The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century Part 21

Americanische Seerauber. Beschreibung der grossesten durch die Franzosische und Englische Meer-Beuter wider die Spanier in Amerika verubten Raubery Grausamheit ...

Durch A. O. Nurnberg, 1679. 12.

("Historie der Boecaniers of Vrybuyters van America ... Met Figuuren, 3 Deel. t'Amsterdam, 1700," 4.--Brit. Mus., 9555. c. 19.)

This was followed two years later by a Spanish edition, also taken from the Dutch original:

Piratas de la America y luz a la defensa de las costas de Indias Occidentales. Dedicado a Don Bernadino Antonio de Pardinas Villar de Francos ... por el zelo y cuidado de Don Antonio Freyre ... Traducido de la lingua Flamenca en Espanola por el Dor. de Buena-Maison ...

Colonia Agrippina, en casa de Lorenzo Struickman. Ano de 1681. 12.

(Brit. Mus., G. 7179. The appended description of the Spanish Government in America was omitted and a few Spanish verses were added in one or two places, but otherwise the translation seems to be trustworthy. The portraits and the map of the isthmus of Panama are the same as in the Dutch edition, but the other plates are different and better. In the Bibl. Nat. there is another Spanish edition of 1681 in quarto.)

This Spanish text, which seems to be a faithful rendering of the Dutch, was reprinted with a different dedication in 1682 and in 1684, and again in Madrid in 1793. It is the version on which the first English edition was based. The English translation is ent.i.tled:

Bucaniers of America; or a true account of the ...

a.s.saults committed ... upon the coasts of the West Indies, by the Bucaniers of Jamaica and Tortuga ...

especially the ... exploits of Sir Henry Morgan ...

written originally in Dutch by J. Esquemeling ... now ... rendered into English. W. Crooke; London, 1684. 4.

(Brit. Mus., 1198, a. 12 (or) 1197, h. 2.; G. 7198.)

The first English edition of Exquemelin was so well received that within three months a second was published, to which was added the account of a voyage by Captain Cook and a brief chapter on the exploits of Barth.

Sharp in the Pacific Ocean. In the same year, moreover, there appeared an entirely different English version, with the object of vindicating the character of Morgan from the charges of brutality and l.u.s.t which had appeared in the first translation and in the Dutch original. It was ent.i.tled:

The History of the Bucaniers; being an impartial relation of all the battels, sieges, and other most eminent a.s.saults committed for several years upon the coasts of the West Indies by the pirates of Jamaica and Tortuga. More especially the unparalleled achievements of Sir Henry Morgan ... very much corrected from the errors of the original, by the relations of some English gentlemen, that then resided in those parts. _Den Engelseman is een Duyvil voor een Mensch._ London, printed for Thomas Malthus at the Sun in the Poultry.

1684.

(Brit. Mus., G. 13,674.)

The first edition of 1684 was reprinted with a new t.i.tle-page in 1695, and again in 1699. The latter included, in addition to the text of Exquemelin, the journals of Basil Ringrose and Raveneau de Lussan, both describing voyages in the South Seas, and the voyage of the Sieur de Montauban to Guinea in 1695. This was the earliest of the composite histories of the buccaneers and became the model for the Dutch edition of 1700 and the French editions published at Trevoux in 1744 and 1775.

The first French translation of Exquemelin appeared two years after the English edition of 1684. It is ent.i.tled:

Histoire des Aventuriers qui se sont signalez dans les Indes contenant ce qu'ils ont fait de plus remarquable depuis vingt annees. Avec la vie, les Moeurs, les Coutumes des Habitans de Saint Domingue et de la Tortue et une Description exacte de ces lieux; ... Le tout enrichi de Cartes Geographiques et de Figures en Taille-douce. Par Alexandre Olivier Oexmelin. A Paris, chez Jacques Le Febre. MDCLx.x.xVI., 2 vols. 12.

(Brit. Mus., 9555, aa. 4.)

