Ooh I actually have one for this.

1920s, Oklahoma: The Osage Native American tribe was possibly the richest group of people per capita in the world. Forced from their ancestral lands, they settled on an unassuming patch of dirt in Oklahoma. The land was rich in oil and the Osage became overnight millionaires. They were immediately targeted for their wealth. White people from the surrounding area began to systematically steal the Osage wealth. To "help" the Osage manage their wealth, the federal government would appoint a guardian to manage their money--after declaring the Osage "incompetent." White suitors would also marry into the Osage and then kill them. The most popular method was poisoning and good ole fashion gunshots to the head:

Minnie died at 27 of what doctors ruled a “peculiar wasting illness.” A few years later, her sister Anna, who was known to enjoy speakeasies and whiskey, left one night and never came home. Her body was found a week later in a ravine. She had been shot in the head. Another Osage member, Charles Whitehorn, was found shot within days of the discovery of Anna’s body. Both he and Anna had been killed with small-caliber bullets. “Two Separate Murder Cases Are Unearthed Almost at Same Time,” a newspaper headline declared. Two months after Anna’s body was found, her mother, Lizzie, also died of the same vague wasting “disease” that had claimed Minnie. When another sister turned up dead in a suspicious fire, leaving Mollie as the last of her family alive, she was terrified. Someone or something was killing not just the members of her family but Osage Indians en masse... Nine months after the deaths of Anna Brown and Charles Whitehorn, a champion Osage steer roper named William Stepson died of an apparent poisoning. Two more Osage died in the ensuing months, both of suspected poisonings. A couple was blown up by a nitroglycerin bomb while they slept in their bed. The killing continued, with more than two dozen people — not just Osage Indians but also white investigators sent to look into the crimes — killed between 1920 and 1924. It became known as the Osage Reign of Terror. Source

The one bit of good news is that one of the mastermind murderers, >!William Hale, his nephews and other accomplices!< were caught by the FBI and this was one of the first major tests of the Bureau under J. Edgar Hoover.

Edit: forgot to say, David Grann wrote an excellent book, Killers of the Flower Moon

TLDR: White people systematically killed the Osage Native Americans for their oil money.

Sketchy? How about life-threatening!

East-Central China's heavy reliance on long flood-prone rivers for agriculture inevitably resulted in a few major catastrophes over the years, but government action generally aimed to mitigate this as much as possible. Indeed, some suggest that the Chinese civil service system originally emerged out of a need to protect against floods, and then expanded into other areas – a somewhat Wittfogelian perspective, but not entirely unreasonable.

Yellow River flooding was especially hard to control, as the river's moniker comes from its high silt content, as it originates in the loess-rich regions of western China, flowing from what is now known as Qinghai through Gansu, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Henan and Shandong. As a result it has traditionally bursted its banks, often at inopportune moments. One flood in 1851 precipitated the Nian Rebellion. Another in 1897 contributed to the Boxer Rebellion. Worst of all, one in 1887 became the subject of a William McGonagall poem!

It is notable, however, that these events occurred near the end of the Qing Dynasty's miserable existence. Theoretically, regular dredging of the riverbed and maintenance of the dikes should have made flooding much less common than it was. But there was a problem. Corruption. Officials realised that firstly, a lot of money went into the Yellow River Conservancy Fund (hereafter YRCF), and secondly, there was a way to get more. The more money was embezzled, the more often the dikes failed. And the more often the dikes failed, the more money needed to be earmarked for the YRCF. And the more money was sent to the YRCF, the more got embezzled. By the 1840s 10% of YRCF money was not being spent on other things.

Alternatively, how about immoral?

