Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500-1750: Piracy in the Americas, 1500-1750

by Kris Lane

Book Overview

This introductory survey to maritime predation in the Americas from the age of Columbus to the reign of the Spanish king Philip V includes piracy, privateering (state-sponsored sea-robbery), and genuine warfare carried out by professional navies.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765602563
• ISBN13: 9780765602565
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A fun, accurate book on piracy

Kris Lane apparently grew up with the same wide-eyed awe of pirates that most of us grew up with. His "Pillaging the Empire" does it's best to reshape our opinions of pirates as a fun-loving bunch of misfits and saucy rogues, but like many recent works on the subject of piracy, he doesn't quite do it. One can't help but retain a skewed view of pirates, despite the unpleasant tales of how dirty ships were, how rotten the food was, how murderous the population was, etc. Like David Cordingly's excellent "Under the Black Flag", the pirate myth is largely debunked, the truth is revealed to be stranger than fiction, but you can still tell that at the end Lane (like Cordingly before him) still gets a kick out of recalling the pirate lifestyle. The book itself tells the story of American piracy in a fun manner, but everything is presented scholarly; sources are cited and there are enough annotated footnotes to keep dorks like me happy. The sidebar pieces are handy, and cover related topics like gambling in the 17th century, a typical pirate's diet, etc. Interesting stuff for the curious and a good awakening to those who think pirates are all guff-talking, one-eyed parrot owners with scurvy and gangrene.