#title Life Under the Jolly Roger
#subtitle Reflections on Golden Age Piracy
#author Gabriel Kuhn
#SORTtopics piracy, pirates, history
#date 2010
#source Retrieved on 2020-05-17 from [[https://thebasebk.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Kuhn-Life-Under-the-Jolly-Roger-Reflections-on-Golden-Age-Piracy.pdf][thebasebk.org]]
#lang en
#pubdate 2020-05-20
** 0. Introduction
In his 2007 essay “Flying the black flag: Revolt, revolution and the social
organization of piracy in the ‘golden age,’” Chris Land suggests that “the
pirate is a figure in full sympathy with the Zeitgeist of the early 21st century.”[1]
Arguably, the figure of the pirate has been in full sympathy with many eras
over the past 300 years, achieving “semi-legendary status,”[2] creating its “own
mythology,”[3] and leaving “an indelible mark in the psyche of the Western
world.”[4] However, the current pirate craze is certainly of a particular strength.
Even if epitomized in the *Pirates of the Caribbean* series and its charismatic
villain Jack Sparrow (or the devilishly handsome Johnny Depp), the attention that pirates have received in recent years is by no means limited to the
big screen and the toy sections of department stores. There have also been
significant scholarly contributions. This does not make it easy to find a place
for yet another pirate book. After all, one does not want to reiterate but to
contribute. This book attempts to find its place in linking the historical data
collected on piracy’s “golden age,” originating in the Caribbean and spanning
from roughly 1690 to 1725, to a number of theoretical notions and concepts
that might allow us to view the cultural and political significance of golden
age piracy in a new light.
An important aspect of this venture is the desire to go beyond a certain
antagonism that seems to have developed over the last decade with respect
to the political interpretation of golden age piracy. On the one hand, there
are scholars who insist that “the real world of the pirates was harsh, tough
and cruel”[5] and that the pirates “acquired a romantic aura…which they certainly never deserved;”[6] on the other hand, there are those who maintain that
“these outlaws led audacious, rebellious lives, and [that] we should remember
them as long as there are powerful people and oppressive circumstances to
be resisted.”[7] The ideological assumptions behind these two perspectives are
as clear as their respective consequences. While for the adherents of the former, “pirates tend to get a better press than they deserve, often being admired
for their laid-back life-style and praised as proto-revolutionaries or democrats rather than condemned as the murderers and thieves that most of them
were,”[8] the adherents of the later embrace Marcus Rediker’s perception that
pirates were “rebels” who “challenged, in one way or another, the conventions
of class, race, gender, and nation,” “expressed high ideals,” and “abolished the
wage, established a different discipline, practiced their own kind of democracy and equality, and provided an alternative model for running the deep-sea ship.”[9]
In the end, both sides accuse the other of substituting fiction for fact.
While skeptics of an alleged pirate romanticism find it important “to present
the difference between myth and reality for those who want to peer behind
the romantic legacy of piracy,”[10] their radical opponents accuse them of
maintaining a reactionary law and order philosophy. In short, self-declared
reason and alleged conservatism oppose self-declared radicalism and alleged
romance.
Although this book is written from a radical perspective, it will try to avoid
this debate for several reasons:
1. *It cannot be decided:* The lack of reliable material on the everyday lives
and exploits of the golden age pirates is notorious. Philip Gosse’s conclusion
that “of the life on board buccaneer and pirate ships a somewhat hazy and
incomplete picture reaches us,” is a very generous way of phrasing it.[11] While
there exist a few precious—and probably authentic—accounts of the life on
buccaneer ships (most notably those of Exquemelin, Dampier, Ringrose, de
Lussan and Reyning[12]), our images of life on pirate ships still rest to an overwhelming degree on Captain Johnson’s *A General History of the Robberies and
Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates.* [13]
The first volume of the *General History* appeared in London in 1724,
containing almost two dozen stories about pirate captains, from Henry
Every and Blackbeard to Bartholomew Roberts and Edward Low. Literary
liberties were certainly taken in transcribing these stories—for example, the
frequent inclusion of on-ship dialogue provokes indeed the comment that “it
would be hard to imagine who had been able to record it”[14]—yet subsequent
research has confirmed many details and the volume is generally considered
to be a reliable historical source. In 1726, Johnson added a second volume,
expanding the number of stories to over thirty. Confirmation for many
of these remains scarce. The most famous—about Captain Misson and
his utopian community Libertalia—is almost certainly fabricated. Some
pirate scholars have taken this as reason enough not to cite or reference the
*General History’s* second volume at all.[15] This book follows the decision of
most others and includes the parts that appear plausible according to later
historical research. As far as the story of Captain Misson is concerned, it
will be discussed as an important story for radical pirate lore rather than as a
historical event.
The main reason for the continuing significance of Johnson’s classic for
pirate historiography is, quite simply, a lack of better sources. Reliable first-
hand accounts of life on pirate ships and in pirate communities during the
golden age are missing, and even the outstanding work conducted in recent
decades by historians like David Cordingly, Peter Earle, and Marcus Rediker,
who have unearthed many valuable secondary sources, cannot make these
accounts magically appear. The evaluation of golden age pirate life—and
hence its politics—continues to rest on guesswork and speculation.
2. *Given the lack of historical sources, the danger of romanticization is indeed
imminent:* Romanticization is a double-edged sword. Under certain circumstances, it can be a useful tactical weapon to provoke and inspire. In the mid-
90s, the members of Minneapolis’ anarcho-punk collective Profane Existence
offered the following interpretation:
The idea of objective truth is bullshit. The belief that you can describe
or interpret history exactly as it happened is a lie. Those who are
in power are also those who usually get to define what is ‘true.’ By
romanticizing events we not only offer an alternative interpretation
to the ‘truth,’ we also challenge the ruling class and the mass media’s
claim to a monopoly on truth. We say our interpretation of politics
and history is as good as theirs and that if you’re going to believe one
pack of lies you might as well believe ours![16]
On a political plane, this sounds convincing. However, what sometimes
works as a tactical weapon does not necessarily work for levelheaded discussion—which can be as inspiring (and provocative) as no-qualms romanticism.
In fact, it can be more so. After all, romanticizing is an inherent part of the
bourgeois tradition as well. This also applies to piracy:
The pirate tale…is the product of the bourgeois imagination. One
of its most important functions is to provide a safety valve against
the pressures put on the individual by the demands of bourgeois
morality.…The key fantasies are those of unrestrained liberty and
power—compensations for what the prudent bourgeois can never
achieve, however successful he is materially.[17]
In these lines, we might find the answer as to why the “Zeitgeist factor”
of piracy has always transcended radical circles. Maurice Besson asserts that
already in the 17th century, the buccaneers “offered Europe, at a moment
when the formalism of the classic revival seemed to be banishing adventure,
a dream world founded upon fabulous stories, astounding fortunes, heroic
deeds, and orgies of the camp.”[18] And even non-radical historians concede
that “pirates are a recognizable and emotive image that represents a freedom
of action that is denied to most law-abiding modern citizens.”[19]
According to these observations, the bourgeois creates imaginary alter
egos that help him accept the libidinal restrictions of his everyday existence.
In this context, the alleged freedom and might of the pirates serve the same
purpose as Hollywood action heroes or the Marlboro Man—not exactly
characters suitable as radical role models. In the end, romanticized notions
about golden age piracy might often play more into the hands of economic
exploitation than into those of radical activists.
3. *It is questionable whether evaluating golden age piracy politically is at all
relevant for contemporary radical politics:* Contemporary radical politics are
not about pirates from a past long gone, they are about people right here and
now. The question is whether and how they can relate to golden age piracy in
ways that inform and inspire their radical aspirations, no mater the pirates’
faults or shortcomings—particularly if Hans Turley is right in stating that “I
am not sure that the ‘reality’ of the pirates, their day-to-day social existence,
is something readers want to know.”[20] Politically, the question of how contemporary activists can relate to golden age pirates seems much more crucial
than the inevitably contested truth about golden age piracy. In other words,
the political *interpretation* of golden age piracy maters less than its contemporary political *adaptation* .
In light of this, the intentions of the book can be summarized as follows:
*One*, adding guesses and speculations about golden age pirate life to those
that already exist, and thereby engaging in a dialogue with others studying
the subject.
*Two*, trying to explore the pirate myth rather than trying to disclose an
alleged pirate truth, following the verdict that here, “the legend and the reality are woven into a fabric impossible to unravel. However, the *way* this fabric
is woven can be examined.”[21]
*Three*, rendering the radical fascination with piracy politically valuable in
the contemporary context, and suggesting ways in which the Jolly Roger can
fly from balconies and at rallies without this being mere symbolic ritualism.
In this vein, it becomes one of the book’s main intentions to disprove the
conclusion that “the…pirates left us with no legacy except an aura that they
never deserved.”[22]
While I sincerely hope that this book can arouse the interest of a broad
spectrum of readers—a spectrum that goes beyond the narrow confines of
political self-labelling—it would make little sense to deny that it was written
from what has been called a radical perspective. By this I mean a perspective
that envisions social change running deeper than a series of reforms within
the prevailing social, cultural, economic, and political order: social change
that affects the very fundamentals of our society and makes way for non-authoritarian and egalitarian communities.
Unsurprisingly, the volume builds on the exceptional work done by several radical pirate scholars such as Christopher Hill, Marcus Rediker,[23] Peter
Lamborn Wilson, Stephen Snelders, and Chris Land. Any criticism that might
be voiced with respect to some of their conclusions must be understood as
a criticism of solidarity that aims at advancing the political discussions on
golden age piracy. Without these scholars’ work, and the inspiration drawn
from it, this book could not have been written. The same is true of course for
the equally exceptional work conducted by non-radical scholars like Robert
C. Ritchie, David Cordingly, Angus Konstam, or Peter Earle.[24]
The volume is laid out as follows:
Chapter One will provide a brief historical sketch of golden age piracy and
the preceding era of the buccaneers. It mainly intends to build an adequate
empirical frame of reference for the discussions that follow. Extensive histories of golden age piracy have been written by authors much more capable of
the task than I am. Please see the “Notes on Pirate Literature” at the end of
the book for more details.
Chapters Two and Three approach the culture of golden age piracy from
two angles. Chapter Two focuses on the interpretation of golden age piracy as
“an alternative world governed by different kinds of norms.”[25] It will attempt
to provide an ethnography of golden age piracy. Chapter Three focuses on
golden age piracy as an “alternative” or “subversive” part of Euro-American
cultural history.
Chapter Four will address the concrete political implications and possibilities of golden age piracy: its politico-historical significance, its social and
organizational structures, its economy, and its ethics. Comparisons to different political theories and movements as well as reflections on the readings of
commentators on pirate politics are of particular importance.
The concluding essay, “The Golden Age Pirates’ Political Legacy,” will
summarize the book’s main arguments, tie them to contemporary politics,
and attempt to make them valuable in a radical context.
The bibliography contains some introductory commentary to orient readers within the ever-growing body of English pirate literature.
For didactic purposes, capitalization, punctuation, and, very rarely, the
spelling in quoted passages have been adjusted to the main body of the text,
except when misapprehensions seemed possible. I take full responsibility for
these decisions.
On a final note: some of the themes developed in this book build on a short
German essay I wrote in 1993. The essay experienced a somewhat curious
publishing history and an English translation, entitled “Life Under the Death’s
Head,” appeared as part of the Black Rose book *Women Pirates and the Politics
of the Jolly Roger* —a volume that one critic described as “agitprop…by three
German anarchists… clearly designed as a situationist challenge.”[26] Apart
from the petty (or not so petty) details that I am not German and that I have
my doubts whether Ulrike Klausmann and Marion Meinzerin—who wrote
most of the book—would identify as anarchists, I take this to be a rather flattering description.[27]
** 1. Background
*** *1.1. Privateers, Buccaneers, Pirates: Maters of Terminology*
“One great difficulty which the author of this work is met with is to
decide who was, and who was not, a pirate,”[28] wrote Philip Gosse in 1924, as
part of the introduction to *The Pirates’ Who’s Who.* The same difficulty is still
faced by anyone writing about pirates today. In general, a wide definition of
piracy competes with a narrow one.
The former builds on the suggestion that a pirate, in the words of David
Cordingly, simply “was, and is, someone who robs and plunders on the sea.”[29]
In a similar vein, German author Reiner Treinen writes that “generally, we
can understand sea robbery and piracy as analogies to common robbery and
the activities of common robber gangs.”[30] Obviously, the problem with this
definition is that it depends on our understanding of “robbery”—a notion
that has been highly contested throughout history, usually based on conflicting political interests. While, for example, in the eyes of the Spanish all ships
preying on Spanish commerce in the Caribbean were “sea robbers,” and hence
“pirates,” many were licensed raiders (“buccaneers” acting as “privateers”)
in the eyes of the English, French or Dutch. As Hans Turley suggests, “the
buccaneer differs from the pirate because he was an outlaw-made-national-
hero.”[31] It will not surprise us then that some observers have also coined the
term “patriotic piracy”[32] for the activities of the buccaneers.
The narrow definition of piracy attempts to escape this conundrum, as it
considers pirates only those sea robbers who carry no license by any legal
authority, who target all ships, regardless of the national colors they fly, and
who are “unwilling to be registered or corrupted by either money or office.”[33]
These are the *“hostes humani generis,”* the “enemies of mankind,”[34] the “villains
of all nations.”[35] Their activities have been coined by some as “autonomous
piracy”[36]—in the eyes of the authorities, “a Kind of Piracy which disgraces our
Civilisation.”[37] In order to distinguish them from licensed sea robbers, these
pirates have been called “the pirates proper,”[38] “out-and-out pirates,”[39] “full-blown pirates,”[40] or “pirate[s] in the truest sense.”[41] In the English legal dictum of the early 18th century, they were defined with the following words: “A pirate is in a perpetual war with every individual, and every state, Christian
or infidel. Pirates properly have no country, but by the nature of their guilt,
separate themselves, and renounce on this mater, the benefit of all lawful
societies.”[42] This definition also accounts for the succinct observation that
“piracy was never *merely* robbery”[43]—a fact on which much of its mythology
is grounded.
This book will mainly work with the narrow definition of piracy. In fact, the
group of pirates on which it focuses not only excludes those being licensed by
legal authority, but also those who operated from secure land bases. The reason for this is the particular attention given to the *nomadic* element of golden
age piracy—a feature that asks for a special and unique analytical approach.
Despite certain structural similarities stemming from their common profession, historical pirate communities like those of the British Channel, the
Barbary Coast or the China Sea constitute fundamentally different social
phenomena as their relations to the land, local communities and political
authorities were much more clearly defined, even if great diversity existed
within their respective modes of organization and activities.[44] The same goes
for current pirate communities like those operating along the Northeast
African coast. Robert C. Ritchie provides a useful distinction when dividing
pirates according to two different methods of operation:
one can be defined as *organized* marauding, the other as *anarchistic*
marauding. Many men were involved in both; yet a distinction can be
made. Organized pirates remained atached to a port as their base of
operation. Anarchistic marauding involved leaving behind the base of
operation and wandering for months—even years—at a time.[45]
An explanation of terms that commonly appear in connection with pirate
history follows:
A *buccaneer* was originally a hunter on the island of Hispaniola (today
divided into the Dominican Republic and Haiti). This was the meaning of
the term for the first half of the 17th century. As the buccaneers gradually
turned to sea robbery and raiding—often licensed, sometimes not—
the term became a synonym for Caribbean pirates. It was used as such
until about 1690, when buccaneer culture came to its end and gave way to
“proper,” or golden age, piracy. Due to the strong cultural ties between the
buccaneers and the golden age pirates, the former will feature prominently
in this book.
