Since ancient times until the present, pirates have struck fear in the hearts of mariners and fascinated observers of the past. Were they bloodthirsty brutes or ‘social bandits’ whose swashbuckling underwrote an egalitarian, democratic lifestyle?
This course follows the pirate bands and privateers who flourished during the age of European expansion, from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, in the Caribbean, the Atlantic, and beyond. We will see how Henry Morgan, Blackbeard, and others were linked to early modern histories of empire, gender, the environment, political thought, slavery, and commerce.