Shows how the political turmoil of the Spanish American Wars of Independence allowed an upsurge in prize-taking activity by navies, privateers and pirates. Private maritime predation was integral to the Spanish American Wars of Independence. When colonists rebelled against Spanish rule in 1810 they deployed privateers - los corsarios insurgentes - to prosecute their revolutionary struggle at sea. Spain responded by commissioning privateers of its own, while the disintegration of Spanish authority in the New World created conditions in which unauthorised prize-taking - piracy - also flourished. This upsurge in privateering and piracy has been neglected by historians yet it posed a significant threat to British interests. As numerous vessels were captured and plundered, the British government - endeavouring to remain neutral in the Spanish American conflict - faced a dilemma. An insufficient response might hinder Britain's commercial expansion but an overly aggressive approach risked plunging the nation into another war. Privateering, Piracy and British Policy in Spanish America assesses the varied and flexible ways the British government responded to prize-taking activity in order to safeguard and enhance its wider commercial and political objectives. This analysis marks a significant and original contribution to the study of privateering and piracy, and informs key debates about the development of international law and the character of British imperialism in the nineteenth century. Matthew McCarthy is Research Officer at the Maritime Historical Studies Centre, University of Hull. He was awarded his PhD by the University of Hull in 2011 and won the British Commission for Maritime History/Boydell & Brewer prize for best doctoral thesis in maritime history.

The Hispanic and Anglo worlds are often portrayed as the Cain and Abel of Western culture, antagonistic and alien to each other. This book challenges such view with a new critical conceptual framework – the ‘Hispanic-Anglosphere’ – to open a window into the often surprising interactions of individuals, transnational networks and global communities that, it argues, made of the British Isles (England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) a crucial hub for the global Hispanic world, a launching-pad and a bridge between Spanish Europe, Africa, America and Asia in the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Perhaps not unlike today, that was a time marked by social uncertainty, pandemics, the dislocation of global polities and the rise of radicalisms. The volume offers insights on many themes including trade, the arts, education, language, politics, the press, religion, biodiversity, philanthropy, anti-slavery and imperialism. Established academics and rising stars from different continents and disciplines combined original, primary research with a wide range of secondary sources to produce a rich collection of ten case-studies, 25 biographies and seven samples of interpreted material culture, all presented in an accessible style appealing to scholars, students and the general reader alike. Chapters Introduction; Chapter 1 (Section 1); Chapter 5 (Section 1); Section II; Afterword) of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Skilfully uses this notorious episode to illuminate the nature and extent of piracy in the period.The pirate attack on the British brig Morning Star, en route from Ceylon to London, near Ascension Island in 1828 was one of the most shocking episodes of piracy in the nineteenth century. Although the captain and many members of the crew were murdered by the pirates led by the notorious Benito de Soto, some survived, escaped and sailed the ship back to Britain. This book, based on extensive original research in Britain, Spain and Brazil, retells the story of the Morning Star, provides much new detail and corrects errors present in the many contemporary accounts of the attack. It sets the attack in the wider context of piracy in the period, and discusses many issues which the episode highlights: how pirates' careers began and developed; how they were pursued and tried, often with difficulty; what became of their treasure; how stories of the attack and of the survivors were sensationalised; how the women passengers on the ship endured their ordeal at the hands of the pirates and then, back in Britain, had to endure potential loss of their reputations.s on the ship endured their ordeal at the hands of the pirates and then, back in Britain, had to endure potential loss of their reputations.s on the ship endured their ordeal at the hands of the pirates and then, back in Britain, had to endure potential loss of their reputations.s on the ship endured their ordeal at the hands of the pirates and then, back in Britain, had to endure potential loss of their reputations.

Spanning from the Caribbean to East Asia and covering almost 3,000 years of history, from Classical Antiquity to the eve of the twenty-first century, Persistent Piracy is an important contribution to the history of the state formation as well as the history of violence at sea.

After emerging victorious from their revolution against the British Empire, many North Americans associated commercial freedom with independence and republicanism. Optimistic about the liberation movements sweeping Latin America, they were particularly eager to disrupt the Portuguese Empire. Anticipating the establishment of a Brazilian republic that they assumed would give them commercial preference, they aimed to aid Brazilian independence through contraband, plunder, and revolution. In contrast to the British Empire's reaction to the American Revolution, Lisbon officials liberalized imperial trade when revolutionary fervor threatened the Portuguese Empire in the 1780s and 1790s. In 1808, to save the empire from Napoleon's army, the Portuguese court relocated to Rio de Janeiro and opened Brazilian ports to foreign commerce. By 1822, the year Brazil declared independence, it had become the undisputed center of U.S. trade with the Portuguese Empire. However, by that point, Brazilians tended to associate freer trade with the consolidation of monarchical power and imperial strength, and, by the end of the 1820s, it was clear that Brazilians would retain a monarchy despite their independence. Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots delineates the differences between the British and Portuguese empires as they struggled with revolutionary tumult. It reveals how those differences led to turbulent transnational exchanges between the United States and Brazil as merchants, smugglers, rogue officials, slave traders, and pirates sought to trade outside legal confines. Tyson Reeder argues that although U.S. traders had forged their commerce with Brazil convinced that they could secure republican trade partners there, they were instead forced to reconcile their vision of the Americas as a haven for republics with the reality of a monarchy residing in the hemisphere. He shows that as twilight fell on the Age of Revolution, Brazil and the United States became fellow slave powers rather than fellow republics.

