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Tikal in 7 artefacts: explore the metropolis of the Maya
Of the city-states that dominated much of Central America in the first millennium AD, Tikal was perhaps the greatest. Paul Bloomfield explores the pyramids and stone reliefs of Guatemala's most impressive Maya monument
Grand central Around AD 734, the monumental pyramid now designated Temple I was erected at Tikal to honour and protect the burial of Jasaw Chan K’awiil I (Moon Double Comb, also known as Ah Cacau – Lord Chocolate), the Maya city’s ruler from AD 682. The pyramid soars to 45 metres high and is topped with a roof comb comprising three small rooms. It stands sentinel over the Grand Plaza, epicentre of possibly the greatest city-state of Central America – Tikal. Settled from around 600 BC, by the peak of the Maya Classic Period (c250–900 AD) Tikal sprawled over 30 sq km and was home to more than 50,000 people. Yet the city – and the civilisation of the lowland Maya as a whole – mysteriously collapsed just a century after Temple I was built. Read more | Your guide to ancient Maya: from the writing system to the truth about ‘human sacrifice’ Stone story The limestone monolith known as Stela 31, carved in AD 445 and now displayed in the Tikal Museum, isn’t just an artistic masterpiece – it’s also a crucial historic document. The front depicts Sihyaj Chan K’awiil II (Stormy Sky), a powerful warrior king – the Maya civilisation wasn’t a single peaceful society, but a series of often warring city-states . More important still is the text on the reverse, detailing the early history of Tikal from the foundation of its royal dynasty by Yax Moch Xoc around AD 230. Body language The writing of the Maya consisted of glyphs (symbols) such as this one on a stela (inscribed column) at Tikal, which was called Mutul by its original inhabitants. The system uses logograms to indicate whole words as well as syllabic glyphs. Knowledge of the script was lost by the end of the 16th century after the Spanish conquest of Central America, and it has still not been completely deciphered after more than a century of study. Today perhaps 90% of Mayan texts can be translated. First steps The hulking ‘Lost World Pyramid’ is impressive for its heft – 32 metres high and 80 metres along its base – but also its age. Tunnels dug into the pyramid by archaeologists reveal that the outer shell was built around no fewer than four earlier structures, the innermost of which dates from around 700 BC – the oldest structure at Tikal. It may have served as the royal necropolis for a century from around AD 250. Royal complex The rambling North Acropolis was built and rebuilt over many centuries from around 350 BC. Studded with a dozen temples and nearly 100 burials, it served as a necropolis and ancestral shrine for the nobility of Tikal, who lived in the palace complex on the opposite side of the plaza. High ambition An ornately carved wood lintel originally graced the pyramid designated Temple IV – at nearly 65 metres high, the loftiest surviving pre-Columbian structure in the Americas. Now in Basel’s Ethnographic Museum, it depicts Yik’in Kan K’awiil (‘Sun Sky Rain’), who consolidated the power established by his father Jasaw Chan K’awiil I, whom he succeeded in AD 734. By AD 900, the Classic-era Maya civilisation collapsed, perhaps due to drought, overpopulation or incursions by invaders from the north, such as the Toltecs. On the podcast | Your guide to ancient Maya: from the writing system to the truth about ‘human sacrifice’ Artefacts for the afterlife Nobles interred in the North Acropolis and other Maya burial sites were accompanied by various grave items such as this red-and-black-painted ceramic pot, topped with a lid bearing a stylised jaguar head and typical of the style of the late Classic era, now at Guatemala’s National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Other burial artefacts included jade objects, carved bones and stingray spines used for ritual bloodletting by the ruling elite or religious leaders, who would pierce their tongue or penis atop a pyramid. This article was first published in issue 4 of BBC World Histories
Your guide to ancient Maya: from the writing system to the truth about ‘human sacrifice’
Professor Matthew Restall of Pennsylvania State University answers key questions on the ancient Maya civilisation
Is it correct to say Maya or Mayans? Or could we use either? It's Maya; Mayan only applies to the language they speak. So, it’s the people of the Maya or the Mayas with an ‘s’, but they are not the Mayans. Who were the Maya? I love that question because it gives me a chance to rephrase the question. It must be ‘Who are the Maya?’ There are six or seven million Maya alive today, defined more or less as people who speak Mayan. Most are still in the Maya area, but there has been the Maya diaspora so many are in Mexico, the United States, parts of Central America, and Europe. Alternatively, you could add a word to the question: ‘Who were the ancient (or pre-Colombian) Maya?’ Now we’re talking about the civilisation of the ancient Maya, which is usually what people mean. The short answer is the Maya are an ethnic group who built a spectacular civilisation and have been around for thousands of years. In terms of area, their civilisation geographically comprises loosely of southern Mexico and northern Central America (all of modern-day Guatemala and Belize, much of Honduras, parts of El Salvador, and a big chunk of Mexico, including the Yucatan peninsula). When was the start of the Maya civilisation? Archaeologists debate and constantly change the date as they discover more about the early Maya. But we can agree, more or less, on somewhere around 1000 BC, when peoples developed a lifestyle and culture that we can start talking about as being Maya, and some of the other hallmarks of who the Maya were – like their calendar and hieroglyph writing system. But that date tends to get pushed further and further back as archaeologists dig deeper, both literally and metaphorically. What are some common misconceptions about the Maya civilisation? I think the obvious one is that the Maya don't exist anymore, and not only that, but that they disappeared in some mysterious way. Another is that they were very violent. Misconception 1: the Maya disappeared Over the last hundred years or more, people have come up with increasingly outlandish explanations as to what happened to them. One is kind of fringe and crazy (but you'd be amazed at how much you can find it repeated): the Mayans were aliens, and the reason they were able to create spectacular cities and a beautiful writing system, and could understand the movement of the planets to create an advanced calendar and mathematics was because they'd come from outer space. What happened to them? Where did they go? They went back to the planet they came from. You can see the appeal of this theory. It does kind of wrap up all these questions in a nice, tidy bow. Misconception 2: the Maya was a violent society Whether you have seen the Mel Gibson movie Apocalypto or not, you’re perhaps still going to have an impression – the same impression that many people have about the Aztecs – that they were very violent, and that their culture was oriented around what we love to call ‘human sacrifice’. I have a real problem with that phrase. This is where I will get into arguments with other historians, anthropologists and archaeologists. When people in early modern Britain or Spain were burned at the stake for political and religious reasons, we don't talk about that as human sacrifice. It’s only ritual political and religious executions by other peoples that we place in this ‘other’ exotic category. The fact is: the Maya were no more violent than any other civilisation or culture, nor were they any less violent. But they did not practice ‘human sacrifice’ on any kind of massive scale. Were people ritually executed? Yes. Were offerings made to deities? Yes. But the vast majority were not human, not even animals. It was plants, herbs and incense. There were self-sacrificial rituals where a person might cut themselves to let some blood, which would go on a sacred piece of paper, or something like that. The ritualised execution of a human being happened relatively rarely, and I would argue probably less often than was happening in Europe during the same period. Read more | Why and how did the Aztecs practise human sacrifice? What is the Maya writing system and how was it deciphered? The process of deciphering Maya hieroglyphs was done by a series of brilliant epigraphers over the course of many decades. There's a wonderful book by the late Michael Coe, Breaking the Maya Code, where he tells that story in great detail. The main message is that this was a team effort by scholars all over the world, including a couple in Soviet Russia who couldn’t leave and go to conferences for years. A possible Rosetta Stone was a manuscript discovered in the late-19th century written by a Franciscan friar, Diego de Landa, in Yucatan in the 16th century. But it turned out to be false: the way it was written with hieroglyphs and then Spanish letters was completely misleading, and threw many scholars off for decades. Also, there was an Englishman called J Eric Thompson who was both famous and infamous because he had certain ideas about hieroglyphs that were wrong, and supposedly blocked publications of other scholars who disagreed with him. Read more | The ancient Maya foretold the end of the world on 21 December 2012. Or did they? Read more about the Maya and the apocalypse So, understanding the Maya hieroglyphic system was a gradual process, and how it was not simply pictographic. The glyphs aren't pictures that allow you to identify what the word is (though there is an element of that), nor were they phonetic, like our alphabet. They were a combination of the two, and the system comprises about 800 glyphs. It’s incredibly complex, sophisticated and visually stunning. That speaks to the amazing reputation of the Maya civilisation: theirs ranks as one of the great writing systems in human history. There was nothing comparable to it anywhere else in the Americas. Other peoples in Mesoamerica, like the Aztecs, wrote glyphically, but they had variants on a system that was not the fully developed 800-glyph Maya system. What purpose did ancient Maya structures like Chichén Itzá serve? Was it similar to the Egyptian pyramids? The comparison between Maya pyramids, or pyramids anywhere in Mesoamerica, and those in Egypt is an interesting one. Some Maya don't like the use of the word ‘pyramid’ because they think it evokes an Egyptian pyramid with a peak. There are no Maya pyramids that had peaks – and it was thought for a while they weren't tombs at all, and that was an important difference to Egyptian pyramids. In fact, the more that Maya pyramids have been excavated and tunnels been dug, the more it turns out that they are very often tombs. They were built, then expanded, and then rebuilt as tombs again. But that's just one part of what their purpose was. Since Maya pyramids had steps, they were always designed to be walked up, and the most important thing was the building at the top. In most cases, these were temples. These pyramids also faced onto plazas and often other pyramid-like buildings. Some had palaces or residential complexes on these pyramidal platforms. These plazas had common elements in all Maya cities, but were all slightly different. There would have been something distinctive about the