War requires the collision of two or more forces. It implies the ideological invention of an “enemy.” The changing faces of that enemy are fueled by entrenched or emergent powers bent upon spreading their hegemonic supremacy and legitimate order over material and conceptual spaces. In this dynamic, the “pirate” enters the stage as the classical hostis humani generis (“enemy of humankind”). However, the classification and identity of the pirate are both fluid and contingent, informing discourses of warfare and challenging the limits of categories related to order and legitimacy. The following three-part essay traces the correlation between war and the making and remaking of “the pirate” and how the figure of the pirate was fundamental to the establishment of specific hegemonies while examining the relationship between the varying discourses of the enemy and the concept of legitimate wars in the early modern period. The first part studies the legal and political debates around the concepts of “just war,” “just enemy,” and “sovereignty” in the context of the Anglo-Spanish War (c1586-1604). The second section explores the aftermath of said war that contributed to the development of a new nomenclature of piracy in the Caribbean region and the establishment of sedentary and commercial societies living at the margins of European wars. Moving to the 17th and 18th centuries, the third part introduces the figure of Miguel Enríquez, a Caribbean-born black corsair, a character located at the intersection of war and commerce, away from previous paradigms of “just war” and “just enemy.”