DAVIDSON COLLEGE

Spring 2003

History 262: Piracy in the Americas

T-Th 1:00 - 2:15

Chambers 334

As the two boys walked sorrowing along, they made a new compact to stand by each other and be brothers and never separate till death relieved them of their troubles. Then they began to lay their plans. Joe was for being a hermit, and living on crusts in a remote cave, and dying, some time, of cold, and want, and grief; but after listening to Tom, he conceded that there were some conspicuous advantages about a life of crime, and so he consented to be a pirate.

The Atlantic world in the era of colonial settlement was an arena of cross-cultural encounters, expanding knowledge, and dynamic transformations. It also rippled with violent conflicts as separate European nations struggled to control the wealth generated at the expense of Indian and African peoples. Outright warfare regularly erupted, but many conflicts were the product of the activities of the ever-present privateers and pirates. This chapter in the larger history of early modern colonialism has produced some great myths, legendary escapades, and heroic personalities. The image of life at sea between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries has been shaped by the exploits of Sir Francis Drake, the romance of men bound together to confront the oppressive authority of state powers, and the swashbuckling figure of renegade pirate captains. Whether he (or even she) be peg-legged, hook-handed, one-eyed, or simply adorned with a parrot on his (or her) shoulder, the pirate continues to be a common figure in our collective historical memory.

This course is designed to introduce students to both the romantic and “real” history of ocean-going marauders during the early modern era. Much of our time will be devoted to uncovering the origins and character of Atlantic piracy between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as attempting to determine why the activities of the Captain Kidds and Blackbeards of history have proved to be so popular. It is also the intent of this course to introduce students to the practice of history as an academic discipline. Therefore, while the focus of our readings and discussions will keep us at sea (perhaps even marooned on a far-off desert island), our research and writing will keep us firmly grounded in questions of methodology and historiography.

Kris E. Lane, Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500-1750 (M.E. Sharpe, 1998).

Robert C. Ritchie, Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates (Harvard, 1986).

This class is meant to be methodologically rigorous and writing intensive. As such, a great deal of our time will devoted to the conventions of historical research and writing. To that end, there will be frequent writing assignments, classroom discussion of research and writing issues, and consideration of several different styles of written work. The writing assignments will be of 5 types:

(1) Thematic Response Papers: Each student will be expected to write two response papers, one during weeks 2, 3, 4, or 5 another during weeks 8, 9, or 10. (10%)

(2) Primary Source Assignment: During week 6, each student will complete a primary source exercise using material from the Evans and Shaw-Shoemaker collections relating to the history of piracy or privateering. As part of this assignment, you will also be expected to:

[Please Note: This assignment will be “first come, first served.” As soon as you announce which document you will be examining for the rest of the class, everyone else will have to look elsewhere. Also note, single-page sources are not sufficient, though you may use several of these together.] (10%)

(3) Critical Book Review: Every student will write a critical book review of Robert Ritchie’s scholarly monograph Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates. (10%)

(4) Piracy in Film and Fiction Essay: Late in the semester we will read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. You will also be responsible for reading one additional piece of pirate fiction (see suggestions below in Appendix 3) and viewing 3 pirate films (see suggestions below in Appendix 2). Once you have completed these tasks, you should write a 3-5 page critical essay on a well-defined theme that speaks to some aspect of the representation of pirates in historical memory as revealed through fiction and film. (10%)

(5) Research Paper: The largest component of your grade will be based on an 8-12 page research paper (including the mandatory completion of a bibliography and rough draft) which you will present to the class for discussion. A significant component of your grade will be based on reading your classmates’ papers and offering constructive feedback during the designated class meetings.

(5) Attendance and Class Participation: Because of the nature of this course, regular class attendance is expected. If, for some reason, you are not able to attend class, I would appreciate it if you would inform me ahead of time. Students should realize that ALL unexcused absences during the semester will affect my final calculation of your grade. Any student who misses 25% of the class meetings will automatically fail the course. Conversely, students with excellent attendance might expect to be rewarded at the end of the semester.

While regular attendance is important, participation in class on a regular basis will also count a great deal. All classes will involve some measure of discussions. The quality (not necessarily quantity) of an individual’s participation in these discussions will contribute significantly toward his or her final grade.(20%)

(1) Papers listed as due in class are due at the beginning of the class period (not during or after).

