Pirates: Resources

Through rare primary resources and new editorial matter, this four-volume facsimile edition moves away from the personality cult of the pirate to encourage a more comprehensive view of Golden Age piracy. This new approach allows an exploration of how and why crews actually arose and how they responded to the complexities of eighteenth-century life. Highlighted are hitherto unexplored topics, such as the period's conflicting attitudes to 'entrepreneurial' pirates, once employed by wartime navies; incentives to piracy within the law; religion and piracy; the function of criminal biography; and the unfiltered voice of the underclass. The edition includes descriptions of the actions of individuals alongside contemporary discussions of the piracy problem through books, journals, newspaper articles, essays, reviews, proposals, pamphlets and sermons from Britain and its colonies. Piracy law and the prosecution of pirates are illustrated in parliamentary bills, treaties, trials, legal instructions and commentaries, proclamations and privateering commissions. Imaginative works that appeared in various forms such as verse, broadside ballads and fiction also feature.