Whatever happened to those villains of the Indian seas? The happy retirement of the Madagascar pirates,1698–1721

Abstract

This article argues that the pirates who sailed the Indian Ocean during the early eighteenth century faced a different set of challenges to those confronting their counterparts in the Atlantic and Caribbean. The passage of Britain’s East India Act in 1698 left them economically isolated and with no choice but to continue as pirates in the short term. But as no European empire was able to suppress them, over the course of the next two decades they found ways to transition out of piracy. Some were able to bribe their way into non-British colonies, and many others settled in Madagascar and began participating in the slave trade. These pirates therefore were neither hapless rebels nor utopians crushed by the expansion of European empires. They were opportunists who used piracy as a temporary means to improve their positions in the world, while actively seeking ways to reintegrate themselves into the commercial markets of an increasingly international economy.