Pirates in the Gaps
The slow growth of government authority, and pirates
In 1699, William Penn visited his colony of Pennsylvania to look into some allegations from his political enemies that Pennsylvania was supporting pirates. He was appalled to find the allegations were entirely true. Notorious pirates were openly walking the streets; the deputy governor had blessed his daughter's marrying one of them; when a few pirates had been imprisoned they'd walked out with the jailers' obvious cooperation.
Penn, horrified, issued a proclamation against piracy. But, it was little more than empty words.
He wasn't in a new situation. Queen Elizabeth could have told him that a mere proclamation would do little good. When one of her judges traveled to Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall to enforce laws against piracy on villages that were openly supporting pirates, he turned back midway for fear of his life.
In the late 1500's, the Crown of England was unable to enforce its authority in the further reaches of England. In the late 1600's, England - and Penn himself - were in the same position regarding Pennsylvania. In both cases, the far-flung territories were happy to encourage piracy.
According to the dictionary and the lawyers, the difference between a pirate and a privateer is that a privateer has a "letter of marque", a legal license from a government letting him seize ships from an enemy in time of war; a pirate doesn't, and seizes whatever ships he wants.
In practice... it turns out, it depended on who you ask. It turns out, most pirates claimed to be privateers, and captured ships that could possibly be regarded as enemies - even if their governments disagreed.
I read an interesting book recently, Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, by Mark G. Hanna, which opened my eyes to the context in which pirates fit - and beyond that, it drove home to me how limited governments' power was in their farther-flung territories in the early modern era.
In popular culture, pirates bury their treasure on deserted islands. But in real life, they don't want to do that - they wanted to sell it, whether to spend their time carousing, buy supplies and small luxuries for their next voyage, or buy land for a good retirement. Occasionally they did bury treasure, but much more often they were looking for on-shore collaborators to buy their plunder.
A lot of coastal communities in the farther-flung reaches of the British Empire were happy to oblige. In the 1500's, this meant Devon and Cornwall; in the 1600's, it was America and the British Caribbean. This wasn't just from a love for piracy - though that was part; young sailors from these communities often spent some time pirating themselves. More significantly, though, it was from economics. The pirates supplied them valuable goods they weren't getting enough of elsewhere - whether precious metals for money, slaves for work, or fine cloth and tea for luxuries.
Hanna's book tells the history of piracy and privateering, from the point of view of these collaborating communities. They viewed piracy as an adventure and a patriotic job where seamen could make their fortune. Even when London objected, colonial governors frequently issued letters of marque to commission pirates, and welcomed them back with cargo stolen from every other country in the world regardless of where or whether there was actually a war on.
London did object.
But London's objection didn't mean much in practice; Queen Elizabeth's judge still ended up running for his life. This wasn't a surprise to anyone.
You may have seen a map of medieval or early modern Europe with political borders as neat lines. These maps are mostly fiction. They show what was claimed - they show who people were nominally acknowledging as king, and what territory a king would defend from an invading army - but in terms of actively enforcing power, things were much more messy.
Take 1650's England. Parliament had won the English Civil War and executed King Charles, then their general Oliver Cromwell had overthrown them, and now Cromwell was the unchallenged ruler of England. But, he then faced half of England simply refusing to prosecute treason against him or give him taxes. Cromwell responded by sending out his army to ride herd on the various counties' assizes, but even that barely worked; quiet resistance continued throughout the Protectorate until Cromwell died and King Charles's son returned as king. This was an unusually visible example, because it struck at the foundations of a new government - but it shows how the central government was forced to resort to unusual options to enforce its will.
Later on in the British colonies in America, this showed up as the policy of "salutary neglect", where the king and the governors he appointed hardly ever interfered with local affairs. One reason was they didn't want to - but in fact, they couldn't, as was proven when they did try to interfere and sparked the American Revolution.
The Roman Empire had solved this problem by, essentially, giving cities and provinces their head. As long as a city acknowledged Roman rule, paid its taxes, and respected Roman citizens, it could do basically whatever it wanted. The Emperor heard myriads of appeals from across the empire, but each individual city rarely faced any interference.
For a while, early modern states did the same. Queen Elizabeth of England even found it convenient, for a while, to let Somerset and Devon privateers raid Spanish and Portuguese ships (and bring in plunder) while being able to claim England as such was at peace with them. What was more, it provided good seamen when there was a war - most of the fleet that fought off the Spanish Armada had previously been privateers. The growing British Empire of the 1600's was sometimes happy to make the same claim about American privateers.
So in the gaps, port towns - not caring about high politics - were happy to send out privateers to raid people whom they could call their enemies. In America, they often had commissions, usually not strictly valid but signed by the colonial governor. This was viewed as just one job of many a sailor might take for a while. It was a risky business, but sailing ships was inherently risky to some degree. Queen Elizabeth eventually ended Devon's privateering habits by encouraging new lines of work.
On top of patriotism and pay, it brought in plundered luxuries these towns probably wouldn't otherwise be able to get. One thing that helped reduce piracy in America was when the British East India Company started selling large amounts of Indian cloth and tea in the colonies.
Of course, this didn't last.
Central governments did gradually start enforcing their authority over more and more of their territory. Sometimes this led to rebellions, which were usually but not always suppressed. (Exceptions include the Netherlands and the United States, which gained independence.) More often, a combination of threats and incentives did bring them under central authority.
This process also led to literal nation-building. It took people who had previously thought of themselves as just Gascon, Cornish, or some local identity, and pushed them to start thinking of themselves as French, English, or a nationality. As late as 1789, only 11% of people within the borders of France reportedly spoke French; modern historians think that was an overestimate. The new French government tried to fix this with a uniform legal system, uniform measures, and uniform education system; even after the monarchy was restored, they kept up the efforts, but it was a very long project.
But, piracy was almost all suppressed by 1789. Measures like opening new trade opportunities (for better ways to get luxuries than through plunder), and appointing new royal governors (who wouldn't give privateering commissions) and new courts (to actually try pirates) drove the pirates out of mainstream society in the early 1700's.
This actually sparked the "Golden Age of Piracy," where the pirates now knew they were under sentence of death and couldn't rejoin mainstream society. So, in turn, they started plundering ships of every nation and piling up the plunder they couldn't use for whatever chance they could get to sell it. But this was only a brief time; after a few decades they died out or were hunted down.
Piracy is fun to think about, but piracy as a microcosm of history is even more fun.
What this book showed me is that piracy was a symptom of the lack of state authority. Some people might lament the nation-building process smoothing out local uniqueness, and other people might praise how it brought people into a more vibrant community - but the story of piracy shows one very significant bad thing (uncontrolled violence!) about the previous situation.
Another thing that I'm glad to see now is how people's behavior makes sense in this context. I can now envision where pirates were coming from, and what they planned to do with their plunder, in ways that make them feel like real, rational people. People in history were real people - and if they act in some way, I can expect them to have been in a context and have motivations where that action makes sense.