ABSTRACT
I n spite of significant geographical barriers, the spilling over of buccaneering from Caribbean into Pacific waters was a logical development. As has been seen, emergent North European nation-states with
colonial holdings and shipping interests in the Caribbean were coming to view buccaneering as a potential danger; it was a monster they had helped create, but its criminal energies were becoming more and more difficult to direct solely at enemies. Thus the governments of England, France, and the Netherlands, following Spanish and Portuguese policy only after being stung by criminal piracy themselves, fmally began to actively pursue and punish the buccaneers. For a time their policies would be uncertain and even contradictory, but by the 1680s it became clear to the famed pirates of the Caribbean that their days were numbered. Some would go "straight," though with great reluctance, under French and English amnesty offers, others would fmd their fate on the gibbet or in fetid jails, and still others would continue to rove the sea beyond the reach of colonial governors and naval patrols, some in the Pacific and others in the more distant Indian Ocean.
