Without piracy, the world鈥檚 history would have gone very differently.

Piracy is usually thought of through the lens of Treasure Island or Pirates of the Caribbean 鈥� a brief swashbuckling era in the 18th Century filled with cutlasses, cannons, and bearded men saying 鈥淎rrr, matey!鈥�

But piracy has existed as long as we鈥檝e had boats and stuff worth stealing.

Pirates of some sort have existed in and around every seafaring culture for thousands of years, in every part of the world.

Going back as far as the Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BC, the Egyptian pharaohs found themselves fending off what became known as the Sea People, some kind of violent mass-migration or invasion force with sizable warships. Historians still don鈥檛 have a clear idea where they came from. Women like Zheng Yi Sao in China and Grace O鈥橫alley in Ireland carved out careers as bandit queens of the high seas.

But piracy really made history when it intersected with the politics of the colonization of the Americas.

By the late 1500s, the Spanish Empire ranged from Florida and Texas down through to South America. Spain used enslaved and forced Indigenous labourers to mine the richest silver deposits in the world for centuries.

But all that silver 鈥� and gold and other goodies Spain was extracting from its colonial empire 鈥� had to be hauled back across the Atlantic.

Enter the pirates.

Not that they called themselves that. Whether it was Sir Francis Drake in the 1570s, or Sir Henry Morgan almost a century later, the rulers of England gave these sea-going raiders permission to go after enemies of the state.

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When those enemies included Spain, that meant it was practically open season. Anyone with a boat, a crew, and some gunpowder could get a letter of marque 鈥� official permission to be a pirate, as long as you picked the right victims.

Drake would circle the world after raiding numerous settlements in South and Central America. (No one expects the Spanish鈥� to be attacked from the Pacific Ocean!) They limped home years after everyone thought they were dead. But they brought back so much silver, they鈥檇 been using it for ship鈥檚 ballast.

Piracy was used as a tool of warfare and colonialism for a solid century and a half. Every time there was a lull in official fighting, the privateers would wander off and become pirates, then huddle under the skirts of official recognition as soon as Britain, France, Spain, and the Netherlands started squabbling again.

Men who began their careers as raiders explored distant lands, mapped unknown shores, were granted knighthoods, and retired rich and respected.

Or died of scurvy, storms, or a hangman鈥檚 noose. Piracy is still with us, but it no longer serves great powers, so they make every effort now to stamp it out.