The Pirate Organization: Lessons From the Fringes of Capitalism (7 page)

Whatever the time period, piracy exists only as such in partially uncharted territories. The pirate organization is a necessary counterpart of expanding the areas of capitalist normalization. Sometimes, the pirate organization tolerates or is even employed by the state. Sometimes it submits to state normalization in the form of a corsair arrangement. Temporary corsairization of the pirate organization precisely fills this function of partial and relative reterritorialization, enabling piratical norms to diffuse broadly within the state apparatus.

When sovereigns come to a consensus about what norms they should apply to a territory, they establish legal boundaries, and every act of deviance from the norm is treated as criminal. Besides, an agreement across sovereign states leads to the disappearance of corsairs, or, to be more specific, it wipes out the distinction between pirates and corsairs. Clearly, pirates should not be confused with criminals, nor should corsairs, who represent their necessary counterpart within state institutions. Put differently, piracy is carried out in partially uncharted territories where the sovereign state has yet to take complete control. These territories are gray areas that do not fall under regular jurisdictions. What’s more, the pirate organization often has no clearly defined nationality. If it did, it would fall under the local laws of the state, which would condemn it for trespassing, theft, or robbery. The more states refuse to grant statehood status to other political entities, the more they deprive these entities of their ability to hold territory, thus producing the gray areas that are prime for the growth of the pirate organization.

Organizations come together with an identity, a set of stated goals, and particular relationships with the normalizing state that give meaning to the development of capitalism. Understanding them avoids the simplifying image of capital as a self-devouring force without any other horizon than itself. Among the various organizational forms, one is essential for the constant evolution and recoding of capitalism. This form, perceived as irrational, abnormal, and dangerous by capitalist organizations from the legitimate milieu, appears both “necessary” and “renegade”—the pirate organization.

Chapter Six

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN:
The Pirate Organization on the High Seas

To win new worlds,
For gold, praise and glory
.

—Verse from the poet Raleigh, a hymn to maritime piracy

The pirate destroys all government and all order, by breaking all those ties and bonds that unite people in a civil society under any government
.

—Daniel Defoe

From the viewpoint of the sovereign, piracy is used as a legal tool to ward off organized opponents. The pirate organization is the one that fights the interests of a centralized state, and the corsair does the same to that state’s enemies. Yes, it is a matter of perspective, and in this respect the pirate organization is deeply embedded in the geopolitical context of any given time. Its first moments of glory date back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the monopolistic trade fleets of European sovereigns sailed the world’s seas. Thousands of pirates thus roamed the Atlantic, the Caribbean, Africa’s East Coast, the Strait of Malacca, and the Mediterranean.

The War Machine and the Pirate Organization

When a war officially ended, a corsair with letters of marque and reprisal that had expired could become a
flibustier
if he agreed to change his methods to peacefully trade legal or illegal products.
Flibustier
comes from the Dutch word
vrijbuiter
, translated literally into English as “freebooter,” which means a freelance merchant. Between 1500 and 1700, thousands of flibustiers tried their luck in America. Though most flibustiers came from French ports, they were still considered to be pirates by the Spanish and Portuguese. Some of these flibustiers joined organizations such as the West India Company (WIC), which was created by the United Provinces in 1621 to run profitable expeditions to America, expeditions that increasingly resembled raiding more than trading.

Other corsairs did not want to stray from the tried-and-true methods that had made them a fortune during wartimes. Many continued to attack ships—they became pirates. They were joined by thousands of soldiers and marines who had lost their jobs after hostilities came to an end, and by sailors who did not accept their substantial drop in pay. According to one historian’s estimates, after the signing of a peace treaty at the end of the seventeenth century, the salaries for wartime mariners dropped by more than 50 percent given the reduced demand for cannon fodder.
¹
Generally, in peacetime the state would renegotiate with the antagonists regarding their respective exclusive trade rights. These agreements could suddenly make the trade of certain products or navigation on certain routes illegal, automatically extending the list of who would be considered pirates in the future. Thus, in the years following the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, “the Spaniards repeatedly attacked men who were cutting down trees in the bights … before seizing their ships, which put an end to all their economic activities, and all sailors who were employed by them—approximately 3,000—became pirates and overran the seas.”
²

