Readings and Review

NovelsThe Pirate RepublicPolitical Arithmetic of PiracyTo Extirpate Them Out Of The World

QUIZ #3: Orientation

0Captain Blood

0They Are Cows, We Are Pigs

0 “The Republic of Pirates: Henry Avery”

0 “The Political Arithmetic of Piracy”

0 “To Extirpate Them Out Of The World”

Captain Blood: Historical Context

0 Peter Blood served under De Ruyter: what historical event does this refer to?

0 Blood was sent to Barbados as a result of what historical event?

0 Blood’s life as a buccaneer/privateer ends with a change in the English monarchy. What was this change?

BONUS: Before being imprisoned and tried for treason, Blood attempts to show he was loyal to the monarchy by making his Irish accent more pronounced. How was this relevant?

The Are Cows, We Are Pigs

0 Smeeks, the narrator in the book, starts off as an indentured servant. What was the system of indentured servitude?

0 Smeeks is an abbreviation of Alexandre Exquemeling (other spellings are also used). Who was the real Exquemeling?

0 Smeeks was apprenticed to become a surgeon. What was the difference between a surgeon and a physician in the 17th century?

“To Extirpate Them Out Of The World” (see handout)

0 Who was Chaloner Ogle, and what was he known for? (first person to…)

0 Who was Alexander Selkirk, and can you identify the two significant ways in which he was directly related to piracy, and the way it changed from the late 17th to the early 18th centuries?

0 The meaning of execution: executions of pirates became spectacles of punishment. What was the message of these highly ritualistic displays?

Transitions

0 How did the balance of power in Europe and the Americas change between, for example, 1607 and 1707?

0 The last outburst of piracy during peace time was in 1690: the end of the era of the buccaneers. During the last decade of the 17th century more stringent laws against piracy were drafted in England, and eventually passed in 1700.

0 The main military adversary to pirates became the English Royal Navy.

“The Political Arithmetic of Piracy”

0 The Golden Age of piracy came after the War of Spanish Succession (1702-13). This outburst wasn’t a surprise. Why?

0 The effect of piracy was the disruption of Atlantic trade. This brought swift and decisive government action. Tougher laws also bred more violence during pirate raids: pirates had nothing to lose.

“The cursed trade of privateering would [in times of peace] breed so many pirates that ... we shall be in more danger from them than we are now from

the enemy [France and Spain].”Edmund Dummer, merchant, 1713

What sailors knew

The seaman who stood on the brink of piracy in 1716 knew…

0 … that the world was divided into vast geopolitical empires0 … that wealth coursed through the trading veins of the

Atlantic0 … that deep-sea ships were the carriers of this wealth0 … that seamanship was a key to it all0 … that times were hard0 … that empires were overextended, and this offered

opportunities to those willing to risk their necks by becoming pirates.

Empires0 Most of the lands surrounding the Atlantic, and most of the port

cities to which Europeans sailed, belonged to five nations that had become imperial powers— Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, and England.

0 Spain and Portugal had claimed most of the lands in the New World in the 1500s, and these lands were home to 2/3 of the European and African population that was transplanted to the Americas.

0 The Dutch had few people, but many ships, and had become masters of the seas in the 1600s.

0 France and England were relative newcomers to the colonial enterprise, but had become the great powers in the 1700s.

Wars0 “The sailor knew, by personal experience, that these Atlantic powers waged

what seemed to be incessant war against each other.”

0 The typical working sailor in 1716 was a man in his late twenties who had known war for much of his life. Twenty of the sailors’ first twenty-five years were passed in an Atlantic world at war.

0 The sailor knew that these wars were fought, for the most part, over wealth , a substantial portion of which was based on the key commodities of the Atlantic trades in which he worked— gold, silver, fish, furs, servants and slaves, sugar, tobacco, and manufactures.

0 Earlier clashes among the great powers had centered on land and the acquisition of new territories, and all had been suffused with the religious fervor of Protestants opposing Catholics. But by the early eighteenth century, the realms of the various empires were largely fixed and religious war had given way to trade war.

Movement, Labor, Violence0 By 1716 millions of people were torn from their ancestral lands in Europe, Africa, and

the Americas.0 Europeans fled mechanisms of dispossession0 Native Americans were subjected to genocide0 Africans were ripped from their homelands, and sold as slaves

0 Sugar, the leading and most lucrative Atlantic commodity of the eighteenth century, was made with blood. By 1716 big planters drove armies of servants and slaves as they expanded their power from their own lands to colonial and finally national legislatures.