A *privateer* is a sea robber who acts under the license of a legal authority.
In the Caribbean of the 17th century, such a license was usually conferred by
*a letter of marque.* In a sense, privateers were seaborne mercenary forces who
engaged in “piracy with state-sponsorship.”[46] Captain Johnson described
privateering indecisively as “something like pirating.”[47] Privateering served
those in power well, since it “was a useful extension of naval warfare which not
only created an income for the government issuing the privateering contract,
but also helped to harass enemy shipping in times of war, without the issuing
authority having to do anything.”[48] Most buccaneers worked as privateers.
According to Jenifer G. Marx, buccaneering became “a peculiar blend of piracy
and privateering in which the two elements were often indistinguishable.”[49]
Despite this, the implications of both activities seen separately remained diametrically opposed. In Janice E. Thomson’s words: “Privateering reflected
state rulers’ efforts to build state power; piracy reflected some people’s efforts
to resist that project.”[50]
*Flibustier* was the French term for a buccaneer. It has sometimes retrospectively been translated into the English *filibuster* , even though this term
only came to be used in the 18th century, partly in connection with illegal
American military infiltration into Latin America, and more lastingly as the
signifier for a legal procedure.
*Corsair* was a French term sometimes used synonymously with pirate, but
usually reserved for the pirates of the Mediterranean.
*Sea dog* was often used for the English privateers of the 16th century, the
most famous being Francis Drake.
Other synonyms for *pirate* not employed here include *sea rover,* *freebooter,*
*marooner,* the picturesque *picaroon,* or *swashbuckler,* which originally served
as a 16th-century term for brigands and was only applied to pirates by 19th-
century novelists and 20th-century scriptwriters.[51]
*** *1.2. What “Golden Age?” A Little History*
The following pages provide a brief overview of the development of piracy
in the Caribbean leading up to the “golden age,” during which the operations of originally Caribbean-based pirates extended along the coasts of the
Americas, into the Indian Ocean, and, finally, to the west coast of Africa.
Different historians have given the golden age different time frames,
depending both on their respective definitions of piracy and the weight given
to certain historical events and developments. While most place the end of
golden age piracy somewhere between 1722 (the death of Captain Roberts
and the mass arrest of his crew) and 1730 (the execution of Olivier La Buse),
there is less of an agreement on its beginnings. While some include even the
age of the buccaneers and let the golden age begin around 1650, others quote
years as late as 1716, when the last major outbreak of non-licensed piracy in
the Caribbean took shape.
It seems most useful to follow those scholars who place the beginning of
the golden age in the early 1690s. At that time, some Anglo-American privateers and mutineers began to sail their vessels into the Indian Ocean to prey
on ships of all nations, those of the English and their allies included. It is told
that the New England privateer captain Thomas Tew convinced his crew to
go pirating in 1692 by suggesting “that it was better to risk your life for plunder than for government.”[52] If there is any truth to this tale, then this moment
seems indeed decisive for the pirate phenomenon studied in this volume.
The following timeline intends to shed some light on the genesis and development of the golden age:
*1492:* Christopher Columbus and his crew arrive at the island of
Hispaniola.
*1492-c. 1620:* Spain establishes a near exclusive hold on the Caribbean
region and punishes “interlopers” indiscriminately. Most famously, a short-lived French Huguenot settlement in Florida is crushed with brutal force in
1565.Throughout the entire period, *there is no peace beyond the line,* meaning
that whatever peace treaties are signed in Europe, they do not apply to the
areas west of the meridian the Spanish drew in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas
to demarcate their newly “discovered” American territories.
*c. 1520–1550:* French privateers start preying on Spain’s transatlantic
trade. At first, Spanish ships are almost exclusively attacked on their return
journeys to Europe. In the 1530s, however, French ships begin to venture into
the Caribbean itself, initiating a period that turns the region into “a happy
hunting-ground”[53] and “a paradise for an adventurous robber.”[54]
*c. 1550–1600:* English privateers, the *sea dogs,* increasingly penetrate the
Caribbean realm to attack Spanish commerce. Francis Drake, called “my
pirate” by Queen Elizabeth, is the most legendary. The era of the sea dogs
ends with the death of Philip II in 1598.
*c. 1600–1635:* Dutch privateers cause enormous damage to Spanish commerce in the Caribbean and weaken the Spanish hold over the area to a degree
that allows the establishment of non-Spanish settlements which, in the words
of one historian, “developed out of the piracy of the preceding century.”[55] The
Dutch privateers also make it possible for Dutch traders to take control of
Caribbean commerce for decades.[56]
During the same period, men who have been described as “a remarkable
blend of human flotsam”[57] as well as “a motley crowd”[58] begin to form a “male,
maritime and migrant culture”[59] in the western parts of Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti), leading a “half-savage, independent mode of life,”[60] sustained by
hunting wild boars and cattle. The animals are remnants of Spanish settlements evacuated by the Spanish authorities in 1603 after its inhabitants had
been suspected of trading with rival European nations.[61] This marks the
beginning of the buccaneers, “these strange people,”[62] “a ruffiantly, dare-devil
lot, who feared neither God, man, nor death,”[63] “tough frontiersmen living
beyond the law,”[64] “outlaw hunters”[65] “scarcely less wild than the animals they hunted,”[66] “men who could never live in the bosom of ordered society, men
who lived for the moment, swaggerers, lovers of glory, men sometimes cruel,
often generous, but cowards, never.”[67]
The buccaneers are named after a meat-smoking device apparently called
*buccan* in the language of the indigenous Caribs. Some conservative historians have drawn a rather dramatic picture of the buccaneers’ existence:
They were savages in dress and habits. No amount of bathing could
eradicate the stink of guts and grease that clung to them. Their rough
homespun garments were stiff with the blood of slaughtered animals.
They made their round brimless hats, boots, and belts of untanned
hides, and smeared their faces with tallow to repel insects. On the
coast they lived in shacks covered with palm leaves and slept in sleeping bags next to smoking fires to ward off mosquitoes.[68]
This has led certain authors to the pointed conclusion that “life among the
‘Brethren of the Coast’ cannot have been pleasant for anyone with a sensitive nose.”[69] Others, however, have conceded that “for many it was a good
life, impossible to duplicate in Europe: enough to eat, independence, freedom
from masters.”[70]
“The origins of these men we do not know,” writes C. H. Haring,[71] but it
has to be assumed that they constituted a blend of “stragglers from all three
nations”—meaning France, England, and the Netherlands—“stranded,
marooned, or shipwrecked crewmen; deserters; runaway bond servants and
slaves; adventurers of all sorts.”[72] Maybe they indeed included “all such as disliked organised society.”[73] “All, whatever they were originally, seem to have
been hearty, care-free men who preferred a life of semi-savagery to the tiresome laws and orders of the civilised world.”[74]
*c. 1620–1640:* Despite fierce Spanish resistance, the English, French, and
Dutch all establish holds in the Caribbean, particularly on the islands of the
Lesser Antilles. The colonial tables in the Caribbean are about to turn. As one
historian has noted, “living cheek by jowl with their enemies, they brought
the Spanish crown a century of unrelieved woe.”[75]
*c. 1630–1650:* The number of buccaneers on Hispaniola steadily increases
due to displaced settlers, runaway slaves, and fugitive or dismissed indentured laborers. According to Stephen Snelders, “the Brethren of the Coast
functioned as a kind of chaotic attractor, serving as a focus for adventurous,
rebellious, and outlaw elements,”[76] while Carl and Roberta Bridenbaugh suggest that “buccaneering syphoned off the most adventurous, pugnacious, and
greedy of the landless males of the crowded English islands.”[77]
Worried about the expansion of the multinational buccaneering community in the heart of their empire, the Spanish conduct ill-conceived attempts
at chasing the buccaneers from the island in the 1630s by killing off the herds
of boars and cattle. The attempt backfires. The buccaneers stay, but have to
turn to new means of livelihood. One is sea robbery. By the 1630s, buccaneer
gangs in dugout canoes or flyboats embark on nightly attacks against Spanish
galleons. By the 1650s, the term *buccaneer* “was exclusively used to refer to
maritime raiders.”[78]
During the same time, the island of Tortuga (across a small strait off
Hispaniola’s northwestern tip) turns into a buccaneer center and remains
highly contested for decades. With the well-protected island as a safe haven,
the buccaneers slowly develop into a community that will have “a tremendous impact on the life of the West Indies”[79] and prove much more disastrous
to the Spanish than the presence of some “savage hunters” in the remote areas
of Hispaniola could have ever been.