This version may have been based on the Dutch original; although the only indication we have of this is the fact that the work includes at the end a description of the government and revenues of the Spanish Indies, a description which is found in none of the earlier editions of Exquemelin, except in the Dutch original of 1678. The French text, however, while following the outline of Exquemelin's narrative, is greatly altered and enlarged. The history of Tortuga and French Hispaniola is elaborated with details from another source, as are also the descriptions of the manners and customs of the cattle-hunters and the freebooters. Accounts of two other buccaneers, Montbars and Alexandre Bras-le-Fer, are inserted, but d'Ogeron's shipwreck on Porto Rico and the achievements of Admiral d'Estrees against the Dutch are omitted. In general the French editor, the Sieur de Frontignieres, has re-cast the whole story. A similar French edition appeared in Paris in 1688, (Brit. Mus., 278, a. 13, 14.) and in 1713 a facsimile of this last was published at Brussels by Serstevens (Dampierre, p. 153). Sabin (_op.

cit._, vi. 312) mentions an edition of 1699 in three volumes which included the journal of Raveneau de Lussan. In 1744, and again in 1775, another French edition was published in four volumes at Trevoux, to which was added the voyage of Montauban to the Guinea Coast, and the expeditions against Vera Cruz in 1683, Campeache in 1685, and Cartagena in 1697. The third volume contained the journal of R. de Lussan, and the fourth a translation of Johnson's "History of the Pirates." (Brit. Mus., 9555, aa. 1.) A similar edition appeared at Lyons in 1774, but I have had no opportunity of examining a copy. (Nouvelle Biographie Generale, tom. x.x.xviii. 544. The best bibliography of Exquemelin is in Sabin, _op.

cit._, vi. 309.)

Secondary Works

Of the secondary works concerned with the history of the buccaneers, the oldest are the writings of the French Jesuit historians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Dutertre (Histoire generale des Antilles. Paris, 1667-71), a chronicler of events within his own experience as well as a reliable historian, unfortunately brings his narrative to a close in 1667, but up to that year he is the safest guide to the history of the French Antilles. Labat, in his "Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de l'Amerique" (Paris, 1722), gives an account of eleven years, between 1694 and 1705, spent in Martinique and Guadeloupe, and although of little value as an historian, he supplies us with a fund of the most picturesque and curious details about the life and manners of the people in the West Indies at the end of the seventeenth century. A much more important and accurate work is Charlevoix's "Histoire de l'Isle Espagnole ou de S. Domingue" (Paris, 1732), and this I have used as a general introduction to the history of the French buccaneers. Raynal's "Histoire philosophique et politique des etabliss.e.m.e.nts et du commerce europeen dans les deux Indes" (Amsterdam, 1770) is based for the origin of the French Antilles upon Dutertre and Labat and is therefore negligible for the period of the buccaneers. Adrien Dessalles, who in 1847 published his "Histoire generale des Antilles," preferred, like Labat and Raynal, to depend on the historians who had preceded him rather than endeavour to gain an intimate knowledge of the sources.

In the English histories of Jamaica written by Long, Bridges, and Gardner, whatever notice is taken of the buccaneers is meagre and superficial, and the same is true of Bryan Edwards' "History, civil and commercial, of the British colonies in the West Indies." Thomas Southey, in his "Chronological History of the West Indies" (Lond. 1827), devotes considerable s.p.a.ce to their achievements, but depends entirely upon the traditional sources. In 1803 J.W. von Archenholz published "Die Geschichte der Flibustier," a superficial, diffuse and even puerile narrative, giving no references whatever to authorities. (It was translated into French (Paris, 1804), and into English by Geo. Mason (London, 1807).) In 1816 a "History of the Buccaneers in America" was published by James Burney as the fourth volume of "A chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Seas or Pacific Ocean." Burney casts but a rapid glance over the West Indies, devoting most of the volume to an account of the voyages of the freebooters along the coast of South America and in the East Indies. Walter Thornbury in 1858 wrote "The Buccaneers, or the Monarchs of the Main," a hasty compilation, florid and overdrawn, and without historical judgment or accuracy. In 1895 M. Henri Lorin presented a Latin thesis to the Faculty of History in Paris, ent.i.tled:--"De praedonibus Insulam Santi Dominici celebrantibus saeculo septimo decimo," but he seems to have confined himself to Exquemelin, Le Pers, Labat, Dutertre and a few doc.u.ments drawn from the French colonial archives. The best summary account in English of the history and significance of the buccaneers in the West Indies is contained in Hubert H. Bancroft's "History of Central America"

(ii. chs. 26, 28-30). Within the past year there has appeared an excellent volume by M. Pierre de Vaissiere describing creole life and manners in the French colony of San Domingo in the century and a half preceding the Revolution. (Vaissiere, Pierre de: Saint Dominigue.