architecture in each place, from Chichén Itzá to Palenque to Tikal. Although the buildings we can see now are all grey, these plazas would have been stuccoed and painted. They would have been brightly coloured, covered in art, portraits of rulers, glyphs, and texts about those rulers – when they lived, their connection with the gods, their marriages, and their great victories in battle. It would have been a sensory overload, in a way. In front of these structures, the plazas would have been full of people. There may have been political rituals or religious ceremonies taking place, and there were markets often adjacent or spilling over into these areas. When you think about somewhere like Chichén Itzá, compared to Egypt, the first thing to do is try and make this huge leap of imagination, to imagine it full of people, colour, art and so on. What did the Maya eat? Maize was the staple of their diet, and it was so important that they thought of it as a sacred substance. They believed that corn had been provided to them, or for them, by the gods – and it plays a really important role in Maya creation mythology. It's reasonable to make a generalisation that all Maya were corn farmers. It was a prestigious activity that everybody got to participate in. There are even suggestions that elite Mayas engaged in corn farming as well, even though they didn't have to. There was nothing demeaning about them going out and working in their fields; that's how important it was. In addition to maize, the Maya ate squash, beans, chilli peppers (and peppers of all kinds) and tomatoes, which were native to the Maya area but not known in Europe. Also native was chocolate. It was not eaten, though, but drunk – unsweetened, since the Maya did not have sugar. That was an old-world plant. Instead, they sweetened it with honey. And cut its bitterness with chilli peppers. In terms of meat, the range of animals was far smaller than what Europeans had. They had turkeys and small deer, though not chickens, pigs and cows. They ate a lot of fish: on the Yucatan Peninsula, even though the Maya area is not an island, they were surrounded by coastline, so seafood played an important part of the diet as well as mythology. When did the ancient Maya civilization end? As mentioned before, they didn’t disappear, but there are two moments in Maya history that have fed into that misconception. The first is to do with the decline of populations in the big cities, particularly in northern Guatemala, which was the centre of population, and economic and political power, in this period. Those cities were abandoned and inhabited by smaller populations that weren't making big buildings or monuments. They didn't leave much of a trace. For a long time that created this idea that there was something that had had disappeared – particularly before the Maya glyphs could be read and before it was understood that the Maya area comprises the whole of the Yucatan Peninsula as well as Guatemala and Belize. The other factor was Spanish colonialism. It wasn't that the Spanish came in and conquered the whole Maya area and killed everybody, or that they were all carted off as slaves. It was mostly the impact of epidemic disease. We don't know exactly what the Maya population was before Spaniards arrived, and we don't even know exactly what it was 100 years later because Spaniards had not conquered most of the Maya area, but the population drop was something in the region of 80 to 90 per cent. Read more | The real Aztecs: brutal, bloodthirsty... and caring? Entire towns and villages become depopulated. There were moments of epidemic disease: outbreaks of smallpox over the course of weeks or months, which killed half the population of the town, at the same time as repeated invasions was extremely disruptive. It meant that there were no independent Maya city states building cities like Chichén Itzá. That reinforces the idea that the Maya disappeared. They’re the reasons for the myth, but it's important to recognise that millions of Maya still exist today. They accommodated and adjusted, and their culture today is still Maya culture, still Maya civilisation. Just because you have a cell phone, you’re watching satellite television, and speaking Spanish as well as Maya – doing things that connect you to the 21st century – it doesn't mean you're not still a Maya person. They are still perpetuating Maya civilisation. Professor Matthew Restall was talking to Rob Attar on the HistoryExtra podcast. These answers have been excerpted from the interview. To find out more, listen to the full episode: The Maya, Everything You Want To Know
Hell on high water: the rise and fall of the golden age of piracy
The golden age of piracy saw waves of rogue sailors terrorising the Atlantic world from 1670 to 1730. But what, asks Rebecca Simon, drove this period of maritime pillage and plunder?
Listen to a version of this article: In August of 1720, a pirate named Captain Bartholomew Roberts led an attack on a British merchant ship out of Boston. According to the Boston News-Letter, the pirates stripped the sailors of their money and effects (weapons, tools and jewellery) and stole the ship’s artillery and gunpowder. Survivors claimed that the pirates were “cursing, swearing, damning and blaspheming to the greatest degree imaginable”. The pirates knew that if they were captured, they would publicly hang, but they paid no heed to these consequences. They claimed that “if it should chance that they should be attacked by any superior power or force which they could not master, they would immediately put fire with one of their pistols to their powder and all go merrily to hell together”. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of incidents like this during the golden age of piracy – a 60-year period when organised piracy flourished in the Caribbean, East Indies and along the North American seaboard. Pirates have plied their trade throughout history, but most of them were so-called privateers, working for kingdoms and governments to attack enemies and bring wealth back home. The 17th century saw a new breed of pirate emerge: men (and sometimes women) who plundered ships entirely for their own gain. On the podcast | Rebecca Simon responds to your questions on the 17th-century golden age of piracy What were the pros of piracy in the 17th century? While piracy was a dangerous world, where anyone caught was almost guaranteed to hang, but the life appealed to many people. Pirate ships were extremely diverse. Crews were made up of men and women from Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, North America, India and China. Christians, Jews and Muslims sailed together – sometimes alongside freed or escaped enslaved people from Africa. Pirate ships were places where people could escape social persecution, and their crews had often chosen piracy over careers in the Royal Navy or on merchant ships, where conditions were notoriously poor. Naval and merchant ships offered the prospect of harsh punishments, meagre rations and a lack of sanitation. Pirate ships were often more egalitarian places where sailors could vote captains in and out based on their abilities. They also promised better and more abundant food – courtesy of looting – and every pirate was guaranteed their equal share. Yet egalitarianism and the prospect of a good hearty meal weren’t the only factors driving the surge of piracy in the 17th century. Geopolitics played a critical role. Intense competition between Europe’s colonial superpowers along the Americas’ eastern seaboard left the waters unsupervised and chaotic. This was the perfect environment for pirates to turn the seas into their own private playground, raiding, plundering and killing with seeming impunity. And at the vanguard of this maritime crimewave were the English. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/02/MMNK1F-079bcef.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="An early 18th‑century map of the central Americas. During the golden age of piracy, this region offered extremely rich pickings (Photo by The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo)" title="An early 18th‑century map of the central Americas. During the golden age of piracy, this region offered extremely rich pickings (Photo by The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo)" /> How did the English change the pirate world? Until the 16th century, England’s European rivals, particularly the Spanish, had led the charge to colonise the New World, and made themselves fantastically wealthy in the process. All that changed in the 1600s when – having already established colonies at Virginia and across New England – the English made a move south to the bustling trading centre of the Americas: the Caribbean. They arrived in a region already swarming with Spanish, French, Portuguese and Dutch vessels, which gave English pirates ample opportunity for raiding. Then, at the midpoint of the 17th century, the authorities in London passed a series of laws that made the plunder of merchant ships irresistible not only to English pirates, but colonists too. The 1651 Navigation Act stated that colonial goods could come in only on English vessels. The aim of the legislation was simple: to cripple the economies of England’s European competitors. Not only foreign merchants suffered since cutting off a diverse range of desirable goods in an instant meant the act denied English colonists a valuable income stream. Read more | Privateers, buccaneers and corsairs: why not all pirates were created equal And so these colonists now began to turn to pirates. Plantation island governors and those in the southern North American colonies either turned a blind eye to pirates, who could spirit in goods such as wine, silks from Asia, spices, cash and sometimes jewels – or they financed piracy outright, aiding and abetting the raids whenever necessary. One such raid took place in 1695 when a group of pirates led by Henry Avery captured the Indian ship Ganj-i-Sawai, slaughtered many of the men and women on board and made off with everything. Avery mysteriously disappeared after the raid, but many of his men sought refuge in North America – and they found it, mostly in Philadelphia and Providence, Rhode Island. On the podcast | Henry Avery: the legendary 17th-century pirate Avery’s raid on the Ganj-i-Sawai was utterly ruthless but it was far from unusual. Soon, piracy was so rampant across the Caribbean that it had become impossible to keep the shipping lanes under control. Too many governors and colonists entertained pirates, which only encouraged illegal maritime activities. Pirates were also starting to go after Spanish ships, which threatened the precarious peace between the two nations. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/02/GettyImages-520719011-41a0f6c.