Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570–1740 by Mark G. Hanna (review)

Pirates’ Nest: the Impact of Piracy on Newport, Rhode Island and Charles Town, South Carolina, 1670–1740” (Harvard 2006), into a broader context with a long view of the role of plunder in building a “coherent, functioning and integrated [British] empire” (p. 420) between the age of Elizabeth and the outbreak of the War of Jenkins’ Ear. The “pirates” themselves are shadowy figures in the background, as Hanna focuses on their reception and treatment within Anglophone maritime communities on land. His core concern is with how attitudes to sea marauders changed as colonial and metropolitan interests supposedly became increasingly aligned. The first three chapters draw on an extensive secondary literature to tell a familiar story of how plunder was used to launch, defend, and supply the initial settlements on a frontier where state authority and piracy were vaguely defined. They end with the bold assertion that in the 1680s, Jamaica, which had been the preeminent pirate nest, was converted into “one of the most brutal and exploitative slave societies in the world” (p. 143) and, in the process, turned firmly against sea predators: a process which was later replicated elsewhere in other parts of the empire. The next two chapters describe how the shift in Jamaica was accompanied by the rise of piracy in Britain’s mainland colonies until another turning point, or imperial transformation, took place after 1696 which further changed perceptions of “pirates”. The last five chapters consider how “pirates” became increasingly marginalized and unwelcome characters in a more centralized and better regulated empire. Others have pointed to a rapid demise of piracy in the early eighteenth century, and accorded the Royal Navy a key role, but Hanna’s explanation focuses on softer power. He claims that pirate nests were transformed into proMark G. Hanna, Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570–1740, Chapel Hill, NC: North Carolina Press, 2015, Maps, 464 pp.