Author(s)

Cheng Ling ¹, Xie Jiguang ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Guilin University of Technology, Guilin, Guangxi, China

Corresponding Author

ABSTRACT

In the 16th and 17th centuries, especially during the reign of Elizabeth Ⅰ, the British pirate community grew to an unprecedented size, and their plundering was frequent. During this period, pirates were no longer the despised thieves but the heroes of the nation. Due to Britain's deteriorating financial situation, the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism, and the intensification of the Anglo-Spanish conflict, it became clear to the British government that piracy was a powerful force to be reckoned with. The resultant large-scale piracy enabled Britain to accumulate huge wealth on the one hand, and weakened the power of Spain on the other, gradually replacing it as the dominant maritime power. This paper briefly analyses the historical reasons for the prevalence of piracy in this period from the perspective of economics, politics, geography, and historical tradition. 

KEYWORDS

CITE THIS PAPER

Cheng Ling, Xie Jiguang. An Exploration of the Historical Background to the Prevalence of Piracy in England during the Elizabethan Era. Journal of Sociology and Ethnology (2021) 3: 6-12. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/jsoce.2021.030702.

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