Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570–1740 by Mark G. Hanna (review)

Mark Hanna's ambitious monograph sets his doctoral dissertation, "The Pirates' Nest: the Impact of Piracy on Newport, Rhode Island and Charles Town, South Carolina, 1670–1740" (Harvard 2006), into a broader context with a long view of the role of plunder in building a "coherent, functioning and integrated [British] empire" (p. 420) between the age of Elizabeth and the outbreak of the War of Jenkins' Ear. The "pirates" themselves are shadowy figures in the background, as Hanna focuses on their reception and treatment within Anglophone maritime communities on land. His core concern is with how attitudes to sea marauders changed as colonial and metropolitan interests supposedly became increasingly aligned.

The first three chapters draw on an extensive secondary literature to tell a familiar story of how plunder was used to launch, defend, and supply the initial settlements on a frontier where state authority and piracy were vaguely defined. They end with the bold assertion that in the 1680s, Jamaica, which had been the preeminent pirate nest, was converted into "one of the most brutal and exploitative slave societies in the world" (p. 143) and, in the process, turned firmly against sea predators: a process which was later replicated elsewhere in other parts of the empire.

The next two chapters describe how the shift in Jamaica was accompanied by the rise of piracy in Britain's mainland colonies until another turning point, or imperial transformation, took place after 1696 which further changed perceptions of "pirates". The last five chapters consider how "pirates" became increasingly marginalized and unwelcome characters in a more centralized and better regulated empire. Others have pointed to a rapid demise of piracy in the early eighteenth century, and accorded the Royal Navy a key role, but Hanna's explanation focuses on softer power. He claims that pirate nests were transformed into productive and self-sustaining communities by opening once closed markets; an exponential increase of the slave trade; a political revolution that led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy and the creation of a broad, overarching imperial bureaucracy; as well as an information revolution that integrated different parts of the Atlantic with a powerful print culture, which did not end support of piracy but played an essential role in establishing a culture of anti-piracy. "The [pirates] were not destroyed in some grand battle they were simply abandoned by those on land" (p. 409).

Hanna's strong overarching narrative imposes simplicity on what he admits was, in fact, a complex and regionally differentiated reality. He depends, in part, on an eschewal of rigid definitions. According to Hanna, historical and fiction writers alike have been too inclined to categorize "pirate" as a rigid and readily identifiable type and, despite quoting Coleridge's claim that "no man is a pirate unless his contemporaries agree to call him so" (p. 5), and acknowledging that few of the sea marauders described in the book could be branded pirates before 1713, he responds by collapsing all sea predators into one undifferentiated "piratical" category. This is anachronistic and also makes it difficult to measure change and continuity. In all his principle dealings, Henry Morgan operated as a privateer, with claims to a valid commission, issued in response to a genuine threat to island security. He was viewed as a valuable tool of state as witnessed in his knighthood, and his appointment to office, and he was not in the same category as the four universally acknowledged pirates who were brought into Port Royal hanging on the yard arm in 1686 after crossing an unforgiveable line by attacking English trade and shipping. Hanna's "better regulated" privateers of the later eighteenth century were Morgan's descendants whereas Black-beard was not. The state continued to rely on "private" protection into the nineteenth century, and although it tried to reduce the obvious risks through tighter controls (well described by Hanna), the core rules remained remarkably clear and...