0 Atlantic empires mobilized labor power on a new and unprecedented scale, largely through the strategic use of violence— the violence of land seizure, of expropriating agrarian workers, of the Middle Passage, of exploitation through labor discipline, and of punishment (often in the form of death) against those who dared to resist the colonial order of things.

0 By 1713 the Atlantic economy had reached a new stage of maturity, stability, and profitability. The growing riches of the few depended on the growing misery of the many.

Ships and Seafaring0Trade was the unifying process of the world economy

0The oceangoing ship was the machine that made it possible. 0The seafarer’s labor made the ship go

01716 was a tough time for seafaring workers0 The British Royal Navy in particular plunged from 49,860 men

in 1712 to 13,475 just two years later0 Privateering commissions expired, adding to the number of

sailors who were loose and looking for work 0 A slump in trade contracted jobs and wages. Sailors were

forced to compete for scarce jobs, and those lucky enough to find one discovered that their customary arrangements aboard ship now included poorer-quality food and harsher discipline

Labor In A Wooden World0 Sailors were “hands”— those who owned no property and who therefore sold their

labor for a money wage.

0 It was a collective work experience that required carefully synchronized cooperation for the sake of survival. Facing natural and man-made dangers, which included a chronic scarcity of food and drink, the sailors learned the importance of equality: a fair distribution of risks would improve everyone’s chances for survival.

0 Sailors faced ship captains of almost unlimited disciplinary power, and developed an array of resistances against such concentrated authority: desertion, work stoppages, mutinies, and strikes. Indeed, sailors would invent the strike during a wage dispute in London in 1768.

0 Separated from the rest of society for extended periods, sailors developed a distinctive work culture with its own language, songs, rituals, and sense of brotherhood. Its core values were collectivism, anti-authoritarianism, and egalitarianism. These cultural traits will influence the decision to turn pirate, as well as how pirates would conduct themselves.

Vast Blue Seas

0 “The sailor knew that whatever the attitude from on high, the Atlantic was a big place, that the empires were overextended and could not easily police the seas on which they depended, and that these circumstances created openings from below”

0 The Atlantic powers, especially Spain and increasingly France and England, possessed large masses of far-flung lands, but they could not easily control the sea-lanes on which their commerce to and from them depended.

0 “The power of the land properly ends where the force of arms ends.” “The sea can be considered subject as far as the range of cannon extends.” “The vast ocean cannot be possessed.”

Attitudes To Piracy0 The common sailor

0 Conditions of labor0 Subculture: cooperation, brotherhood, resistance to authority0 Availability of work

0 Shipowners, merchants, rulers of empires0 Interests0 Attitudes embodied in legislation and the force of law0 Expanding the definition of piracy beyond robbery by sea to

include:0Mutineers who ran away with the ship0 Sailors who interfered with the defense of the vessel when under

pirate attack

The 18th Century Sea Robber0 Captured ships: burnt and sunk

0 First Stage of the Golden Age: begins in 17130 Many early pirates were former privateers0 Continued to attack traditional enemies (Spanish, French)0 Did not meddle with English or Dutch vessels

0 Second Stage of the Golden Age: begins in 17170 Multiethnic, but mostly English crews 0 English vessels, being the most numerous and often the richest, were the main pray0 Produced the most enduring images of pirates0 Most lucrative and dramatic

0 Third Stage of the Golden Age: roughly 1722-26 0 Fighting less for booty, and more for survival0 Bloodbaths: tougher measures, and more desperate and violent pirates0 Emphasis on the alternative way of life

“The Republic of Pirates: Henry Avery”0 What to focus on: the legend of Henry Avery as a Robin Hood of sailors.

Why was he an inspiration to the overworked and abused young sailors and cabin boys?

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Henry_Avery?file=DOCTOR_WHO_CLIP_7_2

0 His positive image: 0 Was fair and courteous to his captives0 “Friend to the English”0 “from a cabin boy to a king”0 Legend of his “pirate kingdom in Madagascar”, married to the Moghul’s

granddaughter

0 His negative image:0 Treatment of Africans0 Treatment of the passengers of the Indian trade ship Ganj-i-sawai, belonging

to the Grand Moghul Aurangzeb

Highlights of the Avery story0Reacted against an abusive situation while serving on George

II, and waiting in Spain for a commission as a result of a joint venture initiated by the English

0Renames George II to The Fancy. Gains many followers. A wide span of action:0 African slave trade0 Raids in the East Indies0 Manages to bribe the governor of the Bahamas, and unload his

damaged ship onto his care0 Manages to bribe his way back to England, and quietly

disappears from history