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Pirates! Legend- General History Legend Fact Pirate Legend Main General History Pirate Fiction Pirate Legends Welcome to the Pirates! Legend- General History section.  The pirate theme was one of the most often used in literature. Starting with the Arabian Nights, pirate stories were always part of literature and adventure. One of the most significant stories of this genre was Treasure Island written by Robert Louis Stevenson. In this book, for the first time, pirates were shown with all the complexity of their character and personality. The book also created a characteristic mood for pirate stories.  In other books that followed, pirates were shown as social revolutionaries fighting social injustice through a time of rebellion. In these stories crime and tyranny justified crime and rebellion.  Another way to describe pirates was to take a specific historic pirate and subjectively paint him in a way so that he looked quite justified in his reprehensible deeds. Some of the pirates were rightfully depicted as soldiers- hired by a legal government. In this way, even the worst deeds were justified as "acts of war".  Some were forced into piracy, being refugees from justice. Some tried to create legal governments and give themselves the right to plunder, rob and kill others (Maurice Beniowski – self-proclaimed king of Madagascar). All of them could not find a place within the current social system. The sea belonged to nobody and, especially before XVII century, there was no international jurisdiction to cover piracy. Sir Francis Drake for instance was Main Menu: Communications Knowledge Check Pirates! Help Pirates! Main Extra Resources Map of Pirates! Tour of Pirates! Bibliography About Pirates!

considered a bandit by the Spanish government; yet in England he was honored and seen as a distinguished gentleman. Quite a few stories and movies were created about the pirates and privateers during Elizabethan times. These tales are especially interesting because of the fact that quite a few pirates were enlisted in the queen’s service, and so could be described without a stigma glorifying common robbers or criminals. Some literary/movie pirate stories were not even based on historic events, and the pirates depicted in them, were totally fictitious. Usually, however, pirate stories were based in the Mediterranean, Caribbean, Mexican, and South American seas. North African pirates were more often represented in older literature ("Odyssey", "Arabian Nights", and "Robinson Crusoe").  In general one can characterize pirate literature and movies as almost always idealizing and romanticizing the reality. This is especially true for Hollywood movies, as they created a specific type of chivalrous pirate- with a tendency to show only the romantic side of pirate life.   Visit the rest of our site by following this link to the Pirates! Main Page.