(1629-1789). Paris, 1909.) It is a reliable monograph, and like his earlier volume, "Gentilshommes campagnards de l'ancienne France," is written in a most entertaining style. De Vaissiere contributes much valuable information, especially in the first chapter, about the origins and customs of the French "flibustiers."

I have been able to find only two Spanish works which refer at all to the buccaneers. One is ent.i.tled:

Piraterias y agresiones de los ingleses y de otros pueblos de Europa en la America espanola desde el siglo XVI. al XVIII., deducidas de las obras de D. Dionisio de Alcedo y Herrera. Madrid, 1883. 4.

Except for a long introduction by Don Justo Zaragoza based upon Exquemelin and Alcedo, it consists of a collection of extracts referring to freebooters on the coasts of Peru and Chili, and deals chiefly with the eighteenth century. The other Spanish work is an elaborate history of the Spanish navy lately published in nine volumes by Cesareo Fernandez Duro, and ent.i.tled:--

Armada espanola desde la union de los reinos de Castilla y de Aragon. Madrid, 1895.

There are numerous chapters dealing with the outrages of the French and English freebooters in the West Indies, some of them based upon Spanish sources to which I have had no access. But upon comparison of Duro's narrative, which in so far as it relates to the buccaneers is often meagre, with the sources available to me, I find that he adds little to what may be learned on the subject here in England.

One of the best English descriptions of the Spanish colonial administration and commercial system is still that contained in book viii. of Robertson's "History of America" (Lond. 1777). The latest and best summary account, however, is in French, in the introduction to vol.

i. of "La traite negriere aux Indes de Castille" (Paris, 1906), by Georges Scelle. Weiss, in vol. ii. of his history of "L'Espagne depuis Philippe II. jusqu'aux Bourbons" (Paris, 1844), treats of the causes of the economic decadence of Spain, and gives an account of the contraband trade in Spanish America, drawn largely from Labat. On this general subject Leroy-Beaulieu, "De la colonization chez les peuples modernes"

(Paris, 1874), has been especially consulted.

The best account of the French privateers of the sixteenth century in America is in an essay ent.i.tled: "Les corsairs francais au XVI^e siecle dans les Antilles" (Paris, 1902), by Gabriel Marcel. It is a short monograph based on the collections of Spanish doc.u.ments brought together by Pacheco and Navarrete. The volume by E. Ducere ent.i.tled, "Les corsairs sous l'ancien regime" (Bayonne, 1895), is also valuable for the history of privateering. For the history of the Elizabethan mariners I have made use of the two works by J. S. Corbett: "Drake and the Tudor Navy" (Lond. 1898), and "The successors of Drake" (Lond. 1900). Other works consulted were:

Arias de Miranda, Jose: Examen critico-historico del influyo que tuvo en el comercio, industria y poblacion de Espana su dominacion en America.

Madrid, 1854.

Blok, Pieter Johan: History of the people of the Netherlands. Translated by C. A. Bierstadt and Ruth Putnam. 4 vols. New York, 1898.

Brown, Alex.: The Genesis of the United States. 2 vols. Lond., 1890.

Crawford, James Ludovic Lindsay, 26th Earl of: Bibliotheca Lindesiana.

Handlist of proclamations. 3 vols. Aberdeen, 1893-1901.

Dumont, Jean: Corps universel diplomatique. 13 vols. Hague, 1726-39.

Froude, James Anthony: History of England from the fall of Wolsey to the defeat of the Spanish armada. 12 vols. 1870-75. English seamen in the sixteenth century. Lond., 1901.

Gardiner, Samuel Rawson: History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1660. 3 vols. Lond., 1894-1903.

Geographical and historical description of ... Cartagena, Porto Bello, La Vera Cruz, the Havana and San Augustin. Lond., 1741.

Gibbs, Archibald R.: British Honduras ... from ... 1670. Lond., 1883.

Hakluyt, Richard: The princ.i.p.al navigations ... of the English nation, etc. 3 vols. Lond., 1598-1600.

Herrera y Tordesillas, Antonio: Historia general de las Indias. 4 vols.

Madrid, 1601-15.

Hughson, Shirley C.: The Carolina pirates and colonial commerce.

Baltimore, 1894.

Lucas, C. P.: A historical geography of the British colonies. 4 vols.

Oxford, 1905. Vol. ii. The West Indies.

Monson, Sir William: The naval tracts of ... Edited ... by M. Oppenheim.

Vols. i. and ii. Lond., 1902--(in progress).