Piracy in the Caribbean

The era of piracy in the Caribbean began in the 1500s and phased out in the 1830s after the navies of the nations of Western Europe and North America with colonies in the Caribbean began hunting and prosecuting pirates. The period during which pirates were most successful was from the 1660s to the 1730s. Piracy flourished in the Caribbean because of the existence of pirate seaports such as Port Royal in Jamaica,^[1] Tortuga in Haiti, and Nassau in the Bahamas.^[2] Piracy in the Caribbean was part of a larger historical phenomenon of piracy, as it existed close to major trade and exploration routes in almost all the five oceans.^[3]^[4]^[5]

^ Campo-Flores/ Arian, "Yar, Mate! Swashbuckler Tours!," Newsweek 180, no. 6 (2002): 58.
^ Smith, Simon. "Piracy in early British America." History Today 46, no. 5 (May 1996): 29.
^ Peter Gerhard, Pirates of New Spain, 1575–1742. Dover Books 2003. ISBN 978-0486426112
^ Peter Gerhard, Pirates of the Pacific, 1575–1742. University of Nebraska Press 1990 ISBN 978-0803270305
^ Kris Lane, foreword by Hugh O'Shaughnessy Blood and Silver: the history of piracy in the Caribbean and Central America, Oxford, Signal (1967) and (1999)