preyed upon the shipping belonging to their former “nests.” During the 18th century, colonial communities began to actively sup­ port a more regulated form of privateering against agreed upon enemies that would be­ come a hallmark of patriot maritime warfare during the American Revolution. Keywords: piracy, privateer, maritime, law, politics, currency, slave trade, admiralty courts, colonies, British North America Page 1 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America Pirates on the Margins of Early American His­ tory The publisher of The Water Witch (Cooper, 1830), remarked how the eminent author blended the two most prevalent myths about early American history: “We have had our buccaneers on the water, and our witches on the land.”1 The deluge of both traditional and recent historical scholarship has given the Salem witches a starring role in the grand narrative of American history. Pirates remained entertaining extras even though the num­ ber of individuals engaged in piracy and pirate markets eclipsed the dozens of people em­ broiled in the Salem conflict. More pirates lost their lives in one day (twenty-three in Charles Town, South Carolina in 1718 and twenty-six in Newport, Rhode Island in 1723) than the nineteen “witches” executed in Salem in 1692. While the witch trials tell us a great deal about colonial American culture at the turn of the 18th century, piracy illus­ trates the arc of imperial expansion and political consolidation. Yet historians have large­ ly relegated them to lively tangential stories that bring respite from the monotony of the standard narrative of colonial development. Instead, the support and eradication of pira­ cy made critical contributions to the shaping of early British American history. Like Cooper’s publisher, historians and instructors have largely consigned buccaneers to the water while ignoring their prevalent role in the history of communities on land. Teachers of colonial North America have largely relegated the history of sea marauding in all of its various permutations during the 17th century to the Caribbean. In reality, piracy and unregulated privateering played a pivotal role in the development of every English community along the eastern seaboard from Charles Town, South Carolina to the Pis­ cataqua estuary in what is today Maine. Sea marauders had a major impact on the social, cultural, economic, legal, and political development of the American colonies from their first inception to their eventual independence. Furthermore, the support of sea maraud­ ers followed by their extirpation from colonial communities contributed to and correlated with other major transformations more common to the narrative of early America, includ­ ing the rise of the novel, the information revolution created by the establishment of colo­ nial newspapers, the Anglicization of colonial legal culture and consumption patterns, the rise of the Atlantic slave trade, early modern political economy, the development of local political regimes, the history of violence, and even Puritanism. Piracy in Colonial Settlements Sea marauders of all stripes had a significant demographic and economic footprint in the founding of early America. Well before England’s first settlement at Roanoke in what is now North Carolina in 1585, many of the first English sailors to alight on the shores of North America were returning home from plunder raids against the Spanish in the Caribbean.2 During these raids, they sometimes kidnapped indigenous peoples, leaving their brethren with decimating diseases, which destabilized communities prior to English settlement in British North America. The Gulf Stream and trade winds compelled ships Page 2 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America taking passengers to Virginia to pass through the Caribbean first, making the temptation to seize valuable goods from Spanish or Portuguese vessels hard to resist. Ships carrying immigrants and commodities plundered Iberian vessels and port communities as they traced the clockwise route through the Caribbean on their way to Jamestown, New Ply­ mouth, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In large part, there was very little money to be made for investors from simple voluntary human transport across the Atlantic. In 1630, Captain John Smith, renowned founder of Jamestown, begged former pirates, “now re­ garded for most part, but as the scumme of the world” to regain their “wonted reputa­ tions, and endevour rather to adventure to those faire plantations of our English Na­ tions.”3 Smith perhaps did not realize the extent to which these early piratical ventures brought desperately needed goods and commodities to the first settlements. The sparsely populated settlements also desperately needed labor, and sea marauders were the first to introduce slaves to the English colonies. In 1619, English Captain Daniel Elfrith, operating with an outdated and marginally legal commission from the Duke of Savoy, and English Captain John Jope, falsely claiming he held legal a commission from Flushing, seized a Portuguese slaver Sao Joao Bautista, delivering the first African slaves to Jamestown, the “20 and Odd Negroes” famously described by John Rolfe.4 Even when the Royal African Company established a formal slave trade during the 1660s, the monop­ oly sold to the most solvent markets in Barbados or Jamaica, leaving outlying colonies like Carolina to purchase African peoples stolen by pirates into the late 17th century.5 Many years later, 19th-century abolitionists reminded their readers of the piratical roots of the American slave trade.6 The first British colonies in New England were less desperate for slave labor than they were for food stuffs and a local medium of exchange that was more reliable than wampum. It became apparent early on that North America possessed no great mines like the fabled South American silver mine of Potosí so bullion could only be wrested from Iberian shipping whether during times of peace or war. In New Plymouth in 1646, William Bradford extolled the arrival of three “warlikke” vessels with “sundrie prizes” taken from “ye Spaniards in ye West Indies.”7 Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop considered the arrival of these piratical cruisers as “divine providence so directing for the comfort and help of that town, which was now almost deserted, where they continued about fourteen days or more, and spent liberally and gave freely to many of the poorer sort.”8 Currency was the “sinews of war” that financed the almost continuous conflicts of the 17th and ear­ ly 18th centuries, essential to pay troops, purchase naval stores, and hire artisans to build fortifications. Pirates would remain a consistent source of bullion throughout the 17th century, one reason for the creation of the Boston mint in 1652 amid the confusion of the English Civil War. The Spanish real was perhaps the most common coin in circulation in the American colonies that symbolized financial security and reliability. At least half the coins in colonial America were Spanish reales. A peso was worth eight reales (hence the phrase “piece of eight” comes from peso de a ocho reales).9 If not for pirates, Americans would likely not