Complex relationships : the state, privateers, & organized crime

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to examine the history and nature of privateers during the 17th through the 19th centuries with the aim in answering this question: Using contemporary definitions, can the business of privateering can be categorized as organized crime? Privateering has long been considered, not only a legal course of reprisal for wartime losses, but also a heroic action that was celebrated, at least on the side of the privateer. The reality is more complex. In order to explain why privateers were employed despite the harm they perpetrated throughout the Maritimes during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, this paper incorporates a blend of sociology, criminology, Atlantic Canadian history, and political economy to show the connection between privateering and organized crime. It draws on a combination of sources to gather data on the complex history and nature of privateering. It also applies a combination of definitions to show that this class of mercenary/merchant marine were not only necessary in establishing the interests of foreign powers in Canada, but were also instrumental in the foundation and development of the early government in the Maritimes; shaping the course Canada would rise to or take in the coming two centuries. Finally, Stephen Schneider’s 23-point comprehensive taxonomy of the characteristics of an organized crime conspiracy is applied, along with the historical and contemporary evidence to point to a classification of privateering as organized crime.