Editing Piracy in the Caribbean (section)

===Early seventeenth century, 1600–1660===
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====Changes in demography====
In the early 17th century, expensive fortifications and the size of the colonial garrisons at the major Spanish ports increased to deal with the enlarged presence of Spain's competitors in the Caribbean, but the treasure fleet's silver shipments and the number of Spanish-owned merchant ships operating in the region declined.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Forts and Fortifications, Spanish America {{!}} Encyclopedia.com |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/forts-and-fortifications-spanish-america |access-date=2025-05-20 |website=www.encyclopedia.com}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |title=The Capture of the Spanish Silver Fleet Near Havana, 1628 |url=https://snr.org.uk/maritime-art/the-capture-of-the-spanish-silver-fleet-near-havana-1628/ |archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20231216152642/https://snr.org.uk/maritime-art/the-capture-of-the-spanish-silver-fleet-near-havana-1628/ |archive-date=2023-12-16 |access-date=2025-05-20 |work=SNR |language=en-US}}</ref> Additional problems came from shortage of food supplies because of the lack of people to work farms. The number of European-born Spaniards in the New World or Spaniards of pure blood who had been born in New Spain, known as peninsulares and [[Creole peoples|creoles]], respectively, in the Spanish [[caste system]], totaled no more than 250,000 people in 1600.

At the same time, England and France were powers on the rise in 17th-century Europe as they mastered their own internal religious schisms between [[Catholic Church|Catholics]] and [[Protestants]] and the resulting societal peace allowed their economies to rapidly expand. England especially began to turn its people's maritime skills into the basis of commercial prosperity. English and French kings of the early 17th century—[[James I of England|James I]] (r. 1603–1625) and [[Henry IV of France|Henry IV]] (r. 1598–1610), respectively, each sought more peaceful relations with [[Habsburg Spain]] in an attempt to decrease the financial costs of the ongoing wars. Although the onset of peace in 1604 reduced the opportunities for both piracy and privateering against Spain's colonies, neither monarch discouraged his nation from trying to plant new colonies in the New World and break the Spanish monopoly on the [[Western Hemisphere]]. The reputed riches, pleasant climate and the general emptiness of the Americas all beckoned to those eager to make their fortunes and a large assortment of Frenchmen and Englishmen began new colonial ventures during the early 17th century, both in North America, which lay basically empty of European settlement north of Mexico, and in the Caribbean, where Spain remained the dominant power until late in the century.

As for the Dutch Netherlands, after decades of rebellion against Spain fueled by both Dutch nationalism and their staunch Protestantism, independence had been gained in all but name (and that too would eventually come with the [[Treaty of Westphalia]] in 1648). The Netherlands had become Europe's economic powerhouse. With new, innovative ship designs like the [[fluyt]] (a cargo vessel able to be operated with a small crew and enter relatively inaccessible ports) rolling out of the ship yards in [[Amsterdam]] and [[Rotterdam]], new capitalist economic arrangements like the joint-stock company taking root and the military reprieve provided by the Twelve Year Truce with the Spanish (1609–1621), Dutch commercial interests were expanding explosively across the globe, but particularly in the New World and East Asia. However, in the early 17th century, the most powerful Dutch companies, like the [[Dutch East India Company]], were most interested in developing operations in the [[East Indies]] ([[Indonesia]]) and Japan, and left the West Indies to smaller, more independent Dutch operators.

=====Spanish ports=====
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{{History of New Spain}}

In the early 17th century, the Spanish colonies of [[Cartagena, Colombia|Cartagena]], [[Havana]], [[Panamá Viejo]], [[Portobelo, Colón|Porto Bello]], [[Santiago de Cuba]], [[Santo Domingo]], and [[San Juan, Puerto Rico|San Juan]] were among the most important settlements of the [[Spanish West Indies]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1867/treasure-ports-of-the-spanish-main/ |title=Treasure Ports of the Spanish Main |last=Cartwright |first=Mark |website=[[World History Encyclopedia]] |publisher=World History Foundation – World History Publishing}}</ref> Each possessed a large population and a self-sustaining economy, and was well-protected by Spanish defenders. These Spanish settlements were generally unwilling to deal with traders from the other European states because of the strict enforcement of Spain's mercantilist laws pursued by the large Spanish garrisons. In these cities European manufactured goods could command premium prices for sale to the colonists, while the trade goods of the New World—tobacco, cocoa and other [[Raw material|raw materials]], were shipped back to Europe.

