Elements of Privateering
- Original Definition:
- Legalized theft and warfare against commerce on the high seas.
- Modern Definition
- Usurpation of Government or public functions for private profit
- Filibustering/Privatized Warfare/
- Private warfare against unorganized places or countries the country the privateer is at war with. Privateers also were frequently mercenaries in service to anyone who would pay them. In modern times they often masque as providing contracts to "train" or "assist" often hostile foreign governments.
- Smuggling
- Usually private sea captains would do legal trade with whoever they could. But often privateers would engage in illegal smuggling if it made them money. Modern privateers smuggle. For example, arms to South America and Drugs back to the USA.
- Slave Trade
- Privateers often combined private warfare elements with smuggling by grabbing people for sale like they were any other good for sale. The Navies would even recruit their own sailors by grabbing them from ports and "pressing them" to service. Privateer sailors were often little better than slaves. Privateering always has involved abusing people. Nowadays it is often women and young kids for adoption scams or prostitution.
- Piracy
- One reason that the saying "Dead men Tell no tales" is that if a privateer took a prize of a ship not at war, if nobody survived to rat them out, and no evidence could be found of a crime, the now pirate could continue to pretend to be a privateer. This led to some confusion among pirate captains. The famous Captain Kidd of the 1700s went to England to argue his case that he had been a legal privateer, not a pirate. He was hung as a pirate. Many pirate/privateers got away with that. A Ship would go "on the hunt" even in peacetime. Most successful pirates avoided the courts.
- Private government and colonization.
- Private government was always an element in privateering. King James granted them the East India Company charter in 1600. This was the real beginning of the Tory Party and of the movement to modern Privateering. But when Christopher Columbus got his permission to sail west, it was with the aim of establishing private government in the lands he discovered.
- Corruption and Bribery
- Pirates succeeded because piracy was lucrative. One of the original purposes of Admiralty courts was to adjudicate the sail of "prizes" and shipwrecks. A legal pirate, a privateer, could make himself and the courts, wealthy by selling his prize at auction. Often he would keep a portion of the loot with the prize so that it would look legal. If the prize was not legal he could bribe judges and Port Officials. Bad pirates got hung. Successful ones built Churches or colonies.
- Banking and Finance
- Privateering and Banking were related. Successful pirates had loot to lend against. So they often founded banks and invested in voyages. Privateering, shipping and smuggling was dangerous and so successful pirates were heavily involved in insuring legal cargos and ships. Insuring and Banking go together as banks don't like to risk their own money and so either use derivative instruments (notes) or create derivative instruments (insurance and exchanges of promises) to spread risk.
- Wealth and Pirates
- Scratch a wealthy family and you find a pirate or mercenary at the founding; or someone who made money off of pirates, smugglers and mercenaries, as the founder.
- Money Laundering and Pirates
- Banks and wealthy criminals need to convert traceable loot to "clean" money. This is called money laundering. US banks, financiers and monied people are experts at doing this.
- Updated with this link:Article on Money Laundering
Privateers engage in the following:
