Forgotten Actors: Indigenous Peoples and Pirates in the Atlantic

In comparison with the Africans, the “indigenous Atlantic” have found only little interest among historians. The first indigenous people that the Europeans encountered were inhabitants of the Caribbean who had reached the island by boat from the American continent in close to 6,000 years before Columbus reached the Americas.

Their livelihood depended on the sea and the plants and animals on the islands. Later generations developed agriculture and ocean-going crafts. The societies were hierarchically structured with elected “captains” (according to European sources) at the top. These captains commanded hundreds of warriors and canoes, who served as allies for European powers and privateers during their rivalries. After the Caribs, the Europeans met the coastal inhabitants, who often helped the Europeans to survive. These people were crucial for the Atlantic trade, especially in North America.

The Algonquins, for example, were interested in European metal fishhooks, knives, iron and copper pots, needles, scissors, and axes and offered in exchange beaver furs, which became the major commodity in the North Atlantic trade. People in the hinterlands of the Atlantic, however, were also affected by the Atlantic exchange, which Alfred W. Crosby named the “Columbian exchange.” This encompassed, on the one hand, the spread of American animals and plants such as maize, potato, peanuts, tobacco, and cacao in Europe, as well as the transformation of the lands and environments of the Americas by European settlers. For the indigenous population, the “Columbian exchange” meant the introduction of European pathogens such as smallpox by the Spaniards, which caused the indigenous population to decline drastically. In the Caribbean and Central American populations, the decline exceeded 90 percent within a century of European contact.

Nevertheless, in all parts of the New World, the relationships between the indigenous population and the various European protagonists were continuously negotiated and renegotiated. The reintroduction of the horse by the Spaniards revolutionized indigenous societies. In this context, historians have started to regard indigenous peoples as serious historical actors alongside the European colonial powers, competing and cooperating with them in shaping colonial America.

Sailors and Pirates. Commercial, administrative, religious, and family networks linked and crisscrossed the various Atlantics. Within these networks, it was sailors and their vessels that provided continuous connections. Memories of sailors, such as the Englishman Edward Barlow, documented the enduring life on ships and the exploitation by captains and merchants, as well as the dangers of being shipwrecked or captured by pirates. Edward Barlow, who ended his career in 1703 at the age of sixty-one, sailed on thirty ships all over the world, not only on the Baltic and the Mediterranean but also on the Indian Ocean, and crossed the Atlantic on his way to Brazil, Barbados, and Jamaica. English sailors served on board together with sailors from the Netherlands, France, Spain, Africa, North America, the Caribbean, and Asia. Especially for African sailors of the Caribbean, a ship job meant freedom, although they often suffered discrimination and had to accept minor positions as cooks and servants on board the ship.

Harsh discipline, insecure wages, bad food, and the tyranny of officers and merchants culminated in mutinies and defections. As an alternative, service on a pirate ship emerged as an attractive proposition. Generally speaking, the better provisions and prospects of individual riches proved convincing. The dividing line between pirates and privateers, who captured ships and settlements on behalf of European powers, was rather fluid. Especially in the Caribbean, the prospects of plundering Spanish islands and settlements on behalf of the English Crown or the Dutch WIC seemed attractive. One of the famous privateers, William Dampier, combined privateering in the form of chasing Spanish Manila Galleons on their way from Mexico to the Philippines with geographical exploration. He circumnavigated the world three times and connected the Atlantic with the Pacific and the Indian oceans. What made his voyages stand out were the meticulous recordings that would ultimately find themselves in print.

The islands of the Caribbean became a prominent place for pirate attacks at the dawn of the eighteenth century. It was here that pirates experimented with new forms of government that did not exclude women and people of color. This golden age of piracy ended with extensive British military campaigns between the years 1716 and 1722 aimed at establishing colonial rule. Resilient pirates met the gallows, while those submitting to British rule received new positions on the ever-increasing number of vessels plying the Atlantic.