By 1600, Porto Bello had replaced [[Nombre de Dios, Colón|Nombre de Dios]] (where [[Francis Drake|Sir Francis Drake]] had first attacked a Spanish settlement) as the Isthmus of Panama's Caribbean port for the Spanish Silver Train and the annual treasure fleet. [[Veracruz (city)|Veracruz]], the only port city open to trans-Atlantic trade in New Spain, continued to serve the vast interior of New Spain as its window on the Caribbean. By the 17th century, the majority of the towns along the Spanish Main and in Central America had become self-sustaining. The smaller towns of the Main grew tobacco and also welcomed foreign smugglers who avoided the Spanish mercantilist laws. The underpopulated inland regions of Hispaniola and Venezuela were another area where tobacco smugglers in particular were welcome to ply their trade.

The Spanish-ruled island of [[Trinidad]] was already a wide-open port open to the ships and seamen of every nation in the region at the start of the 17th century, and was a particular favorite for smugglers who dealt in tobacco and European manufactured goods. Local Caribbean smugglers sold their tobacco or sugar for decent prices and then bought manufactured goods from the trans-Atlantic traders in large quantities to be dispersed among the colonists of the West Indies and the Spanish Main who were eager for a little touch of home. The Spanish governor of Trinidad, who both lacked strong harbor fortifications and possessed only a laughably small garrison of Spanish troops, could do little but take lucrative bribes from English, French and Dutch smugglers and look the other way—or risk being overthrown and replaced by his own people with a more pliable administrator.

=====Other ports=====
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The English had established an early colony known as [[Colony of Virginia|Virginia]] in 1607 and one on the island of [[Barbados]] in the West Indies in 1625, although this small settlement's people faced considerable dangers from the local [[Island Caribs|Carib]] Indians (believed to be cannibals) for some time after its founding. The two early colonies needed regular imports from England, sometimes of food but primarily of woollen textiles. The main early exports back to England included sugar, tobacco, and tropical food. No large tobacco plantations or even truly organized defenses were established by the English on its Caribbean settlements at first and it would take time for England to realize just how valuable its possessions in the Caribbean could prove to be. Eventually, African slaves would be purchased through the [[Atlantic slave trade]]. They would work the colonies and fuel Europe's tobacco, rice and sugar supply; by 1698 England had the largest slave exports with the most efficiency in their labor in relation to any other European imperial power. Barbados, the first truly successful English colony in the [[West Indies]], grew fast as the 17th century wore on and by 1698 [[Jamaica]] would be England's biggest colony to employ slave labor.<ref>Morgan, Kenneth. "Symbiosis: Trade and the British Empire." BBC. Accessed 17 February 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/trade_empire_01.shtml.</ref>  Increasingly, English ships chose to use it as their primary home port in the Caribbean. Like [[Trinidad]], merchants in the trans-Atlantic trade who based themselves on Barbados always paid good money for tobacco and sugar. Both of these commodities remained the key cash crops of this period and fueled the growth of the American Southern Colonies as well as their counterparts in the Caribbean.

After the destruction of [[Fort Caroline]] by the Spanish, the French made no further colonization attempts in the Caribbean for several decades as France was convulsed by its own Catholic-Protestant religious divide during the late 16th century [[French Wars of Religion|Wars of Religion]]. However, old French privateering anchorages with small "tent camp" towns could be found during the early 17th century in the [[Bahamas]]. These settlements provided little more than a place for ships and their crews to take on some fresh water and food and perhaps have a dalliance with the local [[camp followers]], all of which would have been quite expensive.

