ABSTRACT
During the second half of the sixteenth century, English sailors such as Sir Francis Drake were touted as national heroes, and numerous pamphlets were published commemorating their seafaring exploits. Tracts such as Henry Roberts’s Most Friendly Farewell to Sir Francis Drake (1585) framed Drake’s exploits as the natural product of English nationalism. Roberts compares Drake to the ancient heroes of epic and repeatedly mentions his sacrifices for his “countries welth,” portraying him as acting solely in his country’s interest. 1 If in one sense such encomium reflects an undeniable aspect of Drake’s enterprises, in another it obfuscates the manner in which the activities of privateers such as Drake were related to those of the pirate, who had no loyalty to the state. Privateers, like pirates, acted primarily out of their own self-interest, and privateers could act as pirates on one mission and as licensed privateers on another. 2 In this respect, what is really novel about Drake is the way in which an existing tradition going back to medieval times of warfare by non-state actors, of which Drake was a recent participant, was translated by writers such as Roberts into an ideology of incipient nationhood. This incorporation was largely produced by means of writings after the fact that attempted to situate the voyages of privateers within the larger national narrative. 3 According to political scientists, the ability either to eliminate non-state actors or alternatively to incorporate them into a coherent national framework is one of the processes that heralds a more centralized sense of nationhood. 4
