CAPTAIN KIDD AND THE WAR AGAINST THE PIRATES

by Robert C. Ritchie ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1986

A serious treatment of the history of piracy, the life of William Kidd (one of the better-known of the profession) and the demise of buccaneering. While the public conception of pirates has always been that of swashbuckling individualists out for personal fortune, Ritchie (History/UCal at San Diego) shows that in actuality, they were early businessmen, selling their services to governments that couldn't legally sanction such schemes but which nevertheless encouraged piracy as a major economic enterprise. Governments and merchants on both sides of the Atlantic often averted their eyes to the goings on of such as Kidd in order to trade with them. The pirates were ""marginal men freed from societal conventions, living beyond restraint except for the few rules they set for themselves."" Kidd was one of these. Born into a rigidly Calvinist Scottish family around 1645, he took to the sea, where he dashed from the Caribbean to New York to London to the Indian Ocean before being caught up in political intrigue (tied to the fortunes of the Whig leaders for his last great expedition, Kidd became a pawn when their influence waned and their opposition hunted him down, imprisoned him and, finally, sent him to the gallows). Ritchie compares the cob lapse of the buccaneering system to the fall of the cowboy in our own society--they were basically crushed by the competing needs of the more powerful modern states. A refreshing look at a subject usually too easily frivolized.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harvard Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION