Editing Piracy in the Caribbean (section)

==Causes==
{{More citations needed section|date=January 2014}}
[[File:16th century Portuguese Spanish trade routes.png|thumb|right|350px|Main trade routes prey to 16th-century piracy: [[Spanish treasure fleet]]s linking the Caribbean to [[Seville]], [[Manila galleon]]s (after 1568) (white) and [[Portuguese India Armadas]] (after 1498) (blue)]]

Pirates were often former sailors experienced in [[naval warfare]]. In the 16th century, pirate captains recruited seamen to loot European [[Merchant ship|merchant ships]], especially the Spanish treasure fleets sailing from the Caribbean to Europe.
The following quote by an 18th-century Welsh captain shows the motivations for piracy:

{{blockquote|In an honest Service, there is thin Commons, low Wages, and hard Labour; in this, Plenty and Satiety, Pleasure and Ease, Liberty and Power; and who would not balance Creditor on this Side, when all the Hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sower Look or two at choaking. No, a merry Life and a short one shall be my Motto.}}—Pirate Captain [[Bartholomew Roberts]]<ref>{{Cite book |last=Johnson |first=Charles |title=A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates |publisher=Ch. Rivington, J. Lacy, and J. Stone |year=1724 |location=London |publication-date=14 May 1724 |pages=213–214 |language=EN}}</ref>

Piracy was sometimes given legal status by the colonial powers, especially [[France]] under King [[Francis I of France|Francis I]] (r. 1515–1547), in the hope of weakening Spain and Portugal's ''[[mare clausum]]'' trade monopolies in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. This officially sanctioned piracy was known as [[privateering]]. From 1520 to 1560, French privateers were alone in their fight against the Crown of Spain and the vast commerce of the Spanish Empire in the New World. The French privateers were not considered pirates in France as they were in the service of the king of France, they were considered combatants and granted a lettre de marque or lettre de course which legitimized any actions they took under the French justice system.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Shady Isle Pirate Society |url=http://shadyislepirates.com/ |access-date=2024-01-15 |website=Shady Isle Pirate Society}}</ref> They were later joined by the English and Dutch. The English were dubbed "[[Elizabethan Sea Dogs|sea dogs]]".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Cartwright |first=Mark |title=The Sea Dogs – Queen Elizabeth's Privateers |url=https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1576/the-sea-dogs---queen-elizabeths-privateers/ |access-date=2024-01-15 |website=World History Encyclopedia |language=en}}</ref>

The Caribbean had become an important center of European trade and colonization after [[Christopher Columbus|Columbus]]' discovery of the New World for Spain in 1492. In the 1494 [[Treaty of Tordesillas]] the non-European world had been divided between the Spanish and the Portuguese along a north–south line 370 leagues west of the [[Cape Verde Islands]]. This gave Spain control of the Americas, a position the Spaniards later reiterated with an equally unenforceable [[papal bull]] (The [[Inter caetera]]). On the [[Spanish Main]], the key early settlements were [[Cartagena, Colombia|Cartagena]] in present-day [[Colombia]], [[Portobelo, Panama|Porto Bello]] and [[Panama City]] on the [[Isthmus of Panama]], [[Santiago de Cuba|Santiago]] on the southeastern coast of [[Cuba]], and [[Santo Domingo]] on the island of [[Hispaniola]]. In the 16th century, the Spanish were mining extremely large quantities of silver from the mines of [[Zacatecas]] in [[New Spain]] (Mexico) and [[Potosí]] in Bolivia (formerly known as Upper Peru). The huge Spanish silver shipments from the New World to the Old attracted pirates and French [[privateer]]s like François Leclerc or Jean Fleury, both in the Caribbean and across the Atlantic, all along the route from the Caribbean to [[Seville]].

[[File:Jacquesdesores.jpg|thumb|right|French pirate [[Jacques de Sores]] looting and burning Havana in 1555]]
To combat this constant danger, in the 1560s the Spanish adopted a convoy system. A [[Spanish treasure fleet|treasure fleet]] or ''flota'' would sail annually from Seville (and later from [[Cádiz]]) in Spain, carrying passengers, troops, and European manufactured goods to the Spanish colonies of the New World. This cargo, though profitable, was really just a form of ballast for the fleet as its true purpose was to transport the year's worth of silver to Europe. The first stage in the journey was the transport of all that silver from the mines in Bolivia and New Spain in a mule convoy called the [[Spanish Silver Train|Silver Train]] to a major Spanish port, usually on the Isthmus of Panama or [[Veracruz]] in New Spain. The ''flota'' would meet up with the Silver Train, offload its cargo of manufactured goods to waiting colonial merchants and then load its holds with the precious cargo of gold and silver, in bullion or coin form. This made the returning Spanish treasure fleet a tempting target, although pirates were more likely to shadow the fleet to attack stragglers than to engage the well-armed main vessels. The classic route for the treasure fleet in the Caribbean was through the [[Lesser Antilles]] to the ports along the Spanish Main on the coast of Central America and New Spain, then northwards into the [[Yucatán Channel]] to catch the westerly winds back to Europe.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Brown |first=Justin |date=2023-11-02 |title=The Flotas and Galeones: Bringing the Riches of the New World to Spain |url=https://www.historydefined.net/flotas-and-galeones/ |access-date=2024-01-15 |language=en-US}}</ref>

