The Intersection of the History of Piracy and the History of the Slave Trade
Piracy and the slave trade had a real and practical intersection. The pirates were more interested in material wealth rather than live human beings for trade (Vitkus & Matar, 2001). These had more in common with the slave traders as they would travel to other lands to conduct raids and share their loots back home. In moments when loots were uncertain, the pirates would meddle in the affairs of the slave traders by capturing their boats and holding the contents, people, for a ransom or under extreme cases capture peopl e to sell as slaves (Vitkus & Matar, 2001). Thus, by holding people captive or taking some for sale, the pirates facilitated slavery. Slave traders were also by practice pirates as was defined later by the US law on international relations. This led to the establishment of patrol ships in the Northwest of Africa in 1842 with the task of arresting and punishing any slave trader by death ( NARASRA, n.d ). In some instances, the pirates were as brutal as the slave traders or the land masters. They captured and traded on slaves with a ferocity that characterized the actual slave traders (Little, 2010). Therefore, slavery and piracy were intertwined and presented in a confusing duality.
The Inclusion of People of Color in the World of Piracy
The people of color, especially Africans and African Americans, had various reasons for joining piracy. In some degree, they were escaping from a life they had known and did so without a plan of what they would be engaged in next (Yangas, 2014). Some of the people of color escaped the life of serving on slave ships; others were runaways escaping their masters while others were escaping the possibility of being captured to be slaves. The new life offered an alternative in which they could choose their fate, be rich, and free (Yangas, 2014). These reasons demonstrate that the people of color had mixed reactions to slavery. While escaping from their lords, they became the enslavers of others. However, the clear distinction is that they preferred to trade in consumables than capture fellow beings, serve in other lines of duty than to be slaves and the respect and value for human life such as to move them to escape the life of slavery. This observation is relative noting that some Africans participated in the slave trade with great relish.
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The People of African Descent on Pirate Vessels
The treatment of African pirates as equal or not was relative. Some pirates chose to elevate people of color to positions of honor and related to them as equals and this implies that those in lower positions were lesser pirates (Little, 2010). The treatment of Africans as unequal emanated from the attitude of the slaves rather than the inferiority of race. The pirates were in the habit of treating other white pirates as inferior depending on the context with which they dealt (Little, 2010).
References
Little, B. (2010). Pirate hunting the fight against pirates, privateers, and sea raiders from antiquity to the present . Potomac Books, Inc.
National Archives and Records Administration Southeast Region, Atlanta (NARASRA). (n.d). The African Slave Trade A selection of cases from the Records of the U.S. District Courts in the states of Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina . Retrieved from https://www.archives.gov/files/atlanta/finding-aids/african-slave-trade.pdf
Vitkus, D. J., & Matar, N. I. (Eds.). (2001). Piracy, slavery, and redemption: Barbary captivity narratives from early modern England. Columbia University Press.
Yangas, T. (2014). Black Pirates in the Golden Age of Piracy: Men Seeking Escape and Transformation. Retrieved from https://www.eiu.edu/historia/Yangas2014.pdf