From 1630 to 1654, Dutch merchants had a port in Brazil known as [[Recife]]. It was initially founded by the Portuguese in 1548.<ref>"Recife," Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. (2011): 1.</ref> The Dutch had decided in 1630 to invade several sugar producing cities in Portuguese-controlled Brazil, including Salvador and Natal. From 1630 to 1654, they took control of Recife and [[Olinda]], making Recife the new capital of the territory of [[Dutch Brazil]], renaming the city Mauritsstad. During this period, Mauritsstad became one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the world. Unlike the Portuguese, the Dutch did not prohibit Judaism. The first Jewish community and the first synagogue in the Americas—[[Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue]]—was founded with the help of [[Moses Cohen Henriques]] in the city.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue: Founded by Jewish Pirates and Brothers |url=https://theclio.com/entry/160244 |access-date=2024-01-15 |website=Clio |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |title=Synagogue in Brazilian Town Recife Considered Oldest in the Americas |url=https://www.haaretz.com/2007-11-12/ty-article/synagogue-in-brazilian-town-recife-considered-oldest-in-the-americas/0000017f-e3cc-d568-ad7f-f3ef549e0000 |access-date=2024-01-15 |work=Haaretz |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Week |first=Jew of the |date=2021-12-29 |title=Jew of the Week: Moses Cohen Henriques {{!}} Jew of the Week |url=https://www.jewoftheweek.net/2021/12/29/jew-of-the-week-moses-cohen-henriques/ |access-date=2024-01-15 |language=en-US}}</ref>

The Portuguese inhabitants fought on their own to expel the Dutch in 1654, being helped by the involvement of the Dutch in the [[First Anglo-Dutch War]]. The Dutch fought for nine years, only surrendering when safe passage for the Jews was guaranteed by the Portuguese. This was known as the Insurreição Pernambucana ([[Pernambucan Insurrection]]). Most of the Jews fled to Amsterdam; others fled to North America, starting the first Jewish community of [[New Amsterdam]] (now known as [[New York City]]). The Dutch spent most of their time trading in smuggled goods with the smaller Spanish colonies. Trinidad was the unofficial home port for Dutch traders and privateers in the New World early in the 17th century before they established their own colonies in the region in the 1620s and 1630s. As usual, Trinidad's ineffective Spanish governor was helpless to stop the [[Dutch people|Dutch]] from using his port and instead he usually accepted their lucrative bribes.

====European struggle====
{{See also|Decline of Spain}}
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The first third of the 17th century in the Caribbean was defined by the outbreak of the savage and destructive [[Thirty Years' War]] in Europe (1618–1648), which represented both the culmination of the Protestant-Catholic conflict of the [[Reformation]] and the final showdown between [[Habsburg]] Spain and [[House of Bourbon|Bourbon]] France. The war was mostly fought in Germany, where one-third to one-half of the population would eventually be lost to the strains of the conflict, but it had some effect in the New World as well. The Spanish presence in the Caribbean began to decline at a faster rate, becoming more dependent on African slave labor. The Spanish military presence in the New World also declined as [[Madrid]] shifted more of its resources to the Old World in the Habsburgs' apocalyptic fight with almost every Protestant state in Europe. This need for Spanish resources in Europe accelerated the decay of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. The settlements of the Spanish Main and the Spanish West Indies became financially weaker and were garrisoned with a much smaller number of troops as their home countries were more consumed with happenings back in Europe. The Spanish Empire's economy remained stagnant and the Spanish colonies' plantations, ranches and mines became totally dependent upon slave labor imported from West Africa. With Spain no longer able to maintain its military control effectively over the Caribbean, the other Western European states finally began to move in and set up permanent settlements of their own, ending the Spanish monopoly over the control of the New World.

