TTC - The Real History of Pirates

There’s an apocryphal story that Alexander the Great once captured a notorious pirate named Diomedes. The great conqueror decided to interview the doomed pirate, asking him what he thought gave him the right to seize the property of other people. The pirate responded by asking the emperor what he thought gave him the right to take property that doesn’t belong to him, including entire countries. The story goes that Alexander thought the pirate very clever, granting him freedom instead of execution.

Other than scale, what is the difference between a pirate and the vast armies of an emperor? Or between a pirate and the great navy of a queen? Were the men who famously traversed the Atlantic actually the heroic explorers we imagined them to be or were they, in fact, pirates? During the early years of what would be known as the Age of Sail, these explorers included Sirs Francis Drake, John Hawkins, and Walter Ralegh.

In The Real History of Pirates, you’ll find yourself looking at world history from a new point of view, realizing that much of what you’ve learned before could—and possibly should—be viewed through a more accurate, post-imperialistic filter. Your course professor, Manushag N. Powell, an award-winning Professor of English at Purdue University, will expose you to new ways of thinking about global interactions, from the West Indies and the Red Sea to the North Atlantic and Indonesia, and beyond. You’ll learn what inspires piracy, why it still flourishes today—and why women sometimes wielded the real power behind the scenes in an enterprise conducted almost exclusively by men.

What Is a Pirate?

Most of the average person’s knowledge of piracy comes from pop-culture portrayals in literature and film. The truth is, we actually have very little reliable, first-hand information about pirates in the 17th and 18th centuries. The trial testimony, newspaper articles, and journal entries we do have lead us to believe the guns and the filth of pirate tales were certainly real, although much else was fiction.

If we cannot identify pirates by their dress or speech—there was no common pirate language, contrary to portrayals in media—how can we identify them? We recognized pirates the same way we recognize any criminal today: by their behavior. But as you’ll learn in this course, there were many types of pirates operating in different sections of the world, some of whom had the backing of a well-established government. Different types of sea-faring marauders include:

Pirates. Pirates are individuals who operate at sea or in coastal areas, committing robbery and looting, kidnapping, or general warfare. Although this course concentrates on piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries, this type of criminality began much earlier and continues to plague parts of the world today.
Buccaneers were pirates fighting the Spanish in the West Indies. Primarily from England and France, they also included Dutch, Africans, and Moskito Indians, all joined by their hatred of the Spanish and desire for Spanish gold. Even when their respective countries were officially at peace with Spain, the buccaneers continued to fight in the Caribbean.
Privateers. Considered more respectable than pirates, privateers were individuals commissioned by governments to carry out semi-military activities against enemy ships. Privateers owned their own armed vessels, allowing their country to extend into waters beyond the reach of its navy. But it was not uncommon for them to go beyond their commission and into the shadier practices of piracy as we recognize them.
Corsairs. As privateers hired by various governments to make war primarily against non-Muslims, corsairs operated in the Mediterranean near the coast of Northern Africa—although one famous raid extended as far north as Ireland. While they certainly looted any ship they could catch, their primary goal was to take captives for ransom and/or forced labor.
Taking a New Look at History

If you had to name some famous pirates right now, who would come to mind? Chances are you’d think of Long John Silver, Captain Jack Sparrow, and maybe Blackbeard (two of whom are fictional). But you probably would not think of the international explorers you learned about in history class. Francis Drake, Christopher Columbus, Sir Walter Ralegh—pirates all, depending on your point of view. These privateers, sometimes known as “pirates with papers,” were some of the first who sailed from Europe through the Atlantic to unknown lands, or even south from Europe along the coast of Africa, around into the Indian Ocean and into the Red Sea. The truth, of course, is that these lands were not “unknown” to the peoples who already lived there with their own culture, language, and commerce.

In The Real History of Pirates, you’ll hear a different perspective about the exploits of many famous explorers, including:

John Paul Jones. A Scotsman who was considered a naval hero of the U.S. Revolutionary War, he became known as the father of the American navy. He was knighted by the French and awarded the Order of St. Anne in Russia. But the British remember him as a pirate, and in fact, he was a privateer who worked for several years in the transatlantic slave trade.
Sir Francis Drake. A privateer who sailed under the flag of England, Drake became one of the first to circumnavigate the world. He also claimed a part of present-day California for the British, attacked the Spanish armada, and was actively involved in the transatlantic slave trade.
Sir Walter Ralegh. A privateer, Ralegh was given the mandate to create settlements for the Queen in North America, seizing any non-Christian lands and plundering Spanish ships. His men fought the Native peoples in present-day Virginia as Ralegh tried—but failed—to establish the colony or Roanoke.
To the peoples who already lived in North America, the West Indies, or Western Africa, these men who came to claim the land for their king or queen, loot coastal communities, and kidnap individuals for ship’s labor or the slave trade were pirates plain and simple.

Understanding Piracy in the Modern World

While this course focuses primarily on piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries, you will also learn about modern piracy and why it is so difficult, if not impossible, to eradicate. While we tend to think of pirates using armed ships in the Age of Sail, pirate technology has changed over time, just as everyone else’s has. Today’s pirates are armed with speedboats, GPS, heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, and the latest in communications systems.

Piracy is more geographically confined than it was in previous centuries, but it is still largely driven by “greed and grievance.” And while pirates still exist as independent operators today, piracy is increasingly tied to larger criminal syndicates. Piracy happens in many locations throughout the world, including areas like the Straits of Malacca, which are narrow waters where much of the shipping between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore must travel; the Gulf of Guinea along the coast of western Africa; and the Gulf of Aden between Yemen and northern Somalia. These and other areas—often deeply affected by political turmoil and unrest—provide ideal conditions for piracy to continue in the 21st century.

Tales of pirates and their exploits are certainly fascinating, and often entertaining. But as you will see, piracy today is similar to piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries in that unemployment, political violence or instability, and the unjust apportioning of natural resources cause individuals to “turn pirate.” The more we learn about the issues behind the Golden Age of Piracy, the better we can understand and potentially solve these geopolitical realties of today.

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