The Golden Age of Piracy, 1714–1727

Abstract

The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 drastically reconfigured the geopolitics of the northeast. Wabanaki adapted to and then manipulated the new imperial arrangement by modernizing their diplomatic and military strategy for regional ascendancy. The process of modernization was threefold. Indians applied their historic claim to sovereignty over sea and shore to the new postwar world while also amplifying their insistence on the tributary status of English neighbors. As much as Europeans might wish to remap the region, Indians insisted on the proper order of things. At the same time, they detached their seaborne campaigning from wars rooted in the distant power circles of European courts, from conflicts touched off by imperial priorities that increasingly seemed arbitrary and unpredictable. The new face of Wabanaki’s hegemonic ambition was born of a desire to unfetter the political and economic fortunes of native communities from those of Europe.