Willem van Royen, a still life and…

The End of the Buccaneer Era and Their Integration into National Navies (Late 17th Century)

By the end of the 17th century, Western European powers had largely divided the once-independent buccaneer fleets into national units, incorporating them as auxiliaries within their respective navies. This marked the formal end of the buccaneer age, as states sought to harness their naval skills while eliminating their threat to imperial trade.

The Role of Buccaneers in the 17th Century

• Buccaneers were originally privateers, operating mainly in the Caribbean and along the American coasts, preying on Spanish treasure fleets and colonial outposts.
• They were loosely affiliated with European nations, especially England, France, and the Dutch Republic, which tacitly supported their attacks against Spain.
• However, by the late 17th century, the rising imperial ambitions of these Western European powers made unsanctioned piracy a liability rather than an asset.

The Transition: From Privateers to National Navies

✔ State-Sponsored Naval Incorporation

• European powers absorbed buccaneers into their official naval forces, offering them pardons in exchange for military service.
• They were used as naval auxiliaries in conflicts against rival colonial empires, such as:
  • The Nine Years’ War (1688–1697) between France and the Grand Alliance.
  • The War of Spanish Succession (1701–1714), where former buccaneers served in English, French, and Dutch fleets.

✔ Diminishing Need for Unregulated Privateering

• With permanent national navies expanding, European states no longer needed independent buccaneer forces.
• Treaties between European powers (such as the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697) normalized colonial boundaries, making piracy diplomatically inconvenient.

✔ Establishment of Formal Privateering Laws

• Governments restricted privateering licenses, making it illegal for unauthorized private warships to attack enemy vessels.
• Many former buccaneers transitioned into legally sanctioned privateers, serving their home nations under letters of marque.

The End of the Buccaneer Age

• By the early 18th century, most buccaneers had either:
  • Joined national navies as specialized raiders or auxiliary forces.
  • Turned to privateering under state sponsorship.
  • Transitioned to full-scale piracy, leading to the Golden Age of Piracy (c. 1690–1730), where unaffiliated pirates like Blackbeard and Bartholomew Roberts dominated the Atlantic.

Conclusion: Buccaneers Absorbed, Piracy Rises

By century’s end, buccaneers were no longer independent actors, having been divided into national units under European control. Their skills and tactics were integrated into formal naval warfare, while those who refused state control became outlaws, fueling the next phase of Atlantic piracy in the early 18th century.

Morocco withdraws its forces from the Western Sudan by the end of the seventeenth century, leaving the region to splinter into a group of smaller kingdoms.

Austria has reconquered Ottoman Hungary and Slavonia in the Habsburg-Ottoman war of 1683–99, sending a flood of Muslim refugees (mainly converted Slavs) into Bosnia.

Venice acquires the Peloponnese and ...

...much of Dalmatia, including the harbor of Cattaro (Kotor).

The 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz restores Northern Slavonia to Hungarian Croatia.

Christiaan Huygens, in his posthumously published book Kosmotheoros, argues that other planets in the solar system could contain extraterrestrial life, starting a debate that will extend into the twenty-first century.

Alexis Simon Belle was born in Paris, the second child and only son of Jean-Baptiste Belle (born before 1642, died 1703), also a painter, and of Anne his wife (died 1705).

Belle's birth and baptism are recorded in the parish register of the church of Saint-Sulpice, Paris, and quoted in Eugène Piot's Le Cabinet de l'amateur for the years 1861 and 1862.

Belle had studied first under his father, and had continued his training in the studio of François de Troy (1645/46-1730), a painter at the court of King James II in exile at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

He began to produce work at Saint-Germain in the year 1698.

This is a period of peace between France and Great Britain, and Jacobites can cross the English Channel carrying portraits of James Edward Stuart (who at his father's death in 1701 will become the Jacobite claimant to the British throne) and his sister Princess Louisa Maria.

Troy is at this James II's only court painter and needs the help of Belle, his best student, to produce all the portraits ordered from him.

One of his earliest works in this sphere is an allegorical portrait of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart and his sister Princess Louisa Maria Theresa, showing the prince as a guardian angel leading his sister under the gaze of cherubim (1699), now in the Royal Collection.

The Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture), founded in 1648, holds the first of a series of salons at the Louvre Palace.

Only three hundred of the twelve hundred settlers have survived and only one ship has managed to return to Scotland.

Deaths continue on the homeward-bound Scots ships, and those who manage to survive the journey and return home find themselves regarded as a disgrace to their country and even disowned by their families.