*1655–1697:* The English expedition sent to the Caribbean by Oliver
Cromwell takes Jamaica in 1655. Subsequently, many English buccaneers
from Hispaniola and Tortuga flock to the island—enough that by the 1660s,
buccaneering has turned into “the island’s principal source of revenue.”[80] This
constitutes a split in the buccaneer community along national lines. While
the English buccaneers establish themselves in Jamaica, their French “brethren” remain on Tortuga and Hispaniola.
Meanwhile, “buccaneering evolved from small-scale operations in the
West Indies to massive land raids.”[81] “A practice that started as a few men in
a canoe waiting to catch an unwary coastal freighter, gradually grew to large
ships with over a hundred in the crew, and finally to whole fleets.”[82] The buccaneers turn into a military force, engaging in ambitious amphibious raids
under legendary leaders like Henry Morgan (most renowned for the sack of
Panama in 1671). According to Franklin W. Knight, they “achieved international fame,”[83] all this to the delight of the colonial English and French
authorities. As Peter Earle explains:
The governors of Jamaica and Tortuga for their part believed that
privateering had many advantages, providing as it did employment
for some very rough men, profits from fitting out and victualling the
privateers’ ships, a stream of prizes to be sold cheaply in their markets
and an effective and costless naval defence against counter-attack by
the Spaniards. As for the governments at home in London and Paris,
they were normally happy to condone or even actively encourage
the issue of commissions in the West Indies. They believed that this
continued pressure was the best method of encouraging Spain to
recognise their de facto colonies in the Indies and ideally allow their
traders to break into the lucrative Spanish colonial markets which
were maintained as a monopoly for Spaniards. They were also aware
that the capture of Spanish shipping was an effective means of removing the competition and so providing an encouragement for English
and French merchant shipping to break into the trade of the region.[84]
Apart from Tortuga/Hispaniola and Jamaica, buccaneer havens
include New Providence in the Bahamas, St. Croix, Curaçao, and Danish
St. Thomas. Many buccaneers also find temporary homes in the Bay of
Campeche and the Bay of Honduras, where they work as logwood cutters
from around 1670.
Eventually, however, the importance of the buccaneers for the colonial
struggle in the Caribbean wanes. Christopher Hill succinctly sums up the
situation in the late 17th century: “In the short run buccaneering may have
been a convenient investment for big planters. But in the long run the buccaneers were a nuisance, expendable once the Caribbean was policed.”[85]
The Dutch are the first to officially abandon privateering with the Treaty
of The Hague in 1673. The English follow suite with the Treaty of Windsor in
1680, and—after a last ill-fated employment of buccaneer forces in the attack
on Cartanega in 1697—the French finally complete the official withdrawal
from privateering with the Treaty of Ryswick. As the 18th century begins,
the buccaneers are gone. Their legacy, however, remains. As J.H. Parry and
P.M. Sherlock contend: “At no other time in Western history can a few thousand desperadoes have created a reign of terror over so vast an area, or have
exercised so great and so continuous an influence upon the policy of civilised
states.”[86]
*c. 1690–1700:* As the buccaneers disappear, the “pirates proper” arise.
Many former buccaneers have little interest in a settled existence and intend
to further secure their economic survival by raiding. Since official licenses are
increasingly harder to come by, they turn to illegal raids—often on all ships,
regardless which flags they fly. Stephen Snelders describes the transition thus:
“In the struggle for dominance in the seventeenth century, the Brotherhood
had played its role in the grey border zone between sanctioned privateering
and outright piracy. In the golden age its successors were relegated to a black
zone, outlawed by all nations.”[87]
In the mid-1690s, the successful pirate voyages into the Indian Ocean by
Henry Every and Thomas Tew, both of whom get away rich and unharmed
(at least initially—Tew dies during his second voyage), help provide “a new
role-model for the whole fraternity of seagoing mercenaries”[88] and incite a
pirate boom in those longitudes that also prompts the famed pirate settlements in Madagascar. They also give birth to a distinct, “transnational,”
pirate culture. As a result, “soon after the return of peace in 1697, there was
an explosion of piracy on a scale never seen before.”[89]
In 1700, after an English navy vessel gives chase to a ship under the command of Captain Emanuel Wynn, there are first reports of pirates flying the
Jolly Roger—the infamous black flag adorned by allegories of death (skull
and crossbones, hour glasses, bleeding hearts, etc.). It soon comes to signify
an affirmative pirate identity, indicating that “unlike the generations of pirates
before them, who called themselves privateers—in truth, anything but pirate
for fear of the death penalty that soon came with the name—the freebooters
of the early eighteenth century said yes, we are criminals, we are pirates, we
are that name.”[90]
Accordingly, *a war against the pirates* is waged by the authorities: “The
problem was tackled in a number of ways: by the introduction of legislation;
by issuing pardons to pirates in the hope that they would abandon their lives
of crime; by stepping up naval patrols in the worst affected areas; by promising rewards for the capture of pirates; and by the trial and execution of captured pirates.”[91] The most significant legal innovation is the 1700 *Act for the
More Effectual Suppression of Piracy,* making it possible for a seven-person
court of officials or naval officers to try pirates wherever such a court is able to
assemble, thus making transfers back to England unnecessary.
*1701–1713:* The War of the Spanish Succession brings a relief from unlicensed piracy as it produces a new need for privateers. With the big buccaneer
communities dissolved, many pirates return to raiding under national flags.
As Peter Earle puts it: “The pirates became patriots again.”[92]
*1713–1722:* With the end of the war, piracy reemerges. Hundreds of demobilized soldiers fill the pirates’ ranks. While the navy enlisted more than
53,000 men in 1703, the number dwindles to 13,430 in 1715.[93] A year later,
Caribbean piracy reaches previously unknown heights with New Providence,
Bahamas, as its headquarters. The island loses its prominent role in 1718,
however, with the arrival of British governor Woodes Rogers. The arrival of
Rogers—himself a former privateer—is part of a British government design
to curb piracy. The plan also includes the offer of a pardon and the dispatching of three warships—something to “demonstrate to a wise pirate that the
days of their ‘very pleasant’ way of life were numbered.”[94]
While some of the New Providence pirates accept the pardon and help
Rogers turn New Providence into a stable, “lawful” colony, others debark,
vowing not to bow to any government authority and *waging war on the whole
world* instead. “From this point onwards the only pirates were those who
explicitly rejected the state and its laws and declared themselves in open war
against it,”[95] as the anonymous authors of “Pirate Utopias,” an article in the
British anarchist journal *Do or Die* put it. Paul Galvin describes the situation
with the following words:
True outlaws working the fringe of a closing maritime frontier, these
pirates owed allegiance to none but themselves and preyed upon the
shipping of any nation, whether Spanish, English, French or Dutch.
