Pirate, corsair, filibuster, buccaneer, Berber … Sometimes we tend to confuse them and use them as synonyms, but they are not. Each of these groups differ in their characteristics according to the time and also the area where they carried out their maritime pillaging. Here we explain the differences between all of them:
PIRATE. This generic term was already used in antiquity. It comes from the Greek peirates , which means ‘to strive’ or ‘to try fortune in adventures’. The pioneers were the so-called sea peoples – who attacked all of Asia Minor and Egypt in the time of Ramses III – and, later, the Cilician pirates, from the southern coast of the Anatolian peninsula. The latter came to capture Julius Caesar when he was twenty-five years old. The golden age of piracy emerged in the 16th century, as news spread of the discovery of gold in America by the Spanish . The first to try to steal the treasures of the conquest were the French and then the English would follow.
PRIVATEER. Many states or local corporations issued marquees to adventurers so they could attack enemy ships or cities in time of war . These privateers assembled a ship at their own risk and, by means of this patent, they reached an agreement with the authority that included giving them a part of the profits. The most famous of all, the Englishman Francis Drake, carried out his first great assault in 1572 on Nombre de Dios, a Panamanian port through which the gold and silver transported by the Spanish from Peru passed. The attacks of Drake, knighted by Queen Elizabeth I, would be a nightmare for Spain.
FILIBUSTER. This word is derived from the Dutch vrijbuiter and means ‘pirate’ or ‘thief’. It passed into Spanish during the great era of piracy and, although it fell into disuse, it was recovered in the 19th century to designate the adventurers who tried to take over the territories of the United States and Latin America by arms . One of them, William Walker, came to rule Nicaragua.
BUCCANEER. This was the name given to the Westerners settled in the west of the island of Hispaniola who were dedicated to selling smoked meat – in the Arawak language of the Caribbean Indians, bucan means ‘to smoke the meat’ – to the ships that passed through the region. As they did not pay taxes, the Crown of Spain punished them by killing the animals on which they based their trade, and the buccaneers decided to engage in pillage. Then, the term would generally designate the pirates of the Caribbean Sea, who preferred to attack ports more than other ships.
BERBER. The Europeans called the region of North Africa that we know today as the Maghreb Barbary, and the Berbers were Muslim pirates who operated throughout the Mediterranean from their bases in that area. The main ones were the island of Yerba (Tunisia), Algiers, the Peñón Vélez de la Gomera and Tangier. The Ottoman Empire granted a privateering license to Kemal Reis, in 1487, and to the Barbarossa brothers, who made the Berbers a fearsome threat to Mediterranean maritime traffic.
