American Piracy Dbq

Their contemporaries described them as “Robbers, Opposers, and Violators of all Laws, Humane and Divine.” Many viewed themselves as a more selfish reincarnation of Robin Hood, stealing from wealthy merchants, foreign traders, and abusive captains, and in doing so, threatening the hierarchical status quo of sixteenth and seventeenth English society by declaring “war against the world.” The Law considered them hostes humani generis, enemies of all mankind. In reality, pirates of the Golden Age, a period loosely covering the years 1660-1730, were none of those things, or perhaps more accurately, were not one but a combination. They were all robbers, since piracy in its most elementary definition is nothing more than a robbery at sea, something
The cases of William Kidd in London (1696), John Quelch in Boston (1704), and Thomas Green in Edinburgh (1705) epitomize this manipulation. Although officials in London criticized the procedures of both trials, they did nothing to ensure similar outcomes of judicial impropriety would not occur in the future. Instead of implanting safeguards into piracy laws protecting the accused, Parliament and the Board of Trade consistently strengthened the existing laws, widening the scope of potential offenders and harshening the sanctions against those convicted. The crown’s view of piracy as a clear and present threat to national interest ensured the toleration of a certain level of “collateral damage” as long as it cleansed the sea of those hostes humani
The pertinent legal question for many of the trials prior to the war was at what point did acting outside a captain’s privateer commission constitute piracy? Since privateer commissions specifically restricted hostile acts to enemies of the crown, the common practice during the seventeenth century of attacking neutral ships or trading allies were technically acts of piracy, despite the general acceptance returning pirates received from home ports. However, when pirates commenced their illegal activities after the conclusion of hostilities with France and Spain, they were no longer satisfied with praying on vessels in the South Sea as had the previous generation of sea rovers. As English pirates turned there felonious endeavors to English ships, carrying English goods, the murky legality of their actions became quite clear; they were pirates plain and simple. As such, the instances of innocent men hanging in the gallows became less frequent. Yet it is important for modern readers to remember that a man can be guilty of a crime and still improperly tryed, convicted and executed. It is in this way that we must examine the piracy trials occurring after 1713 to discover the continuation of judicial procedural