The Extent of the Pirate Phenomenon

We know that among the eighteenth-century pirate crews that roamed the Caribbean, approximately 35 percent were from England, 25 percent were from the American colonies, 20 percent were natives of the colonies, plus there were some Dutch and French. A pirate ship had an average crew of eighty; on the biggest ships it was not unusual for one hundred fifty or two hundred to be on board. Compare that with a traditional merchant ship, which carried about twenty sailors. We know that the pirate Samuel Bellamy took two hundred men with him, and Blackbeard took three hundred aboard
Queen Anne’s Revenge
. Pirates rarely worked alone. In practice, strength in numbers gave them an advantage over better-armed adversaries. They generally organized themselves into fleets or flotillas of various sizes, but they always adapted their size and formation to the enemy. Pirates would often form squadrons of several ships. For example, Bartholomew Roberts commanded four ships that carried a total of five hundred men. The largest group recorded in the West was that of Captain Morgan, who led a fleet of more than thirty ships and two thousand men.
³

After a successful attack, pirates would stop over in a nonhostile port. These havens of peace were scattered all over the world: Madagascar, Jamaica, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Venezuela—places where idle pirates could find cheap liquor and prostitutes, but they could also find other pirates and recruit them to replace those who died during the last battle or decided to end their career. Leaving Europe, crossing the Cape of Good Hope, reaching the Spice Islands (Moluccas) in Indonesia—in the seventeenth century, these were not easy feats. A round-trip lasted nearly two years: one exceptionally strong storm, a battle that takes a tragic turn, an unlucky encounter, an onboard epidemic, spoiled rations—any of these would have depleted a pirate crew. Often, returning to port meant a shrunken crew, several amputations, not to mention possible capture, prison, hanging without trial, or an unfortunate end in Davy Jones’s locker. Here’s buccaneer Fleury describing the state of his troops during a perilous trip across the Caribbean in 1618: “In this state, it was as if our ship were abandoned … every day we threw dead bodies off the ship, one asking for bread, another asking for water, another swearing and cursing his life … In addition, we looked like real skeletons, or bodies that had been buried for a few days since, from the soles of the feet to the top of the head, we were covered in filth so black and persistent and sticky that we looked more like ghosts than men, which caused a stir when we arrived in the Indies … the savages believed that we were devils.”
⁴

Many pirate organizations made life difficult for Her Majesty. Between 1536 and 1586, the National Archives records 361 pirate attacks, but this number accounted only for French ships operating in the Caribbean.
⁵
It has been estimated that in the second half of the eighteenth century, the value of goods stolen by English corsairs added up to about 10 percent of French maritime international trade.
⁶
Historian Marcus Rediker estimated that, between 1716 and 1726, incessant pirate attacks led to a major crisis in the British Empire and threatened the stability of international trade. In reality, the pirate organization worked on all fronts. It picked up spices in Indonesia and sold them in Cape Town or Lisbon. It took a nonnegligible percentage of the cargo of precious metal extracted from the South American mines by the Portuguese and Spanish monopolies. Moreover, the pirate organization competed with the major state-run companies by establishing parallel trade routes. For example, pirate organizations supplied the Island of Manhattan with slaves, even though they had full knowledge of the monopolistic Royal African Company (which was founded by the Duke of York, who later gave his name to New York City).

