Piracy in Spanish America
During the centuries of Spanish exploration and colonization, treasure fleets made periodic voyages to the Americas to deliver supplies and merchandise and to collect treasures and precious metals. As these cargos increased in size and value, so did the risk of capture and theft. Foreign navies, privateers and pirates threatened, attacked, and plundered the ships of these treasure fleets. The use of privateering and piracy by maritime actors affected the trajectory of the history of the Americas and altered the political environment of the Spanish colonies from time Columbus claimed the Americas for Spain to the Spanish American Wars of Independence.1
In the course of my proposed research paper, by examining the tactics and strategies implemented by established governments, I will show that that piratical operations in Spanish America both influenced government policies and impacted the economy via the disruption of shipping and trade. This maritime predation in the Americas included piracy and privateering as well as genuine warfare carried out by professional navies.
The terms pirates and privateers are sometimes used interchangeably however there are major differences. Pirates were not loyal to any country and attacked indiscriminately for their own gain. The law branded them hostes humani generis, Latin for a sort of people who may truly be called enemies to mankind.2 They preyed on ships from all states. Every nation’s shipping was a pirate’s enemy with some pirates clearly displaying anti-imperial ideology. Although some indigenous peoples such as the Caribs raided by sea and even held hostages for ransom, most pirates in colonial Latin America were northern Europeans hoping to poach on Spanish and Portuguese gain, mainly gold and silver on its way to Europe or Asia, they but also vied for enslaved Africans, sugar, alcohol, and tobacco.3
Privateers, in contrast, were state sanctioned sea robbers. They were licensed by a government to raid the ships of declared enemies and shared their gains with the licensor. These pillagers, mostly set out from European ports, sponsored by sovereigns or state officials. During wartime, a private vessel could secure a commission that would constitute the vessel as a privateer. This commission, or letter of marque, gave them permission to attack the vessels of any nation listed in the document and to legally capture enemy ships and take them to prize court. The letter of marque, issued by a government, differentiated the privateer from a pirate cruising the seas looking for plunder. With normal trade disrupted by war, shipowners were frequently willing to risk their commercial vessels on privateering cruises.
Although privateers were technically only supposed to be used during time of war, Colonial governors often issued letters of marque during peacetime, despite government directives not to do so. With the cover of such documents, privateers were free to prey on any vessel flying the flag of an enemy nation. On more than one occasion, Spanish officials executed captured privateers with their letters of marque hanging around their necks.4 Although privateering provided those involved with the opportunity to obtain wealth, from the perspective of the state, the primary objective was to weaken enemies of the state, not to enrich private citizens.
From early colonization in the 1490s to independence in the 1820s, piracy, or larceny at or by descent from the sea, plagued Latin America.5 French pirates were first to raid Iberian American ships and towns. The French privateer Jean Fleury captured three Spanish treasure ships containing gold, jewels, and other Aztec finery in 1523.6 Prior to this, Europeans had little knowledge of the immense wealth of the New World.
The next wave of piracy in Latin America was instigated, first by the English corsairs in the era of Queen Elizabeth I, then by Dutch raiders who dominated the American seas from the 1590s until around 1650. Welshman Henry Morgan became infamous after leading an amphibious raid on the Spanish colony of Panama City in 1671, the successful invasion winning him both a knighthood and eventually the governorship of Jamaica.
The subsequent piratical phase, led by multinational marauders between about 1650 and 1700, consisted of buccaneers, motley crews of out-of-work soldiers and ex-indentured servants who used bases in the Caribbean to launch their raids and launder their gains. The 1702 to 1713 War of the Spanish Succession absorbed many of these buccaneers, but survivors returned to lead another great wave of pillage lasting from 1713 to 1730 , after which the Royal Navy was able to effectively curtail piracy in the Americas.
However, uninhibited piracy resurged in the Americas after the 1800s. Following the War of 1812, the Napoleonic Wars and then during the struggles for Latin American independence, South American privateering took on a new dimension. The Napoleonic Wars commissioned many privateers and following France’s defeat, these privateers lost their veneer of legitimacy and many continued operating as out and out pirates. When Spain’s colonial possessions in South and Central America sought independence, another round of piracy erupted. Many of those fledgling nations that revolted from Spain in 1810 - 1811 began issuing letters of marque to privateers soon after they rebelled and private maritime predation came to be integral to the Spanish American Wars of Independence.8 Spain, in response, unleashed privateers against the shipping of the new nations.