(2) Papers handed in late will automatically be penalized one full letter grade for the first day / two full letter grades for anything more than 24 hours late.

(3) You may email me your paper, but if you do not come to class on the day the paper is due, the paper will be counted as late (unless, of course, you have made arrangements with me in advance).

(4) Plan Ahead! If, for some reason, you cannot complete your assignment on time, you should talk to me several days beforehand.

(5) PLEASE NOTE: I have no sympathy for last minute computer-related excuses. Write your paper with enough time to spare to deal with any foreseeable difficulties (i.e., not in the middle of the night before the paper is due).

The Davidson College Honor Code states that every student is “honor bound to refrain from stealing, lying about College business, and cheating on academic work.” Cheating is “any practice, method, or assistance, whether explicitly forbidden or unmentioned, that involves any degree of dishonesty, fraud, or deceit. Cheating includes plagiarism, which is representing another’s ideas or words as one’s own.” You should note that, among historians in particular, plagiarism is a particularly egregious offense. Please refer to the attached guide to “Acknowledging Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism” by Robert Williams for clarification on this issue.

Piracy (n): Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made it.

- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1906)

Reading: Patricia Risso, “Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Piracy: Maritime Violence in the Western Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf Region During the Long Eighteenth Century,” Journal of World History 12:2 (2001): 293-319.

Reading: Anne Pérotin-Dumon, “The Pirate and the Emperor: Power and the Law on the Seas, 1450-1850,” and John L. Anderson, “Piracy and World History: An Economic Perspective on Maritime Predation,” in Pennell, Bandits at Sea, 25-54, 82-106.

Reading: Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors, & Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (1999), ch. 2: “Soldiers, Pirates, Traders, and Captives: Britons among the Muslims,” 43-82; Barbara Fuchs, “Faithless Empires: Pirates, Renegadoes, and the English Nation,” English Literary History 67:1 (2000): 45-69; Robert Daborne, A Christian Turned Turk (1594), in Daniel J. Vitkus, ed., Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England (2000); “Letter and Depositions Describing ‘Turkish’ Corsair Raids on the West Country sent by Thomas Ceely to the Privy Council” (1625), in Vitkus, ed., Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England (2001), 354-58.

Reading: Lane, Pillaging the Empire, 3-95; [Walter Bigges], A Summarie and True Discourse of Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian Voyage (1589), repr. in Mary Frear Keeler, ed., Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian Voyage, 1585-86 (1981), 210-77.

Reading: Lane, Pillaging the Empire, 96-163; Exquemelin, The Buccaneers of America (book).

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.

- Mark Twain, “Old Times on the Mississippi,” Atlantic Monthly (1874)

Reading: Marcus Rediker, “The Seaman as Pirate and Social Banditry at Sea,” J.S. Bromley, “Outlaws at Sea, 1660-1720: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity among the Caribbean Freebooters” and Kenneth J. Kinkor, “Black Men under the Black Flag,” in Pennell, Bandits at Sea, 139-210; Lee A. Casey, “Pirate Constitutionalism: An Essay in Self-Government,” Journal of Law & Politics 8:3 (1992): 477-537.

Reading: B.R. Burg, “The Buccaneer Community,” and Dian Murray, “The Practice of Homosexuality among the Pirates of Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century China,” in Pennell, Bandits at Sea, 211-252.

Reading: Dian Murray, “Cheng I Sao in Fact and Fiction,” John C. Appleby, “Women and Piracy in Ireland: From Gráinne O’Malley to Anne Bonney,” Marcus Rediker, “Liberty beneath the Jolly Roger: The Lives of Anne Bonney and Mary Read, Pirates,” and Wendy Bracewell, “Women among the Uskoks of Senj: Literary Images and Reality,” in Pennell, Bandits at Sea, 253-334.

* Individual Progress Meetings this week (during regularly scheduled class times) to discuss your final two writing projects.

* Several pirate films will be screened during this week in the evenings. Attendance is optional, but this would be the easy way for you to see two or three of your required films.

Reading: Stevenson, Treasure Island (book); David Cordingly, “Wooden Legs and Parrots” and “Sloops, Schooners, and Pirate Films” in Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life among the Pirates, 3-25, 158-77.

