The massive expansion of sea-borne trade in this period necessarily also created a large population of seafarers - a new class of wage-workers that had not previously existed. ![]() With the new technologies shipping was no longer just used for luxury goods but became the basis of an international trading network essential to the origin and growth of capitalism. Over the course of the 17th century these embryonic empires finally overtook the Spanish and established themselves. In wartime this raiding would be legitimised as legal privateering but the rest of the time it was simply piracy with state-sponsorship (or at least toleration and encouragement). ![]() In their quest to do so they were not above using piracy to attack the hated Spanish and fill their coffers with the vast wealth the Spanish had plundered from the Native Americans. The Spanish were the world superpower of the 16th century, but did not go unchallenged for long the French, Dutch and English all struggled to overtake the Spanish in the scramble for empire. New technologies allowed long sea voyages to be made with regularity and accuracy, and the new empires that emerged were not based so much on control of the land as control of the seas. The era of Euro-American piracy is ushered in by the discovery of the New World and the enormous empire seized by the Spanish in the Americas. Indeed, Lord Vaughan, Governor of Jamaica, wrote: "These Indyes are so Vast and Rich, And this kind of rapine so sweet, that it is one of the hardest things in the World to draw those from it which have used it for so long." The Rise of Piracy In opposition to this, pirates created a world of their own making, where they had "the choice in themselves" - a world of solidarity and fraternity, where they shared the risks and the gains of life at sea, made decisions collectively and seized their life for themselves in the present, denying its use to the merchants as a tool for the accumulation of dead property. A man in jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company." Johnson famously observed: "no man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail for being in a ship is being in jail with the chance of being drowned. Keel-hauling was a punishment which often proved fatal." As Dr. Punishments available to the ship's officers included manacling, flogging and keel-hauling - the victim being pulled by means of a rope under the hull of the ship from one side to the other. You could be press-ganged into the navy and endure conditions far worse than those experienced on board a pirate ship: "Conditions for ordinary seamen were both harsh and dangerous - and the pay was poor. The Church dominated all aspects of life and women had few options beyond marital slavery. Euro-American society of the 17th and 18th centuries was one of emergent capitalism, war, slavery, land enclosures and clearances starvation and poverty side-by-side with unimaginable wealth. ![]() We can easily imagine the attraction of life as a sea-rover, answerable to no-one. From these mini-anarchies - 'temporary autonomous zones' - they launched raiding parties so successful that they created an imperial crisis, attacking British trade with the colonies, and crippling the emerging system of global exploitation, slavery and colonialism. They operated from land enclaves, free ports 'pirate utopias' located on islands and coastlines as yet beyond the reach of civilization. ĭuring the 'Golden Age' of piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries, crews of early proletarian rebels, dropouts from civilization, plundered the lucrative shipping lanes between Europe and America. No, a merry Life and a short one shall be my Motto" - Pirate Captain Bartholomew Roberts. "In an honest Service, there is thin Commons, low Wages, and hard Labour in this, Plenty and Satiety, Pleasure and Ease, Liberty and Power and who would not ballance Creditor on this Side, when all the Hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sower Look or two at choaking.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |