Buccaneer
an order of men, not quite pirates, yet with decidedly piratical tendencies, who for nearly 200 years infested the Spanish main and the adjacent regions. A bull of Pope Alexander VI., issued in 1493, having granted to Spain all lands which might be discovered W. of the Azores, the Spaniards thought that they possessed a monopoly of all countries in the New World, and that they had a right to seize, ze, and even put to death, all interlopers into their wide domain. Enterprising mariners belonging to other nations, and especially those of England and France, considered themselves at liberty to push their fortunes within the prohibited regions.
Being cruelly treated, when taken, by the Spaniards, their comrades made reprisals, and a state of war was established between the Spanish governments in the New World and the adventurers from the Old. The association of buccaneers began about 1524, and continued till after the English revolution of 1688, when the French attacked the English in the West Indies, and the buccaneers of the two countries, who had hitherto been friends, took different sides, and were separated forever. Thus weakened, they began to be suppressed between 1697 and 1701, and soon afterward ceased to exist. The buccaneers were also called "filibustiers," or filibusters."