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A 19th-century painting shows pirates storming a Spanish galleon in the mid-17th century (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="A 19th-century painting shows pirates storming a Spanish galleon in the mid-17th century (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> The golden age of piracy was very much fuelled by the turbulent relationship between Spain and England. Nowhere was this more evident than in the waters around the island of Jamaica. By the 1650s, this hotbed of English piracy found itself at the centre of escalating tensions between the two nations. War broke out in 1654, and when the conflict ended in 1670 with the Treaty of Madrid, Spain acknowledged English ownership of Jamaica. That may have been good news for the English state, but it didn’t look that way for pirates. One of the stipulations of the treaty was the promise to protect Spanish ships from their raids. It was in London’s interests to end the pirates’ reign of terror across the Caribbean. The English developed a two-pronged approach to eradicating piracy. First, they passed the Act for the More Effectual Suppression of Piracy in 1700, which promised a pardon to all men who turned themselves in and named their accomplices. This was not as successful as the authorities hoped, since pirates did not trust that the conditions of the pardon would be upheld – and, sure enough, sometimes they found themselves pressed into the Royal Navy. London’s second tactic was much more aggressive. That was to establish Admiralty courts in the Caribbean and North American colonies with the express aim of trying and executing pirates using the same, harsher penalties imposed in English courts. Until then, colonial courts had been able to operate more or less autonomously, punishing convicted pirates as they saw fit. And, as the colonies were frequently reliant on piracy to fill their coffers and bring in desirable goods, those punishments were often light to non-existent. Such laxness, London decreed, had to be stopped. Yet no sooner had this new era of zero tolerance come into effect than a sharp deterioration in Anglo-Spanish relations reset the relationship between the English authorities and pirates once again. In 1701, the War of Spanish Succession broke out, embroiling most of Europe in a conflict over who would control the Spanish throne. Much of the war was fought at sea and England found itself in need of skilled seamen and fighters. Suddenly pirates had the upper hand. The English authorities issued a proclamation promising all pirates a pardon if they agreed to fight as privateers for the government against the Spanish and its allies. Under their contract, known as a letter of marque, the privateers would be allowed to keep much of the loot they stole from enemy ships. Most pirates took advantage of this proclamation because they were able to continue their operations without fear from persecution. It was a win-win situation for everyone involved. Scourges of the sea: the Atlantic world’s most notorious pirates Henry Avery Avery worked on a merchant ship and led a successful mutiny against his captain, before sailing for the East Indies where he antagonised Indian Mughal ships. In 1695, Avery attacked the Ganj-i-Sawai, brutalising its crew and the women on board and plundering it dry. In order to avoid all-out war with India, Britain organised a manhunt: some of Avery’s crew made it to the American colonies, but the man himself was never found. His fate remains a mystery. William Kidd The privateer turned to piracy in 1698 when he robbed a ship called the Quedagh Merchant off the coast of India and sailed for Madagascar. On learning he was wanted for piracy, Kidd headed to Boston for refuge, but was arrested and imprisoned before being shipped back to England. He was hanged at Execution Dock on the shoreline of the Thames on 23 May 1701. Kidd is best known for claiming to have buried his loot, which sparked a long-running fascination with pirates’ buried treasure. Blackbeard Edward Teach fought as a privateer in the War of Spanish Succession (1701–14). He turned to piracy and captured the French slave ship La Concorde, renaming it Queen Anne’s Revenge. Teach was dubbed Blackbeard because of his black hair and hirsute appearance, which he used to intimidate his victims. Lighted candles were woven in his hair during battle to give the impression that he was sailing out of hell itself. Teach was infamous for blockading Charleston, South Carolina for more than a week. He was beheaded in battle on 22 November 1718. Samuel Bellamy Bellamy was best known for ordering his men to charge naked on to ships to scare his victims into a rapid surrender. In 1717, he captured the British slave ship the Whydah Gally, which was worth tens of millions of dollars, making it the wealthiest ship in the Atlantic world and Bellamy the richest pirate. Yet his great wealth was short-lived: on 26 April 1717, his boat was caught in a storm off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and crashed into rocks, killing almost everyone on board, including Bellamy. Treasure from the Whydah Gally is still being excavated to this day. Mary Read and Anne Bonny The only known female pirates during the golden age of piracy, Mary Read and Anne Bonny sailed with Captain Jack Rackham between August and October 1720, and were known to fight with their shirts open to intimidate their victims into surrendering. Survivors later claimed that the women fought and swore more than any of the men. They were captured in late October 1720 and found guilty of piracy in November of that year, but received stays of execution as both were pregnant. Read died in prison in April 1721 while Bonny’s fate remains unknown. Read more | The most famous and despicable pirates from history What was the Nassau pirate republic? If the period from the 1670s to the 1730s is widely remembered as a golden age of piracy, then the years during and immediately after the War of Spanish Succession surely marked its zenith. During the conflict many pirates began gravitating toward the island of Providence in the Bahamas to settle in the city of Nassau. Thanks to its proximity to Florida, the Bahamas was the gateway to the Caribbean and North America. The Spanish and British often fought over them: the former seeking to use the islands as a springboard from which to attack British ships; the latter wanting to employ them as a defensive base for North America. Yet during the chaos of the War of Spanish Succession, pirates were able to claim the islands for themselves. By the time the war ended in 1714, Nassau had gained a reputation for violence, disease and malcontents. This all changed when a man named Captain Benjamin Hornigold spotted an opportunity to create an official community where pirates could congregate safely. Hornigold was formerly a leading privateer in the war and mentor to many future infamous pirates, such as Edward Teach (better known as Blackbeard) and . He knew that, with the conflict ended, many privateers would suddenly find themselves unemployed. He also knew that many of these men would turn pirate and needed a safe harbour from which to launch their raids. He therefore stepped in and created law and order. Read more | The real pirates of the Caribbean: your guide to Nassau's pirate republic The pirates dubbed him “the pirate king of the pirate kingdom”. Nassau was now the pirate capital of the Atlantic world. Yet soon that capital would come under attack. In 1718 a former privateer called Woodes Rogers became the first royal governor of the Bahamas. He had a mission to eradicate piracy, and a burning desire to wipe the pirate kingdom off the face of the Earth. No sooner had he taken up his new post than Rogers had issued a proclamation that offered all pirates a pardon if they confessed their crimes before September of that year. More than 200 pirates took up the offer, reasoning that the risks of piracy now outweighed its rewards. Rogers couldn’t rely upon the support of the Royal Navy, for whom piracy was now simply not a priority. But he could call upon the assistance of Hornigold. In a remarkable turn of events, he rounded on his former brethren and became Rogers’ chief pirate-hunter (quite possibly because he viewed being in Rogers’ good books as a smart career move). Hornigold died in a wreckage somewhere along North America’s eastern seaboard in 1719, but that didn’t stop Rogers having almost 100 people publicly executed during his war on piracy. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/02/MMNJR6-af16bb5.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Woodes Rogers, seated in a 1729 painting, who as governor of the Bahamas waged all-out war on the Caribbean’s pirates (Photo by The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Woodes Rogers, seated in a 1729 painting, who as governor of the Bahamas waged all-out war on the Caribbean’s pirates (Photo by The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo)" /> Read more | Did pirates really live on the island of Tortuga? Soon, other powerful figures were seeking to destroy pirate captains. Among them was Alexander Spotswood, lieutenant governor of Virginia, who ordered the coastguard, headed by Lieutenant Robert Maynard, to hunt down Blackbeard. Maynard caught up with his quarry on 22 November 1718 and instantly engaged him in battle. During the fight, one of Maynard’s men stabbed Blackbeard. “Well done, lad!” the cornered pirate shouted. With Blackbeard distracted and injured, one of his assailants beheaded him. The head was mounted on a ship’s mast and paraded up and down the east coast, signifying the power of those working to bring pirates to heel. Blackbeard may have been the most famous of all the pirates, but the wealthiest (at least, in the early 1720s) was Bartholomew Roberts, who commanded the world’s largest pirate fleet. His death in February 1722, after being struck by a stray bullet in a battle off the coast of west Africa, was somehow symbolic of the enormous squeeze that was being exerted on pirates across the Atlantic. Read more | Hunting pirates: how piracy's golden age came to an end With relative peace and stability replacing war and chaos along North America’s eastern seaboard, the pirates’ traditional hunting grounds were providing increasingly meagre pickings. It has been estimated that nearly 4,000 pirates were arrested between 1700 and 1726, many of whom were put to death. One of those to die was a man named William Fly who, in July 1726, was led to a scaffold in Boston. Overseeing the execution was a preacher, Cotton Mather, who spoke to a rapt audience about the evil of piracy. Fly had nothing to say and stood defiantly, refusing to atone for his actions before meeting his fate with the noose. Fly’s was the last major execution (one performed in front of a large crowd at which he was expected to utter his dying words) of a pirate in the Atlantic world. As such, it heralded the end of the golden age of piracy. Within a few years, the Atlantic world would be rocked by conflict again, in the shape of the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–48) and the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48). Yet instead of triggering a resurgence of piracy, these conflicts saw the few remaining pirates trading in their black flags for the letters of marque borne by state-sponsored privateers. For around 60 years, pirates had made the waters of the Caribbean and beyond very perilous places to sail. Their reign of terror may have been brought to a violent end, but they sailed into history. There, they’ve haunted the popular imagination – almost as successfully as they haunted sailors in the 17th and 18th century – for almost 300 years. This article was first published in the January 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine Check out our series on pirate myths: Did any real pirates wear eyepatches or have peg legs? Was walking the plank a real pirate punishment? X marks the spot: did pirates bury their treasure? Did real pirates fly the Jolly Roger? What is the origin and meaning of the pirate expression ‘shiver me timbers’? Did most English pirates really talk with a West Country accent?
