ABSTRACT
Pirates had a role, as adventurers and explorers, in opening up new trade routes in defiance of imperial powers like Spain, which asserted a monopoly over trade with its colonies in the Americas. European nations fought hard to gain wealth through international trade. In the early eighteenth century, as London extended its grip on its American colonies, there were fewer ports in North America that dared to welcome pirate ships. Piracy is both fact and myth, a staple of popular Western culture. Piracy and its suppression in the period 1680-1730 enabled the British government to establish its power across oceans and into colonies. Pirate activity in this Golden Age has also had an identifiable physical influence on the present. Somali piracy has relatively little in common with piracy of the period 1680-1730. Somali's value the crew of a captured merchant ship's much more than its cargo, since they have discovered that they can ransom crews for large sums of money.
