Why is it called the "Golden Age" of Piracy?

by raisondecalcul

Calling it a golden age seems to glorify piracy, so why did this become the accepted term among academic historians of piracy?

I hope it is not illegal to talk about the moderation here, because I am asking this question for the third time. The first two times I asked I was told first that I was asking in the wrong place and asked to leave, and second that I was asking in the wrong way and my words were erased. It is very offputting to ask an honest question and it unasked for you. Twice.

CC: /u/davidAOP

davidAOP

Piracy has been glorified and romanticed in various ways for 300 years, or about since the time the pirates of the "Golden Age" sailed. I wouldn't really say academic historians developed the phrase, it came out of people writing in the late nineteenth century. As far as I can tell, the term isn't meant to glorify the action of robbery on the high seas and other associated crimes - but it refers to a period or a string of periods of heightened pirate activity practiced by European-descended peoples sometime during the Age of Sail. Often these ages came about in circumstances where valuable targets were vulnerable to attack and governments unable to stop them or unwilling to stop them since it provided an advantage (such as a force to use against others or a source of income).

There are a number of periods that are considered part of or the core of the "Golden Age":

  • The Elizabethan "Sea Dogs" of the sixteenth century
  • The "Buccaneers" of the Caribbean from the 1630s-1670s (with their peak in the 1660s)
  • The pirates heading out to the Pacific side of the Americas in the 1670s and 1680s
  • The pirates who raided the Indian Ocean and Red Sea in the 1690s
  • The pirates who raided all throughout the Atlantic Ocean (and Indian Ocean at times - and the Caribbean got especially hit) in the 1710s and 1720s
  • The pirates who came out of being privateers for new nations carved from Spain's former territories in the 1810s and 1820s.

Now, the period in the 1710s and 1720s is the most well known and considered the Golden Age the most since the most famous stories/famous pirates (at least numerically) come from that period (you can thank Charles Johnson's General History of Pyracy published in two volumes from 1724-1728 for that). Often, the men who raided the Red Seas in the 1690s are attached to the Golden Age along with the previously mentioned period, since their stories also got promoted as much as those of the 1710s and 1720s (and also received coverage in the previously mentioned book, in addition to other publications in the early eighteenth century). The next well known extension is to add the Age of Buccaneering to all of it because of Alexandre Exquemelin's History of the Buccaneers of America telling their stories. Those three periods are the most commonly associated with "Golden Age" in the order I just presented them.