Post by Admin on May 29, 2007 16:34:20 GMT -5
The period 1680-1720 represented the sunset of the Golden Age of the pirate and buccaneer. By this time, Europe remained as riven by warfare and carnage as it had ever been as France and England (after 1707 Great Britain) maneuvered for supremacy. But the depredations of the pirates and buccaneers in the Americas in the previous twenty years had taught the rulers and military minds of Europe that those who fought for profit rather than for King and Country could often ruin the local economy of the region they plundered, in this case the Caribbean. As the same time, the constant warfare had led the Great Powers to develop larger standing armies and bigger navies to meet the demands of global colonial warfare and so they had enough troops and fleets at their disposal to begin better protecting important colonies in the West Indies and in the Americas. This spelled the doom of privateering and the easy life of the buccaneer. Though Spain remained a weak power, pirates in large numbers generally disappeared, chased from the seas by a new English Royal Navy squadron based at Port Royale, Jamaica and a smaller group of Spanish privateers sailing from the Spanish Main known as the Costa Garda. With regular military forces now on-station in the West Indies, letters of marque were harder and harder to obtain. Freebooters of all nationalities flocked to the French flag in 1684 when France offered letters of marque to fight the English once more.
Economically, the late seventeenth century and the early eighteenth century was a time of growing wealth and trade for all the nations of the Caribbean. Although some piracy would always remain until the mid-eighteenth century, the path to wealth in the future lay through peaceful trade, the growing of sugar and smuggling to avoid the British Navigation Acts. By the dawn of the eighteenth century, Havana, Panama City, Cartagena and Santiago were still important cities in Spanish America, despite the raids and misfortunes of the seventeenth century. Caracas in Venezuela had risen to a new prominence as the main port serving the interior of South America, while Santo Domingo and San Juan had slipped to the second rank, isolated among the growing wealth of the French and English settlements in the area.
Port Royale, Barbados and Saint Kitts were the great English ports of the early eighteenth century in the West Indies, while the other English Caribbean cities remained economically healthy trading posts. The Bahamas had become the new colonial frontier for the English. Nassau had become one of the last pirate havens. A small English colony had even sprung up in former Spanish territory at Belize in Honduras that had been founded by an English pirate in 1638.
The French colonial empire had not grown substantially by the start of the eighteenth century. The sugar islands of Guadaloupe and Martinique remained the twin economic capitals, and were now equal in economic strength to the largest of the English ports. Tortuga had begun to decline in importance, but the Hispaniolan towns of Port-de-Paix, Petit Goave and Leogane were all thriving and becoming magnets for the African slave trade as French sugar plantation spread across the western coast of Hispaniola. As with the French colonies, the shape of the Dutch possessions in the Caribbean had remained constant—Curacao remained the greatest free port in the West Indies while Saint Eustatius was recovering from the destruction of the Anglo-Dutch Wars and trying to rebuild trade with the nearby English. Saint Martin, the northernmost Dutch possession, simply expanded its profitable sugar plantation economy, though since 1648, the Dutch had agreed to divide the island in half with the French.
After 1720, piracy in the classic sense became extremely rare in the Caribbean as European military and naval forces, especially those of the British Royal Navy, just became too widespread and active for any pirate to pursue an effective career for long. Pirates who were caught were usually hanged as soon as the British returned to port. Piracy saw a brief resurgence between the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713 and around 1720, as many unemployed seafarers took to piracy as a way to make ends meet when a surplus of sailors after the war led to a decline in wages and working conditions. At the same time, one of the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht that ended the war gave to Great Britain a thirty-year asiento, or contract, to furnish African slaves to the Spanish colonies, providing British traders and smugglers potential inroads into the traditionally closed Spanish markets in America and leading to an economic revival for the whole region. This revived Caribbean trade provided rich new pickings for a wave of piracy that lasted only until the Royal Navy was enlarged to deal with the threat.
The idea of “no peace beyond the Line” was a relic that was quickly fading...
Economically, the late seventeenth century and the early eighteenth century was a time of growing wealth and trade for all the nations of the Caribbean. Although some piracy would always remain until the mid-eighteenth century, the path to wealth in the future lay through peaceful trade, the growing of sugar and smuggling to avoid the British Navigation Acts. By the dawn of the eighteenth century, Havana, Panama City, Cartagena and Santiago were still important cities in Spanish America, despite the raids and misfortunes of the seventeenth century. Caracas in Venezuela had risen to a new prominence as the main port serving the interior of South America, while Santo Domingo and San Juan had slipped to the second rank, isolated among the growing wealth of the French and English settlements in the area.
Port Royale, Barbados and Saint Kitts were the great English ports of the early eighteenth century in the West Indies, while the other English Caribbean cities remained economically healthy trading posts. The Bahamas had become the new colonial frontier for the English. Nassau had become one of the last pirate havens. A small English colony had even sprung up in former Spanish territory at Belize in Honduras that had been founded by an English pirate in 1638.
The French colonial empire had not grown substantially by the start of the eighteenth century. The sugar islands of Guadaloupe and Martinique remained the twin economic capitals, and were now equal in economic strength to the largest of the English ports. Tortuga had begun to decline in importance, but the Hispaniolan towns of Port-de-Paix, Petit Goave and Leogane were all thriving and becoming magnets for the African slave trade as French sugar plantation spread across the western coast of Hispaniola. As with the French colonies, the shape of the Dutch possessions in the Caribbean had remained constant—Curacao remained the greatest free port in the West Indies while Saint Eustatius was recovering from the destruction of the Anglo-Dutch Wars and trying to rebuild trade with the nearby English. Saint Martin, the northernmost Dutch possession, simply expanded its profitable sugar plantation economy, though since 1648, the Dutch had agreed to divide the island in half with the French.
After 1720, piracy in the classic sense became extremely rare in the Caribbean as European military and naval forces, especially those of the British Royal Navy, just became too widespread and active for any pirate to pursue an effective career for long. Pirates who were caught were usually hanged as soon as the British returned to port. Piracy saw a brief resurgence between the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713 and around 1720, as many unemployed seafarers took to piracy as a way to make ends meet when a surplus of sailors after the war led to a decline in wages and working conditions. At the same time, one of the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht that ended the war gave to Great Britain a thirty-year asiento, or contract, to furnish African slaves to the Spanish colonies, providing British traders and smugglers potential inroads into the traditionally closed Spanish markets in America and leading to an economic revival for the whole region. This revived Caribbean trade provided rich new pickings for a wave of piracy that lasted only until the Royal Navy was enlarged to deal with the threat.
The idea of “no peace beyond the Line” was a relic that was quickly fading...