“Indigenous Americans who travelled across the Atlantic were horrified by inequalities in European society”
Caroline Dodds Pennock talks to Ellie Cawthorne about her new book tracing the remarkable stories of Indigenous Americans who voyaged to Europe after 1492
Let’s start with the title of your book, On Savage Shores. What can you tell us about the meaning? People often use the term “savage” as a racial slur to diminish and belittle Indigenous peoples. I wanted to deliberately invert that stereotype. In my book, I follow Indigenous Americans who travelled to Europe after 1492 – from their perspective, Europe was a much more savage place than the Americas. We tend to think of the “Columbian exchange” as a one-way cultural encounter – a story of Europeans going to the Americas. Why is it that we don’t hear much about Indigenous Americans coming to Europe? That’s a good question. It’s not that historians have never written about this; I’m standing on the shoulders of other scholars in my work. But for some reason the presence of Indigenous peoples in Europe doesn’t seem to have made an impression on popular understanding of the past. I think that might be because, in our imagination, 15th and 16th-century Europe is a white, ruffed and codpieced “Golden Age”. The stories we’re told are about kings, lords and royal dramas. But how many people know that there was a Brazilian king at the court of Henry VIII, or that there were tens of thousands of enslaved Indigenous people in Spain? Read more | America: Brave new world or accident? How many Indigenous Americans came to Europe, and when? Exact numbers are difficult to pin down, because the official statistics we have are almost certainly far too low. We know that there were tens of thousands, at least, but the number may be very much larger. The vast majority came as enslaved people into Spain and Portugal, but there are also Indigenous people recorded in England, the Netherlands, the other Low Countries and Germany. And they appear from as early as Christopher Columbus’s first voyage, when he brought back Taíno people from the Caribbean. So, from the first moment of encounter, Indigenous travellers are part of the story. On the podcast | Indigenous American travellers in Europe What sources do we have for this? The problem is that a lot of the sources are from the perspective of Europeans – written either by people who kidnapped Indigenous Americans, or by diplomats or courtiers who happened to see them once they reached Europe. However, there are some sources that occasionally allow us to hear the voices of Indigenous people themselves. After 1542, when it became illegal to enslave Indigenous people in Spain’s American colonies, amazing testimonies were produced by Indigenous peoples applying for their freedom. Today these are held in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville. They are formulaic legal records, but they provide fascinating pictures of the lives of people from all across Central and South America. They explain what happened to them, including information about their life stories or how they were kidnapped. Read more | What can the Aztecs tell us about themselves? The secrets of their 'indigenous annals' Then there’s the Cantares Mexicanos, a collection of 16th-century Nahuatl songs and poems by Indigenous people singing about their histories – which is how they would have recorded these stories in a popular oral tradition. They include stories of travel, too. What did Indigenous Americans make of European societies that they encountered? We’re obviously talking about a hugely diverse range of peoples, from the Inuit in the north of what is now Canada down to the Tupi people in Brazil. But some common threads emerge. One is that they were horrified by inequalities in European society, and didn’t understand how people with vast wealth could live right beside others in abject poverty. They were also surprised by leaders who were ineffective, or were children – the idea of boy kings was completely nonsensical to them. My suspicion is that many Indigenous Americans saw European gender roles as peculiar. In many Native American cultures, women were incredibly effective and influential but, apart from Elizabeth I, they would have seen few influential women at European courts. Beating children was another thing they were surprised by. They had different ideas about childhood, and didn’t understand using violence against people you were supposed to care for. Though part of the wider story of slavery, the enslavement of Indigenous American peoples is an aspect with which many in Europe might not be so familiar. What can you tell us about it? There’s been an upsurge in scholarship on the enslavement of Indigenous peoples in the past few decades. In particular, Andrés Reséndez wrote a wonderful book, The Other Slavery, in which he estimates that around a million Indigenous people were enslaved before 1600 alone – a figure that may have risen as high as 4 to 5 million by 1900. This idea of it as an “other slavery” is an allusion to the fact that this hasn’t been widely recognised by history. But it also refers to the fact that it was another kind of slavery. Very often, Indigenous people were involved in forms of forced labour that weren’t technically labelled slavery but were still effectively bondage. Read more | How slavery thrived in Renaissance Europe In the first part of the 16th century, Indigenous American people were being literally traded across the Atlantic – maybe tens of thousands of them. Some estimates have been as high as hundreds of thousands, but I haven’t been able to verify a number quite that big. Europeans were kidnapping Indigenous peoples and using them for forced labour, both within the Americas and overseas. But the extent of this became much murkier after 1542, when it became illegal to enslave Indigenous people. We know they were still being treated as slaves, just identified differently. In Spanish territories, for example, there was a system called the encomienda: as an Indigenous person, you were technically “entrusted” to a Spaniard who was supposed to look after and evangelise you; in exchange, you would work for the Spaniard. In most cases, though, that may as well have been slavery. Sources often talk about Indigenous people being “brought” or “taken” to Europe, and it’s important to look out for those words. Even in the cases of elite individuals who became diplomatic representatives for their people, often the issue of consent is murky and ambiguous. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/01/W95AGFsml-3e69910.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Hernan Cortés (seated at the table) is shown with his Indigenous translator, Malintzin (by the letter E), after his defeat of the Aztecs, c1521. He later brought Martín, the son he had with Malintzin, to Europe (Photo by PRISMA ARCHIVO / Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Hernan Cortés (seated at the table) is shown with his Indigenous translator, Malintzin (by the letter E), after his defeat of the Aztecs, c1521. He later brought Martín, the son he had with Malintzin, to Europe (Photo by PRISMA ARCHIVO / Alamy Stock Photo)" /> You look at stories of Indigenous Americans who came to Europe with diplomatic aims. What kind of petitions were they bringing? A number of high-status Indigenous people came to England, either to assist the English in their explorations or in some cases to meet with the monarch. An interesting case is the so-called “Brazilian king” who met Henry VIII on a diplomatic mission in 1531. In order to guarantee his safe return, the English left a hostage with that king’s people. However, the king died of disease in Europe before he could return home. The English were worried about the fate of the hostage, but the people in Brazil understood, and allowed the hostage to go free. Other travellers included Manteo and Wanchese, high-status men from Croatan and Roanoke, on the north-eastern coast of what’s now the United States. Although they became entangled with English agendas, they seemed to be part of a mission to investigate Britain on behalf of their own people. The same is true of some of the Taíno people who crossed the Atlantic in the 1490s. It was originally assumed that they were simply brought by Columbus but, when you dig into the sources, it appears that some of them were related to rulers of Caribbean islands, so there may have been a diplomatic agenda. There are well-recorded cases of high-status Indigenous people in the Spanish and Portuguese territories, often descendants of prominent nobility, coming over to Europe to appeal for their rights through the Spanish legal system. For example, the sons of [the Aztec emperor] Moctezuma are recorded appealing for money, pensions, jobs and confirmation of the rights to their lands. Read more | Two worlds collide: Spanish conquistadors and Aztecs The Tlaxcalans, who allied with the Spanish to defeat the Mexica (who we think of as the Aztecs), were very successful within the Spanish legal system. The first time that Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortés returned to Spain from Mexico in 1528, he brought a big entourage with him. Historically, we’ve tended to focus on the entertainers, jugglers and tumblers in that group, but it also included several ambassadors – noblemen who were there to promote their interests. During that expedition, the Tlaxcalans gained the right for their city to be recognised as an independent state under the Spanish crown, meaning that they would never be subject to any command or local authority. They got a coat of arms and exemptions from taxation. Though the Tlaxcalans were especially successful, expeditions in which noble families came to Spain to promote their interests or complain about Spanish actions were fairly typical. The conquest of the Americas was not a straightforward story of Europeans versus Indigenous peoples. Very often, Indigenous nobilities were forced to either cooperate with or exploit European ways of doing things. Read more | Why we should remember when Cortés’s conquistadors were forced to flee the Aztec capital You also recount several cases of Indigenous people starting families with Europeans, willingly or unwillingly. Could you give some examples? We know that in the Americas, Indigenous women frequently had relationships with European men. Those were often informal, and Europeans weren’t always keen to bring Indigenous wives with them when they returned home. One of the most famous examples is Matoaka, known to many as Pocahontas, who came to Europe as the wife of an Englishman and was used to promote English colonisation in the Americas as a civilising force. But such examples are more ubiquitous in mainland Europe. Occasionally, the records show Spaniards bringing home Indigenous wives or partners, but we know that a lot of the time it was unrecorded. The trouble is that the Spanish licences to travel across the Atlantic used a word that meant “dependent”; they didn’t have to define exactly who that was, so it could mean a servant or a partner. The precarity of many of these people is very evident. For instance, one Indigenous Peruvian woman, Isabel, was brought to Castile by a Spanish man, Pedro de Oropesa, whom she recognised as her legitimate partner, but he decided to marry a European woman instead. When he died, the new wife tried to assert that the Indigenous woman was enslaved all along, so they had to fight it out in the courts and Isabel was only declared free many years later in 1570. Mestizo children [of mixed ancestry] were also often brought to Europe by their fathers. The most famous example is probably Martín, the son of Cortés. The pope legitimised this son, and Martín actually gained a much higher status than his father. Unlike the elder Cortés, who was not deemed of good enough birth, Martín was recognised as a member of the Order of Santiago, because his mother was a high status Indigenous woman [the translator Malintzin, also called La Malinche or Doña Marina] who had been important in the conquest; by then, too, his father had become a marquis. On the podcast | 15 minutes of fame: Malintzin, Aztec interpreter You also find much more ordinary stories. In 1539, a woman called Beatriz, from somewhere in Venezuela, came across the Atlantic with a man called Alonso Ponce and their young mestizo daughter, Juana. We know that Beatriz was enslaved because she had been branded on her face. Alonso Ponce was the third person to enslave her, but as far as we know she was recognised as his partner. If she’d lived just one more year after her transatlantic voyage, she’d have been able to apply for her freedom. As it was, she died and was buried in Spain. Ponce then cared for his daughter with the help of his sister, before sending Juana off to become a maid in a Seville household. This is what would have been expected with a non-mestizo daughter and Juana seems to have become part of the community. Are there any individual stories from your book that have really stuck with you? In 1577, the English explorer Martin Frobisher returned from a trip to north-eastern Canada with three Indigenous Inuit people he had captured: a man, a woman and a baby. The Europeans thought that they were a family, but it seems that actually the woman and man didn’t know each other. They arrived in Bristol in October and became a real spectacle. Artists flocked to paint them; memorable images drawn of them by John White show the infant, Nutaaq, peeking out of his mother, Arnaq’s, hood. