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[ominous music playing]
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[keyboard clacking]
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[keyboard clacking]
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[narrator] When Adolf Eichmann was found
guilty for his role in the Holocaust,
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the judgment underlying
the court’s ruling was that Eichmann was,
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for all intents and purposes,
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a pirate.
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[woman] The attorney underlined
piracy and slave tradery.
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The attorney general believes
that in the case of Eichmann,
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this should be the guiding principle.
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[narrator] This guiding principle
that enemies of mankind
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can be captured and tried by any country
regardless of nationality
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was established
by international piracy law.
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And that's what justified
capturing Adolf Eichmann in Argentina
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and prosecuting him in Israel
for crimes committed in Europe.
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[woman] The enemy of humanity
must be taken care of
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so that no more harm can be done.
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[narrator]
On May 31st 1962, he was hanged.
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Today, we don’t really think of pirates
as enemies of humanity.
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[singing]
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They're campy villains,
like Captain Hook in Peter Pan.
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-[singing]
-[narrator] Or kind of rock n’ roll,
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like Jack Sparrow
in Pirates of the Caribbean.
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Or rum-lovers
marketed by the Captain Morgan brand.
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-Captain?
-[all] Captain!
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[narrator] So, why are pirates
the original enemies of humanity?
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And why don’t we remember them that way?
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Rise up and put down the pirates
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[theme song playing]
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which have today made ours
a lawless world.
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[man] Pirates preyed
upon America's growing commerce.
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[man 2] The demon rum,
the staple food of the pirates
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who once terrorized the Caribbean.
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[woman] Some out-of-work fishermen
have turned to piracy,
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sometimes resorting to murder.
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[man 3] Their business is now very big,
around 50 million pounds this year.
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The world must come together
to end the scourge of piracy.
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Pirates franchises entertain hundreds
of millions of people around the world.
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[man 4] No one knows, if or when
the pirates will try to strike.
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[uplifting music playing]
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I think a pirate is someone that sails
on the sea looking for hidden treasure.
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Some of them have eye patches.
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Some have peg legs. And some have swords.
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Some are good guys
and some are bad guys.
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A bad pirate tries to, like, take stuff.
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And a good pirate
tries to, like, protect the stuff.
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And they like booty
that's actually treasure.
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Sometimes the men need help,
so the women pirates come in...
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so they can help.
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-Argh!
-Argh!
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I think we're drawn to the image
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of people who are operating
outside of authority.
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And that really accounts, I think,
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for a great deal of the persistent
romanticization of pirate life.
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It's unfortunate
that it turns out not to be true.
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♪ Comb their hair with catfish bones ♪
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♪ And we're bound... ♪
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[narrator] This is Queen Elizabeth
knighting Sir Francis Drake in 1581
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for circumnavigating the globe
and bringing back treasure,
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treasure he got pirating.
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And that’s her again
with Sir Walter Raleigh,
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another pirate she knighted.
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He founded a colony he named Virginia,
after her, the virgin queen.
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Its purpose? A pirate base camp.
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Queen Elizabeth was
actually nicknamed the “pirate queen,”
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and she venerated pirates.
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She called them her “sea dogs”
for expanding her empire
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and harming her rivals...
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by robbing their ships.
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At the time, European powers
were in constant conflict.
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Their empires shifting and expanding.
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And they all hired pirates
to steal and loot from their enemies.
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In Europe,
when raiding took place on the seas,
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one of the ways
that it was made legitimate
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was through letters
of marque and reprisal.
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[narrator] Pirates coveted these letters.
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They meant you could rob ships
with the blessing of the state.
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And there had never been
more ships on the seas.
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This was the beginning
of our globalized economy,
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based almost entirely on shipping,
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which contributed to much of the conflict.
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The European empires were fighting
for a bigger piece of global trade,
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clamoring for goods
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like spices from Indonesia,
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cotton from India,
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sugar from the Caribbean
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and enslaved people from Africa.
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Remnants of ships from that era
litter the ocean floor today.
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And in 1996,
a particularly exciting one was discovered
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off the coast of North Carolina,
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and for years
reporters tracked its recovery.
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Blackbeard's flagship,
the Queen Anne's Revenge,
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was pulled from the bottom of the sea
off our coast today.
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Queen Anne's Revenge,
it sank off the North Carolina coast.
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[man] Beaufort has become known
for Blackbeard,
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whose pirate ship lies wrecked
just out there.
