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 Raiding Or Trading 

Someone put an unsigned comment in my talk page about substituting ""raiding"" for ""trading."" The answer I gave there reads as follows: ""You are certainly aware of Francis Drake and his privateer activities. Spanish galleons carrying silver were routinely attacked in the Caribbean and Central America and that is not a Hollywood myth. And when Portugal, 1580 to 1640, was under Spanish rule, Portuguese fortresses in Brazil were frequently attacked by the Dutch. I have a book written by a scholar on the subject documenting such activity, but because it is a bit long, and I do not have much time to put into reading at such lengths, I have been postponing it. The book is not in Amazon, an English translation seems not to exist, and Portuguese booksellers say the book is no longer available for sale. You can see that here http://www.wook.pt/ficha/o-grande-livro-da-pirataria-e-do-corso/a/id/107133  If I get around to read it, I will walk Wikipedia a bit with the information gleaned.""

The historical rationale is that the English and Dutch navies began with raiding, and only when the Spanish and Portuguese Armadas lost hegemony, did English and Dutch trading ports started being established.   "