Buccaneers of the Caribbean: How Piracy Forged an Empire » (New Edition)

Jon Latimer lectured at the University of Wales, Swansea and served in the Territorial Army. He is the author of 1812: War with America and Alamein (both from Harvard).

During the seventeenth century, sea raiders known as buccaneers controlled the Caribbean. Buccaneers were not pirates but privateers, licensed to attack the Spanish by the governments of England, France, and Holland. Jon Latimer charts the exploits of these men who followed few rules as they forged new empires.

Lacking effective naval power, the English, French, and Dutch developed privateering as the means of protecting their young New World colonies. They developed a form of semi-legal private warfare, often carried out regardless of political developments on the other side of the Atlantic, but usually with tacit approval from London, Paris, and Amsterdam. Drawing on letters, diaries, and memoirs of such figures as William Dampier, Sieur Raveneau de Lussan, Alexander Oliver Exquemelin, and Basil Ringrose, Jon Latimer portrays a world of madcap adventurers, daredevil seafarers, and dangerous rogues.

Piet Hein of the Dutch West India Company captured, off the coast of Cuba, the Spanish treasure fleet, laden with American silver, and funded the Dutch for eight months in their fight against Spain. The switch from tobacco to sugar transformed the Caribbean, and everyone scrambled for a quick profit in the slave trade. Oliver Cromwell’s ludicrous Western Design—a grand scheme to conquer Central America—fizzled spectacularly, while the surprising prosperity of Jamaica set England solidly on the road to empire. The infamous Henry Morgan conducted a dramatic raid through the tropical jungle of Panama that ended in the burning of Panama City.

From the crash of gunfire to the billowing sail on the horizon, Latimer brilliantly evokes the dramatic age of the buccaneers.

Publishers Weekly

In the 17th century the legalities of privateering were ever in flux. A pirate one day might receive a royal commission the next, becoming a "privateer" fighting for the crown; it is these privateers-or in England, buccaneers-that are Latimer's focus. Spain was the juggernaut of the era, but swashbuckling seafarers (as well as continental wars and poor colonial management) contributed to the slow diminishment of its power. Recounted here are numerous tales of sieges and nautical battles, daring escapes and surprising disasters, vicious raids, piratical infighting, violent religious tensions, and the political jockeying of European powers struggling for dominance in the New World. Latimer (Alamein) employs clear, spare prose with an eye for the potent detail to accentuate a story. Readers new to the period may struggle to keep track of the players in this detailed account, preferring a more accessible introduction. However, those familiar with the era or seeking an in-depth treatment will delight in this rich history, drawing on remarkable primary sources to make a readable narrative on the exciting age of the buccaneers. 17 pages of color and b&w illus.; 6 maps.
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