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[narrator] What these news reports
didn’t mention
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was that this was originally a slave ship
named "La Concorde."
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When Blackbeard captured it in 1717,
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there were 455 enslaved Africans on board.
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Almost all of them were sold into slavery,
while Blackbeard went on pirating.
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Very few people have talked about it
as a slave ship that we have evidence of.
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[narrator] You can’t understand
trade at this time
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without understanding the slave trade,
because slave labor was behind
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almost all of the goods produced
and shipped across the Atlantic.
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I think that really helps
for people to rethink
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what they know
about the transatlantic slave trade.
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In many cases,
any ship can be considered a slave ship.
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[narrator] But pirates
also literally traded in slaves.
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[Dunnavant] Generally what would happen
is when a pirate captured a ship
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with enslaved people on it,
they would take the enslaved people,
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and in many cases, go to an island
where they had connections
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um, and sell to some local traders there.
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And then from there,
they would get sold off
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into local markets and local plantations,
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causing some of these pirates
to also be labeled slave traders.
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Although that's not the term
people normally associate with them.
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[narrator] Remember Sir Francis Drake?
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Before he was a pirate and knight,
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he was one of England's
first slave traders.
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Pirates were ultimately interested
in making as much profit as they could.
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And they were doing it
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to also eventually use that profit
to gain status.
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[narrator] Like one of the most famous
pirates in pop culture today.
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Many people know
the more popular drink
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of Captain Morgan rum,
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but Captain Morgan, in many ways,
was not just a pirate,
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but also a slave trader
and a plantation owner.
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[narrator] Morgan made his wealth
as a hired pirate for England.
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But then he was able
to sort of solidify his wealth
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by establishing these plantations
on Jamaica.
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He had over one hundred enslaved Africans
sort of under his ownership.
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[narrator] Roughly the same number
U.S. President Thomas Jefferson had
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at any given time.
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He became significant and prominent
in Jamaican society,
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um, and as a result of that,
ended up becoming lieutenant governor
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and had very close dealings
with a lot of the aristocrats.
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[narrator] In 1674, he was knighted
by King Charles II.
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He's a very good example
for thinking about pirates
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as these people who were not
outcasts and rogues
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and determined
to stay on the edges of society.
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What they wanted, in fact,
was incorporation in society
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and a way to set up households as elites.
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[narrator] Scotland-born William Kidd
was another pirate hired by the English,
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receiving a commission in 1696.
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He was given official papers,
and he was given a pass,
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given a commission by England
to, um... to work on their behalf.
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And the jobs that Captain Kidd was given
was as a pirate hunter.
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[narrator] He voyaged from New York,
around the Cape of Good Hope,
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to Madagascar
and into the Red Sea and Indian Ocean,
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where pirates were robbing the ships
of the British East India Company.
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But then Kidd decided he could make
more money as an actual pirate,
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and he targeted what he thought
would make for a profitable raid.
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The ship was actually registered
to the Mughal Empire,
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so today India,
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uh, a trading partner of the English,
a huge ally of the English at this time.
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[narrator] Captain Kidd looted the ships,
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scoring silk, cotton,
sugar, opium and iron
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that today would be worth
more than 10 million U.S. dollars.
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Not bad for a one-time heist.
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[Chadwick] The English are getting
a lot of anger from the Mughal Empire.
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They're really fed up with all
the English pirates in this region,
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and they want to see something change.
They want to see concrete action
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being taken against Captain Kidd.
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[narrator] So the English capture him
in colonial Massachusetts...
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and take him to London
to stand trial for piracy.
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“...the growing Trouble, Disturbance
and Mischief of the Trading World...”
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England wanted to make the point
that his crime was so serious
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that any state could have done
the same thing. It’s a heinous offense,
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something that was an offense
against all mankind.
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[narrator] He was found guilty.
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And in 1701, the judge sentenced him
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to be "hanged by your Necks
until you be dead."
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Which is exactly what happened.
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And this is the case really
where we see a huge sea change,
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because prior to then, pirates...
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they hadn't been condemned in this way.
They'd kind of been allowed to thrive,
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because they served a purpose
in many ways.
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Hostis humani generis is Latin
for "enemies of all mankind."
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And that is what
the governments of the legitimate world
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in the early 18th century referred
to the Pirates of the Caribbean as.
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This is an uncontested area
of international law.
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No state denies the right
of any other state to pick up,
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capture, prosecute any pirate
who they find on the high seas.