* Scheduled presenters must make their papers available to their classmates at least 48 hrs. in advance of the class meeting. Each student should read the drafts and come to class prepared to ask questions and make constructive suggestions to improve the paper.

*PLEASE NOTE: The “performance,” or participation, burden in these classes will be on the paper readers, not the paper writer.

In the case of pirates, say, I would like to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory about it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at the gallows.

- Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851), ch. 53

Kenneth R. Andrews, ed., English Privateering Voyages to the West Indies, 1588-1595 (1959)

Daniel Defoe [Charles Johnson], A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724, 1728)

George Francis Dow and John Edmonds, The Pirates of the New England Coast (1923)

J. Franklin Jameson, ed., Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period (1923)

John Richard Stephens, ed., Captured by Pirates: 22 Firsthand Accounts of Murder and Mayhem on the High Seas (1996)

Daniel J. Vitkus, ed., Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England (2001)

Irene A. Wright, ed., Spanish Documents concerning English Voyages to the Caribbean, 1527-68 (1929)

________, Documents Concerning English Voyages to the Spanish Main, 1569-1580 (1932)

There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.

- James Russell Lowell, “At Sea” (1864)

* The Black Pirate (1926) – Early silent film starring Douglas Fairbanks as the definitive pirate swashbuckler. It even has someone “walking the plank”! Note: Only the 4^th full-length feature film made in Technicolor.

Treasure Island (1920, 1934, 1950, 1972, 1989) – All based on the 1883 Robert Louis Stevenson novel. The most memorable is the 1950 Disney version.

* Captain Blood (1935) – Second film adaptation of Rafael Sabatini’s popular 1922 novel (the first was a 1924 silent film starring Douglas Fairbanks). A box-office smash (as they say) that made newcomers Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland instant stars.

The Buccaneer (1938, 1958) – Cecil B. De Mille’s pirate spectacular based on Lyle Saxon’s biography of Jean Laffite. The remake, starring Yul Brynner as Lafitte, is perhaps better.

* The Sea Hawk (1940) – A must-see classic. Errol Flynn as the Sir Francis Drake-like freedom-fighting privateer. The Spanish Empire is set up as the Nazi menace.

The Black Swan (1942) – Swashbuckler Tyrone Power and fair maiden Maureen O’Hara in another not-yet-ready-for-prime-time Sabatini adaptation.

The Princess and the Pirate (1944) – Bob Hope – yes, that Bob Hope – in the first “intentional” parody of the genre. Many stock characters, including “Hook.” If this is your kind of film, you might also try the Three Stooges in Three Little Pirates (1946), or Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (1952).

Captain Kidd (1945) – Charles Laughton’s performance in the title role, above all else, makes this worth seeing.

Blackbeard the Pirate (1952) – Though they were active in real life roughly fifty years apart, Sir Henry Morgan and Blackbeard are at the center of this typical piece of Saturday-morning fare.

Against All Flags (1952) – Errol Flynn (as an undercover British agent) and Maureen O’Hara (this time as a female pirate loosely based on Anne Bonny) fight pirates in Madagascar.

* The Crimson Pirate (1952) – Another spoof, with Burt Lancaster as our swashbuckler and scenes including peg legs, drag queens, a deaf-mute sidekick, and submarine warfare. Really.

Scalawag (1973) – A peg-legged Kirk Douglas and alcoholic parrot are featured in this predictable treasure yarn.

Swashbuckler (1976) – Long on swordplay and short on story, but not a bad flick. Interesting cast, including James Earl Jones, Peter Boyle, and Beau Bridges.

The Pirate Movie (1982) – The first of the trio of anachronistic early ‘80s films making use of Pirate motifs.

Nate and Hayes (1983) – Tommy Lee Jones as a mid-19th century pirate in the South Pacific. John Hughes wrote this one before he got around to “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

The Pirates of Penzance (1983) – Film adaptation of the modern stage version of this Gilbert and Sullivan classic. Attempts to update the music include the casting of Linda Ronstadt, and references to Elvis Presley songs and Nelson Eddy films (think: “Singing Canadian Mountie”).

Pirates (1986) – Walter Matthau as a peg-legged pirate names “Red” in this Roman Polanski attempt to spoof the genre.

