Long before Costa Rica became synonymous with cloud forests and wildlife reserves, its coastlines were contested territory in one of history’s most dramatic power struggles. During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, the country’s remote bays, dense jungles, and exposed river mouths made it both a target and a thoroughfare for pirates, corsairs, and privateers operating under the flags of, or in defiance of, Europe’s rival empires. The roots of piracy along Costa Rica’s shores run directly back to the geopolitics of the Old World. When Protestant England squared off against Catholic Spain over colonial dominance, the English crown recruited experienced sailors as corsairs, essentially licensed agents of terror against Spanish ships and settlements throughout the Americas. Costa Rica, known as the Rich Coast, sat squarely in the path of Spanish trade routes linking South America and Panama to the broader empire. That made it an inevitable destination for those looking...