The Pirate Queen
Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Many biographies have been written about Queen Elizabeth I of England. They focus on her struggle for the throne and personal affairs, but Elizabeth’s remarkable financial acumen has been sorely neglected. During her long reign, she turned an economically weak country, overshadowed by France and Spain, into a powerful empire. And the cornerstone of England’s financial recovery was privateering, also known as piracy.
In the fascinating revisionist biography The Pirate Queen, historian Susan Ronald draws on more than a thousand original manuscripts and personal letters to explore how, in a carefully choreographed plan, British ships plundered rich cargoes and secured territory in the name of the Crown. This is a story about power and greed, but also about survival; without Elizabeth’s foresight and determination, it is entirely possible that not only England but also the English language would have been absorbed by its enemies. The Pirate Queen is an entertaining and enlightening look at the woman who laid the economic foundation of the British Empire.
Susan Ronald, author of The Sancy Blood Diamond, has consulted for five British government departments and The National Trust. Born and raised in the United States, she has lived in England for more than twenty years.
A highly colorful, swashbuckling read, one that will give you new respect for Britain’s first Elizabeth. — Seattle Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When Elizabeth Tudor became queen in 1558, her religiously fractured kingdom was in financial chaos and under constant threat from superpower Spain. How the iron-willed, financially astute monarch utilized piracy and plunder as a vital tool in guaranteeing English independence from foreign domination and in transforming a backwater nation into a nascent empire is the tantalizing focus of Ronald's (The Sancy Blood Diamond) latest effort. To wreak vengeance on the Spanish perpetrators of the Inquisition, Elizabeth granted swashbuckling John Hawkins permission for his first slaving voyage to Guinea in 1562. On a 1577 mission to raid Spanish shipping in the Pacific, Francis Drake became the first European commander to sail around the southernmost tip of South America from the Atlantic into the Pacific, and in 1588, he destroyed the invading Spanish Armada. Charismatic, massively ambitious Walter Raleigh founded Virginia, popularized smoking tobacco and spent the 1590s in a futile search for the fabled El Dorado. Authoritative, assiduously researched and with a knack for making the intricacies of sea skirmishes accessible and absorbing, this is a surprisingly fresh perspective on one of the most popular subjects of royal biography. 16 pages of b&w illus.; maps.
