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The factors that led to the outbreak of Anglo-American piracy in the Caribbean, Atlantic and Indian Oceans in the mid 1710s to 1720s was somewhat unique but it should also be understood in the context of piracy as a whole.

The so-called "Golden Age of Piracy" was really more like the "last brief and bitter hurrah of piracy." It was precursed by over a century of very large-scale organized piracy and privateering in the Caribbean referred to as the buccaneering era and which rose to a peak around the 1660s and 1670s which was largely condoned by the English and French governments during times of frequent war. If anything, this should be considered the real "Golden Age" of piracy because everything that came after paled in comparison to its scale and support by government. However, this heyday of piracy or buccaneering declined after government crackdowns in the 1680s as European nations became more peaceful towards each other and was virtually forced out of the Caribbean by the 1690s. In the 1690s many of these pirates who were now on the run briefly fled to the Indian Ocean away from centralized government authority where it was easier to prey on shipping, but this too was largely eradicated by the end of the 1690s. However, in 1702 something happened that would set in motion a final and iconic yet very brief surge of piracy often referred to as the "Golden Age" which ended with piracy being virtually eradicated after 1726. I actually made another post about this.

What happened in 1702 was that the Spanish War of Succession began and Britain declared war on Spain and France. Earlier during the Nine Years' War from 1688-1697 and other wars, Britain had granted privateering commissions during time of war to privately owned vessels who worked as paramilitary supplements to the British navy called buccaneers and attacked enemy merchant shipping and settlements. After these conflicts were resolved, however, Britain soon learned that these buccaneers were often reluctant to stop attacking foreign ships and it became a huge disruption to international trade and hazard to Britain's ability to maintain peaceful relations with its trading partners. Many of these pirates were from the North American colonies such as Thomas Tew who was a native of Rhode Island and made a famous pirate/privateering voyage (the legal line was very hazy) into the Indian Ocean in 1692 beginning what is called the "Pirate Round.” Perhaps the most important example of this was Henry Avery from Devon in England who had served as a privateer in the Nine Years' War and turned pirate in 1695 before the war was even over, attacking and capturing an enormously wealthy treasure laden Mughal ship in the Indian Ocean which caused a huge international scandal that severely jeopardized the British East India Company's trading relations with India and convinced the British Parliament to formalize the laws regarding piracy and declare pirates to be unequivocally "Hostis humanis generis" or enemies of all mankind. An excerpt of this read:

A Pyrate is Hostis humanis generis, a common Enemy, with whom neither Faith nor Oath is to be kept, according to Tully. And by the Laws of Nature, Princes and States are responsible for their Neglect, if they do not provide Remedies for restraining these Sort of Robberies.

Another such privateer turned pirate was William Kidd, a Scotsman, who was tried for piracy in New England and executed in London in 1701. Despite this, when the Spanish War of Succession broke out in 1702 Britain decided to once again grant privateering commissions in addition to greatly expanding its navy in order to fight the war. During the war, there were several successful privateering voyages made into the Pacific Ocean against the Spanish, and in the Caribbean the lawless island of New Providence in the Bahamas with its capital Nassau became a refuge and base of operations for privateers attacking the Spanish and French. Many future pirates served in this war either as privateers or in the navy. One such future pirate who distinguished himself for personal bravery was Edward Thache Jr. from England, better known as Blackbeard. Another was reportedly Mary Read also from England who disguised herself as a man to join her husband fighting in Flanders (which was actually not that uncommon).

When Britain declared peace with Spain and France after the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, British privateering commissions were revoked and the greatly enlarged Royal Navy was rapidly disbanded leaving large numbers of sailors out of work or forced to work for very low wages and under hard conditions because of the flooding of the job market for sailors. Many privateers almost immediately continued attacking Spanish and French ships after they heard about the peace, which now qualified as piracy, and when the Royal Navy started harshly cracking down and punishing (executing) these pirates they began attacking British ships as well. Whereas earlier pirates had always at least pretended to be legitimate privateers in some capacity and flew some national flag to justify their robberies, after this point this new generation of pirates realized they couldn't get away with that anymore and there was nothing to be gained by it so instead they began flying an almost anarchic flag known as the skull and crossbones or Jolly Roger which told ships of any nation that they had a choice to either surrender or die. They were now truly hostis humanis generis and had quite literally declared war on the world.

It wasn't just former privateers and navy that turned pirate though. Decreasing wages and working conditions for seamen after the War of Spanish Succession affected all seamen. What this new breed of pirates would routinely do when they captured a merchant ship was to proposition all the crew to sign their pirate articles and join them, sometimes by force and sometimes willingly. Indeed, it seemed like a very attractive option to some desperate seamen who were forced to endure truly appalling conditions and pay aboard regular merchant ships. At this time, many slave ships were engaged in the triangular transatlantic slave trade which involved trading cheap goods in Africa for slaves, trading slaves in the Caribbean and American colonies for cash crops like sugar and tobacco, and then selling those back in England. These slave ships were especially known for poor treatment toward their own crews and the slavers sometimes had mortality rates as high as the slaves themselves being transported. The famous Welsh pirate Bartholomew Roberts was originally third mate aboard a slave ship but when pirates captured his ship in 1719 he quickly agreed to join them and just a few months later he became their captain when the previous captain Howell Davis was killed. His reasons for turning pirate were famously summed up by the author of A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates published in 1724 in an apocryphal but likely roughly accurate quote that summarizes the idealized pirate ethos:

"In an honest Service ... there is thin Commons, low Wages, and hard Labour; in this, Plenty and Satiety, Pleasure and Ease, Liberty and Power; and who would not ballance Creditor on this Side, when all the Hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sower Look or two at choking. No, a merry Life and a short one, shall be my Motto."

Such sentiments were echoed by other pirates such as in the dying declaration of a crew member aboard the pirate John Phillips' ship in 1724:

I could wish that Masters of Vessels would not use their Men with so much Severity, as many of them do, which exposes us to great Temptations.

Many pirates were obviously just hardened criminals grasping at straws to justify their violent criminal actions at the end of their life, however. Another reported final declaration of a pirate is less sympathetic:

"Yes ... I do heartily repent; I repent I had not done more Mischief, and that we did not cut the Throats of them that took us, and I am extremely sorry that you an't hanged as well as we."

During Roberts' brief but enormously successful two and a half year career in which he captured around 400 ships, he and his crew routinely beat and tortured the captains of slave ships they captured if any sailors claimed they had been abused by them (Rediker, 23). And he wasn't the only pirate to do so. When his predecessor Howell Davis captured a slaver commanded by William Snelgrave off the west coast of Africa in 1719, Snelgrave was first severely beaten and the pirate quartermaster tried to kill him partly for attempting to resist but eventually they stopped when his own crew intervened on his behalf to say he had been a good captain. The pirates also severely beat and almost killed other members of his crew, probably also for attempting to resist before they were forced to surrender (Snelgrave, 134-37). The pirates seem to have been principally concerned with the mistreatment of white crew members aboard the ships, but 70 blacks were captured along with Bartholomew Roberts' crew of about 200 in 1722. It's unclear if they were treated as slaves by the pirates or if they freed some of them to help man the ship, but they were treated as slaves when captured by the British and sold back into slavery instead of being hung as pirates (Johnson, 285).