Apr 11, 2024

Dr. Steven Pitt, associate professor of history, published a chapter in "The Problem of Piracy in the Early Modern World: Maritime Predation, Empire, and the Construction of Authority at Sea," edited by John Coakley, Nathan Kwan and David Wilson. (Amsterdam University Press, April 6, 2024)

The chapter, "Boston, Logwood, and the Rise and Decline of the Pirates, 1713 to 1728," reimagines the origins and conclusion of the Golden Age of Piracy.

From the abstract: 

After the end of Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713), the economic fate of Atlantic seafarers and colonial Boston hinged on an unlikely commodity — logwood. This dyewood from the Spanish-claimed Yucatan Peninsula provided a haven from depressed wages and unemployment for seafarers and bankruptcy for many Boston merchants.

The growing British presence in the Bay of Campeche angered Spanish authorities who considered them pirates. In late 1716, the Spanish attacked, permanently ending that branch of the logwood trade. This act unleashed a decade of intense piracy, as the hundreds of seafarers and loggers engaged in the trade sought new avenues to riches. 

Reprieve from this onslaught only came when highly motivated Bostonians reestablished the logwood trade in the Bay of Honduras in the mid-1720s.