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So Captain William Kidd
is a hugely important figure
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in terms of the development
of universal jurisdiction.
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[narrator] Which means that any state
can try an individual,
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“without regard to where the crime
was committed,
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the nationality of the alleged
or convicted perpetrator,
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or the nationality of the victim..."
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For centuries, this only applied
to the original enemies of mankind,
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pirates...
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which is why piracy law
was the precedent used
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to capture, prosecute,
and execute Adolf Eichmann.
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He is someone
who has committed an offense
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against the entirety of mankind,
against the entire human race.
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[narrator] It wasn’t just Captain Kidd
who was served a bitter end.
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In the following decades,
a rash of pirates faced similar fates...
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because, in 1713,
European powers briefly reached a peace,
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and governments stopped hiring pirates
to raid enemy ships.
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[Benton] Suddenly, a lot of mariners
found themselves in the Atlantic
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without a legal way to continue raiding,
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and some of them continued
to raid illegally.
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[narrator] A lot of merchant sailors
at this time
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decided to take up a pirate life, too,
for simple reasons.
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First, the booty.
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An average, able seaman
earned about twenty five pounds per year.
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Pirates could in a single successful take
earn 40 times that amount.
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In fact, some of them earn
even more than that.
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[narrator] And then there was
the issue of workplace culture.
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Merchant ships were known
as very unpleasant work environments.
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Their captains had, essentially, kind of
autocratic authority over their crews,
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and as you might expect,
sometimes they abused that authority.
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[narrator] While pirates elected
their leaders and wrote constitutions,
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with some pretty progressive
worker protections.
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One ship promised
if “any Man should lose a Limb,
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he was to have $800 dollars”
in compensation.
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For about a decade,
illegal piracy surged.
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This was the peak
of the "Golden Age of Piracy."
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And governments
weren't too happy about it.
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[Chadwick] Pirates really threatened
the mercantile order of European states.
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Without being able to trade
with each other,
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the European states, as we knew them then
and know them today,
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wouldn't have been able to survive.
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[narrator] So, governments cracked down
on pirates like never before,
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ramping up laws
and propaganda against them.
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In 1717, a British newspaper published
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“A proclamation
for suppressing of pirates" by the king,
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saying the military would seize any pirate
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that would
“refuse or neglect to surrender.”
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And all of this amped up
public intrigue around pirates.
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So when the book
A General History of the Pyrates
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came out in 1724,
it was an instant bestseller.
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But while it advertised itself
as a history book,
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a lot of it was made up.
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The book tells a tale of Blackbeard,
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on the eve of his death,
answering a question
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about “whether his wife knew
where he had buried his money."
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He answered “that nobody but himself
and the Devil knew where it was.”
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But pirates
almost never buried their money.
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Why would they do that?
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They spent it, often in the bars
and brothels of port cities.
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One hundred and sixty years later,
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these stories inspired another book,
Treasure Island.
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And the author,
Robert Louis Stevenson,
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added his own embellishments,
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like pirates singing,
“Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum,”
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or making people walk the plank,
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and treasure maps.
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Treasure Island so gripped generations
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that Disney adapted it
into a movie in 1950,
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advertising it as a landmark event.
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[man] Walt Disney now sets a new milestone
with his first all-live action feature,
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Treasure Island.
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[narrator] And actor Robert Newton decided
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to exaggerate a particular letter
of the alphabet...
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-Argh.
-Argh.
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Argh.
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[narrator] More pirate movies followed,
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largely inspired by the flamboyant style
of Treasure Island.
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I've waited years for this.
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[chanting] Hook!
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[Dunnavant] There's this
Disneyfication of piracy that happens,
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where they're seen
as sort of the Captain Hook
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in Peter Pan where they're the mean guy,
but they're not really dealing in killing,
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or harming, or harassing,
or torturing individuals.
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[narrator] And the original
source material for all of this
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only chronicled that so-called
"Golden Age of Piracy."
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And that’s where our image of pirates
has been frozen in time,
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even though pirates have existed
for as long as ships have been at sea,
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like Ancient Mediterranean pirates,
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Viking pirates,
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Barbary pirates,
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and one of the world’s
most powerful pirates,
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Cheng I Sao.
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She strictly enforced
her own pirate constitution.
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For raping a female captive,
the penalty was death.