Consequently, unlike their buccaneer forebears, they enjoyed no
cloak of legitimacy from any government (though many a colonial
governor colluded in trafficking their spoils) and were therefore
doomed to swift eradication.[96]
Once more, the pirates venture into the Indian Ocean, now also raiding along the west coast of Africa, where many new slaving posts have been
established. The route between the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean via
West Africa and Madagascar soon becomes known as the *Pirate Round.* This
marks the strongest period of golden age piracy, “a decade or so of maritime
hoodlumism set loose under the japing countenance of the Jolly Roger.”[97] It
is the time of the best known pirate captains, Blackbeard, John “Calico Jack”
Rackam, and Bartholomew Roberts, and of popular figures like Anne Bonny
and Mary Read. According to David Cordingly, pirate activity reaches its
peak around 1720 with an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 pirates operating in the
Caribbean and North America.[98]
The heyday of piracy’s golden age does not last very long, however. Angus
Konstam, from the non-radical strain of pirate historians, concludes somewhat complacently: “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.’”[99]
In the words of Marcus Rediker, with the killing of the period’s most
successful pirate captain, Bartholomew Roberts, and the subsequent capture of most of his crew in 1722, the golden age “turned crimson.”[100] These
events have drawn self-satisfied commentary: “The complete destruction of
Bartholomew Roberts and his gang, much the strongest pirate combine at
sea, was a devastating blow to the pirate community as a whole. It was rather
humiliating that the two well-gunned, well-manned pirate ships should
surrender so pusillanimously without a single royal sailor being killed in
either action.”[101]
*1722–1726:* A last, more desperate generation of golden age pirates tries to
keep the Jolly Roger alive even after “the war against the pirates was virtually
won.”[102] The tide, of course, has changed and “the years 1722–26 were a time
when pirates fought less for booty than for their very survival.”[103] Peter Earle
draws the following picture:
Getting on for a thousand pirates had been killed or captured on
their ships or in attempts to escape ashore. Many hundreds of others had been pardoned or had crept ashore in haunts such as the
Virgin Islands, the Bay Islands of Honduras, the Mosquito Coast,
Madagascar or West Africa where many former pirates were said to be
living among the natives. Many hundreds more must have died of the
diseases prevalent in West African and West Indian waters, for mortality was likely to have been higher in the densely packed and very
unhygienic pirate ships than those of the Royal Navy who lost well
over a thousand men to disease in this campaign. Such destruction
and dispersal meant that there were not many pirates left at sea, less
than two hundred according to one estimate, most of them in gangs
led either by Lowe or by former consorts or subordinates of his, such
as Spriggs, Cooper, Lyne, and Shipton. These last remaining pirate
captains and their men were to be hunted remorselessly by the navy,
but they were to prove amazingly elusive.[104]
The composition of the pirate crews changes as well. With many former
buccaneers and privateers retired or killed, the majority of pirate crew members now comes from captured merchant vessels, with a fair number of sailors
having been forced to join.[105] This leads both to a disintegration of the “pirate
brotherhood,” and to new increasingly violent tactics.
Captain William Fly is the last notable pirate captain hanged in the
Americas. He dies on the gallows in Boston in 1726. Frenchman Olivier La Buse
meets the same fate in the Indian Ocean on the French island of Bourbon
(today Réunion) in 1730. His death effectively ends the golden age of piracy,
its protagonists now “hunted down and, it may be said, exterminated.”[106] The
most tangible expression of this extermination are numerous mass hangings
of pirates. In 1718, thirty-one members of Stede Bonnet’s crew are hanged
in Charleston, South Carolina. In May 1722, forty-one members of Matthew
Luke’s crew are hanged in Jamaica. In the same year, fifty-two members of
Bartholomew Roberts’ crew are hanged in West Africa. In July 1723, twenty-
six members of Captain Charles Harris’ crew are hanged at Newport Harbor.
All in all, “no fewer than 400, and probably 500–600 Anglo-American pirates
were executed between 1716 and 1726.”[107]
This contributes significantly to the decline of pirate numbers overall:
“From the peak of 2,000 pirates in 1720, the numbers dropped to around
1,000 in 1723 and by 1726 there were no more than 200. The incidence of
pirate attacks declined from forty to fifty in 1718 down to half a dozen in
1726.”[108] Peter Earle sums up the situation dryly:
And so at last the golden age of piracy came to an end. The freedom-
and drink-loving pirates had their moment of fame, but in the long
run the navy, the law, and the self-destructive nature of the pirates
themselves ensured that piracy was not an occupation with very long
life expectancy. Of the fifty-five pirate captains of this period whose
fate has been determined—about two-thirds of the total number—
twelve surrendered and lived out their lives in varying degrees of
comfort or destitution, one retired in poverty to Madagascar, six
were killed in action, four drowned in shipwrecks, four were shot by
their own men, one shot himself and one was set adrift by his men
in an open boat, and never heard of again. The remaining twenty-six
were hanged, often under their own black flags, by the French, Dutch,
Portuguese, and Spaniards as well as by the British, in Africa and
Antigua, Boston, the Bahamas and Brazil, Carolina, Curaçao and
Cuba, London, Martinique, Rhode Island and the island of Bourbon
in the Indian Ocean where Olivier La Buse, the last pirate of the
golden age to be captured, was hanged on the beach in July 1730
‘before a cheering crowd.’[109]
La Buse might have been hanged before a cheering crowd, yet his tombstone receives nightly offerings from secret admirers to this day. While Peter
Earle might see this as hopeless romanticism, the practice proves the political
complexity of the pirate legacy, a legacy this book attempts to investigate.
Finally, a short overview of those golden age pirate captains who will be referenced in the following chapters more frequently. The list is purely didactic and meant to function as a quick reference guide. It neither claims to be
exhaustive nor to list the most notorious of the golden age pirate captains. In
fact, some names, such as that of William Kidd will be conspicuously absent.
According to the authorities, Kidd was a privateer-turned-pirate; according
to Kidd himself, he was loyal to the crown and behaved within the confines
of the law. Kidd was hanged in 1701 and his body displayed in chains on the
banks of the River Tames for years. His story is crucial for analyzing the
arbitrary legal borders between privateering and pirating, yet I do not consider it of particular concern for the questions discussed in this book. For
everyone interested in Kidd’s history, Robert C. Ritchie’s *Captain Kidd and
the War against the Pirates* comes highly recommended. Other pirate aficionado household names that will be missing are those of John “Calico Jack”
Rackam—who mainly rose to fame as Anne Bonny’s lover—and of the
unconventional “gentleman pirate” Stede Bonnet. Again, despite the undeniable entertainment value of their biographies, their exploits will not play a
significant role in the following chapters.
The focus on pirate captains—i.e. on individual “big men” rather than
pirate communities—may appear ironic in a radical context that likes to
stress the egalitarian and democratic character of golden age pirate communities. At the same time, the historical sources pay so much attention to pirate
captains that it is hard not to employ them as a useful frame of reference. This,
however, should not lead to a false impression concerning the primary protagonists: they remain decidedly the common pirate sailors.
*Thomas Tew:* Embarked on a privateering mission against the French from
Rhode Island in 1692. Soon convinced his crew to sail to the Indian Ocean
*on their own account* instead. A huge Indian prize was taken there in 1693
and the sailors came back to America as rich men. Tew embarked on another
journey a couple of years later, but this time he was met with a grisly fate after
attacking a ship belonging to the Great Mogul. In the graphic description of
Captain Johnson, “a shot carried away the rim of Tew’s belly, who held his
bowels with his hands some small space [before] he dropped.”[110]
*Henry Every (Avery):* After lack of payment, Every led a mutiny among
English privateers in the Spanish service in 1694 and sailed for the Indian
Ocean. A year later he took an enormous prize in the Red Sea, the merchant
ship *Ganj-i-sawai.* The *Ganj-i-sawai* belonged to the Great Mogul, and given
the good relations between the Mogul and the English, as well as England’s
investment in Indian trade, the attack undermined English interests and was
hence pivotal for the history of golden age piracy. Every escaped capture
and punishment and rose into legend, imagined to be living in luxury on
Madagascar. Novels and plays were dedicated to his name. In reality, he died
a pauper in England after being cheated by Bristol merchants, which in Philip
Gosse’s version of the story made him realize “that there were pirates on land
as well as at sea.”[111]
*Emanuel Wynn:* French pirate captain who flew the first documented Jolly
Roger, the black pirate flag, while chased by an English navy ship off the Cape
Verde Islands in 1700.
