Buccaneers of the Caribbean
Jon Latimer

The term ‘buccaneer’ is often used synonymously with ‘pirate’, and has become associated with the trappings of pirate living - skull and crossbones, pieces of eight and buried treasure, ‘yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum’. But buccaneers and pirates were not the same; though many acts of the buccaneers were indeed piratical, they operated on very different terms to the pirates of the later, so-called ‘Golden Age’ of the eighteenth century. Seventeenth century buccaneers were privateers. They were licensed to attack the Spanish as instruments of policy by the governments of England, France and Holland, and as such they helped to create the basis of three new empires. Thus they had huge historical significance, going far beyond that of the merely criminal pirates that followed them. Buccaneers of the Caribbeanwillfill an important gap in our understanding of a unique development in imperial history, providing the first complete account of these early sea-marauders since Clarence H. Haring in 1910. It will draw on a considerable body of material never incorporated into a popular account of the period, including Dutch, Spanish and French sources, and told through the eyes of sailors, soldiers, and ordinary people of the period, using personal letters, diaries and memoirs. A must-have book for all maritime buffs and armchair adventurers!