By the 1560s, the [[Netherlands|Dutch United Provinces of the Netherlands]] and England, both [[Protestant]] states, were defiantly opposed to [[Roman Catholic Church|Catholic]] Spain, the greatest power of [[Christendom]] in the 16th century; while the French government was seeking to expand its colonial holdings in the New World now that Spain had proven they could be extremely profitable.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Jaenen |first=Cornelius, J. |date=February 2001 |title=French Expansion in North America |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3054275 |journal=The History Teacher |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=155–164 |doi=10.2307/3054275 |jstor=3054275 }}</ref> It was the French who had established the first non-Spanish settlement in the Caribbean when they had founded [[Fort Caroline]] near what is now [[Jacksonville, Florida]] in 1564, although the settlement was soon wiped out by a Spanish attack from the larger colony of [[St. Augustine, Florida|Saint Augustine]]. As the [[Treaty of Tordesillas]] had proven unenforceable, a new concept of "[[lines of amity]]", with the northern bound being the Tropic of Cancer and the eastern bound the Prime Meridian passing through the [[Canary Islands]], is said to have been verbally agreed upon by French and Spanish negotiators of the [[Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/3/5/6/pages313566/p313566-11.php|title=(Page 11 of 18) – Unequal War and the Changing Borders of International Society authored by Colombo, Alessandro.|access-date=30 July 2013|archive-date=6 November 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131106005259/http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/1/3/5/6/pages313566/p313566-11.php|url-status=dead}}</ref> South and west of these lines, respectively, no protection could be offered to non-Spanish ships, "no peace beyond the line." English, Dutch and French pirates and settlers moved into this region even in times of nominal peace with the Spanish.

The Spanish, despite being the most powerful state in Christendom at the time, could not afford a sufficient military presence to control such a vast area of ocean or enforce their exclusionary, mercantilist trading laws. These laws allowed only Spanish merchants to trade with the colonists of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. This arrangement provoked constant smuggling against the Spanish trading laws and new attempts at Caribbean colonization in peacetime by England, France and the Netherlands. Whenever a war was declared in Europe between the Great Powers the result was always widespread piracy and privateering throughout the Caribbean.
[[File: Philip II's realms in 1598.png|right|thumb|250px|The [[Iberian Union]] of Spain and Portugal (1580–1640)]]
The [[Anglo-Spanish War (1585)|Anglo-Spanish War]] in 1585–1604 was partly due to trade disputes in the New World. A focus on extracting mineral and agricultural wealth from the New World rather than building productive, self-sustaining settlements in its colonies; inflation fueled in part by the massive shipments of silver and gold to Western Europe; endless rounds of expensive wars in Europe; an aristocracy that disdained commercial opportunities; and an inefficient system of tolls and tariffs that hampered industry all contributed to [[Decline of Spain|Spain's decline]] during the 17th century. However, very profitable trade continued between Spain's [[Spanish Empire|colonies]], which continued to expand until the early 19th century.

Meanwhile, in the Caribbean, the arrival of European diseases with Columbus had reduced the local [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native American]] populations; the native population of New Spain fell as much as 90% from its original numbers in the 16th century.<ref>Bartolome de Las Casas, ''The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account'' (1542)</ref> This loss of native population led Spain to increasingly rely on African slave labor to run Spanish America's colonies, plantations and mines and the [[Atlantic slave trade|trans-Atlantic slave trade]] offered new sources of profit for the many English, Dutch and French traders who could violate the Spanish mercantilist laws with impunity. But the relative emptiness of the Caribbean also made it an inviting place for England, France and the Netherlands to set up colonies of their own, especially as gold and silver became less important as commodities to be seized and were replaced by tobacco and sugar as cash crops that could make men very rich.

As Spain's military might in Europe weakened, the Spanish trading laws in the New World were violated with greater frequency by the merchants of other nations. The Spanish port on the island of [[Trinidad]] off the northern coast of South America, permanently settled only in 1592, became a major point of contact between all the nations with a presence in the Caribbean.