La gran colonia: Piracy and Coloniality of Diasporas in the Spanish and French Caribbean in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

Buccaneer, corsair, filibuster, pirate, and privateer are five terms commonly used to refer to the dark side of imperial expansion or to the impulse of the free market in the configuration of the colonial Caribbean as an archipelago where the Spanish, French, British, and Dutch empires collided from the beginning of the seventeenth century. These terms also refer to displacements taking place within colonial/imperial networks that cannot be contained within notions of sovereign states or modern nations. In this chapter I review the etymology and meaning of pirate, the first term to be documented in etymology dictionaries, followed by a reading of two texts that focus on piracy in the Caribbean archipelago. I use piracy as a different paradigm for imperial assimilation in the seventeenth century. I advance here a broader reflection on the limitations of the national and postcolonial theories to explain experiences of “extended colonialism” taking place in international imperial contexts, as is the case in the Caribbean.¹