Abstract
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, pirates and privateers sought to forge alliances with local populations in strategic borderlands of the Spanish American Empire. This was the case in Darien, in the Isthmus of Panama, where English and French pirates allied with Cuna Indians, and in southern Chile, where Dutch privateers established coalitions with Huilliche Indians. In doing so, European enemies of Spain not only tried to undermine Iberian power but also challenged Spanish sovereignty in these territories. By examining these alliances between pirates and local populations, this article seeks to understand the nature of the borderlands of the Spanish Empire defined as an “empire of archipelagoes.” Despite early modern cartographic representations, portraying Spanish American overseas possessions under Iberian control, the Spanish Empire was composed of (polycentric) enclaves across the Americas as several regions, which, though technically part of the empire, remained outside of Spanish control.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
BL, Sloane 46B, “A journal, kept by Capt. Bartholomew Sharp, of passages in going overland to the South Seas…,” c. 1683, 2. John Cox account was included in Ayres 1684 whereas William Dick’s narrative was published in Exquemelin and Ringrose 1685.
- 2.
AGS, Secretaría de Estado: Negociaciones con Inglaterra, Leg. 3963, 1688.
- 3.
“Se hizo un grande y ejemplar castigo en dieciocho indios y se ahorcaron otros treinta caciques de los de la provincia que fueron culpados en meter a los ingleses en Chiloé y dio orden que se despoblase la provincia de la muy costa de la mar tierra de los indios para que otra vez no acogiesen a los ingleses y les diesen bastimentos…” AGI, Lima 34, 1601, Noticias de Chile.
- 4.
AGI, Indiferente 1874, 1643, “Junta de Guerra sobre los avisos que Vuestra Majestad se sirvió de enviar de los designios del enemigo.”
- 5.
Waggoner refers to a collection of sea-charts. The term is an English corruption of the name of Lucas Waghenaer, a famous sixteenth century Dutch sea-charts compiler. Whitfield (2017, p. 177).
- 6.
AGS, Secretaría de Estado: Negociaciones con Inglaterra, 1688, Leg. 3963.
- 7.
AGS, Secretaría de Estado: Negociaciones con Inglaterra, 1699, Leg. 3971.
- 8.
“Capt. Sharp in the Journal of his Expedition, published in Capt. Hacke’s Collection of Voyages, gives an account, that in 1680 he landed at Golden Island with 330 Men, and being joined by one of the Darien Princes, whom they called Emperor and another to whom they gave the Title of King Golden-Cap” (A Defence of the Scots Settlement at Darien, 1699, p. 5).
- 9.
A Letter, giving a description of the isthmus of Darian, 1699, p. 18.
- 10.
A Letter, giving a description of the isthmus of Darian, 1699, p. 23.
- 11.
A Letter, giving a description of the isthmus of Darian, 1699, p. 24.
Bibliography
Archival Sources
Archivo General de Indias (AGI). Audiencia de Lima, Leg. 34. Indiferente, Leg. 1874.
Archivo General de Simancas (AGS). Secretaría de Estado: Negociaciones con Inglaterra, Leg. 3963 and Leg. 3971.
British Library (BL), Sloane 46B.
Published Sources
A Defence of the Scots Settlement at Darien. With an Answer to the Spanish Memorial Against It and Arguments to Prove That It Is the Interest of England to Join with the Scots to Protect It. 1699. Edinburgh: s.n.
A Letter, Giving a Description of the Isthmus of Darian (Where the Scot's Colonie Is Settled;) from a Gentleman Who Lives There at Present. 1699. Edinburgh: s.n.
Ayres, Philip, ed. 1684. The Voyages and Adventures of Capt. Barth. Sharp and Others in the South Sea Being a Journal of the Same. London: Printed by B.W. for R.H. and S.T.
Barbour, James. 1907. A History of William Paterson and the Darien Company. London: Blackwood and Sons.
Benton, Lauren. 2010. A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Benton, Lauren. 2011. “Possessing Empire: Iberian Claims and Interpolity Law.” In Indigenous versus European Land Claims, 1500–1914, edited by Saliha Bellmessous, 19–40. New York: Oxford University Press.
Benton, Lauren, and Benjamin Straumann. 2010. “Acquiring Empire by Law: From Roman Doctrine to Early Modern European Practice.” Law and History Review 28 (1): 1–38.
Brading, David. 1996. “The Catholic Monarchy.” In Le Nouveau Monde, Monde Nouveaux. L’expérience américaine, edited by Serge Gruzinski and Nathan Wachtel, 383–405. Paris: École de Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
Bradley, Peter T. 2014 (1989). The Lure of Peru: Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea, 1598–1701. New Yok: Palgrave Macmillan.
Burney, James. 1806. A Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean, vol. II. London: Printed by Luke Hansard.
Burney, James. 1813. A Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean, vol. III. London: Printed by Luke Hansard.
Bushnell, Amy Turner, and Jack P. Greene. 2002. “Peripheries, Centers, and the Construction of Early Modern American Empires.” In Negotiated Empires. Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500–1820, edited by Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy, 1–14. London: Routledge.
