Elements of Privateering
- Original Definition:
- Legalized theft and warfare against commerce on the high seas.
- Modern Defintion
- Usurpation of Government or public functions for private profit
- Filibustering
- Private warfare against unorganized places or countries the country the privateer is at war with.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
₽rivateers engage in the following:
Privateering And Large Scale Swindles
The theme of piracy and privateering to describe our current economic system, much of our current political system, and the ideology of our modern Republican Business classes. Not that Democrats aren't sometimes pirates and privateers. It is just not their stated ideology.
Privateering is at the heart of the worst of modern capitalism; the "privateering spirit. As I've noticed before privateering is defined as using private enterprises to accomplish missions assigned to government. Initially the term was window dressing for legal piracy. As I've noted before both the British Navy and the USA navy emerged from the private navies of legal pirates like Sir Francis Drake. The successful descendants of pirates became the lords and barons of British Society, and more importantly of British foreign trade, adventurism and the admirals of the fleet.
- For more Information on this history:
- Origins of the East India Company
Pirate Contracts
The heart of the matter is that modern business relies on contractual relationships, and ₽rivateering relies on the inequity of contracts that involve power relationships. The difference between a pirate and a privateer is that privateers are bound by contracts that grant them license, and use those contracts to abuse law and power.
To illustrate, Pirates, were simply outlaws. For that reason pirate ships often were more democratic and the officers and crew more free, aboard ship, than the crews of privateers, who were often little more than slaves to ambitious, greedy power hungry captains. However, the ideal privateer operated his ship as if it were a pirate ship and treated their crew with respect. Thus the lines between pirate and privateer were often blurred. On land they had to follow rules. At sea "dead men tell no tales" was often practiced to avoid getting caught by officials while robbing and stealing at sea while ostensibly doing legitimate business. The result was the legal pirates were often hanging known pirates. Privateers have always tended to be pirates. But pirates rarely get to be privateers unless they can manage to avoid being caught.
Modern Privateers
Modern privateers don't need eye patches, peg legs. They wear Armani suits and carry briefcases. They enslave through contracts, loans, lawsuits and hostile takeovers. No need for cannon. They frequently own (or are) Judges and law enforcement. But when the cops are the criminals, who will enforce the law? Piracy led to privateering and privateering enabled:
- Private Warfare, Filibustering, legalized robbery and looting.
- Conquest and colonization
- Vast estates for the successful Pirates
- Layers of Oppression
Power establishes Inequitable relationships established through abusive contracts and debt. The robbed can be robbed over and over again. Privateers would do anything for trade goods and property:
- Smuggling to acquire trade goods
- Monopoly over vital properties
- Rent from that property
So the irony of modern privateers is that often they are playing all sides. Robbing people, and arresting robbers. Smuggling and arresting smugglers. Bribing people and taking Bribes. Piracy attracts con artists and grifters. A Grifter is a con artist who has a plan B for avoiding getting caught. Grift + Drift to new marks. Privateering only works when the pirates can attract a crew and governments can hire them. Since it is based on looting, it hollows out any actual capital that might have been there.
Modern pirates operate through the use of contracts, courts and information and power disparity. This post is about their historic involvement in drug smuggling.
