Readings and Review

1. Readings and Review Novels The Pirate RepublicPolitical Arithmetic of PiracyTo Extirpate Them Out Of The World

2. QUIZ #3: Orientation • Captain Blood • They Are Cows, We Are Pigs • “The Republic of Pirates: Henry Avery” • “The Political Arithmetic of Piracy” • “To Extirpate Them Out Of The World”

3. Captain Blood: Historical Context • Peter Blood served under De Ruyter: what historical event does this refer to? • Blood was sent to Barbados as a result of what historical event? • 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?

4. The Are Cows, We Are Pigs • Smeeks, the narrator in the book, starts off as an indentured servant. What was the system of indentured servitude? • Smeeks is an abbreviation of Alexandre Exquemeling (other spellings are also used). Who was the real Exquemeling? • Smeeks was apprenticed to become a surgeon. What was the difference between a surgeon and a physician in the 17th century?

5. “To Extirpate Them Out Of The World” (see handout) • Who was ChalonerOgle, and what was he known for? (first person to…) • 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? • The meaning of execution: executions of pirates became spectacles of punishment. What was the message of these highly ritualistic displays?

6. Transitions • How did the balance of power in Europe and the Americas change between, for example, 1607 and 1707? • 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. • The main military adversary to pirates became the English Royal Navy.

7. “The Political Arithmetic of Piracy” • The Golden Age of piracy came after the War of Spanish Succession (1702-13). This outburst wasn’t a surprise. Why? • 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

8. What sailors knew The seaman who stood on the brink of piracy in 1716 knew… • … that the world was divided into vast geopolitical empires • … that wealth coursed through the trading veins of the Atlantic • … that deep-sea ships were the carriers of this wealth • … that seamanship was a key to it all • … that times were hard • … that empires were overextended, and this offered opportunities to those willing to risk their necks by becoming pirates.

9. Empires • 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. • 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. • The Dutch had few people, but many ships, and had become masters of the seas in the 1600s. • France and England were relative newcomers to the colonial enterprise, but had become the great powers in the 1700s.

10. Wars • “The sailor knew, by personal experience, that these Atlantic powers waged what seemed to be incessant war against each other.” • 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. • 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. • 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.

11. Movement, Labor, Violence • By 1716 millions of people were torn from their ancestral lands in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. • Europeans fled mechanisms of dispossession • Native Americans were subjected to genocide • Africans were ripped from their homelands, and sold as slaves • 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. • 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. • 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.

12. Ships and Seafaring • Trade was the unifying process of the world economy • The oceangoing ship was the machine that made it possible. • The seafarer’s labor made the ship go • 1716 was a tough time for seafaring workers • The British Royal Navy in particular plunged from 49,860 men in 1712 to 13,475 just two years later • Privateering commissions expired, adding to the number of sailors who were loose and looking for work • 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

13. Labor In A Wooden World • Sailors were “hands”— those who owned no property and who therefore sold their labor for a money wage. • 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. • 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. • 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.

14. Vast Blue Seas • “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” • 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. • “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.”

15. Attitudes To Piracy • The common sailor • Conditions of labor • Subculture: cooperation, brotherhood, resistance to authority • Availability of work • Shipowners, merchants, rulers of empires • Interests • Attitudes embodied in legislation and the force of law • Expanding the definition of piracy beyond robbery by sea to include: • Mutineers who ran away with the ship • Sailors who interfered with the defense of the vessel when under pirate attack

16. The 18th Century Sea Robber • Captured ships: burnt and sunk • First Stage of the Golden Age: begins in 1713 • Many early pirates were former privateers • Continued to attack traditional enemies (Spanish, French) • Did not meddle with English or Dutch vessels • Second Stage of the Golden Age: begins in 1717 • Multiethnic, but mostly English crews • English vessels, being the most numerous and often the richest, were the main pray • Produced the most enduring images of pirates • Most lucrative and dramatic • Third Stage of the Golden Age: roughly 1722-26 • Fighting less for booty, and more for survival • Bloodbaths: tougher measures, and more desperate and violent pirates • Emphasis on the alternative way of life

17. “The Republic of Pirates: Henry Avery” • 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 • His positive image: • Was fair and courteous to his captives • “Friend to the English” • “from a cabin boy to a king” • Legend of his “pirate kingdom in Madagascar”, married to the Moghul’s granddaughter • His negative image: • Treatment of Africans • Treatment of the passengers of the Indian trade ship Ganj-i-sawai, belonging to the Grand Moghul Aurangzeb

18. Highlights of the Avery story • Reacted 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 • Renames George II to The Fancy. Gains many followers. A wide span of action: • African slave trade • Raids in the East Indies • Manages to bribe the governor of the Bahamas, and unload his damaged ship onto his care • Manages to bribe his way back to England, and quietly disappears from history