Golden Age of Piracy

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The Golden Age of Piracy was the period between the 1650s and the 1730s, when maritime piracy was a significant factor in the histories of the North Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Histories of piracy often subdivide the Golden Age of Piracy into three periods: The buccaneering period (approximately 1650 to 1680), characterized by Anglo-French seamen based in Jamaica, Martinique, and Tortuga attacking Spanish colonies, and shipping in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific to western Pacific. The Pirate Round (1690s), associated with long-distance voyages from various Caribbean and North American ports to established bases in countries like Madagascar, in order to rob Muslim and East India Company targets in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. The post-Spanish Succession period (1715 to 1730), when English sailors and privateers left unemployed by the end of the War of the Spanish Succession turned en masse to piracy in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, the North American eastern seaboard, and the West...

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