What the difference between a pirate and a privateer?
IIRC privateers were more akin to mercenaries or other forms of hired security whereas pirates robbed and pillaged for their income.
A privateer would have a “letter of marque”, an authorization from a government to carry out its activities against that country’s enemies. A pirate was just a freebooter.
In practice, the distinction could get kind of iffy, of course.
A privateer was a licensed pirate, in other words. Ha!
It could make a big difference, as pirates could be hanged out of hand but privateers had some quasi-legal status as “hired ships” of the Navy.
As stated, a privateer is licensed to prey upon an enemy and in return is not punished as a pirate by the country that grants him permission. The use of privateers is now outlawed (but which treaty said so escapes me).
Oddly, contractors are allowed.
But licensed by one country, ONLY against that countries enemy.
Thus a privateer with a letter of marque from England, at the time when England and Spain were fighting, could attack Spanish ships. But they were not authorized to attack, say French or Dutch ships – doing so would be piracy.
Of course, privateer captains stretched this a bit. They’d claim that the French ship was under contract to Spain, hauling goods for Spain, so a valid ship to attack.
A hell of a big difference: Captain William Kidd was hanged because he couldn’t substantiate his claim he was a privateer.
Were there ever privateers under contract by several governments at once?
Very interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque
So the U.S. has not formally abandoned the practice because it did not sign the Paris Treaty.
The distinction between “marque” and “reprisal” is edifying too.
Also, note that the enemy country was highly unlikely to respect a letter of marque from their opponent, and would probably just hang the “pirates”. Basically, the difference between a Freedom Fighter and an Insurgent.
Do you have a cite for that? I’m no expert, but I’d always understood that respecting an opponent’s letters of marque was part of how the game was played, in those days when it was important to play by the rules.
http://www.econlib.org/LIBRARY/YPDBooks/Lalor/llCy862.html
BTW, while the U.S. did not sign the Paris treaty, it has signed other treaties on privateering. Moreover, the rule against privateering is probably jus cogens by now.* E.g.* , http://www.iccnow.org/documents/WritingColombiaEng.pdf (pdf page 16).
So did the British hire privateers to pillage American ships during the revolutionary war?
How does one become a privateer by the way?
A license to pirate? The RIAA’s heads are gonna asplode!
Yarr, be there a written test at the DMV?
The British had the better navy, and so would have had less of a need for privateers. I don’t know if they used any in this case. We used privateers to match the British navy. They did a lot of damage, too. http://hnn.us/articles/915.html; http://www.nps.gov/revwar/about_the_revolution/privateers.html; Privateers or Merchant Mariners help win the Revolutionary War
Get yourself some Letters Marque. Fortune Favors the Brave - The Story of the Texas Navy - Texas Privateers | TSLAC
That would be the DSV – Dept. of Sailing Vessels! 
Jean Lafitte was a classic privateer – captaining a ship out of New Orleans against the British during the War of 1812
Another difference between privateers and pirates is that privateers weren’t supposed to sail off to Barbados with their plunder, but take it to a prize court to gain legal title.
Executing captured privateers is equivalent to executing prisoners of war. Both happen, but they shouldn’t in the civilized world.
This caused tremendous controversy during the Civil War, when the Lincoln administration tried Confederate privateers for piracy, on the grounds that the Confederacy wasn’t a nation. Federal courts eventually threw out the cases, finding the Confederates to be lawful belligerents even though not a recognized nation. Even without this ruling, executing privateers would have invited the South to retaliate by executing Union prisoners, and might not have happened.
You mean the arrrrIAA.