be spending “dollars” to this day. Page 3 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America Although it may seem a sort of contradiction that New England Puritans like Bradford and Winthrop would so enthusiastically welcome crews guilty of acts of violence in peace­ time, these marauders did not choose their prey at random. Their Spanish and Por­ tuguese victims were nominally at peace with England (hence these were acts of piracy), but in the minds of local religious leaders, they were Catholic enemies who threatened not only the expansion of the Protestant Reformation but also the imperial ambitions of English plantations. Some argued that the purpose of planting settlements in North America was to serve as a support system for a broader battle against the Papist AntiChrist.10 Bradford and Winthrop’s excitement upon the arrival of men guilty of piracy into their communities forces us to rethink how we teach this history of New England Puri­ tanism among that founding generation. Not every colonial leader was comfortable with welcoming suspected pirates. The Vir­ ginia Company early on divided over whether to support plunder over planting, fearing the retribution that might arise from wakening the Spanish giant outweighed short-term profits. As Virginia began to produce tobacco on a larger scale with a growing number of slave laborers, their governors refused to welcome pirates into the Chesapeake Bay, mak­ ing the Pamlico and Delaware Bays to the north and south more favorable destinations. We find fewer instances of pirates selling their goods in royal colonies where governors were paid by the Crown and were therefore tied to royal interests, sometimes over local needs. This debate would remain persistent during most of the 17th century, largely pit­ ting those who looked for long-term growth and were beholden to the Crown and larger imperial interests versus local merchants struggling to tap into lucrative markets.11 These initial tensions between metropolitan interests and local concerns sowed the seeds of conflict that would eventually climax in the American Revolution. This initial acceptance of illicit sea marauders exposed what would become a general pat­ tern among “pirate nests.” From a macroeconomic perspective, sea marauders were most welcome when a market imbalance created a disequilibrium between supply and demand. These imbalances were exacerbated in the colonies as a result of mercantilist policies that enforced dependency upon the Mother Country. One could envision pirates as essen­ tially violent anti-monopolists, wresting bullion from Spaniards who stridently attempted to protect its movement from Potosí to Seville, or seizing slaves from the Portuguese who preferred to sell them to higher bidders in the West Indies. Communities that did not ben­ efit proportionally from the rapid expansion of global trade networks were less compelled to condemn individuals who threatened the safety of those networks. Beyond these simple economic disparities, pirate nests arose during the 17th century where power was necessarily local—where the merchant elite held a disproportionate say in matters of trade regulation, local defense, and the administration of justice. Long dis­ tances from the reach of central authority, coupled with a lack of interest in the affairs of the peripheries, allowed the blatant support of international crime to go unnoticed or at least unhindered. Global piracy was not supported in North American port communities by some underclass or proto-proletariat but by the highest echelons of colonial society, es­ pecially by colonial governors and merchants. In each port community the legal appara­ Page 4 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America tus that regulated community life on land largely failed to correlate cohesively with at­ tempts to regulate crime at sea. This stemmed in part from the many sources of law colo­ nial founders could choose from and the lack of individuals explicitly trained in those laws to clarify them. This legal uncertainty had both local and imperial components, exacerbat­ ed by the imperatives of maritime defense on the peripheries of the empire. Attempts to regulate the excesses of sea marauding beginning in the mid-17th century played an im­ portant role in formalizing a more coherent legal system across the British North Atlantic by the early 18th century. Pirates of the Caribbean in North American Ports (1670–1688) Although Jamaica has rightly held the mantle as the home of some of the most overt sup­ porters of anti-Spanish piracy after its conquest in 1655, many English sea marauders took their ill-gotten gains north. Sir Thomas Lynch was sent to Jamaica following Henry Morgan’s 1671 raid on Panama to take over the governorship, with orders to send Mor­ gan back to England to face piracy charges. Lynch then issued proclamations to what he believed were the pirates’ “haunts,” including New England, New York, and Virginia, “promising exemption from arrest if they come in in six months.”12 Over the next two decades, English (along with French and Dutch) crews, inspired by Morgan’s audacious raid, crossed over the Isthmus of Darien to attack the Spanish along their less fortified Pacific Coast (what they referred to as the “South Sea”) as far south as Peru and Chile. When they returned to the Caribbean, traveling either back over the Isthmus or through the Straits of Magellan, they found they were no longer welcome, so they took their plun­ der north. In 1679, Jamaica’s Governor Lord Carlisle complained that pirates who had committed depredations against the Spanish had boldly warned him that if they were not allowed to bring their booty to Port Royal “they would leave their interest in Jamaica and sail to Rhode Island or to the Dutch, where they would be well entertained.”13 Nine years later, the Lieutenant Governor of Barbados affirmed “that the pirates of the South Seas are said to… generally go to North America.”14 During this period, Edward Randolph, the surveyor-general of the American colonies, be­ holden to crown interests, recalled the arrival of these crews from the Caribbean with “quantities of Silver in Coine & Bullion, with Rich Copes, Church plate & other Riches.” What Randolph found surprising was that the colonial gentry referred to these men not as “pirates” but as “privateers,” a word that was new to him.15 This term was coined in Ja­ maica during the first decade after the English conquered the island to describe English­ men who continued to fight against the Spanish in peacetime. They distinguished them­ selves from pirates because they purchased commissions from some government that loosely permitted violent depredations. These commissions were legally dubious, often purchased from governors in marginal islands like Petit Guavre off Hispaniola, and they were often left blank providing captains the leeway to fill them in as they deemed neces­ sary. This was enough for gentry leaders in North American communities to claim plausi­ Page 5 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America ble deniability in the face of a growing need for Spanish bullion. A royal official like Ed­ ward Randolph could rightly denounce these