Opium trading. 'Nuff said. Or at least, it would be if there weren't a number of interesting things to say about it. Firstly, it was immensely stupid how it happened on the scale it did. Until 1819, the quantity of opium being shipped from India to China was quite low – 4000 (give or take a few hundred) chests per annum. However, this was mostly high-morphine Patna opium produced in East India Company-controlled Bengal. From the late 1810s onwards, however, there were new kids on the block: Malwa. Malwa opium had been produced alongside Patna for many years – in the days when opium was mostly a medicinal substance (up to the late 18th century) the 200-300 chests of opium being imported into China per year were of the Malwa variety – but the 1810s marked the beginning of real mass-production of Malwa opium. Now Patna had a competitor, and it was a competitor offering a cheaper product. So, the East India Company needed to throttle Malwa. First it tried barring Malwa from being auctioned off in British-held ports, but then it started shipping out of Portuguese Goa. So the Honourable East India Company, in its infinite wisdom, decided to start buying up all the opium produced in Malwa. The result was unexpected but entirely predictable – the artificial demand created for Malwa opium meant that whatever revenues the Company made from opium were being wasted on buying opium it wouldn't sell. And so, from 1819 onwards, the Company's only real recourse was to ramp up production of Patna opium. Shortly after the First Opium War, the opium-producing states of India would be conquered by Britain, but by that point British India was too reliant upon opium exports to suspend them.

That's the production side covered, but what about the point of sale? Well, it's quite interesting where you might find a missionary pamphlet in those days. Imagine if drug busts nowadays turned up Chick Tracts alongside all the heroin and cocaine and what-have-you. Missionaries ended up having a pretty close partnership with opium smugglers, as each had what the other wanted. Missionaries wanted transport upriver where they could proselytise (usually unsuccessfully, mind you). Opium smugglers needed interpreters. As a result, opium chests often came ashore bundled with missionary pamphlets. Karl Gützlaff, the Pomeranian Lutheran whose translation of the Bible was the standard for the Taiping, made a name as an interpreter through working with opium traders, once shouting down a customs ship that was about to inspect the smuggling ship he was on. Of course, it's not hard to see which of the partnership was getting the short end of the stick in the end.

Let's talk about Caspar Van Senden and his (eugh) blackamoore project. For "project", think "venture" -- a project could involve scientific or industrial inventions, business innovations, military advancements, or social programs. The people who undertook them were projectors, operating with the protection of the queen and privy council so long as their ventures were profitable to the English economy and compliant with English national interests. (And for "blackamoore", think of all the stuff you're already probably thinking of -- slavery, Othello, free English blacks, North African Moors, Islam, the Iberian peninsula, and racism.) Many projectors never got their schemes off of paper and into reality, let alone achieving the benefits they promised, but we can tell a lot about Elizabethan economy and society from the documentation of these projects. This scheme kicked off with a warrant:

July 11, 1596:

An open letter to the lord mayor of London and the aldermen and his brethren, and to all other mayors, sheriffs, etc. Her majesty, understanding that there are of late divers blackmoors brought into this realm, of which kind of people there are already here too many, considering how God hath blessed this land with great increase of people of our own nation as any country in the world, whereof many for want of service and means to set them on work fall to idleness and to great extremity. Her majesty's pleasure therefore is that those kind of people should be sent forth of the land, and for that purpose there is direction given to this bearer Edward Banes to take of those blackmoors that in this last voyage under Sir Thomas Baskerville were brought into this realm the number of ten, to be transported by him out of the realm. Wherein we require you to be aiding and assisting unto him as he shall have occasion, and thereof not to fail.

The bearer of this letter was presumably an Englishman, Edward Banes. The second letter, issued a week later, outlined a similar scheme contrived by a German (or Dutch) entrepreneur:

July 18, 1596:

An open warrant to the lord mayor of London and to all other vice-admirals, mayors, and other public officers whatsoever to whom it may appertain. Whereas Casper van Senden, a merchant of Lübeck did by his labor and travel procure eighty-nine of her majesty's subjects that were detained prisoners in Spain and Portugal to be released, and brought them hither into this realm at his own cost and charges, for the which his expenses and declaration of his honest mind towards those prisoners he only desireth to have license to take up so many blackamoors here in this realm and to transport them into Spain and Portugal. Her majesty, in regard of the charitable affection the suppliant hath showed being a stranger to work the delivery of our countrymen that were there in great misery and thralldom and to bring them home to their native country, and that the same could not be done without great expense, and also considering the reasonableness of his requests to transport so many blackamoors from hence, doth think it a very good exchange and that those kind of people may be well spared in this realm being so populous and numbers of able persons the subjects of the land and Christian people that perish for want of service, whereby through their labor they might be maintained. They are, therefore, in their lordships' name required to aid and assist him to take up such blackamoors as he shall find within this realm with consent of their masters, who we doubt not considering her majesty's good pleasure to have those kinds of people sent out of the land and the good deserving of the stranger towards her majesty's subjects, and that they shall do charitable and like Christians rather to be served by their own countrymen than with those kind of people, will yield those in their possession to him.

