Equiano and the Pirates: How Gentlemanly Capitalism Saved the Seas

by: Eliyah Afzal

Since the dawn of navigation, a breed of ill-meaning men has roamed the sea intending violence and vicious confiscation of property, the pirates. During the 1700s, there was an epidemic of piracy throughout the “West Indies,” and simultaneously, the nation of Great Britain was forging an empire. During this process, the government of Britain developed into a fiscal military state. Olaudah Equiano was an African who wrote a widely circulated autobiography, this text is often perceived as a window into the experience of ordinary people living in the British Empire during the latter half of the seventeen hundreds. His experience in relation to piracy in conjunction with his relationship to the British state exemplifies the benefits of the transformation of the British government during the colonial era for the people over whom it ruled. In other words, the lives of sailors like Equiano during the 1700s were improved by the rise of the British fiscal military state because it reduced piracy.

            Piracy was well entrenched in the Atlantic as well was elsewhere at the beginning of the century but by Equiano’s time piracy had become relatively rare. Before the age of exploration the Mediterranean was the hub of traffic for sea traders. During this phase piracy ran rampant throughout most sailors’ experience. Alison Games explains: “Pirates were a particular menace in the Mediterranean, a region shaped by a culture of piracy and ransom.” [1] Piracy could not be stopped; on the one hand pirates could take advantage of cultural differences. Muslim pirates preying on Christian vessels but then finding safe harbor in the ports on the south and east coasts of the Mediterranean and vice-versa for Christian pirates preying on Moorish shipping and harboring in Christian lands without fear of persecution. Also, the balance of naval power was such that there was no fleet capable of patrolling the Mediterranean and rooting out the dens of evil that plagued maritime commerce. Neither the Christians nor the Muslims had naval dominance in the Mediterranean until the battle of Lepanto but even that did not bring order to the seas. Before nation states, monarchies and city states could rarely afford standing armies and almost never had fleets at their disposal to roam the sea-lanes preserving order. After the age of exploration the Atlantic became just as bad. The English were even the ones funding piracy and privateers to raid Spanish shipping well into the 1500s. When they made their own colonies in America they began to feel the sting of piracy themselves. For example,  “In 1724, Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia lamented his lack of some safe opportunity to get home” for fear of pirates of whom he says, “those barbarous wretches can be moved to cut off the nose and ears of a master,” demonstrating that in the early part of the eighteenth century pirates were both a potent and terrifying presence in the Atlantic.[2]There is even more primary evidence that piracy was a problem at the beginning of Equiano’s century, parliament mentions them as part of,  “the Danger of the Seas, Enemies, Pirates, Conflicting Princes and Rulers…” in An Act for Better Securing the Duties of East India Goods.[3]Here the pirates are immortalized in contemporary legislation. Piracy existed and loomed large and frightening in the consciousness of sailors at the outset of the eighteenth century.

            Piracy had to be stopped for Britain and the rest of Europe to appreciate the fruits of trade and enjoy their eminent commercial revolution. Atlantic piracy was at its worst following the war of Spanish succession which ended in 1714 and after which the British had greatly downsized their navy. Peter Earle, the author of The Pirate Wars describes this period as a golden age for piracy but then goes on to narrate its decline: “and so at last the golden age of piracy came to an end. The freedom- and drink-loving pirates had their moment of fame, but in the long run the navy, the law and the self-destructive nature of the pirates themselves ensured that piracy was not an occupation with a very long life expectancy.”[4]Regardless of how it happened, the scourge of sea-scum that plagued the Atlantic shipping ceased to exist by the third and fourth decades of the eighteenth century. Alfred Bradford, the author of Flying the Black Flag: A Brief History of Piracy, ascribes responsibility for this peace upon the water to the British: “The British in particular, but other powers, too, made a concerted effort in the early 1700s to catch and hang pirates in the Americas. By the 1730s pirates in American waters were almost extinct.”[5]So the facts run that during the beginning of the eighteenth century piracy was a serious problem in the Atlantic but by the 1730s the British had, for the most part, solved the problem through extermination and enforced order on the seas lanes.

            Pirates should be important to those reading Equiano’s autobiography because Equiano was a sailor. The majority of his professional life was spent at sea and thus his narrative reflects the contemporary worldview of a sailor.  Pirates entered the worldview of most contemporary sailors because most sailors were almost superstitiously afraid of them. David Cordingly, the author of a book entitled Under the Black Flag: the Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates, describes the phenomenon thus: “Men and women who were attacked by pirates found it a terrifying and deeply shocking experience.”[6]  This trauma seeped into the mythology of the era and even Equiano, after the decline of Atlantic piracy, found himself confronted with the popular perception of pirates’ brutality. The phenomenon arises in his narrative:

Our captain, who was a Welchman, swore that they were pirates, and would kill us. I said, be that as it might, we must board her if we were to die for it; and, if they should not receive us kindly, we must oppose them as well as we could; for there was no alternative between their perishing and ours.[7]

The sheer legacy of the pirates from the early part of the century was still completely alive during Equiano’s voyage. This is a testament to the extent to which piracy had become a part of the maritime world into which Equiano was thrust.