sailors as “pirates” while colonial leaders felt equally justified in ignoring potential improprieties. Crews that arrived from the West Indies were not only laden with silver, they also provided proven military experience use­ ful in colonies with no Royal Navy presence. Samuel Moseley and his crew of “priva­ teers,” for example, arrived in New England in 1675 precisely as King Philip’s War began. Although many New Englanders were relieved by the former pirates’ protection, some were aghast when Moseley’s men unleashed upon their indigenous enemies the type of brutal violence that was typically relegated to the horrific plunder raids committed by English marauders farther south in New Spain.16 These pirates not only brought with them the riches of Spanish booty into North American ports but also the type of bucca­ neer violence we normally associate with the Caribbean. The Red Sea Pirates and the “Indo-At­ lantic” (1688–1700) The outbreak of war between England and France in 1688 shifted the attention of North America’s pirate market from the Caribbean and the South Sea to the Indian Ocean. Colo­ nial governors used the fog of war to issue their own privateering commissions to local captains who were purposely capacious in scope, entailing the “king’s enemies” loosely defined. Captains gathered crews locally, comprising a motley mix, from former pirates experienced in West Indian raiding to young farmhands who had never taken to the sea before sailing halfway around the world. The governor of New York complained that these captains lured away young men needed to fight the French to the north. Paltry Canadian outposts, however, provided little temptation for booty, so captains interpreted “enemies” to broadly include “infidels,” notably, the shipping of the Muslim Mughal Empire in India. When these first “Red Sea Pirates” began to return to the North American colonies by the mid-1690s, first in Charles Town, Virginian William Byrd II blamed the gentry in Carolina who, “by their frequent harbouring of Pyrates, by their receiving and furnishing them with Provisions and other necessarys,” have supported these rogues “in Carrying on their Villany.” Without these accessories to global crime, it would be “impossible for those Free booters to subsist.”17 Soon pirates began arriving laden with Indian Ocean riches farther north in proprietary and charter colonies in the Delaware Bay and Rhode Island, connect­ ing these peripheral communities to global trade networks. While the North American gentry had long sought markets in bullion and slaves, they had also yearned for another elusive market, luxury goods from the East Indies. Although New York was a royal colony like Virginia, Robert Ritchie and Kevin McDonald have both described how that colony dove headlong into the pirate market in the Indian Ocean be­ cause of its powerful merchant trading elite. Merchant Frederick Philipse became one of the richest men in New York by trading alcohol, supplies, naval stores, and ammunition to pirates through his agents in Madagascar.18 Pirates continued to supply the colonies with slaves, only now, many of them originated from Madagascar, sold to pirates by the local Page 6 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America Malagasy leaders as war captives. North American-born pirates based in Madagascar be­ gan to bring home silk, calico, rugs, jewels, and Arabian gold. Governors and merchants adorned themselves in fashions more akin to their peers in England, further solidifying their positions at the top of the colonial social hierarchy. These goods were nearly impos­ sible to obtain affordably in the face of the East India Company monopoly. Kevin McDon­ ald has referred to this rising market as the “Indo-Atlantic World.”19 The global pirate market compels us to rethink the material culture of North America that we commonly encounter today in museums. A mahogany chest produced in Philadelphia might have originated in the Bay of Campeche where pirates illicitly cut logwood and gathered their crews, while New England communion silver could have been crafted from silver stolen from Spanish vessels off of Chile. When we enjoy paintings of wealthy New Englanders wearing silk banyans, sitting on elaborate carpets while drinking tea from porcelain pots, it is quite possible those goods were all Indian Ocean plunder. Red Sea pi­ rates, alternatively, could be relied on for “elephant’s teeth” and bullion in plentiful sup­ ply, enough to convince one crown official in 1701 that there was “no money to be seen amongst them now but Arabian Gold.”20 This was not an outrageous claim since amateur historian James Bailey recently found an Islamic coin minted in Yemen in 1693 in a Mid­ dletown, Rhode Island field, plunder from Red Sea pirates.21 Pirate metal was transfused into the colonial economy by fences, the most common being silversmiths who, despite re­ siding in a region with no mines, outnumbered lawyers.22 Silversmiths transformed pirat­ ed bullion into the chocolate pots and candlesticks one finds today in American museums.23 Modern mythology implies that pirates had no families, but New Jersey Governor Jeremi­ ah Basse attested in 1697 that local men sailed to the Red Sea seeking their fortune “leaving some of their wives and families as pledges of their return behind them.”24 Although historians have discovered no female pirates in North America during the 17th century, many women played a pivotal role in helping sea marauders settle into local com­ munities while others fenced their goods or risked their lives protecting them from crown authorities. Valuable East India luxury goods gave many Red Sea pirates the financial means to get married and buy land, hoping to build a family with no intention of ever re­ turning to the sea. The most renowned pirate wedding took place in Pennsylvania. When James Brown arrived in the Delaware Bay after successful Indian Ocean plunder raids in 1696, he immediately approached Governor William Markham to ask for his pardon. At some point, while regaling Markham with his stories, the governor’s daughter became smitten with the swashbuckling sailor. Brown lavished her with brightly colored flower print calicos or the gleaming jewels that would make her the belle of Philadelphia. The young couple was soon betrothed, and one observer noted in 1698 how “Madam Markham & her Daughter” were now full of “haughty humors.”25 Dorothy Tatham, daughter of a member of the West Jersey elite, fell in love with Red Sea pirate Robert Hickman when he arrived aboard the Nassau in Delaware Bay. The two were secretly married in the tavern owned by a local Quaker named Elizabeth Basnett in February 1700. When Governor Basse issued a warrant for his arrest, the Quaker commu­ Page 7 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America nity rallied around the newlyweds. Eventually they relented and allowed him to be “im­ prisoned” in a Burlington tavern because “the Quakers there will not suffer the Governor to send them to Goale.”26 Overall, there were few untouched in some way by the pirate market by the late 1690s, from governors to sailmakers, prostitutes, silversmiths, and tav­ ern keepers to governors’ daughters. The active support