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/01/BMImagesSuperRescmyk-def766b.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Contemporary portrait of Inuit man Kalicho. Captured by the explorer Martin Frobisher, he died soon after being brought to England (© The Trustees of the British Museum)" title="Contemporary portrait of Inuit man Kalicho. Captured by the explorer Martin Frobisher, he died soon after being brought to England (© The Trustees of the British Museum)" /> Local records talk about how the man, Kalicho, hunted ducks with a “dart” on the river Avon to demonstrate how he would harpoon seals. That’s a funny image, but it’s also an incredibly tragic story. It seems that Kalicho had been injured when he was captured. He quickly became ill, and died less than a month after he arrived. The doctor who carried out the autopsy made Arnaq watch the burial and see Kalicho’s dismembered corpse, to demonstrate that the English were not cannibals, which seems frankly horrific. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/01/PE6PFH-cmyk-066b026.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The Inuit woman Arnaq and baby Nutaaq, seen in a contemporary portrait, who were brought to England along with Kalicho. Both died shortly afterwards (© The Trustees of the British Museum)" title="The Inuit woman Arnaq and baby Nutaaq, seen in a contemporary portrait, who were brought to England along with Kalicho. Both died shortly afterwards (© The Trustees of the British Museum)" /> Arnaq was very quiet, which the doctor took to mean that she wasn’t bothered, but it seems much more likely that she was incredibly traumatised. Arnaq herself then became ill – probably with measles – which happened frequently to Indigenous people who had no natural resistance to European diseases. She died a few days after Kalicho. The baby, Nutaaq, was then taken to London. His mother had died and he must have been terrified. Strangers took him to an inn called the Three Swans, where they put him on display and charged people to view him. But, like his mother, he probably had measles, and died just eight days later. Nutaaq is buried at the tiny church of St Olave’s on the corner of Hart Street and Seething Lane in the City of London. Buried in the same graveyard is Samuel Pepys, about whose life no detail goes unreported. The English writer was laid to rest in the same place as this tiny baby about whom we know almost nothing and whose voice we can barely hear, which is such a striking juxtaposition for me. It’s a moving and tragic story – but also, sadly, typical. So many Indigenous people were taken from their homes and died in a strange land, surrounded by strangers and buried in ways that did not respect their traditions or beliefs. They were separated forever from their homelands – which for many Indigenous peoples is a rupture, a wound. Can the legacy of this story still be felt in Europe today? It’s possible to create a jolly cosmopolitan history of globalisation in this period. I could say, for example, that the legacy is that our language is absolutely full of Indigenous words like canoe and hammock. Or I could say that foods from the Americas are central to our lives today. Imagine Italian cooking without tomatoes or peppers. Imagine Asian cuisine without chillies. The first people to drink chocolate in Europe were Maya lords. The legacy of what’s often called the “Columbian exchange” is vast, and Indigenous peoples were very much part of that. So you could look to this era for the roots of our global world today. But it’s also important to reflect on the colonial violence in this story that has an enduring legacy – to recognise the depth of that legacy, and the ways in which Indigenous peoples are seeking to overcome it. These peoples are now starting to try to reclaim the bodies and the belongings of their ancestors from European institutes, to recover their heritage and to repair these wounds where they can. But there’s a lot more work to do. Caroline Dodds Pennock is the author of On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2023). Buy it now on <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Savage-Shores-Caroline-Dodds-Pennock/dp/1474616909/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2QOJ2KAQR38BD&keywords=On+Savage+Shores%3A+How+Indigenous+Americans+Discovered+Europe&qid=1673878686&qu=eyJxc2MiOiIwLjA3IiwicXNhIjoiMC4wMCIsInFzcCI6IjAuMDAifQ%3D%3D&s=books&sprefix=on+savage+shores+how+indigenous+americans+discovered+europe%2Cstripbooks%2C68&sr=1-1&tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-222864" rel="sponsored" target="_blank">Amazon, Waterstones or Bookshop.org This article was first published in the February 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine
Kwasi Kwarteng: "Wars are bloody expensive – so the only way nations can buy what they need is by printing their own money"
In this interview from 2014, Kwasi Kwarteng talks to Matt Elton about his book War and Gold, which explores how new wealth fosters war, in turn leading nations to debt and failure – and why this pattern is repeated through history
The book starts with the discovery of the Americas. What impact did this have on Europe’s economy? It was hugely transformational. Silver and gold flooded Europe, pushing up prices. This was a great stimulus to business activity: if you are opening a shop in an environment in which prices are rising, there’s a big incentive to trade. In many ways, the discovery of the New World kickstarted Europe’s economy. You argue, however, that there were also less desirable results of this boom. Spain relied on these endless flows of silver and gold, and its industry and agriculture fell behind as its people became addicted to these imports. The thing about becoming rich is that you are aware of your money, so spend it: the fact that Spain was extracting riches from the Americas, causing prices to rise, meant that they had to spend more money. This influx of wealth coincided with the military revolution, when the hardware of fighting became much more expensive. So while Spain was getting richer the cost of its endeavours ballooned, and it borrowed money to try to meet the shortfall. At this point, politics became involved. Charles V of Spain inherited a vast empire through a series of dynastic alliances made by his grandfather and his parents. The big question in the Europe of the early 16th century – the backdrop to all that’s familiar to us in British history – was how to accommodate this superpower. For his part, Charles had to spend a lot of money to maintain armies in several theatres of war, which put heavy strains on his kingdom. Was it this international rivalry that led Spain to overspend? It was all about strategic dominance of Europe. What drove Spanish spending was its bid for hegemonic mastery, while the other powers in Europe tried to drag it down. In a sense, that’s what British foreign policy of the period was about: an attempt to limit the mighty powers in Europe. This pattern was repeated through the 17th century, with the burgeoning power and military campaigns of Louis XIV and beyond. Read more | King of the world: how Louis XIV turned France into a global power Do you see the whole history of finance as being cyclical in this way? Repetition is a key theme of the book. The model starts with stability, and then – for whatever reason – a country has to fight a war. The problem with wars is that they’re bloody expensive, so the only way nations can buy what they need is by printing their own money – which leads to inflation and instability. So they say “forget all that gold standard stuff – we’re going to borrow as much paper money as we can, and spend it”. Once they’ve financed this course of action, they realise that they’re in a bit of bother, and revert to fiscal orthodoxy – and so on. What was the financial impact on Europe of the First World War? The First World War was probably the big watershed in terms of financial history, because during the 50 years preceding it the gold standard – by which each currency was linked to a fixed quantity of gold – had become established in the western world. Economists sometimes describe this period a one of proto-globalisation: a liberal world in which capital and people could move freely. The war changed all that. Early in the conflict, the UK stopped paying gold – unlike the US where, as a result, a lot of financial muscle went. Britain, which for the century up to 1914 had essentially been running balanced budgets, became debt-financed. It left the gold standard, and borrowed – and, essentially, printed – lots of money with which to buy what it needed to win the war. Read more | Inflation then and now: Britain's century of boom and bust You argue that the 1930s were more important in financial history than the 1929 crash. Why? The 1929 crash captured the public imagination, but the 1930s were important because governments were trying to deal with the aftermath. After the economy juddered to a halt in 1929, the orthodox view was that spending needed to be cut. Later, in 1936, the economist John Maynard Keynes asserted that in fact governments should be spending money. But I’d argue that governments in the 1930s, particularly the Nazis, had already arrived at that conclusion. Hitler and Roosevelt were Keynesian financiers before Keynes’ General Theory: they were spending and borrowing lots of money, and motivating their people to work. Read more | How was Germany able to afford the astronomical cost of rearmament in the 1930s? Did the Second World War shift the balance of economic power to the US? My view is that the US became top dog after the First World War, but no one really admitted it. After the Second World War, it was obvious that the US was the pre-eminent military and financial power. It was a rare and fascinating situation in which one nation had such a vast share of the global economy. Which powers do you see as emerging most strongly on the postwar stage? China is obviously the big story of the past 25 years, and will continue to be. The other big story is the introduction of the euro. It was a long project, not one dreamt up in the 1980s and 90s; whether you love or loathe the EU, you have to admire the strategic vision of the single currency. One of the things I try to tease out in the book is that British politicians don’t really have that strategic view that their European counterparts have. We think they keep coming up with these madcap schemes, but there’s method to the madness. It’s part of a much bigger, much longer story, a larger architecture than we’re conscious of as politicians in Britain. What new view of money would you like readers to leave the book with? The most important thing is that, if you think that an event may have a historical precedent, then it probably has. This is largely a function of human nature, because people and nations tend to employ the same techniques to survive. The story that I tell in this book is a classic case in which the past does inform, and give us an idea of, what’s going to happen in the future: states are greedy, they spend money, they like borrowing money, and they go to war. These demands have shaped the world for centuries, and understanding the dynamic between them is vital in anticipating what the future might bring. Read next The 2008 financial crisis explained The credit crunch: "It's a story of hubris followed by a fall" War and Gold: A Five-Hundred-Year History of Empires, Adventures and Debt by Kwasi Kwarteng (Bloomsbury, 2014) This content first appeared in the July 2014 issue of BBC History Magazine