Hook (1991) – Steven Spielberg’s sequel to the Peter Pan story with Robin Williams as an all-grown-up Pan, Dustin Hoffman as Hook, and Julia Roberts as “Tink” Tinker Bell.

Cutthroat Island (1995) – Geena Davis as the pirate hero, the daughter of a famous pirate who inherits a map identifying the location. Male lead was supposed to go to Michael Douglas; instead we get Matthew Modine.

Frenchman’s Creek (1998) – Reasonable made for T.V. adaptation of a Daphne du Maurier novel. Earlier version (1944) featured Joan Fontaine as the noblewoman who encounters a French pirate.

James Fenimore Cooper, The Pilot (1824), The Red Rover (1827) – The Pilot was the first American sea story, while The Red Rover is a better pirate story.

Sir Walter Scott, The Pirate (1822) – Set in the Zetland and Orkney Islands, this novel considers a closed community when a famous pirate, Clement Cleveland, is rescued.

William Kingston, Peter the Whaler (1851) – A boy’s adventure story that predates, and obviously influenced, Stevenson’s Treasure Island.

* Charles Kingsley, Westward Ho! (1855) – Historical romance and nationalistic fervor made this a bestseller in Victorian England. Celebrates the memory of the Elizabethan Sea Dogs. Virulently anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic.

Robert M. Ballantyne, The Coral Island (1858) – Adventure story in the style of Treasure Island and Peter Pan.

* Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (1883) – Surely, you know what this is about.

Howard Pyle, The Story of Jack Ballister’s Fortunes (1895) – Perhaps most famous for the illustrations, this is an adventure story of a youth who joins up with Blackbeard.

John Masefield, Captain Margaret (1908) – First novel of the future poet Poet Laureate of Great Britain. Set during the reign of James II (1685-89).

* Rafael Sabatini, The Sea Hawk (1915), Captain Blood (1922), Captain Blood Returns (1931), The Fortunes of Captain Blood (1936), The Black Swan (1932) – Perhaps the most important works in the genre. Works were popular with readers, if not necessarily literary critics and historians.

An able-bodied seaman meets a pirate in a bar, and they they take turns recounting their adventures at sea. Noting the pirate's peg-leg, hook, and eye patch the seaman asks: "So, how did you end up with the peg-leg?"

The pirate replies: "We was caught in a monster storm off the cape and a giant wave swept me overboard. Just as they were pullin' me out a school of sharks appeared and one of 'em bit me leg off.”

"Blimey!" said the seaman. "What about the hook"?

"Ahhhh...", mused the pirate, "We were boardin' a trader ship, pistols blastin' and swords swingin' this way and that. In the fracas me hand got chopped off."

"Zounds!", remarked the seaman. "And how came ye by the eye patch?”

"A seagull droppin' fell into me eye,” answered the pirate.

"You lost your eye to a seagull dropping?", the sailor asked incredulously.

"Well..." said the pirate, "it was me first day with the hook."

John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold (1929) – Steinbeck’s first published work. Odd fictionalized retelling of the rise of Henry Morgan (from Morgan’s point of view).

* Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica (1929) – Four children captured by pirates in this prototype for William Golding’s Lord of the Flies

Thomas Costain, For my Great Folly (1942) – Very loosely based on the life of John Ward, an English renegade / Barbary pirate in the early 17^th-century Mediterranean.

Kenneth Roberts, Lydia Bailey (1947) – Set during the era of the Haitian Revolution, Lydia is captured by North African pirates where she serves as a tutor before being rescued.

Frank Yerby, The Golden Hawk (1948) – Best-selling African-American author of the mid-twentieth century. Lurid, occasionally eroticized, tale set in the Spanish Caribbean in the 1690s.

Peter Benchley, The Island (1979) – Set in the 20^th century, Benchley imagines a long-lived buccaneer colony encountered by a New York journalist and his son.

Dudley Pope, Buccaneer (1981), Admiral (1982), Corsair (1987), Galleon (1986) – Ned Yorke is the buccaneer hero in these novels set in the 17^th-century Caribbean.

Jacqueline Church Simonds, Captain Mary, Buccaneer (2000) – Loosely based on the exploits of Mary Read. Plenty of romance without actually being a romance novel.

Elizabeth Garrett, The Sweet Trade (2001) – This one gets you both Mary Read and Anne Bonny. Otherwise, see above.