of global piracy in the North American colonies during the second half of the 17th century compels historians to recognize connections beyond the North At­ lantic into the Caribbean, West Africa, and the Pacific and Indian Oceans. If one ap­ proached an inebriated crew of sailors in a Newport tavern in 1704, you might easily meet someone who had crossed over Panama decades before where he shook down friars looking for silver in distant South Sea ports, another who spent the last decade attacking Muslim merchants and blowing up mosques along the coast of the Mughal Empire, and another who had attacked Portuguese fishermen smuggling gold from recently discov­ ered tracer mines in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The incorporation of global sea marauders in North American port communities reveals a far more cosmopolitan society than has been depicted by traditional narratives of early American history. Transformation Period (1696–1716) The overt colonial support for global piracy during the late 17th century exposed critical rifts between political leaders attempting to please their local merchant elite and royal of­ ficials struggling to tether colonial communities to the economic needs of the Mother Country. For the most part, administrators in England were unaware of the extent of these contacts until a major trial of Red Sea pirates held in London in 1696 exposed the unseemly details of colonial complicity. Edward Randolph, the same man who noted prevalent use of the word “privateer” amongst the colonial gentry in the 1670s, now back in England, wrote a treatise that year entitled A Discourse about Pyrates, with proper Remedies to Suppress them. He blamed the influence that local merchants had on colo­ nial governors as well as the municipal court system where juries failed to find pirates guilty of their crimes.27 The following year, English political economist Charles Davenant made similar observations with more dire conclusions. He suggested that each time pirat­ ical societies arose they exposed a tendency to “set up for themselves,” unless circum­ stances changed to bring them back into the imperial fold. He correctly feared that to ac­ tually create a coherent empire the metropole would likely need to threaten the colonies’ “primitive Institutions, and those Fundamentals, by which they were first united together: Liberty, choice of their own Chief Magistrates and Officers,” among other rights. Dav­ enant feared the real danger in allowing the colonies to support piracy was not only to global trade, but to the peace and coherence of the empire as a whole. If major political and legal reforms were not installed in the colonies, they may eventually “erect them­ selves into Independent Commonwealths, or Pyratical Societies, which at last we shall not be able to Master, by which means the Plantations, which now are a main Branch of our Wealth, may become a Strength to be turn’d against us.”28 Page 8 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America Many colonists fiercely resisted initial attempts to stem their protection of pirates from 1696 to 1704. These clashes were not fought between the heroic Royal Navy against ma­ rauding ruffians or between merchant capitalists and maritime labor (as more recent his­ tories attest).29 These conflicts pitted royal officials against local elites. Pirates were of­ ten (to their surprise) pawns played by rival groups struggling for power on the borders of empire. On countless occasions pirates were sprung free from prisons by rebellious colonists, simply in protest against Crown-imposed policies. Colonists who took these po­ sitions were primarily men with rival views over the purpose of Empire, over the role the Crown should play over a people so distant, and over whether English liberties crossed with the immigrants to the New World or simply dissolved in the briny Atlantic. Perhaps more important than the reasons why communities openly supported illicit sea marauding were their visceral responses to attempts to stem this support. More important than pro­ tecting individual pirates was the need for local communities to prove they had the power and right to do so. Attempts to stem piracy were invariably seen as direct threats to local autonomy, community self-regulation, and common law tradition. Pirates appeared, in this respect, during some of the fundamental debates that would eventually lead to revolution three quarters of a century later as Davenant in some ways predicted. The 1690s ushered in dramatic changes at the imperial level. While this is a decade known in history books primarily for the Salem witch trials (1692), it proved pivotal to the establishment of England as a coherent and recognizable maritime empire. This change occurred in large part as a result of the compromises made by colonial governors, local administrators, and merchants who felt secure from impunity in what they considered the basic exercise of their natural-born English liberties. Focusing on the relationship of North American communities with piracy contributes to a recent broader historiographi­ cal shift in recognizing the 1690s as a pivotal period.30 Major transformations in legal his­ tory, for example, such as attempts to establish admiralty courts without the use of juries, were thwarted until John Quelch and members of his crew were executed in Boston in 1704.31 The attack on piracy would indeed radically transform the empire into something quite new: an opening of trade through a challenge to monopolies, the exponential expan­ sion of the slave trade, a political revolution that led to the establishment of a constitu­ tional monarchy, a broad overarching imperial bureaucracy, the formalization of a more standardized legal system, and an information revolution through the rise of a local colo­ nial press. The War on Pirates (1716–1726) As Crown officials increasingly expressed an awareness and eventual sympathy for colo­ nial grievances, the colonies became increasingly willing to forego their relationship with piracy as long as local elites were assured of their long-held liberties. In a dramatic turn, English pirates began to prey on their own people a few years following the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). Many were captured and brought to trial along the eastern seaboard. By the 1720s, these former “nests” not only ceased to harbor these men, they now actively hunted pirates, administering two of the largest mass executions in American history not Page 9 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America involving slave insurrections. Over the past two decades, numerous historians have ar­ gued that this brief period marked the existence of a “Red Atlantic” that pitted proto-pro­ letariat labor against merchant capitalism. Historians like Marcus Rediker focus on class solidarity and suggest that piracy was a form of rebellion against a proto-capitalist soci­ ety. Many of these men, like the sadistic Captain Edward Low, were born in the colonies, so their attacks were perceived as revenge against communities that had once openly welcomed marauders or against merchant captains who might have treated their crews cruelly. Because attacks were