What’s the Difference Between a Pirate, a Privateer, and a Naval Officer? In the 1700s, Very Little

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The pirates that exist in our imagination are not just any pirates. Violent sea-raiding has occurred in most parts of the world throughout history, but our popular stereotype of pirates has been defined by one historical moment: the period from the 1660s to the 1730s, the so-called "golden age of piracy."

The Caribbean and American colonies of Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands—where piracy surged across these decades—are the main theater for buccaneering, but this is a global story. From London, Paris, and Amsterdam to Curaçao, Port Royal, Tortuga, and Charleston, from Ireland and the Mediterranean to Madagascar and India, from the Arabian Gulf to the Pacific Ocean.

Familiar characters like Drake, Morgan, Blackbeard, Bonny and Read, Henry Every, and Captain Kidd all feature here, but so too will the less well-known figures from the history of piracy, their crew-members, shipmates, and their confederates ashore; the men and women whose transatlantic lives were bound up with the rise and fall of piracy.

To explore this story is today’s guest, Richard Blakemore, author of “Enemies of All: The Rise and Fall of the Golden Age of Piracy.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Piracy has existed since the beginning of maritime trade along long distances going back at least to the Bronze Age.
0:10.0	But how we imagine pirates to look and act is targeted specifically to a time period from the 1660s to the 1730s.
0:18.0	Why don't we ever imagine medieval pirates or Roman pirates or ancient Greek pirates when there were plenty of all of those.
0:24.8	It has to do with piracy reaching the height of its activity during this time period, for
0:29.0	many complicated reasons, but mostly because warfare happening in Europe caused plenty of naval actions in the Caribbean and the way that governments were happy to outsource
0:38.8	Naval warfare to private sailors called privateiers and if they attacked an enemy on their behalf,
0:45.1	they could keep most of the spoils for themselves.
0:47.7	So the line between naval officer, privateer, and pirate was very blurry in this time period.
0:53.2	In this time period you also have some very intriguing figures
0:57.4	like Henry Morgan, Blackbeard, Henry Everett, and Captain Kidd.
1:02.0	But most of all the story of pirates we have today
1:05.0	comes from the media of the 18th century.
1:07.0	Robinson Crusoe, another book called The General History of Pirates.
1:11.0	Everything else that gave us the idea of buried treasure,
1:13.7	walking a plank, the pirates code, parrots on shoulders, and everything else.
1:17.9	Today's episode I'm speaking to Richard Blakenmore, author of enemies of all,
1:21.0	the rise and fall of the golden age of Piracy, we look into how these myths
1:24.4	were constructed, like how pirates were lone buccaneers, when in reality they could sail and fleet
1:29.5	as large as anything the British Royal Navy could field. What parts of them were true? Many
1:34.0	pirates were out and out criminals who wanted profit and how many of them openly
1:38.4	embraced the myth of what a pirate was, the way that a modern-day mafioso might spot off lines from the Godfather.
1:45.0	Hope you enjoy this discussion with Richard Blakemore.
	...

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