Hispaniola: Did you mean...?

Sir Richard Grenville (1542-1591 CE) was an Elizabethan adventurer, mariner, and privateer whose life story is as entertaining as any fictional sailor. His early career saw him become a Member of Parliament, a soldier in Hungary...

The staggering quantity of gold the conquistadors extracted from the Americas allowed Spain to become the richest country in the world. The thirst for gold to pay for armies and gain personal enrichment resulted in...

The first plantations in the Americas of sugar cane, cocoa, tobacco, and cotton were maintained and harvested by African slaves controlled by European masters. When African slavery was largely abolished in the mid-1800s...

European explorers began to probe the Western Hemisphere in the early 1500s, and they found to their utter amazement not only a huge landmass but also a world filled with several diverse and populous indigenous...

The sea dogs, as they were disparagingly called by the Spanish authorities, were privateers who, with the consent and sometimes financial support of Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603 CE), attacked and...

During the Golden Age of Piracy (1690-1730), pirates were first and foremost after gold, silver, and jewels, but if these could not be grabbed, then a ship’s cargo would be taken for resale at a pirate haven...

The treasure ports of the Spanish Main such as Cartagena, Portobelo, Panama, and Veracruz were used to collect the riches the Spanish Empire had extracted from the Americas, ready for transport in the two annual...

Between c. 1650 and 1730, the Caribbean formed the maritime heart of Spain’s American empire and one of the principal arenas of European imperial rivalry...

A 17th-century illustration showing the massacre of the Spanish community at Cumaná on Hispaniola in 1515. The community was an attempt at a more peaceful rule over indigenous peoples.

The fortress built by Jean Le Vasseur from 1642 on the island of Tortuga (Ile de la Tortue), located in northwest Hispaniola (modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Tortuga became a major haven for the buccaneers like...