Editing Piracy in the Caribbean (section)

===Seventeenth century crisis and colonial repercussions===
{{unreferenced section|date=February 2015}}
[[File:Prise et pillage de Carthagene d'Amerique en 1697 par Pointis.jpg|thumb|200px|The French [[raid on Cartagena (1697)|raid on Cartagena]] took place on 6 May 1697, as part of the [[Nine Years' War|War of the Grand Alliance]]]]
The mid-17th century in the Caribbean was again shaped by events in far-off Europe. For the Dutch Netherlands, France, Spain and the [[Holy Roman Empire]], the [[Thirty Years' War]] being fought in Germany, the last great religious war in Europe, had degenerated into an outbreak of [[famine]], [[Plague (disease)|plague]] and starvation that managed to kill off one-third to one-half of the population of Germany. England, having avoided any entanglement in the European mainland's wars, had fallen victim to its own ruinous [[English Civil War|civil war]] that resulted in the short but brutal [[Puritan]] military dictatorship (1649–1660) of the Lord Protector [[Oliver Cromwell]] and his [[Roundhead]] armies. Of all the European Great Powers, Spain was in the worst shape economically and militarily as the Thirty Years' War concluded in 1648. Economic conditions had become so poor for the Spanish by the middle of the 17th century that a major rebellion began against the bankrupt and ineffective [[Habsburg]] government of [[Philip IV of Spain|King Philip IV]] (r. 1625–1665) that was eventually put down only with bloody reprisals by the Spanish Crown. This did not make Philip IV more popular.

But disasters in the Old World bred opportunities in the New World. The [[Spanish Empire]]'s colonies were badly neglected from the middle of the 17th century because of Spain's many woes. Freebooters and privateers, experienced after decades of European warfare, pillaged and plundered the almost defenseless Spanish settlements with ease and with little interference from the European governments back home who were too worried about their own problems to turn much attention to their New World colonies. The non-Spanish colonies were growing and expanding across the Caribbean, fueled by a great increase in immigration as people fled from the chaos and lack of economic opportunity in Europe. While most of these new immigrants settled into the West Indies' expanding plantation economy, others took to the life of the buccaneer. Meanwhile, the Dutch, at last independent of Spain when the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia ended their own [[Eighty Years War]] (1568–1648) with the Habsburgs, made a fortune carrying the European trade goods needed by these new colonies. Peaceful trading was not as profitable as privateering, but it was a safer business.

By the later half of the 17th century, [[Barbados]] had become the unofficial capital of the English West Indies before this position was claimed by [[Jamaica]] later in the century. Barbados was a merchant's dream port in this period. European goods were freely available, the island's sugar crop sold for premium prices, and the island's English governor rarely sought to enforce any type of mercantilist regulations. The English colonies at Saint Kitts and Nevis were economically strong and now well-populated as the demand for sugar in Europe increasingly drove their plantation-based economies. The English had also expanded their dominion in the Caribbean and settled several new islands, including [[Bermuda]] in 1612, [[Antigua]] and [[Montserrat]] in 1632, and [[Eleuthera]] in the Bahamas in 1648, though these settlements began like all the others as relatively tiny communities that were not economically self-sufficient.

The French also founded major new colonies on the sugar-growing islands of [[Guadeloupe]] in 1634 and [[Martinique]] in 1635 in the Lesser Antilles. However, the heart of French activity in the Caribbean in the 17th century remained [[Tortuga (Haiti)|Tortuga]], the fortified island haven off the coast of Hispaniola for privateers, buccaneers and outright pirates. The main French colony on the rest of Hispaniola remained the settlement of Petit-Goâve, which was the French toehold that would develop into the modern state of [[Haiti]]. French privateers still used the tent city anchorages in the Florida Keys to plunder the Spaniards' shipping in the [[Straits of Florida]], as well as to raid the shipping that plied the sealanes off the northern coast of [[Cuba]].

For the Dutch in the 17th century, the Caribbean island of [[Curaçao]] was the equivalent of England's port at Barbados. This large, rich, well-defended free port, open to the ships of all the European states, offered good prices for tobacco, sugar and cocoa that were re-exported to Europe and also sold large quantities of manufactured goods in return to the colonists of every nation in the New World. A second Dutch-controlled free port had also developed on the island of [[Sint Eustatius]] which was settled in 1636. The constant back-and-forth warfare between the Dutch and the English for possession of it in the 1660s later damaged the island's economy and desirability as a port. The Dutch also had set up a settlement on the island of [[Saint Martin (island)|Saint Martin]] which became another haven for Dutch sugar planters and their African slave labor. In 1648, the Dutch agreed to divide the prosperous island in half with the French.