The Rise and Fall of the Global Age of Piracy (17-19th Centuries)

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Piracy didn’t spring into existence in the 18th century Caribbean. It has existed as long as there has been commercial shipping and people to steal the goods. There were medieval pirates. Vikings loved robbing ships in the Baltic and North Seas. The Romans dealt with pirates in the Mediterranean, and the Greeks and Carthaginians before them. Pirates are as much part of history as armies, taxes, and temples. Why do we associate pirates with one specific time and place in the 18th century Caribbean with eye patches and peg legs?

Today’s guest is Katherine Howe, author of “The Penguin Book of Pirates.” We go behind the eye patches, the peg legs, and the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger and into the no-man’s-land of piracy that is rife with paradoxes and plot twists We look at real maritime marauders like the infamous Blackbeard; the pirates who inspired Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean,Stede Bonnet in Max’s Our Flag Means Death, and the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride; the egalitarian multi-ethnic and multilingual crews that became enmeshed in historical horrors like the slave trade; and lesser-known but no less formidable women pirates, many of whom disguised themselves as men.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Scott here with another episode of the History Unplugged Podcast.
0:08.0	The Golden Age of Piracy happened in the 18th century Caribbean,
0:11.0	but piracy itself has existed long before then.
0:14.2	The Vikings committed plenty of piracy in the Middle Ages, and the Mediterranean.
0:18.0	The Ottomans dealt with pirates, as did the Romans, the Greeks and the Carthaginians
0:21.5	before them.
0:22.6	So really, piracy is baked into every historical record of every civilization that had
0:27.5	seagoing commerce and bandits, which is basically anywhere that had a body of water.
0:32.0	If that's a case, why do we only associate piracy
0:35.2	this timeless phenomena with the 1700s with men who had eye patches and parrots on their shoulders?
0:41.0	To explore this question and many more is today's guest Catherine Howe, author of the Penguin Book of Pirates.
0:46.0	We look at all sorts of episodes from Pirate History, such as A Man's Body, hanged in chains as a warning against piracy on a rock at the mouth of Boston Harbor in 1726.
0:54.8	The pirates who resided along the Texas-Louisiana border
0:58.0	that did a brisk business selling enslaved people who had been kidnapped from Spanish ships.
1:01.8	We also look at the notorious Pirate Town full of Europeans and Americans and Africans on a tiny tropical
1:07.0	paradise off the coast of Madagascar, and a very interesting figure, an Englishman who converted to Islam and terrorized the Barbary coast.
1:13.4	Part of the reasons pirates are so romanticized is that they represent the idea of freedom and
1:18.0	leaving behind obligations, but an overlooked aspect that we'll explore is that they were also heavily involved in unf freedom,
1:25.1	particularly the slave trade, as this was a significant source of revenue and profit for pirates.
1:30.5	Piracy was a timeless and also time-bound phenomenon.
1:33.4	The ebbsen flows with national and international strength as it can be projected over international
1:37.9	waterways, and I hope you enjoy this discussion with Catherine Howe.
	...

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