The second warrant reiterates the assertion of the first -- that there are too many blackamoors in England -- but it broadens its proposition. Following the precedent of Edward Banes' limited request for the deportation of ten blackamoors, the second warrant requests that Casper van Senden be allowed, as a reward for his ransoming of 89 English prisoners of war out of Spanish captivity at his own expense, to deport a corresponding 89 blackamoors out of England. This will be done "with the consent of their masters", who no doubt will find the employment of their own countrymen its own reward. Sounds fair, right? Everybody wins -- well, almost everybody. It's not clear whether anyone was deported at all as a result of this warrant, for reasons I'll get to later, but that's not where the matter stops.

The third document came into being several years later. it steps up the rhetoric considerably, presumably as a consequence of the failure of the earlier iterations of the whole "deport blackamoors" scheme, but it exists only as a draft among Robert Cecil's papers. It reads like the second warrant on steroids:

1601

After our hearty commendations; whereas the Queen’s majesty, tendering the good and welfare of her own natural subjects, greatly distressed in these hard times of dearth, is highly discontented to understand the great number of Negroes and blackamoors which (as she is informed) are carried into this realm since the troubles between her highness and the King of Spain; who are fostered and powered here, to the great annoyance of her own liege that which co[vet?] the relief which these people consume, as also for that the most of them are infidels having no understanding of Christ or his Gospel: hath given a special commandment that the said kind of people shall be with all speed avoided and discharged out of this her majesty’s realms; and to that end and purpose hath appointed Caspar van Senden, merchant of Lübeck, for their speedy transportation, a man that hath somewhat deserved of this realm in respect that by his own labor and charge he hath relieved and brought from Spain divers of our English nation who otherwise would have perished there. These shall therefore be to will and require you and every of you to aid and assist the said Caspar van Senden or his assignees to taking such Negroes and blackamoors to be transported as aforesaid as he shall find within the realm of England; and if there shall be any person or persons which be possessed of any such blackamoors that refuse to deliver them in sort aforesaid, then we require you to call them before you and to advise and persuade them by all good means to satisfy her majesty’s pleasure therein; which if they shall eftsoons willfully and obstinately refuse, we pray you to certify their names to us, to the end her majesty may take such further course therein as it shall seem best in her princely wisdom.

This… is some strong stuff. It doubles down on the idea of rewarding Senden for his services to England, it removes the numerical cap on the number of blackamoors to be deported, it situates black people as categorically different from white people and from Christians using frankly racist language, and it abandons the earlier language of masters' consent -- if this had been put into place, this would be a blueprint for the unrestricted deportation of as many blackamoors as van Senden and company could seize and their subsequent enslavement. Hard times or not, that's brutal. What gives? Who is this guy and why is he running this scheme by a privy councilor?

Caspar van Senden was a continental merchant in the business of making fast money, along with his patron and protector, Sir Thomas Sherley. Van Senden had reputedly engineered the release of some 200 English prisoners, but he'd racked up considerable debts in the process. Sherley himself had gone bankrupt in 1597, and did his best to pull some strings to hurry along Van Senden's deportation scheme. The presence of this draft in Cecil's papers likely indicates Sherley's influence. Whether or not Elizabeth I's privy council or Elizabeth I herself stood to profit off this particular project, they were willing to put their weight and influence behind it, at least on paper, due to the complicated web of royal patronage surrounding such projects and their projectors. The scheme was patriotic -- redeem English prisoners! open up jobs for native-born English workers during a time of financial crisis! -- as well as lucrative; it was in the hands of an experienced entrepreneur, and it came at the cost of a vulnerable demographic that lacked formal political influence. So why didn't it go anywhere?