Cardim, Pedro, Tamar Herzog, José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez, and Gaetano Sabatini, eds. 2012. Polycentric Monarchies: How Did Early Modern Spain and Portugal Achieve and Maintain a Global Hegemony? Eastbourne and Portland: Sussex Academic Press.
Daniels, Christine, and Michael V. Kennedy, eds. 2002. Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500–1820. London: Routledge.
Delgado, James, Tomás Mendizábal, Frederick Hanselmann, and Dominique Rissolo, eds. 2016. The Maritime Landscape of the Isthmus of Panama. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Elliot, John H. 1992. “A Europe of Composite Monarchies.” Past & Present 137 (1): 48–71.
Exquemelin, Alexander. 1853 (1678). The Buccaneers of America: A True Account of the Most Remarkable Assaults Committed of Late Years Upon the Coasts of West Indies by the Buccaneers of Jamaica and Tortuga. Boston: Benjamin B. Mussey & Co.
Exquemelin, Alexander, and Basil Ringrose. 1685. Buccaneers of America: The Second Volume. London: Printed for William Crooke.
Grafe, Regina, and Alejandra Irigoin. 2012. “A Stakeholder Empire: The Political Economy of Spanish Imperial Rule in America.” The Economic History Review 65: 609–51.
Herrero Sánchez, Manuel. 2020. “Spanish Theories of Empire: A Catholic and Polycentric Monarchy.” In A Companion to Early Modern Spanish Imperial Political and Social Thought, edited by Jörg Alejandro Tellkamp, 17–52. Leiden, Boston: Brill.
Herzog, Tamar. 2015. Frontiers of Possession: Spain and Portugal in Europe and the Americas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Howse, Derek, and Norman Thrower, eds. 1992. A Buccaneer’s Atlas: Basil Ringrose’s South Sea Waggoner. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Königsberger, Helmut G. 1978. “Monarchies and Parliaments in Early Modern Europe Dominium Regale or Dominium Politicum et Regale.” Theory and Society 5 (2): 191–217.
Levin Rojo, Danna, and Cynthia Radding. 2019. “Introduction.” In The Oxford Handbook of Borderlands of the Iberian World, edited by Danna Levin Rojo and Cynthia Radding, 1–27. New York: Oxford University Press.
Meuwese, Mark. 2019. To the Shores of Chile: The Journal and History of the Brouwer Expedition to Valdivia in 1643. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press.
Montañez-Sanabria, Elizabeth. 2014. Challenging the Pacific Spanish Empire. Pirates in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1570–1750. PhD thesis, University of California at Davis.
Montañez-Sanabria, Elizabeth. 2022a. “The Spanish Lake: Pirates, Privateers, and the Contest for the Pacific Ocean.” In The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, edited by Stephen Webre. New York: Oxford University Press.
Montañez-Sanabria, Elizabeth, 2022b. “La Quimera del Control en el Imperio Español: Darién, 1670–1750.” In El Virreinato del Perú en la encrucijada de dos épocas (1680–1750), edited by Bernard Lavallé and Claudia Rosas Lauro. Lima: Instituto Riva-Agüero, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 43–61.
Montañez-Sanabria, Elizabeth, and Ximena Urbina. 2019. “The Spanish Empire’s Southernmost Frontiers: From Arauco to the Strait of Magellan.” In The Oxford Handbook of Borderlands of the Iberian World, edited by Danna Levin Rojo and Cynthia Radding, 717–39. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pagden, Anthony. 1991. El imperialismo español y la imaginación política: Estudios sobre teoría social y política europea e hispanoamericana (1513–1830). Barcelona: Planeta.
Rosales, Diego de. 1877. Historia General del Reino de Chile, Flandes indiano. Valparaíso: Imprenta del Mercurio.
Rosenmüller, Christoph. 2020. “Introducción: Los imperios ibéricos. Cambios, negociaciones desiguales y autoridad.” Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas/Anuario de Historia de América Latina 57: 4–14.
Schmidt, Benjamin. 1999. “Exotic Allies: The Dutch-Chilean Encounter and the (Failed) Conquest of America.” The Renaissance Quarterly 52 (2): 440–73.
Schmidt, Benjamin. 2004. Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570–1670. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Urbina, María Ximena. 2009. La frontera de arriba en Chile Colonial. Interacción hispano-indígena en el territorio entre Valdivia y Chiloé e imaginario de sus bordes geográficos, 1600–1800. Valparaíso: Centro de Estudios Diego Barros Arana and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso.
Weber, David. 2004. Spanish Bourbons and Wild Indians. Waco: Baylor University Press.
Whitfield, Peter. 2017. Charting the Oceans. London: British Library.
Zandvliet, Kees. 1998. Mapping for Money: Maps, Plans and Topographic Paintings and Their Role in Dutch Overseas Expansion During the 16th and 17th Centuries. Amsterdam: Batavian Lion International.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Montañez-Sanabria, E. (2023). Piracy and Local Alliances in an Empire of Archipelagoes. In: Hyden-Hanscho, V., Stangl, W. (eds) Formative Modernities in the Early Modern Atlantic and Beyond. Palgrave Studies in Comparative Global History. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8417-4_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8417-4_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-19-8416-7
Online ISBN: 978-981-19-8417-4
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)