Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570–1740 by Mark G. Hanna

Mark Hanna’s important book makes two very valuable contributions to the history of the British Atlantic. First, it recovers piracy’s vital part in colonial economic growth during the seventeenth century. Secondly, it explains piracy’s ultimate demise in the early eighteenth century by tracing the regulatory revolution that turned an assemblage of wayward Atlantic colonies into a profitable commercial empire.