Black Banners and Letters of Marque: Unlocking the World of Privateers and Pirates in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries

私人组织的战争是欧洲帝国建立的重要组成部分，为军事、政治和经济目的服务，尤其是在这些帝国在近代早期迅速扩张的时候。然而，这也给帝国统治者带来了一个关键而有争议的挑战，他们努力控制私人代理人，并区分合法的私掠者和非法海盗。着眼于大英帝国，我的项目将探索私人战争和帝国发展之间的复杂关系，通过调查私掠者的军事和经济角色，海盗，私掠者和更广泛社会之间的关系，以及通过18世纪早期不断变化的政治环境出现的新的帝国私掠政策。这个话题在今天引起了相当大的共鸣，因为私人战争的类似应用在现代世界中仍然存在，例如在战区雇用保安公司，因此查看这种实践的历史应用将产生一个有趣的话语。正如西印度邮政服务的创始人埃德蒙•达默（Edmund Dummer）在1709年全球西班牙王位继承战争（the War of the Spanish Succession）最激烈的时候所说的那样，“这种被诅咒的贸易（私劫）将滋生出如此多的海盗，以至于当和平到来时，我们面临的海盗威胁将比现在来自敌人的威胁更大。”Dummer的评论唤起了海盗行为的前景和问题之间的紧张关系，事实证明他是对的：1713年战争的结束带来了所谓的“海盗的黄金时代”，从此定义了早期现代海盗的学术讨论和大众想象（Rediker, 2004; cordling, 2011; Hanna, 2015）。然而，与战争之后的海盗行为相比，战前和战争期间的私掠行为受到学者的关注要少得多，尽管它既刺激了后来海盗行为的激增，也对大英帝国的发展、对当代的影响以及对现代世界的影响产生了更广泛的影响。私掠船是大英帝国战略的重要组成部分，因为议会对商业需求做出了让步，并鼓励私掠船舰队与法国的海上战争作斗争。几十年来，历史学家一直在写关于这个问题的文章，但很少有人考虑到这一特定的历史时刻，而是倾向于进行更广泛的调查。David Starkey颇具影响力的《British Privateering Enterprise》（1990）涵盖了18世纪及以后的实践历史，而Janice Thomson（1994）和Lauren Benton（2005）则讨论了在国际乃至全球范围内私掠和海盗法的更广泛发展。通过对18世纪早期作为私掠和帝国政策转折点的更深入分析，我的项目将为这一重要课题提供新的视角。该项目将整合各种原始资料，从多个角度分析私掠行为，包括帝国统治者、殖民地社会和私掠者本身；同时，在关注大英帝国的同时，它将认识到早期现代海上活动的基本国际性质，并将在选择来源材料时超越区域和国家边界。TNA海军部高等法院的获奖论文将对该项目非常宝贵，形成其核心档案基础。这些文件记录了英国战利品法庭的诉讼程序，并详细描述了1652年至1815年间被私掠者扣押并带到英国、爱尔兰、葡萄牙和海峡岛港口的船只。我将把我的研究扩展到获奖论文以外的其他HCA系列，这些系列涉及私人航行，以及来自英国及其殖民地其他司法管辖区的法律记录；我将分析这一时期与私掠有关的政府记录和公开资料。

Privately organised warfare was an instrumental component in the creation of European empires, serving military, political, and economic purposes, especially as those empires expanded rapidly in the early modern period. Yet it also posed a key and controversial challenge for imperial governors, who struggled to control private agents and to distinguish between legal privateers and illegal pirates. Focusing on the British empire, my project will explore this complex relationship between private warfare and imperial development by investigating the military and economic roles of privateers, the relationship between piracy, privateers, and wider society, and the emergence of a new imperial policy on privateering through the shifting political circumstances of the early eighteenth century. This topic possesses considerable resonance today because similar applications of private warfare persist in the modern world, such as the employment of security companies in warzones, and so to view historical applications of this practice would produce an interesting discourse.As Edmund Dummer, founder of the West-Indian mail service, stated in 1709, at the height of the global War of the Spanish Succession, 'This cursed trade [privateering] will breed so many pirates that when peace comes, we shall be in more danger from them than we are now from the enemy' (quoted in Cordingly, 2011). Dummer's comment evokes the tensions between the promise and the problems of privateering, and he was proved right: the end of the war in 1713 brought the so-called 'Golden Age of Piracy' that has defined both scholarly discussion and popular imagination of early modern piracy ever since (Rediker, 2004; Cordingly, 2011; Hanna, 2015). Yet the practice of privateering before and during that war has received much less attention from scholars than the piracy that followed it, though it both spurred this later surge in piracy and had broader implications for the development of the British empire, its contemporary impact, and its legacies in the modern world. Privateers were a crucial part of the British empire's strategy, as parliament conceded to mercantile demands and encouraged a privateering fleet to combat the French guerre de course.Historians have written upon the subject for several decades, but few have considered this specific historical moment, tending instead towards broader surveys. David Starkey's influential British Privateering Enterprise (1990) covers a condensed history of the practice from the eighteenth century and beyond, while Janice Thomson (1994) and Lauren Benton (2005) have discussed the broader development of privateering and piracy law on an international and indeed global scale. My project, through a more in-depth analysis of the early eighteenth century as a turning point for privateering and imperial policy, will shed new light on this important subject. This project will incorporate a diverse range of primary sources to analyse privateering from multiple perspectives, including those of imperial governors, colonial society, and privateers themselves; and, while concentrating on the British empire, it will recognise the fundamentally international nature of early modern maritime activity, and will range beyond regional and national boundaries in the selection of source material. The High Court of Admiralty's Prize Papers at TNA will be invaluable for this project, forming its core archival base. These papers document the proceedings of the British prize court, and detail the vessels seized by privateers and taken to British, Irish, Portuguese, and Channel Island ports between 1652 and 1815. I will expand my research beyond the Prize Papers to other HCA series, where these concern privateering voyages, and to legal records from other jurisdictions both in Britain and its colonies; and I will analyse government records and published sources relating to privateering from across this period.