eBook The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire download

Interesting as a chronology of maritime events through Elizabeths reign, but reads like the raw research material for a dissertation paper. Poorly written, sometimes almost incoherent, and badly edited. The Kindle edition is not hyperlinked to the notes (which are at the back of the book). Disappointing

Very intriguing if you are seriously interested in Elizabeth I. There is a lot of detail here (more than I needed - hence the 4 stars) but for the more serious scholar I'm sure it is amazing. For an amateur like me it was a terrific insight into the business and political side of this great queen. We tend to hear about her love life and the politics of holding on to her throne, but this shows you the underside - the money, the never ending struggles with Spain and the Catholic countries and how she adroitly played all sides while continuing to deceive and steal (via pirates) from all of them just to survive. This book greatly enriched my understanding of this complicated woman. Some parts of it still haunt me.

This is as interesting and well written a book on England's 16th Century emergence, from third world nation status to global superpower stature, as you are likely to find. I especially appreciate the consistency with which author Susan Roland puts the economics of Queen Elizabeth's decisions into today's terms. This goes a long way toward making Elizabeth's decisions understandable. Piracy was an amazingly big business. With single voyages generating over $1.0 billion in today's equivalent, utilizing current values enables readers to readily understand how large an economic driver piracy was to England's evolution as a superpower. Plunder became England's primary growth industry, the financial bedrock upon which England's global dominance over the next 400 years was built. Since most of this wealth was taken from Spain, plunder also planted the seeds which would ultimately destroy Spain's preeminent position in world affairs.

After Philip of Spain stifles England's ability to export wool, its primary cash crop, early in Elizabeth's reign, England subsequently suffers from an inability to either fund its defense or protect its interests on the European stage. Beset by powerful enemies both secular and religious, England struggles with Spain and the Catholic Church externally and Scotland internally. Moreover, England's allies were in disarray. France was often religiously bipolar, while Holland, Belgium (then referred to as the Low Countries) and Portugal were economically dependant. Revolution was rife and Elizabeth's monarchy was tenuous to say the least.

With this as the backdrop to relations in the neighborhood, Elizabeth made common cause with what history refers to as her adventurers. Piracy had been practiced along most European and Mediterranean coasts for centuries. But under Elizabeth, English piracy became a global, state sanctioned art form, an economic necessity for survival that harvested the seas for the Queen's Treasury. Elizabeth begins to organize with John Hawkins' voyages to the Caribbean where he razed whole towns and ravaged Spanish shipping. Next was Francis Drake's Caribbean activities and his subsequent circumnavigation of the Earth which plucked the best value from Spain's global empire. By the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic-Protestant debates were in full tilt and undeclared war existed between England, Spain and the Catholic Church with numerous Spanish and Catholic assassination attempts on Elizabeth's life. England's piracy was no longer small, single voyage ventures but numbered over 200 ships, with individual fleets varying from 15 to 30 vessels and employing between 500 - 1,000 men. Under the guidance of veteran sea dogs Hawkins and Drake, piracy had grown into England's de facto Navy, becoming sufficiently powerful to stave off Spain's Armada when Philip's anger bubbled over and he unleashed that 500 ship weapon in 1588.

This is an amazing story, well told, which builds with a power and a mastery of detail that is quite appealing. I came away from this work understanding that both England, and subsequently her American Colonies, were built on the bedrock of piracy. Moreover, the great explorations and colonization efforts of Martin Frobisher, Walter Raleigh and others, were, generally speaking, voyages where pillage and plunder, especially at Spain's expense, were an encouraged and necessary business practice.

Wonderfully detailed and excellently crafted, Roland's work spares no effort in describing the intrigue and confrontation involved in England's rise and Spain's downfall as Europe's dominant global power. This is as good a description of this fascinating portion of history as I have found and a read that is really second to none in explaining the intricacy of the time period covered.

The Pirate Queen is a remarkably worthwhile book.

I couldn't put this book down. What an amazing historical account of the reign of Elizabeth I and her Pirates ('merchants', 'adventurers', 'rovers', etc). This is by far the best book I've read about the Tudors and the part the pirates played in ensuring the survival of England. Thank you for writing this book, Ms Ronald.

It was a pretty dry read for me. It usually doesn't take days of really trying to get through a book. Really more of a date/time history book.

Bravo, Elizabeth! Piracy not necessarily being a kosher topic in all circles, this was a wonderful, revealing read! Artful manipulation and exploitation by Elizabeth's 'Gentlemen' brought England to the forefront of history against the oppressive duo of Pope and Spain. Again, the author leaves me feeling as though these characters are here, now, and anxious to hear the outcomes of all their exploits. "Water...have you seen Virginia, as it is today? Could you have ever imagined where your discoveries and adventures would lead?" I hope you know, Sir Walter Raleigh, somehow I hope you know..."Oh, and by the way...we have still not found the fabled 'El Dorado'...I think the Spaniards got it all...drast!"

Fantastic book! Ronald talks less about the scandals of Elizabeth's court and more about her merchant endeavors. A recommended read for anyone.

Susan Ronald writes like a high school student trying to fill pages to meet some page-length proscription. Her book assumes a lot of knowledge on the part of readers; it repeats itself; it is confusing and unnecessarily cluttered; it fails to paint a textured picture of what life was like at the time (see for comparison "Nelson's Trafalgar" for a description of just how incredibly difficult life on land and at sea was like in the time of the Napoleanic Wars, and Ronald's subject occurs more than 200 hundred years prior). It is a very disappointing read given just how fascinating this subject is. I am trudging through it but very eager to learn of better books on this topic and this era.