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For 15 years,
at the turn of the 19th century,
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pirates dominated the South China coast,
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and Cheng I Sao commanded
the largest pirate fleet ever recorded,
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more than 1,200 ships
and up to 70,000 men.
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She controlled most of China’s salt trade
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and destroyed government ships
that tried to stop her,
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disabling the Chinese navy and threatening
the country’s ability to trade.
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[Chadwick] There's no obvious bright line
that distinguishes
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when you're dealing with pirates
as someone who's a petty robber,
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like a small band of thieves
on the high seas,
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and pirates as controlling kind of
empires, as controlling vast armies.
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And it is quite difficult to actually say,
you know, where does your pirate end
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and where does
your organized political community begin.
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[narrator] When Cheng I Sao
decided to finally surrender,
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the Chinese government
essentially treated her like a nation.
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They negotiated a deal
that allowed most of her pirates
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to either become military officials
or be resettled on land.
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And Cheng I Sao received no punishment.
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A pirate receiving that kind of treatment
would be absurd today.
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The world has changed since then.
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Borders are mostly fixed
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and international order is held together
by laws, treaties, and trade.
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Shipping is still the backbone
of our globalized economy.
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Ninety percent
of internationally traded goods
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are transported by sea.
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The total value of those goods
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is just more than 2,000 times higher
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than in the time of Cheng I Sao.
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And they’re no longer transported
in the hulls of wooden sailboats,
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but in containers
stacked on massive cargo ships,
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which are a whole lot harder to pirate.
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And the most sought after booty
these days isn’t gold, silver or spices,
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but oil...
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If the price is high enough.
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In 2013, pirates hijacked
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13 oil ships in West Africa.
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But when the price of oil plummeted
the following year,
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they shifted to a different strategy.
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Instead of targeting a ship’s cargo,
targeting a ship’s crew.
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We take kidnap for ransom
quite a bit more seriously
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because of the human impact.
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[narrator] Just like pirates of the past,
these pirates have victims.
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Only today, we can hear
those first-hand accounts directly.
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Please from the bottom of your heart,
open your heart to help us.
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We need your help.
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[man] They thought maybe
I am from a very rich family,
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and they beat. They hit...
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They tie my hands from behind.
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What we have experienced...
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I think nobody can even imagine.
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[narrator] This is what piracy
looks like now around the world.
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It tends to flare up in spots
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where national or international order
breaks down.
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Like in Somalia,
a country that was in anarchy
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when piracy surged from 2007 to 2012.
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Or in Venezuela today,
where there’s been an uptick in piracy
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since its economy
began collapsing in 2014.
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A state has less capacity
to govern its maritime space
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when it is focused on a crisis
within its borders.
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Pirates don't just emerge out of nowhere.
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There are certain structures in place
that, in some cases, facilitate
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or, in some cases, necessitate
the idea of individuals
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working outside of existing structures
to sort of proliferate illegal activity.
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[narrator]
Just like pirates centuries ago,
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people are driven to piracy today
for simple reasons.
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An absence of viable economic alternatives
for would-be pirates
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and access to vessels to attack.
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[narrator] But today’s pirates
aren’t portrayed
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as romanticized rogues by Hollywood.
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They're desperate criminals.
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Like in this Oscar-nominated film...
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based on the true story of Somali pirates
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taking an American ship captain hostage
in 2009.
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Pirates today also no longer slip
in and out of high society.
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[Chadwick] So in terms of
why are we here and pirates are there?
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They are on the wrong side
of history essentially.
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Politically, the civilized states
that form the world today came out on top.
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[narrator] In large part
because those states
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were so successful at something barbaric:
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trading slaves.
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Into the 1700s,
pirates just couldn’t compete
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as the slave trade
became more industrial in scale,
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transporting millions of Africans
to Europe's colonies in the Americas,
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where their labor
generated enormous wealth,
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solidifying the global dominance
of the European powers and, ultimately...
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the United States.
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When the U.S. finally banned
the slave trade in the early 1800s,
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it passed a law saying any citizen
"engaged in the slave trade
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shall be adjudged a pirate
and shall suffer death."
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But only one slave trader
was ever executed by a Western state:
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Nathanial Gordon,
convicted in 1862 of piracy.
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[Benton] Pirates is a label
that, throughout history,
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you assigned to your rivals or enemies
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to suggest that what they were doing
was illegitimate,
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whereas what you were doing
was entirely legitimate.
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Pirates were an important part of history.
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They just aren't the part of history
that we tend to think they are.
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[theme music playing]