The Rise and Fall of the Buccaneers
The original pirates of the Caribbean
Howard Pyle, Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons
In our modern days, the term buccaneers have become synonymous with pirate, and by buccaneers, people describe the pirates who were active in the early parts of the Golden Age of Piracy.
No doubt, the buccaneers in the second half of the 17th century acted little better than pirates; however, many contemporaries would have argued if the two terms were referred to as equals.
From a strictly legal point of view, most of the buccaneers were not pirates but rather privateers. These two words have also become synonymous by today, but there was a great difference between them in the early modern period.
A privateer was a sailor who was serving as the private naval force of a state and was licensed by the government of that state to attack and plunder ships belonging to the enemies of that state.
On the other hand, a pirate was not serving any government but robbed people only to benefit himself and his crew. The pirates did not limit themselves thus to the ships belonging to a certain nation, and as far as they were concerned, all ships were fair game.
Leaving the legal niceties aside, the buccaneers did not start out as sea robbers either, but rather as social outcasts who, in the hope of a freer, if not necessarily easier…