            This legacy of fear was, however, utterly grounded in factual reality. Cordingly explains, “Those who spent time among the pirates were horrified by their foul language, drunken orgies, and casual brutality.”[8] The pirates were known for bloody sensationalism and propensity to take revenge upon the established social order. For example, pirates often tortured or executed the captains of ships they captured in order to carry out justice against the established hierarchy in lawful society. In one ordeal, called the “Sweat” the ship’s captain, society’s expression of hegemonic power, was made to circle the mizzenmast for ten minutes while twenty-five men stabbed his buttocks with instruments of pain. [9] This demonstrates the strange anti-establishment morality that did exist in pirate culture. One of the results of this ideology of defiance and rejection was that pirate crews tended to multiply when they captured ships. Lawful society had but a tenuous hold on sailors already either impressed or impoverished against their will and they would often join their captors rather than face the horrors of captivity. Bradford describes this phenomenon, “These are hard lessons—if societies do not check piracy, when pirates are few, they may have to pay a fearsome price in cash, property, and lives, and possibly more, because sometimes the pirates win.”[10] They terrorized the Atlantic materially and mentally therefore playing a large role in the lives of contemporary sailors. The pirates, while they existed, had a huge effect on the mindset of contemporary sailors so their absence in Equiano’s time must have had an equally profound effect on his life and the world presented in his autobiography.

            The simplest material effect of the eradication of piracy upon the lives of eighteenth century sailors was that they no longer needed to protect themselves from pirates they no longer needed to fear. In an age when the seas were unsafe a merchant marine might have had to double as warships if they engaged with a vessel flying the black flag. Rediker says that often, “A knowledgeable gunner was essential to the crew’s safety if a ship had any pretense of self-defense.” [11] This makes perfect sense in the context of the early eighteenth century when piracy was still a threat. It is more profitable to make voyages with a smaller crew so in Equiano’s time he writes: “Our vessel, which had not been tight at first, was much less so now; and, though we were but nine in the whole, including five sailors and myself.”[12]                              He had set out with only nine crewmembers; needless to say, any pirate ship they encountered would have easily overcome their ship. Therefore, this demonstrates that Equiano could not have been the least bit concerned with the possibility of encountering pirates. Thus, the success of the British navy in exterminating the pirates on the Atlantic affected Equiano’s life and his narrative.

            The threatening sea dogs would have played a large role in Equiano’s life had they not been stopped. Piracy did not phase out due to environmental or economic factors; only heroic British sailors (one generation previous to Equiano) could make the seas safe again. Peter T. Leeson, who wrote The Invisible Hook, explains:

Authorities needed to capture pirates so they could be tried, or otherwise cajole sea dogs into surrendering their swashbuckling lifestyle. England’s decision in 1717 to send former privateer captain Woodes Rogers to put the pirates’ largest and most important land base in the Bahamas under government rule was one important step in this direction.[13]

Still, it was not simple to bring an end to the pirate threat. Most of his majesty’s ships in the Caribbean were not organized into large fleets and they all knew they could make more money convoying Spanish ships than hunting pirates. Regardless Peter Earle writes, “Given all the problems and temptations they faced, the Royal Navy captains did quite a good job in this first phase of the war against the pirates, as far as can be told from the few surviving logbooks.”[14]

 It was the ships of the Royal Navy in Virginia and the Caribbean who vanquished Blackbeard, Bartholemew Roberts, Jack Rackham, and the other buccaneers of legend. In so doing those righteous seamen had a profound effect upon Equiano’s life as he navigated a safer Atlantic ocean.

            The Royal Navy was only able to succeed in cleansing the great blue waters as a result of the successful crafting of the British government into a fiscal military state. England as a nation was governed and taxed by the legitimate authority of the king in parliament since the time of Henry the eighth, but it was not enough simply for England to be a nation state to empower them to rid the seas of pirates. The British Isles during the seventeenth century came to be the forefront of a revolution both in state crafting and economics. In 1645, when parliament formed Cromwell’s New Model Army Britain became the first European nation with a standing army. Later, in 1688, William of Orange ascended the throne bringing with him the developments of the commercial revolution, which had already been flourishing in Holland. Now, with their standing army, Britain entered the commercial age with a national bank, colonies to exploit, and a growing class of money men just learning the ins and outs of joint stock companies and colonial corporations. Linda Colley summarizes the new mindset of the Britons: “Profits from servicing the war machine; profits as more and more colonies were won; profits from new ports opened by naval power and treaties; profits from cheaper raw materials and exotic commodities;” [15]  They created what is known as a fiscal military state, which is defined as a state that bases its economic model on the sustainment of its armed forces. In other words, Britain was only able to fund itself because its navy enforced trade monopolies both exploiting the natives and colonists and excluding other European powers.

This might seem ineffective but it was extremely lucrative as long as the Royal Navy was successful (always won wars, especially defending lucrative colonies), and it was because that is the primary goal of a fiscal military state. With the combined power of the legitimate authority of congress and the efficiency of their fiscal military state the British were able to carry out this act:

And in so doing, they rid the seas of their most potent menace, pirates. Piracy had been outlawed at least twice before as the statute mentions but it was not until the full ramifications of political and economic reforms made in the seventeenth century had ripened that this law was enforced in reality. It was successfully brought to bear and sailors like Equiano benefited throughout the rest of the century.

            Equiano lived in a time of prosperity for Britain. One aspect of the prosperity was the lack of pirates raiding trade and shipping throughout British domains. This freedom and safety in the British maritime world was the result of the cumulative effect of improvements to both Britain’s economic system and the bureaucratic body ruling over it that had been made in the previous century. Therefore, Equiano and his experience with piracy, demonstrates the success of Britain’s policy-makers during the period of the Glorious Revolution in improving the lives of their citizens even decades after their deaths.