indiscriminate there were few communities in North Ameri­ ca willing to welcome these crews, with the exception of more sparsely populated frontier communities like North Carolina where some, like the notorious Blackbeard, obtained a pardon before returning to piracy again.32 Before 1700, many sea marauders knew they had some place to turn, some possibility for redemption. Over the following decade it became increasingly apparent that their former haunts had no need for them. When most historians, and even most children, imagine the Golden Age of Piracy, they picture Blackbeard, Bartholomew Roberts, and the two famous female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. However, the narrative of the rise and fall of pirate nests on the edges of England’s Empire makes it clear that the period from 1716 to 1726 was so anomalous and brief it should not stand in for prototypical notions of “pi­ rates.” Without the ability to genuinely promise retirement to potential crew, captains like Edward Low eventually relied on forced labor bound by signing articles. Some captains gathered crews by plundering slave traders off the coast of Africa, presenting evidence for some historians that pirates might have been ideologically against the slave trade. This form of free-floating piracy with no stable connection to land, water, food, markets, legal protection, or social and sexual pleasures could simply not sustain itself for more than a few years. During this period, captivity at the hands of pirates was a genuine fear for anyone sailing to or from North American seaports. Charles Town’s first trained physician, James Kill­ patrick, was captured by pirates on board his voyage to North America. In a footnote re­ garding the human digestive system in his translation of Tissot’s Advice to the People in General, with Regard to their Health, Killpatrick recalled a personal story: I knew a Man of the Name of Poole, who being taken in the same Ship with me, 1717 or 1718, by Pirates, had swallowed four Guineas, and a gold Ring, all which he voided some Days after without any Injury or Complaint, and saved them. I for­ get the exact Number of Days he retained them, but the Pirates staid with us from Saturday Night to Thursday Noon. K.”33 A young Marblehead sailor named Philip Ashton recalled his captivity at the hands of the brutally violent Captain Edward Low in 1722. To Ashton, they were “a vile Crew of Mis­ creants” whose monstrous behavior proved “an open defiance of Heaven, and a contempt of Hell.”34 After his captivity in 1724, Newport seaman Jonathan Barlow recalled, “they used me very Barbarously & I having on my Fingar a Ring they were going to Cut off my Page 10 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America Fingar because I did not offer it to them the Capt of sd Pirate taking his Pistol to beat out of my Teeth and thretned to Shoot me down the Throat.”35 By the latter half of the 1720s into the early 1730s, there were few places one could spend plunder, and forcing men like Philip Ashton to join crews proved impossible.36 Colonial officials captured, tried, and executed pirates en masse in Charles Town, Boston, Williamsburg, Newport, New York City, and Philadelphia.37 While Charles Town had been one of the most open supporters of piracy during the late 17th century, it produced one of the most seminal works of piracy law in history. Judge Nicholas Trott, the only profession­ ally trained lawyer practicing his profession in South Carolina, circulated a printed speech at the trial of Stede Bonnet in 1718 that included a full disquisition on the history of piracy and piracy law. Trott’s treatise was published in London in 1719, making ar­ guably one of English America’s first great contributions to the “law of nations,” and re­ mains today one of the seminal works of piracy law.38 Trott issued more than harsh words since he ordered the execution of twenty-three men at Chalk Point in Charles Town Har­ bor. Expansion of Privateering and Independence Although outright piracy by Englishmen against English colonial shipping dropped dra­ matically by the outbreak of the War of Jenkins Ear (1739–1748), gentry leaders in colo­ nial maritime communities relied heavily on private maritime warfare. Merchant captains in colonial port communities became so smitten with the profits and low costs provided by privateers they became even more predominant during the Seven Years War (1756– 1763). Privateer attacks were brutal and at times indiscriminate enough throughout the 18th century that historian Guy Chet suggests that perhaps we have put too much cre­ dence in the narrative of piracy’s downfall, it was simply refocused on loosely regulated privateering.39 While communities may not have supported piracy, their desire for diffi­ cult-to-obtain goods remained unsated as they continued to support smuggling and illicit trade, even with enemies in wartime.40 Privateering was such an ingrained part of colonial naval culture during the 18th century that Patriot leaders like John Adams took it for granted that they would serve as the pri­ mary form of citizen militia at sea at the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775. Captains commissioned by the Continental Congress lamented the use of privateers be­ cause they made it more difficult to man a legitimate navy and they refused to take Eng­ lish prisoners who could be exchanged for patriots languishing in prison. Robert Morris, a member of the Marine Committee that superintended the Continental Navy, called Ameri­ can privateers “a lawless Set of Freebooters” that belied “the Characteristicks of the Country I love.”41 Historians continue to debate the impact that colonial privateers had on the final outcome of the revolution.42 Page 11 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America Pirates at the Center of Colonial American His­ tory Historians of colonial British North America have largely relegated piracy to the margina­ lia of the broad historical narrative from settlement to revolution. Even historians who take a more “Atlantic” approach to colonial North American history consign 17th-century piracy to the Caribbean, particularly well-known locales like Port Royal in Jamaica or Tor­ tuga. Sea marauding in its multiple forms played a pivotal role in the settlement, forma­ tion, and development of nearly every North American colony during the first two cen­ turies of English colonization. The active support of global piracy, in particular by commu­ nities, challenges the way we understand the economic, legal, political, religious, and cul­ tural worlds of colonial America. The relationship of the British North American colonies with global piracy compels historians to integrate those communities to worlds beyond the Atlantic. Attempts to suppress the presence of pirates in colonial port communities from the very late 17th century into the early 18th century in large part influenced the formal integration of North America with the wider British Empire. The eventual transfor­ mation of colonial communities from pirate supporting to pirate hunting by the turn of the 17th century marked one of the most significant developments in the history of the North American colonies