Even as the Dutch Netherlands was forced to renew its struggle against Spain for independence as part of the Thirty Years' War (the entire rebellion against the Spanish Habsburgs was called the [[Eighty Years War]] in the [[Low Countries]]), the [[Dutch Republic]] had become the world's leader in mercantile shipping and commercial capitalism, and Dutch companies finally turned their attention to the West Indies in the 17th century. The renewed war with Spain with the end of the truce offered many opportunities for the successful Dutch joint-stock companies to finance military expeditions against the Spanish Empire. The old English and French privateering anchorages from the 16th century in the Caribbean now swarmed anew with Dutch warships.

In England, a new round of colonial ventures in the New World was fueled by declining economic opportunities at home and growing religious intolerance for more radical Protestants (like the [[Puritans]]) who rejected the compromise Protestant theology of the established [[Church of England]]. After the demise of the [[Saint Lucia]] and [[Grenada]] colonies soon after their establishment, and the near-extinction of the English settlement of [[Jamestown, Virginia|Jamestown]] in [[Virginia]], new and stronger colonies were established by the English in the first half of the 17th century, at [[Plymouth, Massachusetts|Plymouth]], [[Boston]], [[Barbados]], the West Indian islands of [[Saint Kitts]] and [[Nevis]] and [[Providence Island colony|Providence Island]]. These colonies would all persevere to become centers of English civilization in the New World.

For France, now ruled by the Bourbon King [[Louis XIII]] (r. 1610–1642) and his able minister [[Cardinal Richelieu]], religious civil war had been reignited between French Catholics and Protestants (called Huguenots). Throughout the 1620s, [[Huguenots]] fled France and founded colonies in the New World much like their English counterparts. Then, in 1636, to decrease the power of the Habsburg dynasty who ruled Spain and the Holy Roman Empire on France's eastern border, France entered the cataclysm in Germany—on the Protestants' side. The [[Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659)|Franco-Spanish War]] continued until the 1659 [[Treaty of the Pyrenees]].

=====Colonial disputes=====
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[[File:Political Evolution of Central America and the Caribbean 1700 na.png|right|thumb|250px|Central America and Caribbean sovereignty in 1700]]
Many of the cities on the Spanish Main in the first third of the 17th century were self-sustaining but few had yet achieved any prosperity. The more backward settlements in Jamaica and Hispaniola were primarily places for ships to take on food and fresh water. Spanish Trinidad remained a popular smuggling port where European goods were plentiful and fairly cheap, and good prices were paid by its European merchants for tobacco.

The English colonies on Saint Kitts and Nevis, founded in 1623, would prove to become wealthy sugar-growing settlements in time. Another new English venture, the [[Providence Island colony]] on what is now [[Providencia Island]] in the [[Mosquito Coast]] of [[Nicaragua]], deep in the heart of the Spanish Empire, had become the premier base for English privateers and other pirates raiding the Spanish Main.

On the shared Anglo-French island of Saint Christophe (called "Saint Kitts" by the English) the French had the upper hand. The French settlers on Saint Christophe were mostly Catholics, while the unsanctioned but growing French colonial presence in northwest Hispaniola (the future nation of [[Haiti]]) was largely made up of French Protestants who had settled there without Spain's permission to escape Catholic persecution back home. France cared little what happened to the troublesome Huguenots, but the colonization of western Hispaniola allowed the French to both rid themselves of their religious minority and strike a blow against Spain—an excellent bargain, from the French Crown's point of view. The ambitious Huguenots had also claimed the island of [[Tortuga (Haiti)|Tortuga]] off the northwest coast of Hispaniola and had established the settlement of Petit-Goâve on the island itself. Tortuga in particular was to become a pirate and privateer haven and was beloved of smugglers of all nationalities—after all, even the creation of the settlement had been illegal.

Dutch colonies in the Caribbean remained rare until the second third of the 17th century. Along with the traditional privateering anchorages in the Bahamas and Florida, the [[Dutch West India Company]] settled a "factory" (commercial town) at [[New Amsterdam]] on the North American mainland in 1626 and at [[Curaçao]] in 1634, an island positioned right in the center of the Caribbean off the northern coast of [[Venezuela]] that was perfectly positioned to become a major maritime crossroads.