This deportation scheme met with resistance almost immediately. Its parameters weren't clear, and its stated justifications were flimsy -- would freeing up fewer than a hundred jobs really ameliorate a widespread employment crisis? Perhaps most offensively to Elizabethan sensibilities, despite the token mention of employer consent there was no assurance of compensation for said employers for the loss of their black employees. English masters were loath to relinquish the servants they'd employed for years, and tradespeople had no desire to hand over skilled workers to be deported and shuttled back into Spanish slavery. No word about how the black individuals likely to be earmarked for deportation might have felt about that prospect -- whether they were Spanish-born prisoners of war like Banes' prisoners, formerly enslaved individuals brought to England from the continent, or the children of formerly enslaved men and women who were born and raised on English soil. There's a whole part of this scheme that we don't hear about, and that's the resistance of the people who stood to be deported for a profit.

1/2

Well privateers--or should I say "privateers"--certainly often fell into this category when they tried to stretch the authority of their lawful privateering commissions in truly gymnastic and convoluted ways to excuse outright piracy, or other times those without valid privateering commissions at all would go to great lengths to pretend that they did and were actually privateers instead of pirates.

Some were highly successful at this and did make a fortune while others were not. I'll give three examples.

Henry Morgan (1670-71)

Henry Morgan was a Welsh buccaneer and privateer based in English controlled Jamaica during the 1660s who led many very successful raids against Spanish towns in the Caribbean and came to be recognized as the leader of the buccaneers. England had been at war with Spain during much of this time, but in July 1670 England signed a lasting peace treaty with Spain called the Treaty of Madrid in which Spain agreed to recognize English rule over Jamaica in exchange for an end to English buccaneer attacks against them in the Caribbean. In fact, this wasn't the first such peace treaty between England and Spain. Another Treaty of Madrid had been signed in 1667 but it wasn't as explicit and was widely ignored. The new treaty of 1670 was supposed to finally put an end to hostilities, even in the far-flung Caribbean colonies where there had been a longstanding acceptance of "No peace beyond the line" or in other words that European treaties and alliance were impractical to enforce out there.

News did travel slowly at this time, but it was only in August 1670 that Thomas Modyford (the governor of Jamaica) received a letter from Lord Arlington in England dated June 1670 that the Treaty of Madrid was about to be signed with Spain and ordering him to cease hostilities. But Modyford was a crafty and cunning man and thought he found a loophole. Arlington had mentioned in his letter that "His Majesty [Charles II] bids me let you know his pleasure is, that in what state soever the privateers are at the receipt of this letter, you keepe them soe till we have final answer from Spaine (which shall be immediately signified to you) with this condition only, that you oblige them to forebear all hostilities at land." Modyford claimed that Morgan's fleet of buccaneers had just so happened to have set sail to attack the Spanish just the day before he received this letter (what a coincidence!) at the beginning of August 1670, so of course he was then obligated to follow his majesty's orders and keep the fleet in the state it was. He then claimed in his reply to Lord Arlington at the end of August that he had communicated with Morgan at sea and told him to behave himself with "all moderation and civility possible in the carrying out of this war." Morgan replied to Modyford that he would do so, although necessity would compel him to land and supply his fleet (forcibly) with provisions from Spanish towns. Morgan said he would try not to attack any Spanish towns unless he had reason to believe the Spanish were plotting to attack Jamaica with the weapons stored there. Hmmm, that an awful lot like the things some modern politicians have said about finding weapons of mass destruction....

Plus, just because Modyford had heard from Arlington that a treaty was about to be signed doesn’t mean he had to act as if it was signed. Peter Earle writes:

The Treaty of Madrid was signed by Godolphin on 21 July, a fortnight after Modyford had unilaterally declared war on the Spaniards in the Indies. The Treaty was then sent to London for ratification, which had to be done on 28 November, and a further eight months were allowed for its publication in the Indies. The letter of the Treaty thus allowed for hostile acts to be excused up to July 1671. However, the spirit of the Treaty was obviously for there to be peace in the Indies from the moment of signature, and there could be no possible excuse for an English attack on the Spanish Main if it could be proved that the English knew of the existence of the new treaty. Whether they did know officially is still a matter under discussion. Communications were slow, and official correspondence was subject to delays due both to bureaucratic procedures and to deliberate policy. Unofficial news of the treaty reached Curacao in the middle of December and Cartegena on 29 December. But no one had to believe the official news. (p. 158)

From August to December 1670, Morgan assembled a very large fleet of buccaneer ships at the island of Isla Vaca which amounted to 2,000 buccaneers, the largest buccaneer force ever assembled in the Caribbean. In October they attacked and captured the Spanish town of Rio de La Hacha on the coast of Columbia to steal the supplies of grain and maize stored there to feed the fleet, despite the Spaniards' fierce resistance. Another buccaneer expedition was sent to Nicaragua to try to raid Spanish towns there, but was less successful. Morgan easily excused himself in these actions by saying he now suspected the Spaniards were plotting to take Jamaica. And what did he intend to do about it? A preemptive assault on the Spanish city of Panama!