Why we should remember when Cortés’s conquistadors were forced to flee the Aztec capital
Amy Fuller considers the retreat of Spanish forces from the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1520
Five hundred years ago, on the night of 30 June 1520, Spanish forces and their allies fled from the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan under attack. Known as La Noche Triste (Night of Sorrows), this shameful retreat marked a key moment in the conquest – or, as it should more accurately be called, invasion – of Mexico. The Spanish were led by Hernán Cortés, whose illegal expedition had begun in February 1519. Cortés had left Cuba against the direct orders of his superior, Diego Velázquez, and evaded arrest several times. He had forged alliances with several indigenous groups, including the Tlaxcalans, who were enemies of the Aztecs. In November, the Spaniards reached Tenochtitlan, where they were received peacefully by Moctezuma II. However, they soon took the emperor hostage as a puppet ruler. Meanwhile, Velázquez sent a force of 1,100 men, led by Pánfilo de Narváez, to arrest Cortés, landing in Veracruz in April 1520. Cortés headed out to face them with only 226 soldiers, but he captured Narváez in a surprise attack and persuaded his men to join the mission to conquer Tenochtitlan. Read more about Cortés, Moctezuma and the conquering of Tenochtitlan In Cortés’s absence, the situation started to unravel at Tenochtitlan. Apparently afraid of an uprising (though only according to Spanish sources), Pedro de Alvarado, who had been left in charge, ordered the massacre of thousands of celebrants taking part in the sacred Toxcatl festival. This greatly diminished the Aztec forces, but meant that any pretence of friendship was over. Moctezuma lost all support: he was no longer a useful hostage, let alone able to continue his reign. Cortés returned to a compound under siege. The Spaniards forced Moctezuma to make a rooftop appeal to his people, but he was pelted with rocks and most likely then murdered by the conquistadors. Bridges had been raised by the Aztecs to cut off a Spanish retreat, and provisions were low; the only choice was to escape to their allies in Tlaxcala, or die. The Spaniards left at midnight, loaded with gold, but were discovered and fiercely attacked. According to some sources, many were so laden with treas- ure that a bridge was created by bodies piling up in the canal. Overall, around 860 Spanish soldiers, five Spanish women and more than 1,000 Tlaxcalan warriors lost their lives. Moctezuma has been vilified for his so-called ‘weak’ leadership, but La Noche Triste shows how sound his decision was to invite the conquistadors into the city. Contained within Tenochtitlan and reliant upon the Aztecs’ hospitality, the Spaniards’ powers were limited. It’s also important to remember that the indigenous allies were crucial; not only in military terms, but also to the Spaniards’ ability to recover, regroup and return to lay siege to the Aztec capital the following year. In fact, we can question whether the conquistadors were mere players in a war between indigenous rivals. Amy Fuller is a lecturer in the history of the Americas at Nottingham Trent University This article first appeared in the June 2020 issue of BBC History Magazine
Cinco de Mayo takes place on 5 May each year in celebration of Mexican heritage, culture and food. But what does it commemorate, and why is it a bigger celebration in the United States? Historian Edward Shawcross explains…
Sometimes confused with Mexico’s Independence Day (which is on 16 September), Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Mexican army’s victory over invading French troops at the battle of Puebla on 5 May 1862. Despite it having been a significant moment in Mexican history, Cinco de Mayo is not a national holiday in Mexico. In fact, its biggest celebrations take place in the United States. This is because people of Mexican heritage in California were some of the first to formalise commemorations of this epic victory over foreign invaders. In 1862, the French emperor Napoleon III sent soldiers to support Mexican conservatives. Recently defeated in civil war, these men wanted to overthrow the liberal, democratically elected president, Benito Juárez, and replace him with a European emperor: Habsburg archduke Ferdinand Maximilian. Read more | Peace, stability and pragmatism: a brief history of US-Mexico relations To achieve this, the French army needed to occupy Mexico City. The French commander in chief of the expeditionary force, Charles Ferdinand Latrille, Comte de Lorencez, was arrogantly confident: “We have over the Mexicans such superiority of race, organisation, discipline, [and] morality . . . that now at the head of 6,000 soldiers I am the master of Mexico”. In May 1862, his army deployed before Puebla, Mexico’s second city and key point on the route to the capital. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/05/GettyImages-587490316-0e86df4-e1651574526898.jpg" width="1024" height="823" alt="Artist Patricio Ramos Ortega's depiction of the battle of Puebla" title="Artist Patricio Ramos Ortega's depiction of the battle of Puebla, which took place on 5 May 1862 near the city of Puebla during the French intervention in Mexico. (Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)" /> General Ignacio Zaragoza commanded the Mexican force facing the invaders. He had roughly the same number of men as Lorencez, but many were poorly trained and badly equipped, with some local indigenous volunteers having nothing but machetes to fight with. Despite this, Zaragoza’s men achieved an astonishing victory. But the Mexican army had only won a single battle; it would take five years to win the war. The French seized Mexico City in 1863, setting up the Second Mexican Empire, which was finally defeated with the execution of its emperor, Maximilian, in June 1867. On the podcast | Edward Shawcross describes a little-known attempt to install an Austrian archduke as emperor of Mexico in the mid-19th century Why is the battle of Puebla commemorated? Why, then, is the battle of Puebla fought on 5 May 1862 still commemorated today? This is because some of the first formal celebrations of the battle were in the United States. California, a Mexican territory seceded to Washington in 1848, took the lead. In 1863, Spanish speakers there – a mixture of a longstanding community, second-generation children, and recent migrants – organised public celebrations of Cinco de Mayo to remember their heritage and show support for Benito Juárez. Successive movements of Mexican and Latin American migration to the United States then institutionalised the day in a way that never happened in Mexico. To this day, the biggest Cinco de Mayo celebrations take place in Los Angeles, Chicago and San Diego. It was in those cities that Spanish-speaking communities adopted and adapted Cinco de Mayo. The battle is remembered, but the event has become a much broader celebration of community, heritage and Mexican – even Latin American – culture. Since the 1980s, the commercialisation of Cinco de Mayo has raised concerns around cultural appropriation and the stereotyping of Mexico. Despite this, the celebrations themselves are nothing new. During the siege that would bring down Maximilian in 1867, Mexican soldiers loyal to Benito Juárez held their own party on 5 May, celebrating freedom, democracy and reform. The fact that millions of people remember – even if imperfectly – the same event today is testament to the courage of those who defended the Mexican nation over 150 years earlier. Read next | The Siege of Querétaro: the downfall of Maximilian I of Mexico Edward Shawcross is a historian whose research specialises in French imperialism in Latin America and the Mexican intellectual thought that underpinned the Second Mexican Empire. He is the author of The Last Emperor of Mexico (Faber, 2022)
The Siege of Querétaro: the downfall of Maximilian I of Mexico
In the early 1860s, as the American Civil War raged, a plot was hatched to have a European archduke assume the throne in Mexico. The royal was promised that his rule would have both popular support and imperial resource, but Maximilian I of Mexico would instead meet a bloody end. Edward Shawcross, a historian whose research specialises in French imperialism in Latin America, takes up the tale…
Before lunch on 13 February 1867, Ferdinand Maximilian, a Habsburg archduke, and – to his supporters at least – emperor of Mexico, had been drinking champagne. Before dinner, he found himself staring at the mutilated body of one of his soldiers. The corpse was hanging upside down from a tree in a churchyard, another victim in a war that Maximilian was losing. The dead man served as a warning to the military convoy that the emperor was leading from Mexico City to the provincial town of Querétaro. Here, at the head of what remained of his army, Maximilian hoped to begin a fight back that would restore confidence in his empire. When Maximilian accepted the Mexican crown on 10 April 1864, the idea that he would one day lead an army would have been laughable. After all, the Mexican exiles who offered him the throne had promised him that monarchy was popular in their country. In fact, these exiles had no throne to offer. They were a mere faction defeated in a civil war, but they had the support of the one of the most powerful men in the world: French emperor Napoleon III. In a brazen act of regime change, by the end of 1862, the French emperor Napoleon III had some 30,000 French troops in Mexico. His plan was to use French military power to drive the constitutional president Benito Juárez out of the capital and create the Second Mexican Empire with Maximilian as its ruler. A French-backed monarchy, Napoleon III reasoned, would provide all the benefits of colonialism to France at a fraction of the cost, roll back the republicanism in the Americas and check the rise of US power. Read more | America’s hidden empire: the USA's forgotten imperial expansion Napoleon III told Maximilian that all this was the will of the Mexican people. But when the emperor of Mexico arrived, he found a country where many still saw Juárez as the legitimate president. He and his liberal supporters – known as Juaristas – had merely retreated into the vastness of Mexico to wage war against a Habsburg usurper championed by Mexican conservatives and propped up by foreign bayonets. At first, imperialistas – as supporters of the empire were known – were in the ascendancy. But the situation changed in January 1866 when Napoleon III announced that French troops were withdrawing, the intervention proving too costly to sustain in the face of Juárez’s defiance. On the podcast | Edward Shawcross describes a little-known attempt to install an Austrian archduke as emperor of Mexico in the mid-19th century Fight or flight? Without French support, Maximilian resolved to abdicate. His wife, princess Charlotte of Belgium, had other ideas. She accused her husband of cowardice and travelled to Europe to persuade Napoleon III to change his mind. She failed, and never returned to Mexico, suffering a mental breakdown before the Pope