The Life Of Sir Henry Morgan With An Account Of The English Settlement Of The Island Of Jamaica

This work presents the history of Sir Henry Morgan, the Welsh buccaneer who was one of the most famous adventurers and looted Spain's Caribbean colonies during the late 17th century. Working with the unofficial support of the English government, he sabotaged Spanish authority in the West Indies. It's believed that he was a member of the expedition that captured Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655 and converted it into an English colony.

Analyzing the rise and subsequent fall of international piracy from the perspective of colonial hinterlands, Mark G. Hanna explores the often overt support of sea marauders in maritime communities from the inception of England's burgeoning empire in the 1570s to its administrative consolidation by the 1740s. Although traditionally depicted as swashbuckling adventurers on the high seas, pirates played a crucial role on land. Far from a hindrance to trade, their enterprises contributed to commercial development and to the economic infrastructure of port towns. English piracy and unregulated privateering flourished in the Pacific, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean because of merchant elites' active support in the North American colonies. Sea marauders represented a real as well as a symbolic challenge to legal and commercial policies formulated by distant and ineffectual administrative bodies that undermined the financial prosperity and defense of the colonies. Departing from previous understandings of deep-sea marauding, this study reveals the full scope of pirates' activities in relation to the landed communities that they serviced and their impact on patterns of development that formed early America and the British Empire.

Twelve scholars of piracy show why pirates thrived in the New World seas of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century empires, how pirates operated their plundering ventures, how governments battled piracy, and when and why piracy declined.

'Morgan the Pirate' is associated with the trappings of pirate living - skull and crossbones, pieces of eight, almost 'with a yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum'. Yet if this was true, why did Charles II knight him and why was he given the governorship of Jamaica? In this authoritative biography, Dudley Pope lays to rest the popularised image.

Shedding new light on British expansion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this collection of essays examines how the first British Empire was received and shaped by its subject peoples in Scotland, Ireland, North America, and the Caribbean. An introduction surveys British imperial historiography and provides a context for the volume as a whole. The essays focus on specific ethnic groups -- Native Americans, African-Americans, Scotch-Irish, and Dutch and Germans -- and their relations with the British, as well as on the effects of British expansion in particular regions -- Ireland, Scotland, Canada, and the West Indies. A conclusion assesses the impact of the North American colonies on British society and politics. Taken together, these essays represent a new kind of imperial history -- one that portrays imperial expansion as a dynamic process in which the oulying areas, not only the English center, played an important role in the development and character of the Empire. The collection interpets imperial history broadly, examining it from the perspective of common folk as well as elites and discussing the clash of cultures in addition to political disputes. Finally, by examining shifting and multiple frontiers and by drawing parallels between outlying provinces, these essays move us closer to a truly integrated story that links the diverse ethnic experiences of the first British Empire. The contributors are Bernard Bailyn, Philip D. Morgan, Nicholas Canny, Eric Richards, James H. Merrell, A. G. Roeber, Maldwyn A. Jones, Michael Craton, J. M. Bumsted, and Jacob M. Price.

"The study is concerned mainly with the growth and development of political ideas in the Caribbean since the latter half of the eighteenth century. It attempts an analysis of the more significant intellectual formulations which have emerged in the region during the period ... it includes reference to some of the major economic theories which have shaped the Caribbean reality over the years."--Introduction ([p. xi]).