Editing Privateer (section)

==Legal framework and relation to piracy==
{{main|Prize law|Piracy}}
The commission was the proof the privateer was not a [[pirate]]. It usually limited activity to one particular ship, and specified officers, for a specific period of time. Typically, the owners or captain would be required to post a [[performance bond]]. The commission also dictated the expected nationality of potential prize ships under the terms of the war. At sea, the privateer captain was obliged to produce the commission to a potential prize ship's captain as evidence of the legitimacy of their prize claim. If the nationality of a prize was not the enemy of the commissioning sovereign, the privateer could not claim the ship as a prize. Doing so would be an act of piracy.

In British law, under the [[Offences at Sea Act 1536]], piracy, or raiding a ship without a valid commission, was an act of [[treason]]. By the late 17th century, the prosecution of privateers loyal to the usurped [[King James II]] for piracy began to shift the legal framework of piracy away from treason towards crime against property.<ref name="Craze, Sarah 2016">{{cite journal |last=Craze |first=Sarah |title=Prosecuting Privateers for Piracy: How Piracy Law Transitioned from Treason to a Crime against Property |journal=The International Journal of Maritime History |volume=28 |number=4 |date=2016 |pages=654–670|doi=10.1177/0843871416663987 |s2cid=159998526 }}</ref> As a result, privateering commissions became a matter of national discretion. By the passing of the [[Piracy Act 1717]], a privateer's allegiance to Britain overrode any allegiance to a sovereign providing the commission. This helped bring privateers under the legal jurisdiction of their home country in the event the privateer turned pirate. Other European countries followed suit. The shift from treason to property also justified the criminalisation of traditional sea-raiding activities of people Europeans wished to colonise.
[[File:Witte de With's Action with Dunkirkers off Nieuwpoort, 1640 RMG BHC0272.jpg|thumb|[[Dutch States Navy|Dutch warships]] under [[Witte de With]] fighting against [[Dunkirkers|Dunkirk Privateers]] off [[Nieuwpoort, Belgium|Nieuwpoort]] in 1640]]
The legal framework around authorised sea-raiding was considerably murkier outside of Europe. Unfamiliarity with local forms of authority created difficulty determining who was legitimately sovereign on land and at sea, whether to accept their authority, or whether the opposing parties were, in fact, pirates. Mediterranean [[Barbary pirates|corsairs]] operated with a style of patriotic-religious authority that Europeans, and later Americans, found difficult to understand and accept.{{citation-needed|date=October 2020}} It did not help that many European privateers happily accepted commissions from the [[dey]]s of [[Algiers]], [[Tangiers]] and [[Tunis]]. {{citation-needed|date=October 2020}}  The sultans of the [[Sulu archipelago]] (now present-day [[Philippines]]) held only a tenuous authority over the local [[Iranun]] communities of slave-raiders. The sultans created a carefully spun web of marital and political alliances in an attempt to control unauthorised raiding that would provoke war against them.<ref>{{cite book |last=Warren |first=James Francis |title=The Sulu Zone 1768–1898 |location=Singapore |publisher=Singapore University Press |date=1981}}</ref> In Malay political systems, the legitimacy and strength of their Sultan's management of trade determined the extent he exerted control over the sea-raiding of his coastal people.<ref>{{cite book |last=Murray |first=Dian H. |title=Pirates of the South China Coast |location=California |publisher=Stanford University Press |date=1987}}</ref>

Privateers were implicated in piracy for a number of complex reasons. For colonial authorities, successful privateers were skilled seafarers who brought in much-needed revenue, especially in newly settled colonial outposts.<ref>{{cite book |last=Zahedieh |first=Nuala |author-link=Nuala Zahedieh |title=Naval History 1500–1680 |date=2005 |publisher=Ashgate Publishing Limited |editor-last=Glete |editor-first=Jan |series=The International Library of Essays on Military History |location=Hants, England |pages=145–168 |chapter=A Frugal Prudential and Hopeful Trade': Privateering in Jamaica, 1644–89}}</ref> These skills and benefits often caused local authorities to overlook a privateer's shift into piracy when a war ended. The French Governor of [[Petit-Goave]] gave buccaneer [[Francois Grogniet]] blank privateering commissions, which Grogniet traded to [[Edward Davis (buccaneer)|Edward Davis]] for a spare ship so the two could continue raiding Spanish cities under a guise of legitimacy.<ref name="Marley-Pirates of the Americas">{{cite book |last1=Marley |first1=David |title=Pirates of the Americas |date=2010 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |location=Santa Barbara, California|isbn=9781598842012|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bU6ML_VnXTwC|access-date=12 September 2017}}</ref> New York Governors [[Jacob Leisler]] and [[Benjamin Fletcher]] were removed from office in part for their dealings with pirates such as [[Thomas Tew]], to whom Fletcher had granted commissions to sail against the French, but who ignored his commission to raid [[Mughal Empire|Mughal]] shipping in the [[Red Sea]] instead.<ref name="Burgess">{{cite book |last1=Burgess |first1=Douglas R Jr. |title=The Politics of Piracy: Crime and Civil Disobedience in Colonial America |date=2014 |publisher=ForeEdge from University Press of New England |location=Lebanon, New Hampshire |isbn=9781611685275 |pages=44–46 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WdiPBQAAQBAJ |access-date=31 January 2019}}</ref>

Some privateers faced prosecution for piracy. [[William Kidd]] accepted a commission from King [[William III of England]] to hunt pirates but was later [[Hanging|hanged]] for piracy. He had been unable to produce the papers of the prizes he had captured to prove his innocence.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ritchie |first=Robert C. |title=Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |date=1986}}</ref>

Privateering commissions were easy to obtain during wartime but when the war ended and sovereigns recalled the privateers, many refused to give up the lucrative business and turned to piracy.<ref name="Arnold">{{cite book |last1=Arnold |first1=Samuel Greene |title=History of the State of Rhode Island, Volume I: 1636–1700 |date=1859 |publisher=Appleton |location=New York |pages=540–541 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iUJg2uqb7LgC |access-date=31 January 2019}}</ref> Boston minister [[Cotton Mather]] lamented after the execution of pirate [[John Quelch (pirate)|John Quelch]]:<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mather |first1=Cotton |title=Faithful warnings to prevent fearful judgments. Uttered in a brief discourse, occasioned, by a tragical spectacle, in a number of miserables under a sentence of death for piracy. At Boston in N.E. Jun. 22. 1704.: [Five lines of quotations] |url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=evans;cc=evans;rgn=main;view=text;idno=N00981.0001.001 |access-date=31 January 2019 |date=October 2007}}</ref> {{Blockquote |text=Yea, since the privateering stroke so easily degenerates into the piratical and the privateering trade is usually carried on with so un-Christian a temper and proves an inlet unto so much debauchery and iniquity and confusion, I believe I shall have good men concur with me in wishing that privateering may no more be practised except there may appear more hopeful circumstances to encourage it.}}