while pleading for his support. Back in Mexico, imperialistas were everywhere in retreat, but Maximilian’s Mexican allies convinced him to stay and fight for his empire. So it was that he took command of the army on 13 February 1867 and marched to Querétaro to relieve his beleaguered forces there. The plan was a desperate one. Three separate Juarista armies were converging on the city; and the emperor faced being outnumbered three to one. Maximilian had never served in an army, let alone commanded one, but at least he looked the part. Wearing a general’s uniform of black trousers with silver buttons down the sides, and boots that came up to his knees, Maximilian appeared every inch the soldier – and a Mexican one at that, his wide sombrero completing his battle dress. As the column wended its way through the 130 miles of rugged, hilly terrain that separated the capital from Querétaro, it came under fire from Juarista guerrillas. Despite his inexperience, Maximilian remained calm. Writing to a friend after one engagement, he recalled how, as bullets whistled past, he “saw the most beautiful butterflies fluttering about”. After more skirmishes, the soldiers arrived in Querétaro. At this imperialista stronghold, Maximilian and his small army were greeted with cheers. The houses were decorated with flags and banners hung from balconies packed with euphoric onlookers. The empire’s best and most famous generals – Tomás Mejía, Miguel Miramón and Leonardo Márquez – were with Maximilian and began planning the campaign. The problem was that they detested one another, and rarely agreed on strategy. Miramón urged an immediate attack to prevent the approaching armies from combining; but it was Márquez who won the day, arguing that they should wait for reinforcements from Mexico City. While he waited, Maximilian mingled amongst the people of Querétaro. When not in military uniform, he dressed in a blue tunic and carried a walking stick. Fond of cigars, he would ask unsuspecting people in the street for a light and talk with them while smoking. At first, life in the town continued much as before: the theatre remained open, a French coffeehouse proved popular with officers, and there was even a bullfight. Read more | Peace, stability and pragmatism: a brief history of US-Mexico relations This normality came to an end on 6 March 1867, when the enemy appeared to the west of the town. Any hope of defeating the Juarista armies separately was over; a siege had begun. With little money or provisions, the outlook was bleak. Maximilian did not even have enough men to take hills on three sides of the town. Soon enemy artillery was on the high ground, every building below within range. Maximilian made his headquarters in a thick-walled convent. On the morning of 14 March, Maximilian reviewed his troops in its courtyard. While he was delivering a speech, shells crashed into the walls. The Juarista attack had begun. Desperate fighting ensued, Juaristas made it into the gardens of the convent, but the imperialistas pushed them back and defended their lines elsewhere. In the early evening, the emperor went to inspect his victorious troops. As he rode past his soldiers, they saluted him with wild cheers, potshots from enemy sharpshooters kicking up the dirt near his horse. The bells of Querétaro were ringing, trumpets sounded, and his troops sang the national anthem. Maximilian was a hero. As one imperialista officer recorded: “The empire had been saved.” An imperial success? Temporarily, perhaps, but Maximilian needed reinforcements to break the siege. It was decided that Márquez would slip through enemy lines, ride to Mexico City and bring back troops garrisoning the capital. The general promised to return within two weeks, but nearly three weeks later, April 10 – the third anniversary of Maximilian’s acceptance of the throne – there was no sign of Márquez. Undeterred, the highest authorities that could be scraped together in Querétaro presented themselves before the emperor to congratulate him on his reign. The minister of justice read a speech, which began, without apparent irony, “On this day Your Majesty deigned to accept the crown of Mexico, by this memorable deed forever opening the gates of hope for this unhappy land.” Despite the fact that Maximilian controlled Querétaro, Mexico City, and only a handful of other towns, the minister insisted that the empire was the “will of the nation”; the republic but the “will of the few”. These farcical ceremonies – pastiches of imperial grandeur – were made all the more absurd by Maximilian’s increasingly tenuous grip on reality. On afternoon walks, while explosions rained around him, he took the time to dictate to his private secretary the details of court etiquette. Maximilian’s army was so short of supplies that lead roofs were turned into musket balls. Food became scarce, horses were slaughtered for meat. Hungry and short on money and munitions, Maximilian’s men began to desert. The situation worsened when news reached the imperialistas that Márquez had been defeated and was now himself under siege in Mexico City. No help was coming. Maximilian and his generals resolved to break the siege before the army melted away. On 27 April they nearly succeeded, punching a hole in Juaristas lines; however, the imperialistas moved too slowly and reinforcements closed the gap. Another escape was planned for 13 May, but delayed until 15 May. The night before, fearing capture, Maximilian divided his possessions amongst his closest entourage, including one of his most trusted officers, Miguel López. In the early hours of the morning, however, López crossed over into the Juarista lines, betraying Maximilian. In return for his life, and, it was alleged, money, López ordered imperialista guards to stand down and led the republican soldiers into the convent where Maximilian and his officers were sleeping. Even then, Maximilian somehow managed to avoid capture. With a band of loyal officers, he made his way to the Cerro de las Campanas, a small hill overlooking the town, where he tried to rally his troops. The situation was hopeless. As artillery shells rained down, the emperor saw that Querétaro was lost, and he surrendered. Maximilian was escorted to the commanding officer of Juarista forces, Mariano Escobedo. “I am your prisoner,” said Maximilian. It was then that he, an archduke born at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, offered his sword to Escobedo, a former farm labourer from the harsh sierras of Nuevo León. The death of Maximilian I of Mexico This moment was heavy with symbolism: the triumph of republicanism over monarchy in the Americas. But Juárez was determined that the victory be final. Maximilian was, therefore, imprisoned, court martialled and sentenced to death alongside two of his most important generals, Miramón and Mejía. Their deaths, Juárez believed, would mark the final triumph of secular, liberal republicanism over European imperialism, Mexican conservatism, and the power of the Catholic Church after nearly ten years of fighting. Maximilian had stumbled into this conflict which he little understood but did much to prolong, not least through rallying his forces to make one last stand in Querétaro. And it was here that he paid the price, facing a firing squad on the same hilltop overlooking the town where earlier he had surrendered. Turning to face straight towards his executioners, Maximilian spoke in clear, loud Spanish: “I forgive everybody, I pray that everyone may also forgive me, and I wish that my blood, which is now to be shed, may be for the good of the country. Long live Mexico, long live independence.” The shots rang out. Maximilian fell to the ground, smoke gently wisped skywards from the bullet holes in his clothes as he lay dying in the Mexican dust. Edward Shawcross is a historian whose research specialises in French imperialism in Latin America and the Mexican intellectual thought that underpinned the Second Mexican Empire. He is the author of The Last Emperor of Mexico (Faber, 2022)
Edward Shawcross describes a little-known attempt to install an Austrian archduke as emperor of Mexico in the mid-19th century
Edward Shawcross speaks to Elinor Evans about a little-known and disastrous attempt to install a Habsburg archduke, Ferdinand Maximilian, as emperor of Mexico in the mid-19th century, at a time when the US Civil War was raging. Edward Shawcross is the author of The Last Emperor of Mexico: A Disaster in the New World (Faber & Faber, 2021) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones How to download the HistoryExtra podcast Download as MP3
The real pirates of the Caribbean: your guide to Nassau's pirate republic
In the early 18th century, one small, salty, sun-splashed corner of the Bahamas was the epicentre of an organised crime wave that washed across the islands of the Caribbean and along America’s Atlantic coast. Pat Kinsella tells its tale
Late one evening on 26 July 1718, the inky black Bahamian night was ripped asunder by a fireball, as the pirate captain Charles Vane set his flagship aflame and sent it towards the Royal Navy frigates that had escorted the newly appointed Governor of the Bahamas into Nassau harbour earlier in the day. The governor was Woodes Rogers, a name that struck fear into even the darkest pirate heart. A former privateer, Rogers was on a mission to rid the Bahamas of the villainous seafaring gangs that were decimating trade routes through the region, and to shut down the den of iniquity that was the Republic of Pirates. Read more | Famous pirates: the worst and most despicable in history Rogers’ reputation preceded him, and the circumstances that had led the British government to turn a blind eye to the crime wave emanating from their far-flung colonial outposts had changed. A cold wind was blowing across the renegade republic, unsettling the pirate flag that brazenly flew from the hill fort above the harbour. Many of the most infamous figures of the day – a collective of pirate captains known as the Flying Gang, who had been bossing and bullying the Bahamas for over a decade – were preparing to accept the King's Pardon the new governor offered, rather than risk the likelihood of a grizzly death at the end of a short rope by staying on the wrong side of the law. Listen | Dr Rebecca Simon responds to your questions on the 17th-century golden age of piracy and discusses how accurate pop culture portrayals of pirates are But not Vane. A cruel character with a horrible history – supported by a crew that was even more rash and unrepentant than their captain – he wasn’t about to give up his lucrative life of crime without a fight. Wrong-footed and hemmed in by Rogers’ sudden arrival, Vane bought time by demanding the right to dispose of his ill-gotten swag before promising to accept the terms of the pardon, but by nightfall he knew he was cornered. It was time to surrender or swashbuckle his way out of the situation. When was the Nassau pirate republic established? Initially established as an English outpost called Charles Town, the settlement around the main harbour on New Providence Island in the Bahamas was renamed Nassau in 1695, after being torched by the Spanish in a skirmish typical of the time, when competing colonial powers constantly fought over footholds in the New World. Sir Nicholas Trott was installed as governor, but the so-called city – the Bahamas’ capital – was thinly populated and ripe for attack, especially as Europe’s Nine Years’ War was spilling into the Americas. One year later, renegade English sea-captain Henry Avery arrived, fresh from pulling off the biggest pirate raid in history. His ship, the Fancy, had attacked and plundered the Grand Mughal dhow, Ganj-i-Sawai, which was laden with vast amounts of treasure. On the podcast | Henry Avery: the legendary 17th-century pirate Using a false name and posing as a slaver, Avery employed bribery and deception to convince Trott to allow him into harbour, where the presence of his crew more than doubled Nassau’s male population. Trott, who doubtless suspected he was entertaining pirates, calculated this might deter an