Slavers, privateers, and circumnavigators — the Elizabethan seafarers who built an empire

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Slavers, privateers, and circumnavigators — the Elizabethan seafarers who built an empire

GCSE History

John Hawkins carried enslaved Africans to Spanish colonies and called it a business venture; Francis Drake raided Spanish treasure ships, circumnavigated the globe, and burned Cadiz harbour. Both were celebrated as heroes. The Elizabethan seafarers were simultaneously agents of commercial expansion, instruments of state policy, and - by any honest accounting - pirates and slave traders.

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