In December 1670, Morgan departed Isla Vaca with his fleet and captured the Spanish island of Providence several hundred miles off the coast of Panama. From there he attacked Porto Bello and marched his army 20 miles across the Isthmus of Panama, where in January 1671 they defeated the Spanish troops in a short battle and sacked the city, with the entire city being burned to the ground (it was destroyed so badly that a new city had to be built on the opposite side of the river). After four weeks spent plundering, Morgan led his army back across the Isthmus and began dividing the loot. However, Morgan was a dastardly sort and betrayed the majority of the buccaneers at this point by sailing away without warning and with the largest part of the loot on his ship. When the others realized what he was doing, some tried to chase and attack but him it was too late.

Back in Jamaica, both Modyford and Morgan were soon arrested by English officials for violating the treaty and taken back to England. But this was really not much more than a PR stunt to appease Spain. Charles II was in fact probably secretly glad that Morgan had violated the treaty, and Morgan may well have bribed him with the plunder he had stolen and then sailed away with before it could be divided among the buccaneers. Neither Morgan nor Modyford were ever charged or tried for any crime and Morgan never spent a day in prison. Instead he spent a few years in Charles II’s court, entertaining people with stories of his heroic deeds against the Spaniards, until Charles II had him knighted in 1674 and sent back to Jamaica as the new governor. Morgan spent the next decade as governor of Jamaica until his death in 1688, actually helping to suppress his former buccaneer allies while enjoying the fruits of his own buccaneering and piracy. In his case, it appears that crime can sometimes pay.

Source: The Sack of Panama: Captain Morgan and the battle for the Caribbean by Peter Earle

Basil Ringrose

Basil Ringrose was not a captain but he was a buccaneer who joined an expedition of several hundred buccaneers in 1680 who wanted to cross over the Isthmus of Panama as Henry Morgan had done, but instead of sacking Panama to capture ships there and raid the Pacific coasts of Spain’s territories. However, since Spain and England were no longer at war thanks to the Treaty of Madrid, this made things a little difficult. None of them wanted to be considered pirates so they came up with a cunning plan, so to speak.

The scheme they came up with was to find some Darien Indians living in the jungles of Panama who hated the Spanish and claim that the Indians authorized them/granted them official privateering commissions to plunder the Spanish. The buccaneer Basil Ringrose and John Cox in their journals published after the fact claimed that while crossing the Isthmus with Indian guides they found the chieftain of all the Darien Indians called Goldencaps who wore a gold tiara and had a court that vaguely resembled a European one and he officially authorized them to attack the Spanish. I'm not sure exactly how accurate that description was but they probably did find... some guy... who told them they could attack the Spanish. Afterwards they tried telling this to the Spanish who disregarded it and considered them pirates. It's nice to think the English buccaneers really thought of the Darien Indians as an independent nation or kingdom when no other Europeans recognized them as such, but obviously they were just digging at the bottom of the barrel for any technicality to argue they weren't pirates. Nonetheless, Charles II (who had pardoned and knighted Henry Morgan a decade earlier) was satisfied with this defense and had them all acquitted of piracy when they returned to England in 1682.

Despite this, things didn’t work out very well for Basil Ringrose. The expedition in the Pacific had not been nearly as profitable as they had expected despite capturing many small towns. Basil Ringrose’s friend William Dampier who later published his own journal, wrote that Ringrose was necessitated to join the buccaneers for a second expedition into the Pacific to avoid “starvation.” He was killed by the Spanish during this expedition in 1686.

Sources: The History of the Buccaneers by Basil Ringrose, published 1685

A New Voyage Round the World by William Dampier, published 1697

For another, slightly counter narrative from an indigenous scholar on surfing :

• Isaiah Helekunihi Walker, Waves of Resistance: Surfing and History in Twentieth-Century Hawai‘i (University of Hawaii Press: Honolulu, 2011)