attack from the French, who were at war with England and had recently overrun nearby Exuma. The attack on the Ganj-i-Sawai had put the crown and English merchants under huge political pressure, however, and when Trott realised who his guest was, he squealed to the authorities – but not before giving Avery advance warning and allowing him to escape with his loot, never to be seen again. The pirates were gone, but not for long. Nassau was again left dangerously exposed and unprotected, and Trott soon moved on as the settlement was repeatedly attacked by the Franco-Spanish fleets during the War of the Spanish Succession, which erupted in 1701. Eventually, Nassau was effectively abandoned by English authorities, which allowed the increasing number of privateers active in the area to move in. Read more | Did pirates really live on the island of Tortuga? The Spanish succession war – sparked by the death of Charles II, last Habsburg king of Spain, who died childless – pitted the forces of the Holy Roman Empire (Austria, Prussia, Hanover), England and Scotland (joined in the Acts of Union in 1707), Portugal, the Dutch Republic and one faction of Spain against France and Spain (loyal to Philip, duc d’Anjou). The conflict was fought across Europe and the New World, and was bigger than anything seen before. A tactic long employed by the English during wartime was to skimp on the cost of a maintaining a big, expensive navy by issuing ‘letters of marque’ to private captains, authorising them to attack any ships flying the flag of an enemy nation and to capture the cargo (on the understanding that they should send a percentage of profits back to the Crown). Possession of this piece of paper was the sole difference between being a privateer (a legal occupation, actively encouraged by Crown and government) and a pirate (a criminal act, punishable by death). During the succession war, lots of letters of marque were issued, and attacks on ships flying Spanish and French flags as they sailed in American waters were highly encouraged. When Britain pulled out of the conflict these letters were suddenly worthless, and privateers faced a choice: give up their lucrative life of violence and robbery on the high seas, or carry on beyond the law and become full-time pirates. It wasn’t a hard decision. Read more | Did any real pirates wear eyepatches or have peg legs? Most of these men – captains and crew – were lifelong mariners who’d served in the regular navy, and weren’t about to rush back. Conditions were appalling, with draconian rules and horrific punishments, years at sea with little reward and scant opportunity to meet women, lots of discomfort and danger, and a high probability of early death. Until the 19th century, the Royal Navy regularly paid sailors’ wages up to two years late, and it was common practice to hold back six months’ pay simply to dissuade men from deserting or mutinying. And even when they were paid, mariners’ salaries remained unchanged for nearly 150 years, between 1653 and 1797. By contrast, as privateers and subsequently pirates, they could typically expect a proper share of any spoils blagged from boats they helped to plunder, could play an active role in a surprisingly inclusive system, and enjoy plentiful shore time in places like Nassau with its taverns and women. The violence and high probability of dying young stayed the same – but at least they faced the risks on their own terms. Which pirates sailed from Nassau? Prominent among those who now found themselves sliding into a criminal career were captains Benjamin Hornigold and Henry Jennings, once rival privateers who quickly became lead players in the Republic of Pirates, mentoring some of the era’s most notorious characters. Hornigold's first forays into piracy happened during the winter of 1713–14, off the coast of Nassau, where he used a sloop and a flotilla of periaguas (sailing canoes) to harass merchant ships attempting to pass New Providence. Within three years, he'd amassed a pirate fleet of five vessels (including a 30-gun sloop called the Ranger – the most powerful ship in the region) and commanded a combined crew of 350 men. Hornigold's second-in-charge was a big bloke called Edward Teach, who would become better known as Blackbeard. Jennings – branded a pirate in 1715 after two illegal attacks on Spanish interests – relocated from Jamaica to Nassau, and formed an alliance with Hornigold. Besides Blackbeard, the stellar cast of criminals that graduated through the crews of Hornigold and Jennings included Charles Vane, 'Black Sam’ Bellamy, Stede Bonnet and 'Calico Jack’ Rackham. Collectively, they were known as the Flying Gang, and their audacious misdeeds would come to define the golden age of piracy, giving rise to many of the legendary antics we now associate with fictional pirates from page, stage and screen. Who was in the Flying Gang? The lead characters active in the Republic of Pirates were collectively known as the Flying Gang. The society was run like a surprisingly tight ship, underpinned by the same code of principles employed by pirates while they were at sea. They included: Edward 'Blackbeard' Teach 'Calico Jack' Rackham Charles Vane Stede Bonnet Olivier Levasseur Benjamin Hornigold Henry Jennings 'Black Sam' Bellamy Read more about the history’s most famous pirates And not all of these tales are based on fantasy. The Republic of Pirates flew a skull and crossbones, and it was governed according to the Pirates' Code, which made it far more democratic and egalitarian than most so-called civil societies at the time. Alarmed officials from neighbouring colonies, such as the Governor of Bermuda, claimed that over 1,000 pirates were operating out of Nassau at the republic’s height, dwarfing the settlement’s law-abiding population, which numbered just a few hundred. Some reports suggest the city supported an equal number of prostitutes, and the taverns were doing a roaring trade. Read more | X marks the spot: did pirates bury their treasure? Yet, by most accounts, this community of criminals was well organised and reasonably disciplined, with Jennings acting as ‘commodore’ and Blackbeard elected as 'magistrate' – a terrifying man to have in charge of law enforcement. When did the pirate republic begin to decline? Cracks in the cornerstones began to appear over the vexed issue of whether British ships should be attacked. Hornigold, wary of the consequences, was against plundering vessels flying the Union Jack, but his less-cautious crew disagreed, and in November 1716 he was overthrown and replaced by 'Black Sam' Bellamy. According to the code, Hornigold was set adrift with men who remained loyal, while Bellamy went on to have a spectacular but short career as a pirate captain – capped by the plunder of a British slaving ship, the Whydah Gally, loaded with gold and silver, having just offloaded its human cargo – before being drowned during a storm in 1717. Read more | What is the origin and meaning of the pirate expression ‘shiver me timbers’? Hornigold was proved right, however, and once their commercial interests began to be threatened, the British stopped ignoring the Republic of Pirates. They engaged the services of Woodes Rogers as a governor, dispatching him to clean up the colony and reign in the renegade captains. Rogers roared across the Atlantic, bearing a proclamation from George I offering the King's Pardon to any pirate for crimes committed before 5 January 1718 – if they agreed to swear an oath and stop their illegal operations. Generous rewards were further given to those willing to turn pirate hunter, helping to bring in any members of their former fraternity who remained outside the law. Read more | Stede Bonnet, Gentleman Pirate: how a mid-life crisis created the ‘worst pirate of all time’ This shrewd tactic fatally split the Flying Gang. Hornigold was one of several who accepted the pardon and went searching for the bounty on the heads of his former protégés. Jennings too sought and received a pardon under the amnesty, as did some 400 other pirates. But not Jennings’ underling Charles Vane, who jumped into the vacuum left behind by this pirate exodus, and seized command of Nassau – at least until Rogers arrived, surprising him into a dramatic course of action. The fall of the pirates of the Caribbean Blockaded into Nassau Harbour, Vane filled his formerly French flagship, the Lark, with gunpowder, set it aflame and directed it towards the navy vessels. As it exploded, Rogers' men quickly cut their anchor lines and took desperate evasive action, allowing the pirate captain and his cutthroat crew to escape in a swift six-gun sloop called the Ranger, firing a few volleys at the navy ships as they sailed out into open sea. While most of his Flying Gang colleagues were now out of action, Vane kept raiding ships passing through the Bahamas and remained a thorn in Rogers’ side as he attempted to snuff out the remnants of the Republic of Pirates on Nassau and restore order. Read more | Ghost ships through history Even Blackbeard – who’d been rampaging along the coast of mainland America when Hornigold was deposed, committing crimes that made his reputation – had accepted the pardon and was living relatively peacefully in North Carolina. Vane, who was being pursued by pirate hunters including Hornigold, tracked his old buddy down and tried to tempt him out of retirement, but only succeeded in drawing attention to the infamous pirate. Directly after Vane’s visit, Blackbeard was attacked and killed by a task force commissioned by the Governor of Virginia. Meanwhile, Vane’s crew had grown even more reckless than their captain. In November 1718, Vane was deposed by his quartermaster John ‘Calico Jack’ Rackham, who accused him of cowardice after he retreated from a fight with a large French man-o-war. Read more | Hunting pirates: how piracy's golden age came to an end Cut loose on a captured sloop, Vane was shipwrecked on the coast of Central America, before being picked up by a merchant ship. Unfortunately for the pirate, he was subsequently recognised and turned over to authorities in Jamaica, where he was hanged at Gallows Point, Port Royal, on 29 March 1720. Calico Jack didn’t fare any better. Although he returned to Nassau in 1719 and pursued a pardon, while on the island Rackham began an affair with Anne Bonny, wife to one of Rogers’ sailors. Exposed, the pair pinched a sloop and embarked on a new pirate rampage – with another famous female, Mary Read, also in their crew – until they were cornered by a pirate hunter. Rackham too ended his days on the Port Royal gallows. With Hornigold having turned pirate hunter, Jennings in retirement, and ‘Black Sam’ Bellamy, Blackbeard, Vane and Calico Jack all dead, the Flying Gang was decimated by 1721, and Woodes Rogers had succeeded in consigning the Republic of Pirates to history. Woodes Rogers: the man who broke the Flying Gang The man who brought down Nassau's pirate posse wasn't a newcomer to adventure. Woodes Rogers had conducted a privateering expedition with William Dampier in 1708–11, during which he had circumnavigated the globe while pursuing Spanish ships, and rescued the marooned sailor Alexander Selkirk – who'd spent four lonely years on Juan Fernandez Island, and subsequently inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Rogers then set his sights on the Bahamas, striking a deal with King George I that he'd rid the islands of pirates, in return for a share of the colony's profits. By 1720, he'd successfully quashed the Republic of Pirates and restored New Providence's defences, but found himself imprisoned because of debts he'd wracked up in the process. The subsequent publication of a wildly successful book, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, (possibly authored by Defoe, under the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson) made Rogers a national hero, prompting King George II to award him a generous pension and reappoint him as Governor. He died in Nassau in 1732. Pat Kinsella is a freelance journalist specialising in history This content first appeared in the May 2017 issue of BBC History Revealed