Europe’s colonies in Africa and the Americas were created for one reason: to generate wealth in Europe. To achieve this, a complex system was created that controlled where goods could be bought and sold. European economies needed the constant stream of raw goods that new colonies could provide. The colonies, in turn, served as captive markets for refined goods made in Europe. In effect, colonies like New York existed to ship things to England (or the Netherlands) and to then buy things in return, while European markets profited on each end, taxing and imposing tariffs on imports and exports. In this system, explicitly designed to disfavor colonists, an enterprising businessman like Frederick Philipse I could make huge gains over his competitors by skirting the rules.
European colonial expansion and seafaring exploration stretched governmental claims of authority across impractical distances. Privateers blurred the line between sanctioned and illegal use of force during the nearly perpetual maritime warfare waged between the European seagoing powers. These privately owned vessels, legally empowered by their government to engage with enemy ships, often continued their maritime marauding long after they had lost official permission; one day a privateer, the next a pirate. Privateers, pirates, and naval vessels all operated in this chaotic near free-for-all of nascent global sea trade in the early colonial period. Bold merchants and captains, willing to play all sides and exploit all advantages, could attain great wealth with a bit of luck and daring.
Merchants on the fringes of the empire, like Margaret Hardenbroek and Frederick Philipse, were often more willing to engage with the gray legality of the pirate trade because of their own alienation from the heart of European power. Pirate captains, in turn, took full advantage of the ever-changing alliances between governments and privateers, gambling that the ships they raided had just as little knowledge of who was, at any given time, a friend or a foe.
Piracy and the international slave trade were tightly bound together. In fact, the first enslaved people to reach the English colonies arrived on ships owned by Anglo-Dutch privateers. In the 1680s, New York merchants like the Philipses began again to take people from Madagascar to be sold as slaves, despite the longer voyage around the southern tip of Africa.
The island of Madagascar lay outside the Royal African Company’s monopoly on the West African slave trade, and colonial markets were desperate for the cheap enslaved labor that it could provide. Complicating the pursuit of profit for the colonial merchants further, the East India Company mercantile laws prohibited direct trade between ports in the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic colonies. Pirates, operating outside laws and customs, allowed merchants to cut out the middlemen. New York traders sent grain, flour, cloth, paper, guns, and ammunition to pirate ports like Madagascar, which in turn provided luxury goods, enslaved people, and the gold and silver coinage the colonial economies desperately needed.
Ships within Frederick Philipse I’s fleet were built for use in this illicit Indo-Atlantic trade. We know from records seized on behalf of the English government that Philipse employed renowned pirate captain Samuel Burgess to sail this route, using his pirate’s knowledge to avoid the costly East India Company customs. When Philipse’s boat the Margaret was taken, five years of trading records and correspondence between New York and Madagascar showed, not a fly-by-night criminal enterprise, but a stable trading network covering tens of thousands of miles.
Frederick Philipse I’s whole family assisted in his risky but profitable endeavors. His wife Margaret, a hugely successful businesswoman in her own right, was aboard their ship the Charles when it returned to the Philipse property. The ship had left Africa with 146 enslaved people; 41 died en route, leaving 105 to arrive in Barbados alive. All but 23 were sold by Margaret's son, Philip. These 23 set sail for New York; of them, only nine survived the final leg of the journey. These nine individuals would be the first enslaved people to be owned by the Philipse family.
The geography of the New York colony added to its appeal as a hub for piracy. The wide Hudson estuary offered many ways to slip by the watchful eye of the colonial authorities who monitored ports to ensure that all taxes were paid and mercantile laws obeyed. But even with craft and cunning, it is likely that many smuggling endeavors would have failed without the tacit approval of a succession of New York colonial governors. These men, most of great wealth and with personal business interests in line with families like the Philipses, allowed piracy and smuggling to take place as long as it enriched them or their friends.
McDonald, Kevin P. Pirates, Merchants, Settlers, and Slaves: Colonial America and the Indo-Atlantic World. University of California Press (2015).
Wilson-Fall, Wendy. Memories of Madagascar and Slavery in the Black Atlantic. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press (2015).
