Talk:Johannes van Walbeeck

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Biography

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Van Walbeeck as a corsair

I re-removed the pirate info box and his label as a corsair. There seems to be an urge to include every 16-17th century sailor not on the side of Habsburg Spain as a pirate, corsair, or privateer. For example, I recently released Hendrik Brouwer from that pigeon hole as well.

According to ourselves, a corsair is either a French privateer from the port of St-Malo or a Barbary pirate operating from North Africa. It sometimes is used more generically as a "more romantic or flamboyant version of the word privateer, or even the word pirate". Since Jan wasn't associated with France or Africa, I'd say use the less ambiguous "privateer". However, we currently define privateer as "a private warship authorized by a country's government by letters of marque to attack foreign shipping. Privateering is often described as a form of state-supported piracy. Strictly, a privateer was only entitled by its state to attack and rob enemy vessels during wartime. However, states often encouraged attacks on opposing powers while at peace, or on neutral vessels during time of war, blurring the line between privateering and piracy". Though not mentioned, it obviously is also used for the people owning and operating the ship.

From the little I could find out about Van Walbeeck (somehow, nobody from the Dutch Antilles or anywhere else has written a biography on him), I didn't find evidence that he ever owned a ship or attacked vessels, let alone make a habit of it. Even if he has been involved in a fight at sea (quite likely, it being the 80-year war after all), that wouldn't make him necessarily a privateer and certainly not a privateer first and everything else later, which the pirate info box very much suggests.

I also removed the link of the French mercenary soldier named "Big Pete" aboard his expedition to Pierre le Grand (pirate). That article says that nothing is known about the pirate but one perhaps imaginary story, while the mercenary has a documented history, also before and after his trip to Curacao. Contemporary Englishmen with the name "Big John" weren't all the same person either.

And finally, the added sentence "Although the island was initially considered unsuitable for colonization, Curacao became a major base for privateers to trade contraband within the next several years" suggested that piracy was the main reason for the occupation of the island and Van Walbeeck invited all his fellow swashbucklers over. My referenced sources claim that the West Indies Company was interested in the island both as a trading base and for harvesting salt from the natural salt pans, for which some colonization presumably was necessary. Curacao became a place from which raids were made on Spanish towns on the South American coast, starting in the time of Van Walbeeck's successor Jacob Tolck and probably peaking at the time Peter Stuyvesant was governor (who does not have a pirate info box ;-). The sentence should be part of the entry Willemstad or History of Curacao instead. Afasmit (talk) 02:25, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

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