Pirates and Publicity

The Making and Unmaking of Early Modern Pirates in English and Scottish Popular Print

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20249269
AutoresC Alasdair Macfarlane (0000-0001-9179-3576, Independent Scholar, Glasgow G73, UK, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume9
Fascículo1
Páginas14
Data de publicação2020-02-05
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoHumanities (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2076-0787 • E-ISSN: 2076-0787
EditoraMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/h9010014
OpenAlexW3005104471
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas22

This essay contrasts scholarship on printed authority within buccaneer ethnographies, contemporary apologetics for colonial enterprise, and the role of publicity in the delineation of piracy within print to ask: ‘when is a pirate not a pirate?’. Beginning with the ethnographies relating to the buccaneers’ crossing of the Isthmus of Darien during the ‘Pacific Adventure’ (1679–1682), this paper describes how the buccaneers escaped prosecution through their literary materials and became socially rehabilitated as credible explorers. Drawing on materials which highlight the diverse readings of piracy within the different ‘news-cultures’ and maritime traditions which existed in the Atlantic archipelago, this paper develops an argument for a ‘popular’ conception and interpretation of piracy within publicity and periodical print which reflects its utility within competing political and maritime enterprises. Using contrasting examples of the negotiation and renegotiation of what constituted ‘piracy’ within the promotion of the attempted colonisation of the Isthmus of Darien by the Company of Scotland (1696–1700), and the literary campaign which surrounded the trial of the crew of the Worcester for piracy in 1705, this essay argues for the role of ‘public opinion’ and popular print culture in the making and unmaking of pirates in early modern anglophone print

Adventure · Art history · Colonialism · Media studies · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Print culture · Publicity · Scholarship · Sociology · History · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Travel Writing and Literature

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