The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII CenturyHaring, Clarence Henry
History
The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century
Haring, Clarence Henry
Buccaneers; West Indies -- History
Of the secondary works concerned with the history of the buccaneers, the
oldest are the writings of the French Jesuit historians of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Dutertre (Histoire generale des
Antilles. Paris, 1667-71), a chronicler of events within his own
experience as well as a reliable historian, unfortunately brings his
narrative to a close in 1667, but up to that year he is the safest guide
to the history of the French Antilles. Labat, in his "Nouveau Voyage aux
Isles de l'Amerique" (Paris, 1722), gives an account of eleven years,
between 1694 and 1705, spent in Martinique and Guadeloupe, and although
of little value as an historian, he supplies us with a fund of the most
picturesque and curious details about the life and manners of the people
in the West Indies at the end of the seventeenth century. A much more
important and accurate work is Charlevoix's "Histoire de l'Isle
Espagnole ou de S. Domingue" (Paris, 1732), and this I have used as a
general introduction to the history of the French buccaneers. Raynal's
"Histoire philosophique et politique des etablissements et du commerce
europeen dans les deux Indes" (Amsterdam, 1770) is based for the origin
of the French Antilles upon Dutertre and Labat and is therefore
negligible for the period of the buccaneers. Adrien Dessalles, who in
1847 published his "Histoire generale des Antilles," preferred, like
Labat and Raynal, to depend on the historians who had preceded him
rather than endeavour to gain an intimate knowledge of the sources.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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