Vocabulary.

• COMMONWEALTH: Republic established in England after the confrontation between Charles I and the Parliament which counts on the support of Oliver Cromwell. After winning, Cromwell dissolved the Parliament and governed alone until the mid-17^th century. Nowadays it is an association of sovereign states, most of which were former members of the British Empire.

• EAST INDIA COMPANY: English and Dutch great commercial companies of the 17^th century formed by the fusion of smaller ones. Their governments protected them and thus they could obtain commerce privileges and consequently they established good relationships with the East.

• PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: navigators who assaulted ships and ports of the Caribbean from the mid-16^th century to the 17^th and found their main refuge in the Turtle Islands (near Haiti). Pirates and buccaneers like Morgan were considered simple bandits who acted on their own, while corsairs or privateers as English Francis Drake worked for a Government who offered a permission or “letter of marque” to let them attack his enemies.

• BAROQUE: term that refers to something irregular, extravagant and excessive. Artistic style of the 17^th century that used the same architectonic elements and pictorial subjects that the Renaissance, but in a more complicated way, with extended domes and rich ornamentation on facades full of movement, recesses and projections to create areas of light and shade, as well as color effects.