kzt wrote:https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2017/winter/feature/lot-what-known-about-pirates-not-true-and-lot-what-true-not-known
One colleague working on Atlantic families had noticed that locals in South Carolina seemed strangely unsurprised when pirates came ashore in the 1680s. Another colleague came upon a pirate who arrived in Newport in the 1690s, bought land, settled down, and became a customs official. This more-than-passing interest in pirates, as opposed to fathers, left me quite concerned. I had already taken my qualifying exams. I knew nothing about piracy. And since few scholars had written about piracy, I assumed it was not an important topic. Yet there it was, boarding the ship of my research agenda without permission.
Distraught, I cut a deal with my adviser that I would spend a month in the archives, examining government records and official correspondences to find out more. Sure enough, pirates were everywhere. But they were not who we thought they were. They were not anarchistic, antisocial maniacs. At least not in the seventeenth century. Like Moses Butterworth, many were welcome in colonial communities. They married local women, and bought land and livestock. Pirate James Brown even married the daughter of the governor of Pennsylvania and was appointed to the Pennsylvania House of Assembly.
...It was the higher reaches of colonial society, from governors to merchants, who supported global piracy, not some underclass or proto proletariat.
Henry Morgan ended up as a Governor as well if I recall.
But yes, piracy ultimately only works if you have somewhere to sell the stuff you steal and a safe port to repair and refit your ships. It may be a 'respectable businessman' who deals (at several removes) with carribean pirates, or a Nordic earl who quite openly pays for, builds and commands a raiding fleet, but warships and fighting men are expensive, and ultimately someone has to foot the bill.
Privateers have always been a cost-effective way for a nation to raise a navy. Drake & co are some of the most iconic examples - carrying the war against spain across the atlantic and (from the perspective of the british crown) paying for themselves in the process.