ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connections between piracy and empire-formation in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These years were crucial to English, later British, empire-formation, as this was when the nation seriously attempted, for the first time, to express ambitions for an empire to rival that of Spain in the west and the Ottomans in the east. The chapter argues that ‘piracy’ in this period was a highly flexible category ‘privateering’ was, of course, an established practice, but pardons were also often offered to notorious ‘pirates’ and convicted felons. It focuses on three textual versions of the pirates Purser and Clinton. The English success directly parallels that of the pirates as they seize control of the seas for three years with the Swallow, enabling legitimate trade to prosper unmolested. The pirates’ competitive and mimetic relation to trade and mercantilism, and the text’s critique of Charles, are further revealed by the final image included in the pamphlet.