Privateering and piracy co‐existed during the Spanish‐American Wars of Independence. In response to the successes achieved by the Latin American rebels, actions taken by Spain included imposition of a blockade on most of the South and Central American nations. In one case, three Spanish naval ships were assigned responsibility for patrolling 1,200 miles of coastline.9 Spain did not have sufficient forces to enforce the blockade but this action did provide a pretext for Spanish warships to seize neutral vessels caught violating the blockade. Because of the Spanish Navy’s weakness, Spanish officials used privateers to enforce the blockade. Many of these Spanish commissioned privateers focused on American shipping in retaliation for the support given to the Latin American revolutionaries. Spanish oversight was lacking in the New World and privateers often engaged in ambiguous piratical behavior. Preying on American shipping became so lucrative that many Spanish privateers resorted to outright piracy.
Piracy and privateering influenced government policy in the context of international and national affairs and economics. Eighteenth century privateering was a government‐sanctioned strategy that allowed both established and fledgling nations to disrupt the shipping and trade of their enemies, thus impacting the trajectory of the Spanish revolutions. Revolutionaries used privateering to their advantage as a way to indirectly put pressure on Spain. Spanish American governments in Central and South America funded insurgent privateers, including non‐Hispanic Americans and Europeans to create large‐scale businesses that were a thorn in the side of Spanish trade. Piracy and privateering were able to disrupt trade routes, ransack slave ships and sever Europe from communications and commerce with New World empires.
When colonists rebelled against Spanish rule in 1810 they deployed privateers, los corsarios insurgents, to prosecute their revolutionary struggle at sea.11 Spain responded by commissioning privateers of its own, however the disintegration of Spanish authority in the New World created conditions in which unauthorized prize taking, as in piracy, also flourished. Following a brief surge in 1821, the Spanish government renounced privateering in neutral territories. The Spanish privateers were far fewer in number and their prize actions were much smaller than the insurgents. The situation being more delicate with Spanish privateering, as they were interfering with British trade, they needed to remain allies to avoid a French invasion while still maintaining access to trade in Spanish America.10
The economic impact of piracy on Spanish American merchant shipping influenced the Spanish American Wars of Independence. Since the destruction of enemy merchant ships reduced competition, thereby improving a nation’s opportunity for garnering wealth, privateering complemented mercantilist theory.12 Local authorities provided political cover for the pirates and Spanish merchants eagerly disposed of their stolen goods at cut-rate prices, thus gaining support for piracy from the local populations.
The pirates, including African ex-slaves and other outlaws, worked together to subvert capitalism and challenge the authority of the Spanish colonizers. As numerous vessels were captured and plundered, in addition to impacting European and colonial trade routes, these depredations soon began to affect United States shipping as well. In 1819, the U.S. government acted in response to the threat, with congress authorizing President Monroe to deploy naval forces to combat pirates in South America. A delicate diplomatic mission was sent to Venezuela to try to convince the South Americans to restrain their privateers, without jeopardizing the United States good relations with those countries. This process was initially successful, however, the U.S. negotiator contracted yellow fever and died on his way home. Consequently, the United States South American mission foundered.
Spain’s overseas empires were continually harassed by clashes with American and European based privateers and pirate ships. Spain fought an almost continual undeclared war in the Western Hemisphere for more than 200 years, essentially authorizing the commission of privateers during the entire period. Privateering on foreign commissions was common and privateers impacted not just about business, sovereignty, and government, but war itself. Lacking the resources to build and maintain large national naval fleets, Spain, England, France, and the Dutch Republic used privateers to augment their naval forces. European nations permanently outlawed privateering in the mid-19th century.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, wars were fought and won largely due to naval prowess on the high seas. However, alongside the naval vessels, another naval force worked to make a significant difference on the outcome of the war, these were the privateers. This prize-taking activity was utilized in order to safeguard and enhance a nations wider commercial and political objectives. Spanish responses to and the overall economic and social effects of two and a half centuries of piracy and privateering helped formulate the political environment of Latin America.
Footnotes:
1 Kris Lane, Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500–1750 (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1998).
2 Ibid.
3 Marcus Rediker, Outlaws of the Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014).
4 Matthew McCarthy, Piracy and British Policy in Spanish America 1810–1830 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013).
5 Benerson Little, The Sea Rover’s Practice (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005).
6 Colin Woodard, The Republic of Pirates (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007).
7 Marcus Rediker, Outlaws of the Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014).
8 Matthew McCarthy, Piracy and British Policy in Spanish America 1810–1830 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013).
9 Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
10 Matthew McCarthy, Piracy and British Policy in Spanish America 1810–1830 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013).
11 Kris Lane, Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500–1750 (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1998).
12 Ibid.