Pirates. During their heyday in the 16th-19th century when the combined rises of mercantilism, imperialism, and naval technologies sparked an explosion of commercial, exploratory, and political sea-travel, piracy was synonymous with murder, thievery, and rape, but in one of history’s most impressive spin campaigns, the modern image of the historical pirate has had a thorough cleansing resulting in the romantic figure of the swashbuckling hero we know today. One of the principal examples of this curious instance of historical revisionism is Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, a 2003 blockbuster directed by Gore Verbinski that sparked an explosion of wealth on par with the Age of Sail. Lovable Jack Sparrow isn’t a murderer, he just kills fish monsters, skele-pirates, and British people, and no one cares about any of tho ...