Buccaneers
Initially, the word buccaneer was applied to people, especially hunters, who cooked or cured meat on a boucan (from the Arawak word for a wooden frame on which the Caribs and Tainos roasted or smoked meat). English colonists anglicised boucanier to buccaneer, and the word became a general label for pirates operating off the Spanish-American coasts and unscrupulous adventurers after the first English translation of Alexandre Exquemelin's The Buccaneers of America was published in 1684.
The original boucaniers were landless Frenchmen who had been driven away from the settled areas of Hispaniola. Some fled to the uninhabited parts of the island, others to nearby Tortuga, but they lived as hunters rather than robbers. Their gradual transition to full-time piracy was due to confusion or a blurring of the distinction between the producers of viande boucanée and their customers as the Spanish authorities sought to wipe out the hunters, their prey, and the outlaws they fed.
The buccaneers gradually relocated from Hispaniola's mainland to a more defensible offshore island (Tortuga), where they were joined by an assortment of French, Dutch, and English adventurers in attacks on homeward-bound Spanish galleons using small craft to attack ships in the Windward Passage between Cuba and Hispaniola.
The support and encouragement of European powers gave the buccaneers a veneer of legitimacy — letters of marque from British, French or Dutch authorities gave them temporary privateer status in wartime — and allowed them to establish semi-permanent bases away from Tortuga. Jamaica's Governor Thomas Modyford invited the buccaneers to base ships at Port Royal; New Providence in the Bahamas was another favoured location — but as time passed and European governments asserted their authority, the buccaneers became separated by nationalities and were eventually suppressed, leaving dispersed bands of pirates to operate without pretensions of legitimacy.
Noted buccaneers included the Frenchmen Jean-David Nau (a.k.a. François l'Ollonais) and Daniel Montbars and the Welshman Henry Morgan, who sacked Maracaibo, Portobello, and Panama City before receiving a knighthood and serving as lieutenant-governor of Jamaica. A party that looked to emulate Morgan's feats and made its way across the Isthmus of Panama to pillage South America's Pacific coast in 1680 included John Coxon, Bartholomew Sharp, Richard Sawkins, William Dampier and Lionel Wafer.
However, as Spanish power in the Caribbean waned towards the end of the 17th century and the buccaneers' attacks began to disrupt English and French merchant traffic, those who previously treated them as a defence against Spanish interests grew increasingly hostile. Some buccaneers turned to legitimate activities; others joined pirate crews seeking plunder elsewhere—in the Indian Ocean off North America's east coast or West Africa ± rather than the Caribbean.
Links to add:
Arawak
Caribs
Tainos
Alexandre Exquemelin
The Buccaneers of America
Hispaniola
Tortuga
Windward Passage
Cuba
Thomas Modyford
Port Royal
New Providence
Bahamas
Jean-David Nau (a.k.a. François l'Ollonais)
Daniel Montbars
Henry Morgan
MaracaiboPortobello
Panama City
Jamaica
Isthmus of Panama
John Coxon
Bartholomew Sharp
Richard Sawkins
William Dampier
Lionel Wafer
