Thesis

Pirates, merchants, and imperial authority in the British Atlantic, 1716-1726

Creator
Rights statement
Awarding institution
  • University of Strathclyde
Date of award
  • 2017
Thesis identifier
  • T14838
Person Identifier (Local)
  • 201456643
Qualification Level
Qualification Name
Department, School or Faculty
Abstract
  • Between 1716 and 1726, there was a surge in piracy in the Caribbean Sea, North America, Africa, and the Indian Ocean. British state, colonial, and local responses to increased reports of piracy differed across these colonial and geographical divides. British mercantile groups with stakes in the Caribbean sugar, Virginian tobacco, and African slave trade lobbied when these markets were impacted by piracy. Likewise, the East India Company exerted extensive influence when piratical operations spread to the Indian Ocean. The British state, moved by these groups, responded with multiple initiatives to stem the impact of piracy on important commercial areas. At the same time, colonial agents both supplied pirates and subsidised local campaigns against piracy. This project explores the multifaceted nature of the suppression of piracy within colonial and metropolitan contexts to explain that multiple participants operating in distant but connected theatres influenced and shaped anti-piracy campaigns. Such an examination challenges current understanding of the war against piracy, while providing novel insight into imperial authority, state-empire relations, and the multilateral Atlantic economy. In this way, both pirate ships and the ships that hunted them are the lens through which to observe and understand the British Atlantic world in the early eighteenth century.
Advisor / supervisor
  • Macinnes, Allan.
  • Cathcart, Alison.
Resource Type
Note
  • This thesis was previously held under moratorium from 25th April 2018 until 1st May 2023
DOI
Date Created
  • 2017
Former identifier
  • 9912593390002996

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