Buccaneers and Privateers: The Story of the English Sea Rover, 16751725 [Hardcover]

This book takes a fresh look at English buccaneering and privateering literature from the Golden Age of Piracy and includes discussion of well-known figures such as Sir Henry Morgan as well as more obscure figures like Captain George Cusack.In the late seventeenth century, Spain dominated the Caribbean and Central and South America, establishing colonies, mining gold and silver, and gathering riches from Asia for transportation back to Europe. Seeking to disrupt Spains nearly unchecked empire-building and siphon off some of their wealth, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British adventurersboth legitimate and illegitimateled numerous expeditions into the Caribbean and the Pacific. Many voyagers wrote accounts of their exploits, captivating readers with their tales of exotic places, shocking hardships and cruelties, and daring engagements with national enemies. Widely distributed and read, buccaneering and privateering narratives contributed significantly to Englands imaginative, literary rendering of the Americas in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and they provided a venue for public dialogue about sea rovers and their position within empire. This book takes as its subject the literary and rhetorical construction of voyagers and their histories, and by extension, the representation of English imperialism in popular sea-voyage narratives of the period.Acknowledgments and PermissionsList of IllustrationsIntroductionChapter 1: The Word and the Grand Pirate, George CusackChapter 2: The Usual Atrocities: Narrating Henry Morgans Raid on Panama CityChapter 3: Exquemelin in England: The Literary Transformation of Henry MorganChapter 4: Captain Bartholomew Sharp and the Sacred Hunger for GoldChapter 5: Reconsidering William Dampiers VisionChapter 6: Consummate Privateers: Edward Cooke and Woodes RogersChapter 7: The Return of the Buccaneer in the Voyage Narratives of Shelvocke and BetaghBibliographyAuthor BiographyThis book takes a fresh looklS6