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Pirate Motives

In Under the Black Flag, David Cordingly explains the motives of men who became pirates in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.* The hunger for riches was the most important motive, he explains, but there was also a desire to travel. Importantly, some men felt compelled to become pirates. Cordingly explains that peace between England and Spain in 1603 left former navy and privateering sailors unemployed, which led them into piracy; and those alive after the 1717 Treaty of Utrecht brought peace to England, Spain, and France believed that unemployed sailors were to blame for an increase in piracy.** A further motive was alcohol. Some pirates, in speeches they gave before they were executed, stated that alcoholism drove them to piracy and other crimes.

According to a January 15th, 2014, report from the International Chamber of Commerce International Maritime Bureau, piracy at sea is at its lowest since 2011, in large part because of the deterrence of Somali pirates off the coast of east Africa.*** A United Nations spokesperson, as reported by the Congressional Research Service, has stated that Somali pirates felt compelled into that lifestyle because illegal fishing and toxic waste dumping in Somali waters have ruined the livelihoods of Somali fishermen.****

This is simply to show that European pirates sometimes had the same motives of today's Somali pirates. Like them, some European pirates felt forced to become pirates because there was no economic alternative.

*Cordingly, David. Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates. Pages 192-193. Random House Publishers, 2006. Print.
**Cordingly notes that there were 40,000 unemployed men after the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession.
***"Somali pirate clampdown caused drop in global piracy, IMB reveals." Commercial Crime Service, a division of the ICC. 15 January 2014. Web. 22 July 2014.
****Dagne, Ted. "Somalia: Current Conditions and Prospects for a Lasting Peace," page 15. Congressional Research Service. 31 August 2011. Web. 22 July 2014.

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