<P> David Cordingly, in his influential 1994 work Under the Black Flag, defined the "great age of piracy" as lasting from the 1650s to around 1725, very close to Fiske's definition of the Golden Age . </P> <P> Rediker, in 2004, described the most complex definition of the Golden Age to date . He proposes a "golden age of piracy, which spanned the period from roughly 1650 to 1730", which he subdivides into three distinct "generations": the buccaneers of 1650--1680, the Indian Ocean pirates of the 1690s, and the pirates of the years 1716--1726 . </P> <P> Piracy arose out of, and mirrored on a smaller scale, the conflicts over trade and colonization among the rival European powers of the time, including the empires of Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal and France . Most of these pirates were of Welsh, English, Dutch and French origin . </P> <P> Historians, such as John Fiske, mark the beginning of the Golden Age of Piracy at around 1650, when the end of the Wars of Religion allowed European countries to resume the development of their colonial empires . This involved considerable seaborne trade, and a general economic improvement: there was money to be made--or stolen--and much of it traveled by ship . </P>

Where did most of the pirates come from