At the time, there were approximately five thousand pirates in the Atlantic, including three thousand in the Caribbean, and a continuous presence of fifteen hundred in the Indian Ocean. In comparison, the navy had about thirteen thousand men. Depending on the year, pirates represented between 10 percent and 15 percent of the largest marine corps in the world. On land, the population of the North American colonies was approximately one hundred fifty thousand people—so the number of pirates was equivalent to 1 percent of the colonial population. At the time, some British officials feared that pirates might create their own commonwealth. Here is a quotation from a letter written by Colonel Bennet in 1718 to the Council of Trade and Plantations: “I fear that they will soon multiply for so many are willing to joyn [sic] with them when taken.”
⁷

Around 1800, in the China Sea, a former prostitute called Cheng I Sao worked her way up and became the head of the Confederation of the Six Flags, a pirate organization of about fifty thousand pirates. The organization’s main activity was pillaging businesses controlled by the Middle Kingdom.
⁸
Despite the Chinese warships that were continually sent to annihilate its five hundred–ship fleet, the confederation maintained power for more than a decade. In turn, government was forced to grant a general amnesty to sea pirates in 1810.

A Real Threat: From Banditry to the Public Cause

In the classical period, bandits became pirates simply because a Barbary state on the coast of the Mediterranean did not obtain recognition from official political communities. In modern times, the states have established their borders and sovereignty, and the bandits’ raids from identified neighbors become acts of war. A state cannot serve itself in its neighbor’s territory with impunity for fear of creating a conflict. The law of reprisal—compensatory spoils or
sulan
—is no longer tolerated and becomes an expropriation. Pirates do not morph into corsairs as easily as before. In parallel, capitalism, through its expansion and what it includes, produces the organization of what it excludes. Integration of new territories and normalization of exchanges create the conditions for the emergence and development of a milieu favorable to capitalist exchanges. But symmetrically, it pushes to its periphery actors who organize their contestation. As a result, pirates are no longer defined by states that negate their legitimacy and denounce their actions. Instead, the pirate organization defines itself positively by differentiating its code, values, and cause from the normative will of the sovereign.

The pirate in ancient times was not recognized by anyone. He was neither the enemy of a few nor an identified common criminal. The lack of a common cause made it difficult for victims to refer to pirates or to find a reason to fight against them. International law treaties, therefore, called them enemies of everyone. However, in modern times, pirates become organized renegades that provide a capitalist countermodel. This countermodel is both necessary and absolute in its excessiveness. Pirate organizations seek to be a radical contradiction, often too radical to succeed and convince large crowds. But occasionally, parts of their message gain acceptance and become integrated into the capitalist code. In both instances, the fate of any pirate organization is failure. Either it is wiped out by the state or it slowly dies out as its propositions are assimilated into the capitalist code (in which case it loses its raison d’être). Extreme and necessary, the pirate organization seeks to tweak the capitalist logic that partially uncharted territories should be first monopolized, then privatized. From within the expansionist logic of capitalism, pirates stand up for a common cause they express publicly. This “public cause” feeds into the rationalization of capitalist institutions as they are renewed again and again, crisis after crisis.

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, a lively debate began about the rights and uses of new maritime territories. On the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese traded with Dutch merchants who roamed the same waters as the pirates. In his famous treatise,
Freedom of the Seas
, legal scholar Hugo Grotius wrote that waters and navigation are “free” because the sea is essentially a public good—it does not belong to anyone, and using the seas for navigation does not prevent others from doing the same. Responses came quickly from Iberic and English sovereigns, who claimed that the parts of an ocean that linked their territories together could be legally appropriated. But it was Grotius’s viewpoint that won out two centuries later. Outside of territorial waters, Grotius defended the viewpoint that no nation has the right to take possession of the open seas. Eventually, the freedom of the open seas—nowadays, more than 50 percent of all water surfaces on Earth—was achieved through a series of treaties, starting with the 1856 Declaration of Paris, which abolished privateering. The Hague Peace Conference of 1907 spelled the end of sea corsairs by forcing every sovereign to list armed vessels as military. The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea finalized the discussions by recognizing freedom of navigation on the high seas, coming around, at last, to the demands of seventeenth-century sea pirates.