Answer:
The colony of North Carolina was unique, one in which the people owned land
and enjoyed religious toleration but were isolated from much of the Atlantic trade.
Unlike any other colonial society, the demographic of settlers included a mixture of
classes, religions, and races among landowners. The local government was comprised of
the new landowners, so it tended to be informal and less structured than the colonial
government of Virginia, creating a relaxed judicial system. The geography of the
coastline of North Carolina presented many obstacles for the large ships of the Atlantic
trade but attracted many pirate sloops, since it offered inlets and islands that could serve
as hideouts. The people who settled in Carolina formed a society that did not define
criminal activity in the same manner as their Virginian neighbors. As a result of these
factors—the demographics of the population, the informal structure of government, and
the geographic obstacles for legal trade—pirates, who provided luxury goods at cheaper
prices than England and were an easily accessible source for trade, were embraced by the
people and accepted into North Carolina communities.
Historians have written about colonial North Carolina, its geographical
differences from other eastern colonies, and its history under proprietary rule. Jonathan
Edward Barth’s article, “‘The Sinke of America’: Society in the Albemarle Borderlands
of North Carolina, 1663-1729,” “seeks to provide a glimpse into early modern ideas on
authority and disorder…in early North Carolina, a colony that many contemporaries
considered a stain on the map of British America.”1 Barth’s research and analysis
support the claim that, in a region geographically designed to protect pirates from many
seafaring naval vessels too large to navigate the Outer Banks, the early colonists of
North Carolina were the types of individuals who were open to nurturing a mutually
beneficial relationship with pirates, and were perfectly located to do so. Edwin Combs
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