Pirates, Merchants, Settlers, and Slaves: Colonial America and the Indo-Atlantic WorldIn the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, more than a thousand pirates poured from the Atlantic into the Indian Ocean. There, according to Kevin P. McDonald, they helped launch an informal trade network that spanned the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, connecting the North American colonies with the rich markets of the East Indies. Rather than conducting their commerce through chartered companies based in London or Lisbon, colonial merchants in New York entered into an alliance with Euro-American pirates based in Madagascar. Pirates, Merchants, Settlers, and Slaves explores the resulting global trade network located on the peripheries of world empires and shows the illicit ways American colonists met the consumer demand for slaves and East India goods. The book reveals that pirates played a significant yet misunderstood role in this period and that seafaring slaves were both commodities and essential components in the Indo-Atlantic maritime networks. Enlivened by stories of Indo-Atlantic sailors and cargoes that included textiles, spices, jewels and precious metals, chinaware, alcohol, and drugs, this book links previously isolated themes of piracy, colonialism, slavery, transoceanic networks, and cross-cultural interactions and extends the boundaries of traditional Atlantic, national, world, and colonial histories. |
Contents
The IndoAtlantic World
| 1 |
1 The Spectrum of Piracy
| 12 |
2 New York Merchants and the IndoAtlantic Trade | 37 |
3 Utopian Dreamers and Colonial Disasters | 61 |
4 PirateSettlers of Madagascar | 81 |
5 Seafaring Slaves and Freedom in the IndoAtlantic World | 99 |
Specters of the IndoAtlantic World | 123 |
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Common terms and phrases
aboard Adam Baldridge African Armstrong arrived Atlantic world Barbados Bellomont Betsimisaraka buccaneers Calico Jack Cape Captain Kidd captured cargo Caribbean coast colonists crew cross-cultural cultural Cygnet Dampier Dutch early modern East India Company eighteenth century Eltis Empire England English enslaved Euro-American European Fletcher Frederick Philipse French global Governor harbor historians History Indian Ocean Indies Indo-Atlantic trade network Indo-Atlantic voyage Indo-Atlantic world interlopers island Jamaica John laborers logwood Lowth Loyola Marymount University Madagascar Slave Malagasy slaves Margaret maritime Marramitta mortality rate Eltis Mughal North American colonies NYCD officials Philipse’s pillaging piracy pirate settlements pirate ships pirate-settlers pirates Platt plunder port Portuguese privateers raiding Red Sea Rediker region Ritchie Royal sailed sailors Saint Augustine Saint Helena Saint Mary’s Samuel Burgess seafaring slaves settlers seventeenth century Shelley Slave Trade Slavery Spanish Thomas Thomas Tew Utopia vessels West William William Kidd York merchants York’s