Victim Reparation under the Ius Post Bellum fills an enormous gap in international legal scholarship. It questions the paradigmatic shift of rights to reparation towards a morality-based theory of international law. At a time when international law has a tendency to take a purely positivistic and international approach, Shavana Musa questions whether an embrace of an evaluative approach alongside the politics of war and peace is more practical and effective for war victims. Musa provides a never-before-conducted contextual insight into how the issue has been handled historically, analysing case studies from major wars from the seventeenth century to the modern day. She uses as-yet untouched archival documentation from these periods, which uncovers unique data and information on international peacemaking, and actually demonstrates more effective practices of reparation provisions compared with today. This book combines historical analysis with modern day developments to provide normative assertions for a future reparation system.

Following the 1808 French invasion of the Iberian Peninsula, an unprecedented political crisis threw the Spanish Monarchy into turmoil. On the Caribbean coast of modern-day Colombia, the important port town of Cartagena rejected Spanish authority, finally declaring independence in 1811. With new leadership that included free people of color, Cartagena welcomed merchants, revolutionaries, and adventurers from Venezuela, the Antilles, the United States, and Europe. Most importantly, independent Cartagena opened its doors to privateers of color from the French Caribbean. Hired mercenaries of the sea, privateers defended Cartagena's claim to sovereignty, attacking Spanish ships and seizing Spanish property, especially near Cuba, and establishing vibrant maritime connections with Haiti. Most of Cartagena's privateers were people of color and descendants of slaves who benefited from the relative freedom and flexibility of life at sea, but also faced kidnapping, enslavement, and brutality. Many came from Haiti and Guadeloupe; some had been directly involved in the Haitian Revolution. While their manpower proved crucial in the early Anti-Spanish struggles, Afro-Caribbean privateers were also perceived as a threat, suspected of holding questionable loyalties, disorderly tendencies, and too strong a commitment to political and social privileges for people of color. Based on handwritten and printed sources in Spanish, English, and French, this book tells the story of Cartagena's multinational and multicultural seafarers, revealing the Trans-Atlantic and maritime dimensions of South American independence.

Between 1500 and 1750, European expansion and global interaction produced vast wealth. As goods traveled by ship along new global trade routes, piracy also flourished on the world’s seas. Pillaging the Empire tells the fascinating story of maritime predation in this period, including the perspectives of both pirates and their victims. Brushing aside the romantic legends of piracy, Kris Lane pays careful attention to the varied circumstances and motives that led to the rise of this bloodthirsty pursuit of riches, and places the history of piracy in the context of early modern empire building. This second edition of Pillaging the Empire has been revised and expanded to incorporate the latest scholarship on piracy, maritime law, and early modern state formation. With a new chapter on piracy in East and Southeast Asia, Lane considers piracy as a global phenomenon. Filled with colorful details and stories of individual pirates from Francis Drake to the women pirates Ann Bonny and Mary Read, this engaging narrative will be of interest to all those studying the history of Latin America, the Atlantic world, and the global empires of the early modern era.

In the Name of the Battle against Piracy discusses antipiracy campaigns in Europe and Asia in the 16th-19th centuries. Nine contributors argue how important antipiracy campaigns were for the establishment of a (colonial) state, because piracy was a threat not only to maritime commerce, but also to its sovereignty. 'Battle against piracy' offered a good reason for a state to claim its authority as the sole protector of people, and to establish peace, order, and sovereignty. In fact, as the contributors explain, the story was not that simple, because states sometimes attempted to make economic and political use of piracy, while private interests were strongly involved in antipiracy politics. State formation processes were not clearly separated from non-state elements. Contributors are: Kudo Akihito, Satsuma Shinsuke, Suzuki Hideaki, Lakshmi Sabramanian, Ota Atsushi, James Francis Warren, Fujita Tatsuo, Murakami Ei, and Toyooka Yasufumi.

A Dissenting Companion to the U.S. History Textbook Most U.S. History textbooks track the origins and evolution of American identity. They therefore present the American Revolution as the product of a gradual cultural change in English colonists. Over time, this process of Americanization differentiated and alienated the settlers from their compatriots and their government in Britain. This widely-taught narrative encourages students to view American independence as a reflection of emerging American nationhood. The Colonists' American Revolution introduces readers to a competing narrative which presents the Revolution as a product of the colonists’ English identity and of English politics. This volume helps students recognize that the traditional narrative of the Revolution is an argument, not a just-the-facts account of this period in U.S. history. Written to make history interesting and relevant to students, this textbook provides a dissenting interpretation of America’s founding—the Revolution was not the result of an incremental process of Americanization, but rather an immediate reaction to sudden policy changes in London. It exposes students to dueling historical narratives of the American Revolution, encouraging them to debate and evaluate both narratives on the strength of evidence. This stimulating volume: Offers an account of the Revolution’s chronology, causes, ends, and accomplishments not commonly addressed in traditional textbooks Challenges the conventional narrative of Americanization with one of Anglicization Presents the Atlantic as a bridge, rather than a barrier, between England and its colonies Discusses the American Revolution as one in a series of British rebellions Uses a dual-perspective approach to spark discussions on what it means to study history Exposing students to two different ways of studying history, The Colonists' American Revolution: Preserving English Liberty, 1607-1783 is a thought-provoking resource for undergraduate and graduate students of early-American history, as well as historians and interested general readers.