Women against pirates: Gender and defense in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 17th century

This article analyzes the participation of women in the “defense of the kingdom”, a male task par excellence. It studies the role played by four women (Catalina de Erauso, Paula Piraldo, the Countess of Lemos Ana de Borja, and the Queen Regent Mariana of Austria) in three episodes of incursions into the Peruvian viceroyalty by the Dutch privateer Joris van Spilbergen and the Welsh pirate Henry Morgan in the seventeenth century. For this purpose, we examine documents from Spanish archives, as well as studies related to these events.