"In the 1500s, Spain was getting rich colonizing America, and the original Queen Elizabeth was feeling left behind. So she authorized a practice called “privateering”, which is essentially a legal version of piracy - where she would use pirate mercenaries to attack and plunder Spanish treasure ships carrying gold back from their American colonies.
Piracy was a way for Queen Elizabeth to get a piece of the action without provoking a full-scale war with Spain, who was way bigger and badder than them at the time. She called her private pirate army “Marine Intelligence 6” (aka MI6). And they stole lots of gold from Spain. MI6 now stands for “Military Intelligence 6” but that didn’t happen until way later.
During this time, British operatives pioneered many of the clandestine tactics and networks they ultimately used to become the preeminent superpower in the 1800s – tactics using such as opium, aka heroin, and human trafficking to fund pirate colonies throughout the Caribbean to keep the money flowing, and the men fed, when there weren’t Spanish ships to attack."
