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Welcome to the Pirate Republic—the early-eighteenth-century home to some of the great pirate captains, including Blackbeard, "Black Sam" Bellamy, and Charles Vane. Along with their fellow pirates—former sailors, indentured servants, and runaway slaves—this "Flying Gang" established a crude but distinctive democracy in the Bahamas, carving out their own zone of freedom in which servants were free, blacks could be equal citizens, and leaders were chosen or deposed by a vote.For a brief, glorious period the Pirate Republic was enormously successful. It cut off trade routes, sacked slave ships, and severed Europe from its New World empires. Imperial authorities and wealthy shipowners denounced its residents as the enemies of mankind, but common people saw them as heroes.