<P> Of recent definitions, Pringle appears to have the widest range, an exception to an overall trend among historians from 1909 until the 1990s, toward narrowing the Golden Age . As early as 1924, Philip Gosse described piracy as being at its height "from 1680 until 1730 ." In his highly popular 1978 book The Pirates for TimeLife's The Seafarers series, Douglas Botting defined the Golden Age as lasting "barely 30 years, starting at the close of the 17th Century and ending in the first quarter of the 18th ." Botting's definition was closely followed by Frank Sherry in 1986 . In a 1989 academic article, Professor Marcus Rediker defined the Golden Age as lasting only from 1716 to 1726 . Angus Konstam in 1998, reckoned the era as lasting from 1700 until 1730 . </P> <P> Perhaps the ultimate step in restricting the Golden Age was in Konstam's 2005 The History of Pirates, in which he retreated from his own earlier definition, called a 1690--1730 definition of the Golden Age "generous," and concluded that "The worst of these pirate excesses was limited to an eight - year period, from 1714 until 1722, so the true Golden Age cannot even be called a' golden decade ."' </P> <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>

Jamaica governor during the golden age of piracy