in the two centuries before the American Revolution. Discussion of the Literature Robert Ritchie’s Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates (1984) was one of the first serious academic studies to argue that we cannot really understand piracy unless we con­ nect it to politics on land, in particular New York City and London. Kevin McDonald (2015) followed Ritchie by broadening the interconnection of the New York merchant class with the illicit connections to the Indian Ocean world. Mark G. Hanna (2015) ex­ panded these connections further by broadening the scope to encompass the whole of British North America from the Jamestown settlement to the War of Jenkins’s Ear. The bulk of the literature on the relationship of North American colonies with piracy is either regionally specific with little analysis like Shomette’s and Donnelly and Diehl’s work on the Chesapeake, or Dow and Edmunds’s exploration of New England piracy. Most of the contemporary histories of piracy in British North America tend to focus on the “War on Pirates” period from roughly 1716 to 1726. Inspired by the work of Marcus Rediker (2004, 2015), this scholarship presents English pirates as a proto-proletariat challenging a rising proto-capitalist regime growing in the American colonies. This literature empha­ sizes conflict between sea marauders and the colonial merchants in port. Peter Leeson (2009), for example, depicts the pirates of this period as capitalists attempting to simply maximize profits. Recently, a number of articles have appeared that have spun off of Rediker’s work by either supporting (Kinkor, 2001; Wilson, 2018) or challenging his cen­ tral premise (Bialuschewski, 2004, 2008).43 Only recently have historians begun to weave Page 12 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America what we now know about piracy into the broader narrative of early British North Ameri­ ca, so there is a great deal of work to be done.44 Primary Sources Historians of piracy in British North America face a number of unique challenges when untangling sources because these documents were often produced by individuals support­ ing and protecting pirates and other sea marauders. They had a vested interest in evad­ ing crown surveillance or the complaints from the victims of piracy. These individuals of­ ten denied the presence of sea marauders, referred to obvious pirates as “privateers,” or downplayed their influence in colonial affairs. Since there were so many ways communi­ ties justified the support of illicit sea marauding during times of peace, one can under­ stand why local colonial leaders denied their piracy. Alternatively, the longest and most detailed documents were produced by royal officials or governors directly beholden to the Crown tasked with eliminating piracy so some of their claims might have been exaggerat­ ed in order to prove their remarkable diligence to court officials back in England. Those individuals also referred to nearly every marginal sailor as a “pirate.” It is important to read these documents carefully for their complete context, noting for example, if sea ma­ rauders’ prey were legitimate enemies in wartime or simply unfortunate victims. Many of the sources illuminating piracy in British North America are housed in The Na­ tional Archives (TNA) in Kew Gardens on the outskirts of London. The most fruitful of those documents are part of the Colonial Office (CO) records. Some of these manuscripts have recently been digitized or transcribed, especially CO/5. One way to initiate a search in those records is to look at the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series which provides abridged versions of original documents in England. TNA also holds admiralty records (ADM) that include references to cases involving the North American colonies. Each indi­ vidual colony has compilations of their public records that include detailed references to piracy. Other comprehensive works include John Franklin Jameson’s Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents (1923) and Joel H. Baer’s British Piracy in the Golden Age: History and Interpretation, 1660-1730 (2007). One of the remarkable aspects of the “War on Pirates” was the fact that it was so heavily documented because of the simultaneous rise in colonial printing presses and newspa­ pers. As pirates attacked the shipping belonging to North American merchants, the first newspapers in America described those events in detail, including the three Boston pa­ pers, the Boston News-Letter, New-England Courant, and Boston Gazette, and the Philadelphia-based American Weekly Mercury. These presses printed the records of trials held in the colonies as well as the sermons preached at their executions. The most fa­ mous primary source originating from this period was Captain Charles Johnson’s A Gener­ al History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates that was printed in London in 1724 but provides detailed stories involving North American ports and local communities. Page 13 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America Links to Digital Materials Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series Colonial Office Records Early American Newspapers Early English Books Online Eighteenth Century Online Historic Hudson Valley’s “Traders & Raiders” Website Naval Records of the American Revolution Queen Anne’s Revenge Project United States National Archives Further Reading Beal, Clifford. Quelch’s Gold: Piracy, Greed, and Betrayal in Colonial New England. West­ port, CT: Praeger, 2007. Bialuschewski, Arne. “Between Newfoundland and the Malacca Strait: A Survey of the Golden Age of Piracy, 1695-1725.” Mariner’s Mirror 90, no. 2 (2004): 167–186. Bialuschewski, Arne. “Pirates, Markets and Imperial Authority: Economic Aspects of Mar­ itime Depredations in the Atlantic World, 1716–1726.” Global Crime 9, nos. 1–2 (2008): 52–65. Chet, Guy. The Ocean Is a Wilderness: Atlantic Piracy and the Limits of State Authority, 1688-1856. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014. Clifford, Barry, and Kenneth J. Kinkor, with Sharon Simpson. Real Pirates: The Untold Sto­ ry of the Whydah from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship. Washington, DC: National Geographic Press, 2007. Donnelly, Mark P., and Daniel Diehl. Pirates of Maryland: Plunder and High Adventure in the Chesapeake Bay. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2012. Dow, George Francis, and John Henry Edmonds. The Pirates of the New England Coast 1630–1730. Mineola, NY: Dover Books, 1996. Flemming, Gregory N. At the Point of a Cutlass: The Pirate Capture, Bold Escape, and Lonely Exile of Philip Ashton. Lebanon, NH: ForeEdge, 2015. Page 14 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America Hahn, Steven C. “The Atlantic Odyssey of Richard Tookerman: Gentleman of South Caroli­ na, Pirate of Jamaica, and Litigant before the King’s Bench.” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 15, no. 3 (2017): 539–590. Hanna, Mark G. Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Hanna, Mark G. “Protecting the Rights of Englishmen: The Rise and Fall of Carolina’s Pi­ ratical State.” In Creating and Contesting Carolina: Proprietary Era Histories, edited by Michelle LeMaster and Bradford J. Wood, 295–317. Columbia: University of South Caroli­ na Press, 2013. Harrington, Matthew P. “The Legacy of the Colonial Vice-Admiralty Courts (Part 1).” Jour­ nal of Maritime Law & Commerce 26, no. 4 (1995): 581–600. Kinkor, Kenneth. “Black Men under the Black Flag.” In Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader, edited by C. R. Pennell, 195–210. New York: New York University Press, 2001. Layton, Simon. “Discourses of Piracy in an Age of Revolutions.” Itinerario 35, no. 2 (2011): 81–97. Leeson, Peter. The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. McDonald, Kevin P. Pirates, Merchants, Settlers, and Slaves: Colonial America and the In­ do-Atlantic World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015. Patton, Robert H. Patriot Pirates: The Privateer War for Freedom and Fortune in the American Revolution. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008. Rediker, Marcus. Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail. Boston: Beacon Press, 2015. Rediker, Marcus. Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. Boston: Bea­ con Press, 2004. Ritchie, Robert C. Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. Shomette, Donald G. Pirates on the Chesapeake: Being a True History of Pirates, Pica­ roons, and Raiders on Chesapeake Bay, 1610-1807. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2015. Wilson, David. “Protecting Trade by Suppressing Pirates: British Colonial and Metropoli­ tan Responses to Atlantic Piracy, 1716–1726.” In The Golden Age of Piracy: The Rise, Fall, and Enduring Popularity of Pirates, edited by David Head, 89–110. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2018. Page 15 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America Notes: (1.) James Fenimore Cooper, “Preface,” in The Water-Witch; or, the Skimmer of the Seas: A Tale, v–vii (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1852). (2.) Alden Vaughn, Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500-1776 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1–6, 70. (3.) John Smith, The True Travels, Adventures, and Observations of Captain John Smith, into Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, from 1593 to 1629 (London, UK: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1630), 58–60. The original was transcribed in Philip Barbour, ed., The Complete Works of Captain John Smith1580–1631, Vol. 3 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 238–241. (4.) Philip D. Morgan, “Virginia Slavery in Atlantic Context, 1550-1650,” in Virginia 1619: Slavery & Freedom in the Making of English America, eds. Paul Musselwhite, Peter C. Mancall, and James Horn (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 85; Michael Jarvis, “Bermuda and the Beginnings of Black Anglo-America,” in Virginia 1619: Slavery & Freedom in the Making of English America, eds. Paul Musselwhite, Peter C. Mancall, and James Horn (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 122. Linda Heywood and John Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Founda­ tion of the Americas, 1585-1660 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 6– 8. (5.) Gregory O’Malley, Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619-1807 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 85–95. (6.) For example, see Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accom­ plishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (London, UK: John W. Parker, 1839); James Bandinel, Some Account of the Trade in Slaves from Africa: As Connected with Europe and America; From the Introduction of the Trade into Modern Europe, Down to the Present Time; Especially with Reference to the Efforts Made by the British Government for its Extinction (London, UK: Longman and Brown, 1842), 36; The National Era (Washington, DC), June 3, 1847; The North Star (Rochester, NY), April 26, 1850. (7.) William Bradford, History of Plimoth Plantation (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1901), 526– 527; Winthrop Family Papers, vol. 36 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society), 179– 180. (8.) Richard Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds., Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 272–274; W. Frank Craven, “The Earl of Warwick, a Speculator in Piracy,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 10, no. 4 (1930): 463. Page 16 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America (9.) David Wheat, Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570-1640 (Chapel Hill: Uni­ versity of North Carolina Press, 2016), xix. The popularity of this coin emerged from Charles I’s revision of an act implementing exacting standards on the weight of Spanish silver and gold coins in 1537. Spanish dollars were in fact made legal tender in the Unit­ ed States in 1793 and were not demonetized until 1857. Hence the use of the term “dol­ lar” for American currency over pounds and shillings as the use of the symbol “$” repre­ senting the “piece of eight.” (10.) Mark G. Hanna, Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 63, 91. (11.) Hanna, Pirate Nests, 77, 80. (12.) Lieutenant Governor Sir Thomas Lynch to Sec. Lord Arlington, Jamaica, August 20, 1671, The National Archives (TNA) CO 1/27, no. 22. (13.) Governor Lord Carlisle to Lords of Trade and Plantations, Saint Jago de la Vega, No­ vember 23, 1679, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series (CSP), no. 1188. (14.) Lieutenant Governor Stede to Lords of Trade and Plantations, Barbados, October 5, 1688, Calendar of State Papers, no. 1898. (15.) Edward Randolph, A Discourse about Pyrates, May 10, 1696, National Maritime Mu­ seum Manuscripts, GOS 9. (16.) Hanna, Pirate Nests, 106–107, 144–149; Arne Bialuschewski, “Between Newfound­ land and the Malacca Strait: A Survey of the Golden Age of Piracy, 1695-1725,” Mariner’s Mirror 90, no. 2 (2004): 167–186, esp. 168–173. (17.) Representation of Mr. Byrd Concerning Proprietary Governments, (1699), Hunting­ ton Library Mss., BR 744; On Carolina’s movement from pirate nests to pirate hunting community see Mark G. Hanna, “Protecting the Rights of Englishmen: The Rise and Fall of Carolina’s Piratical State,” in Creating and Contesting Carolina: Proprietary Era Histo­ ries, ed. Michelle LeMaster and Bradford Wood (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2013), 295–317. (18.) Robert C. Ritchie, Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 113, 115; Kevin P. McDonald, Pirates, Merchants, Set­ tlers, and Slaves: Colonial America and the Indo-Atlantic World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 51, 53. (19.) See also Jonathan Eacott, Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and Ameri­ ca, 1600-1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016); and Philip J. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). (20.) George Larkin to the Board of Trade, December 5, 1701, TNA CO 5/715, no. 47. Page 17 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America (21.) Pirate tale Unearthed by Amateur historian from Warwick. (22.) Scholars have identified at least 178 silversmiths who were active before 1740. Much of this data relies on the maker’s mark on existing silver pieces, indicating there were certainly more. Rita R. Benson, ed., The Encyclopedia of Early American Silver­ smiths and Their Marks (Harrisburg, PA: Benson Gallery Press, 1972). (23.) It is possible that bullion stolen from the Spanish or Portuguese influenced the aes­ thetic style of English colonial silversmiths during the late 17th century. See John Mar­ shall Phillips, Early American Silver Selected from the Mabel Brady Garvan Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1960); and Jeannine Falino and Gerald Ward, eds., New England Silver & Silversmithing, 1620-1815 (Boston: The Colonial Society of Massa­ chusetts, 2001); Hermann Frederick Clarke, John Coney, Silversmith, 1655-1722 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1971). (24.) “Letter from Mr. Jerem[iah] Basse about Pirates and Piracies [and the Security De­ manded of Him as Governor of New Jersey],” London, July 15, 1697, in New Jersey Docs., vol. II, 151. (25.) Reprinted in “Civil and Ecclesiastical Affairs in Pennsylvania in 1698,” Pennsylvania Magazine 13 (1889): 216–219. (26.) Report on Pirates in New Jersey, TNA CO 5/1259, f. 39. (27.) Randolph, A Discourse about Pyrates. (28.) Charles Davenant, Discourses on the Publick Revenues, and on the Trade of England, vol. 2 (London, UK: Knapton, 1698), 86, 243, 245–246, 264–265. (29.) For examples of a heroic navy, see Peter Earle, The Pirate Wars: Pirates vs. the Le­ gitimate Navies of the World (North Yorkshire, UK: Methuen, 2004); and David Cordingly, Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean: The Adventurous Life of Captain Woodes Rogers (New York: Random House, 2011); For examples of heroic proletariat sailors, see Marcus Redik­ er, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004); Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000); Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pi­ rates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987). (30.) For example, Owen Stanwood, The Empire Reformed: English American in the Age of the Glorious Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Abigail Swingen, Competing Visions of Empire: Labor, Slavery, and the Origins of the British At­ lantic Empire (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015); Brendan McConville, The King’s Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776 (Chapel Hill: Universi­ ty of North Carolina Press, 2012); Mark Peterson, The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1635-1865 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019). Page 18 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America These works follow an older historiography that notes the importance of Anglicanization originating in this period by Ian K. Steele, John Murrin, Stephen Saunders Webb, and Michael G. Hall. For a review, see Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, Andrew Shankman, and David J. Silverman, eds., Anglicizing America: Empire, Revolution, Republic (Philadelphia: Univer­ sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). (31.) For more details on this story, see Clifford Beal, Quelch’s Gold: Piracy, Greed, and Betrayal in Colonial New England (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007). (32.) Robert E. Lee, Blackbeard the Pirate: A Reappraisal of his Life and Times (WinstonSalem, NC: John F. Blair, 1974); Baylus C. Brooks, Quest for Blackbeard: The True Story of Edward Thache and his World (Morrisville, NC: Lulu Press, 2016). (33.) Samuel-Auguste Tissot, Advice to the People in General, with Regard to their Health: A Table of the Most Cheap Yet Effectual Remedies, trans. J. Kirkpatrick (London, UK: T. Becket, 1765), 425. (34.) John Bernard, Ashton’s Memorial, vol. 7 (Boston: Samuel Gerrish, 1725); On Ashton’s story, see Gregory N. Flemming, At the Point of a Cutlass: The Pirate Capture, Bold Escape, and Lonely Exile of Philip Ashton (Lebanon, NH: ForeEdge, 2015). (35.) Robert Francis Seybolt, ed., “Captured by Pirates: Two Diaries of 1724-1725,” New England Quarterly 2 (1929): 659. (36.) David Wilson suggests that although pirates were unwelcome in most ports in North America, they found locations to alight in less inhabited locales. This again was not selfsustaining. David Wilson, “Protecting Trade by Suppressing Pirates: British Colonial and Metropolitan Responses to Atlantic Piracy, 1716-1726,” in The Golden Age of Piracy, ed. David Head (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2018), 89–110. (37.) David Cordingly, Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life among the Pirates (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1995), 245–247. Cordingly missed a num­ ber of these trials that appear in HCA 1/99 including one in New York City in 1717 and 1724, in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1720, 1727, and 1729, in Philadelphia in 1731, and in Charles Town in 1733 and 1734. Some of these trials were printed for popular consump­ tion. See, for example, Massachusetts Court of Admiralty, The Trials of Eight Persons In­ dited for Piracy (Boston: John Edwards, 1718); South Carolina Court of Admiralty, The Tryals of Major Stede Bonnet and other Pirates (London, UK: Benjamin Cowse, 1719); Rhode Island High Court of Admiralty, Tryals of Thirty-Six Persons for Piracy (Boston: Sa­ muel Kneeland, 1723); Massachusetts Court of Admiralty, The Trials of Five Persons for Piracy, Felony and Robbery (Boston: S. Gerrish, 1726); Massachusetts Court of Admiralty, The Tryals of Sixteen Persons for Piracy (Boston: John Edwards, 1726). (38.) Hanna, “Protecting the Rights of Englishmen,” 309–310. (39.) Guy Chet, The Ocean is a Wilderness: Atlantic Piracy and the Limits of State Authori­ ty, 1688-1856 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014). Page 19 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020 Piracy in Colonial North America (40.) On wartime trade with the enemy, see Thomas Truxes, Defying Empire: Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). (41.) Robert Morris to William Hooper (January 24, 1777) Quoted in Naval Documents of the American Revolution, vol. VII, part VII, p. 1031. (42.) Robert H. Patton, Patriot Pirates: The Privateer War for Freedom and Fortune (New York: Vintage, 2008). (43.) For a review of the literature on piracy, see Mark G. Hanna, “Well-Behaved Pirates Seldom Make History: A Reevaluation of the Golden Age of English Piracy in the Golden Age,” in Governing the Sea in the Early Modern Era: Essays in Honor of Robert C. Ritchie, ed. Peter C. Mancall and Carole Shammas (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library Press, 2015), 129–168. (44.) For example, Mark Peterson, The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an At­ lantic Power, 1630-1865 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 175, 199–201. Mark G. Hanna Associate Professor of History, University of California, San Diego Page 20 of 20 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (oxfordre.com/americanhistory). (c) Ox­ ford University Press USA, 2020. All Rights Reserved. Personal use only; commercial use is strictly prohibited (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: UC - San Diego; date: 01 June 2020