*Captain Misson:* An almost certainly fictional French captain who founded
a utopian community by the name of Libertalia in Madagascar, soon destroyed
by Madagascan natives.
*Samuel Bellamy:* According to Gosse, a “pirate, socialist, orator.”[112] Captain
Johnson contributes some of the politically most conscious quotes of all
golden age pirate captains to Bellamy in the second volume of *A General
History.*
*Edward Teach a.k.a. Blackbeard:* Possibly the most legendary of the golden
age pirate captains. According to Edward Lucie-Smith “full of strange
freaks,”[113] and famously described by Johnson:
[His] beard was black, which he suffered to grow of an extravagant
length; as to breadth, it came up to his eyes. He was accustomed to
twist it with ribbons, in small tails… and turn them about the ears. In
time of action he wore a sling over his shoulders, with three brace of
pistols, hanging in holsters, like bandoliers; and stuck lighted matches
under his hat, which, appearing on each side of his face, his eyes
naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a figure
that imagination cannot form an idea of a fury from hell to look more
frightful.[114]
Killed in battle against navy forces along the North Carolina coast in
1718.
*Charles Vane:* Famous pirate captain during the New Providence heyday.
Defiantly left the island one morning after the arrival of the new governor
Woodes Rogers by slipping out of the harbour while firing at Rogers’ ship.
Hanged in Jamaica in 1721.
*Bartholomew Roberts:* Though not as sensational as Blackbeard, clearly the
most successful of the golden age pirates. Elected captain of a pirate crew only
a few weeks after he was conscripted from a taken slave ship, Roberts led his
crew for four years (an exceptionally long time for a pirate captain during
the golden age) and took reputedly over 400 prizes. His death in 1722 and
the subsequent defeat and imprisonment of almost all of his crew (fifty-two
of whom were executed) is considered a decisive moment in the demise of
golden age piracy.
*Edward Low:* Possibly the best known captain of the golden age’s final
phase, gaining a reputation for particular cruelty. Active in the Caribbean,
along the North American coast and around the Azores in 1722/23, he
suddenly vanished, his fate remaining unresolved to this day. According to
Captain Johnson, “the best information we could receive, would be, that he
and all his crew were at the bottom of the sea.”[115]
*Nathaniel North:* Bermuda-born, well-educated, unconventional pirate
who sailed to Madagascar around 1720 and spent the last years of his life
among a community of Europeans apparently deeply entrenched in local
politics. Eventually killed by Madagascan natives in his sleep.
*Christopher Condent:* English pirate captain whose crew took a huge prize
in the Indian Ocean in 1720. Pardoned by the French colonial authorities off
the island of Bourbon (Réunion), Condent later became a wealthy merchant
in Saint-Malo.
*John Taylor:* Took one of the biggest prizes in pirate history from the richly
laden and storm-damaged Portuguese merchant ship *Nostra Senhora de Cabo*
off Bourbon in 1721. Retired into service in the Spanish navy fleet.
*Olivier La Buse:* Taylor’s partner in the coup at Bourbon; remained at large
in the Indian Ocean until hanged in 1730.
** 2. “Enemy of His Own Civilization”
An Ethnography of Golden Age Piracy
There seems to be wide agreement among scholars that the golden age
pirate community constituted a special—and possibly unique—cultural
phenomenon. Stephen Snelders speaks of “pirate customs,”[116] “a shared pirate
culture,”[117] “an alternative society with alternative rules,”[118] and even of “an unbroken social tradition of piracy with clear forms of organization, a repertoire of behavior, and a developed code of ethics.”[119] He concludes that “the
pirates were clearly very conscious of their traditions, as is shown by their
adaptation of common symbolic forms and their regard for elder representatives of their kind.”[120] The authors of “Pirate Utopias” identify “a specifically
‘pirate consciousness,’” a “‘pirate ideology,’” “a world of their own making,” and “one community, with a common set of customs shared across the
various ships.”[121] German scholar Heiner Treinen speaks of the pirates’ “own
world,”[122] his compatriot Rüdiger Haude of a “common pirate culture,”[123] and
Frank Sherry of an “original and lurid style of life”[124] as well as a “separate community in the world.”[125]
Some observers stress the distance that the golden age pirates put between
themselves and their cultures of origin. Peter Lamborn Wilson even calls
“the pirate…first and foremost the enemy of his own civilization.”[126] For
Marcus Rediker, too, “everything pirates did reflected their deep alienation from most aspects of European society.”[127] As a consequence, “pirates
constructed their own social order in defiant contradistinction to the ways
of the world they had left behind,”[128] and created—borrowing the title of
a Christopher Hill book—a “world turned upside down”[129] with “common symbols and standards of conduct,”[130] set “apart from the dictates of
mercantile and imperial authority.”[131] The fact that buccaneers allegedly shed
their Christian names by joining the buccaneer communities would only
confirm this.[132]
If the world and culture of the Caribbean buccaneers and pirates was indeed
so distinct, it might be worthwhile to attempt an ethnography of golden age
piracy, i.e. trying to recognize patterns of the community’s social, political,
and economic life. Obviously, such an attempt must remain tentative due to
lack of reliable data and because it is uncharted terrain. However, even if little
more can be done than to stimulate discussion, such an endeavor promises to
aid the study of our political relations to golden age piracy.
The following principles laid out by David Graeber in *Fragments of an
Anarchist Anthropology* serve as useful guidelines for this chapter:
When one carries out an ethnography, one observes what people do,
and then tries to tease out the hidden symbolic, moral, or pragmatic
logics that underlie their actions; one tries to get at the way people’s
habits and actions makes sense in ways that they are not themselves
completely aware of. One obvious role for a radical intellectual is to
do precisely that: to look at those who are creating viable alternatives,
try to figure out what might be the larger implications of what they are
(already) doing, and then offer those ideas back, not as prescriptions,
but as contributions, possibilities—as gifts…Such a project would
actually have to have two aspects, or moments if you like: one ethnographic, one utopian, suspended in a constant dialogue.[133]
*** *2.1. “From the Sea”: Maritime Nomads*
The association between pirates and nomads appears evident: after all, pirates
lack a home, are not settled and take to roaming. In this sense, it seems likely
that a comparative study of golden age piracy and nomadism may shed light
on the socio-cultural circumstances of pirate life. However, we have to be cautious. Many ethnologists would refuse to include marauding seafarers into
their definition of nomadism. A. M. Khazanov writes in his seminal *Nomads
and The Outside World:*
In my view… the term ‘nomads’ is not applicable to other mobile
groups, whether ethnic-professional groups such as gypsies, or the
so-called ‘maritime nomads’ of Southeast Asia, or shifing horticulturalists, or certain groups of workers in contemporary industrial
societies (so-called industrial mobility). Consequently, hunters and
gatherers who do not lead a sedentary way of life are best described by
the term ‘wandering’… and mobile extensive pastoralists by the term
‘nomadic.’[134]
Khazanov concedes, however, that “some scholars have defined nomads as
all those leading a mobile way of life independent of its economic specificity.”[135]
If we apply this later definition, the golden age pirates—a fluctuating community of marauding bands ranging in number from a few dozen members
to a maximum of about 200 without a secure home base—would definitely
belong to the wider community of nomads. The clearest expression of the fact
that the golden age pirates themselves—who “knew themselves to be homeless and cut off from their countries of origin”[136]—understood their community to be nomadic was the common pirate response to enquiries about where
they came from: *From the Seas.* [137] In fact, the early buccaneers of Hispaniola
already revealed nomadic tendencies. “According to the French missionary
Abbé du Tertre, ‘they were without any habitation or fixed abode, but rendezvoused where the animals were to be found.’”[138] How radically these tendencies expressed themselves during the golden age of piracy is best described
by David Cordingly:
Apart from the obvious desire to avoid North America in winter, and
a sensible use of the trade winds when crossing the Atlantic, there
was no consistency in the planning and execution of most voyages.
Indeed, there was very little forward planning by any of the pirate
crews. The democratic nature of the pirate community meant that a
vote must be taken by the entire crew before the destination of the
next voyage could be agreed on, and this inevitably led to many decisions being made on the spur of the moment. A study of the tracks
of the pirate ships shows many zig-zagging all over the place without
apparent reason.[139]
One aspect of the golden age pirates’ zig-zagging nomadism is the complete
lack of a productive economy. Pastoralists, for example, develop patterns of
movement that guarantee grazing opportunities for their herds, while the
pirates’ movements are bound to the availability of “prey.” In this respect,
the nomadic culture they most closely resemble in terms of economics is
that of hunters and gatherers. Raiding merchant ships—and the occasional
onshore community or trading post—might be a peculiar way of hunting
and gathering, of course, but a structurally similar one. Golden age pirates
share with hunters and gatherers a “nomadism required by the foraging
economy.”[140]
The dependency on prey in the form of European merchant ships reveals
another structural similarity between golden age pirates and other nomads,
namely their dependency on the outside world. As Khazanov explains:
“Nomads could never exist on their own without the outside world and its
non-nomadic societies, with their different economic systems. Indeed, a
nomadic society could only function while the outside world not only existed
but also allowed for those reactions from it…which ensured that the nomads
remained nomads.”[141] A historian of the Caribbean realm confirms that this is
true for the buccaneers as well, who he calls “essentially stateless persons who
lived comfortably by commerce with the settled communities of European
colonists.”[142]
The structural similarities between golden age pirates and other nomadic
societies are not only restricted to economic maters, however. They are also
reflected in the socio-political realm. As Marcus Rediker points out, “egalitarian forms of social organization and social relations have been common-place among history’s nomadic peoples.”[143]
Particularly interesting parallels can be drawn to nomads who inhabit the
same natural environment as the golden age pirates, namely the sea, or, more
specifically, “an extensive and diversified world of islands.”[144] The so-called sea
nomads of Southeast Asia are even known to occasionally employ sea robbery as a means of income. As David E. Sopher explains in his study *The Sea Nomads:*
Three conditions appear to govern the incidence of piracy: first, the
existence of productive, but defenceless coast communities or the
existence of regular sea trade along regular routes; second, a fluid, if
not quite nomadic, way of life, in which tribal warfare, feuds and raiding are accepted institutions—a way of life which would foster piracy;
third, superior striking power and speed on the part of the piratical
force together with a degree of invulnerability and immunity in its
own home.[145]
If by “in its own home” we understand retreats like Hispaniola or Tortuga,
or temporary shelters and safe havens, this description applies practically
word for word to the Caribbean buccaneers and pirates.
It is not surprising that the *myth of the nomad* (a myth that “may be even
older than the myth of the ‘noble savage’”[146]) echoes the *myth of the pirate* in a
striking fashion. As A. M. Khazanov writes:
A stereotyped view of nomads has arisen in which their real or
imaginary freedom and political independence almost occupy pride
of place. Moreover, despite its poverty and other drawbacks, nomadic
life is thought by nomads themselves and by many onlookers to have
one important advantage, which was defined by A.C. Pigou at the
beginning of the century as ‘quality of life.’[147]
*** *2.2. “Smooth” vs. “Striated”: The Question of Space*
If it is true “that the nomads have no history [but only] a geography,”[148] then
the question of space deserves particular attention. In the case of Caribbean
piracy, this specifically means the sea. Its significance can hardly be overrated. All of Caribbean society has always been intrinsically linked to it:
The sea led men to the West Indies, and away from them. A unique
fact about the Caribbee islands was that all the inhabitants—Caribs,
Arawaks, white planters, merchants, and servants, and black slaves—
had arrived by sea in very recent times. To these islands, with their
motley populations, merchants and factors came and went with some
regularity; they brought craftsmen, servants, and slaves to the West
Indies. Communication from one island to another by means of small
sloops was both facilitated and obstructed by the incessant trade
winds; Barbados lay so far eastward of the Leeward Islands that very
little exchange took place. All life, everywhere, depended on wooden
hulls: in the outward passage they carried food and supplies of all
kinds, and wines from Madeira and the Canaries; on the homeward
voyage they took back the island staples and a few passengers.[149]
This meant ideal conditions for aspiring pirates: “While petty thuggery and
brigandage might be easily subdued close to home, these far-flung new trades
routes offered a tempting outlet for an entirely different breed of marauder, a
mobile and elusive adventurer who could sail to the far ends of the earth, and
seek his fortune amid its most lawless frontiers.”[150]
In general, too, the sea has long been a symbol of freedom, a *free space* par
excellence. Rüdiger Haude calls it “the unlimited, unpredictable space, the
negation of everything ‘national.’”[151] Marcus Rediker adds: “‘The vast ocean
cannot be possessed.’ It was a commons, a place to be used by many, including the sailor who dared to turn pirate.”[152] This was especially true as long as
those who traveled the seas were dependent on the elements: “The source of
power that took them from one haven to the next was everywhere and always
available, since it was only the wind.”[153]
In the terminology of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guatari, the sea constitutes
a *smooth space,* “perhaps the principal among smooth spaces, the hydraulic
model par excellence.”[154] As they explain: “Smooth space is a field without
conduits or channels. A field, a heterogeneous smooth space, is wedded to a
very particular type of multiplicity: non-metric, acentered, rhizomatic multiplicities which occupy space without ‘counting’ it.”[155] In simpler words, the
smooth space is a space for creating self-determined, creative, “free” forms
of life. Here, the nomads reach their full potential as raiders: “With practical
skill a nomad band can strike, steal, and disappear beyond hope of pursuit in
the great waste, fading away without trace… ”[156]
The supplement to the open space of the sea were the pirates’ coastal refuges, the “many small inlets, lagoons and harbours,… solitary islands and
keys.”[157] If we stick to the terminology of Deleuze and Guatari, we might call
this a *rhizomatic* terrain since a rhizome is “open and connectable in all of its
dimensions…it always has multiple entryways.”[158] All of the favorite operational areas of the pirates are described accordingly: “the Caribbean islands
provided innumerable hiding places, secret coves and uncharted islands;”[159]
“the Gulf of Honduras and the Mosquito Coast [were] dotted with numerous small islands and protecting reefs,… creeks, lagoons and river-mouths;”[160]
“the American coast from Boston to Charleston, South Carolina, is a network
of river estuaries, bays, inlets, and islands.”[161] These coastal labyrinths provided the pirates’ natural onshore environment. “‘As surely as spiders abound
where there are nooks and crannies,’ wrote Captain the Hon. Henry Keppel,
the great hunter of Oriental pirates in the nineteenth century, ‘so have pirates
sprung up wherever there is a nest of islands offering creeks and shallows,
headlands, rocks and reefs—facilities in short for lurking, for surprise, for
attack, for escape. ’”[162]
Between the extremes of the wide open sea and the impenetrable coastal
mazes of reefs, inlets, and river-mouths, the pirates were able to escape the
wrath of the law for several decades.[163] Eventually, however, the smooth
space of the sea—and with it its coastal boundaries—became “striated,” i.e.
ordered, regulated, and controlled. This contributed significantly to the end
of golden age piracy:
The sea is…of all smooth spaces, the first one attempts were made
to striate, to transform into a dependency of the land, with its fixed
routes, constant directions, relative movements, a whole counterhydraulic of channels and conduits. One of the reasons for the
hegemony of the West was the power…of its State apparatuses
to striate the sea by combining technologies of the North and the
Mediterranean and by annexing the Atlantic.[164]
The most tangible aspect of this annexation—or the striating process—
was an increased navy presence. The number of permanently employed royal
ships in the Americas rose from two in the 1670s to twenty-four by 1700,[165] “by
1723, increased surveillance on the sea routes by the Royal Navy was severely
limiting [the pirates’] freedom of operations,”[166] and by 1724, “the world was
becoming too small for a wanted pirate to be able to find a safe hiding place.”[167]
This coincided with significant technological innovations. As David F. Marley
explains: “Steam, advanced ballistics, telegraphic communications and other
technological innovations meant that the advantage swung decisively to the
professional services.”[168] Edward Lucie-Smith stresses the first in particular:
“What put an end, in its classic form, to a crime which had existed since history began, was chiefly the coming of steam. Mechanical propulsion, which
meant that the men who traveled the oceans were no longer at the mercy of
the winds, also removed much of the danger they had hitherto felt from the
man who made the wind his ally, and cast himself upon its mercy as the price
of an irregular and ferocious independence.”[169]
Robert C. Ritchie concludes:
Ultimately the buccaneers’ success in expanding their geographic
range aroused the forces of order and brought the pirates into collision
with the demands of empire. The struggle that ensued was lopsided:
the resources mobilized by the rising imperial states far exceeded
those of the pirates. [This ends a time] when the world was younger,
when it was possible for a group of men to seize a ship and sail to the
end of the world seeking their fortune, while living in a consensual
society free of the constraints that dominated their lives at home.[170]
*** *2.3. Pirate Captains and Indian Chiefs: Remembering Pierre Clastres*
The fact that many of the historical accounts and popular images of piracy
focus on pirate captains often leads to notions of men with huge power and
influence—something they might have never had.
In the 1970s, radical French anthropologist Pierre Clastres described the
chief’s role in “stateless” Indian societies[171] in his essay “Exchange and Power:
Philosophy of the Indian Chiefainship.”[172] Clastres reached the controversial
conclusion that “the most notable characteristic of the Indian chief consists
of his almost complete lack of authority.”[173] He stresses in particular the following aspects: 1. The chief is elected and replaceable. 2. His power rests on merit
only. 3. His power is controlled by the community. 4. He is a peacemaker.
5. He is generous with his possessions. 6. He is a good orator. 7. He is an able
leader in war. This reveals startling parallels to the role of the pirate captain.
*The chief is elected and replaceable:* There is plenty of evidence that this
was true for pirate captains. Even non-radical pirate historians concede that
“there was an admirable tradition of democracy that enabled crews to vote
their captains in and out of office.”[174] Captain Johnson’s *A General History of
the Pirates* contains several passages that describe the election of new pirate
captains, maybe most notably that of Bartholomew Roberts.[175] Philip Gosse
claims that “it is on record that one ship had elected thirteen different commanders in a few months.”[176]
The election—or dismissal—of captains was already practiced among
buccaneer crews. Basil Ringrose provides a credible first-hand account of
the way in which Captain Bartholomew Sharp, deemed inept by many of his
crew, is replaced by John Watling:
On Tursday, January 6th, our differences being now grown to a great
height, the mutineers made a new election of another person to be
our chief captain and commander, by virtue whereof they deposed
Captain Sharp, whom they protested they would obey no longer. They
chose thereof one of our company, whose name was John Watling, to
command in chief, he having been an old privateer, and gained the
esteem of being a stout seaman. The election being made, all the rest
were forced to give their assent to it, and Captain Sharp gave over his
command, whereupon they immediately made articles with Watling,
and signed them.[177]
*His power rests on merit only:* Frank Sherry notes that “for the most part
pirates chose their captains on the basis of merit. Because of the dangers
inherent in their calling, they could not afford to apply any criterion other
than ability to the selection of their leaders.”[178]
*His power is controlled by the community:* Stephen Snelders writes that
“regardless of how pistol-proof, bold, terrifying, or beloved a pirate captain
might be, all hierarchy and authoritarianism were constantly questioned by
the Brethren. Their transmitted customs and the fleeting and evanescent
character of their lives severely limited, and in the end nullified, any attempt
by authority to assert itself.”[179] This sounds very much like the “diffuse, collective mechanisms” that—according to Deleuze and Guatari who included a
“Homage to Pierre Clastres” in their book *A Thousand Plateaus* —“prevent a
chief from becoming… a man of State.”[180]
*He is a peacemaker:* Several passages in Captain Johnson’s *History of the
Pirates* echo this responsibility. In Johnson’s account of Captain North,
for example, the captain’s peacemaking abilities are even extended to the
Madagascan natives: “North deciding their disputes not seldom, with that
impartiality and strict regard to distributive justice (for he was allowed by
all, a man of admirable good natural parts) that he ever sent away even the
party who was cast, satisfied with the reason and content with the equity of
his decisions.”[181] Compare this description to the one by Clastres:
The chief is responsible for maintaining peace and harmony in the
group. He must appease quarrels and settle disputes—not by employing a force he does not possess and which would not be acknowledged
in any case, but by relying solely on the strength of his prestige, his
fairness, and his verbal ability. More than a judge who passes sentence, he is an arbiter who seeks to reconcile.[182]
*He is generous with his possessions:* The pirate captain was often granted a
larger part of the booty than ordinary crew members. However, this did not
necessarily help him amass greater riches. In fact, due to possessing more, he
was also expected to give and share more. Captain Johnson illustrates this in
connection with Bartholomew Roberts, arguably one of the pirate captains
who exerted a more than average amount of authority over his crew: “They
separate for his use the great cabin, and sometimes vote him small parcels of
plate and china (for it may be noted that Roberts drank his tea constantly)
but then every man, as the humour takes him, seize a part of his victuals and
drink, if they like it, without his offering to find fault or contest it.”[183] It was the
captain’s responsibility to store wealth for times of need. Some anthropologists have identified this as an almost universal feature among elected leaders of so-called primitive societies. Marshall Sahlins contends that “big-men
and chiefs are compelled to relieve shortages among the people,”[184] and Boris
Malinowski goes as far as saying that “the chief, everywhere, acts as a tribal
banker, collecting food, storing it, and protecting it, and then using it for the
benefit of the whole community.”[185] According to Pierre Clastres, “this obligation to give, to which the chief is bound, is experienced by the Indians as a
kind of right to subject him to a continuous looting. And if the unfortunate
leader tries to check this flight of gifts, he is immediately shorn of all prestige
and power.”[186]
*He is a good orator:* Even if the significance of oratory was probably much
less pronounced in pirate than in Indian communities (Clastres suggests
that Indian chiefs “gratify the people of his group with an edifying discourse…every day, either at dawn or sunset”[187]—something hardly imaginable for pirate captains), Johnson’s *General History* knows many captains who excel in the art of oratory, most notably Saul Bellamy.
*He is an able leader in war:* In one of the most regularly cited passages of
the *General History,* Captain Johnson writes that during military engagements, the pirate captain’s power “is absolute and uncontrollable, by their
own laws, *viz.,* in fighting, chasing, or being chased.”[188] This echoes the following description by Clastres: “During military expeditions the war chief
commands a substantial amount of power—at times absolute—over the
group of warriors.…But the conjunction of power and coercion ends as soon
as the group returns to its normal internal life.”[189]
In light of all this, it is a curious play of words when Heiner Treinen speaks
of pirate captains as *“Piratenhäuptlinge”* in a 1981 essay— *Häuptling* being
an antiquated German term for Indian chief.[190] While Clastres declares the
Indian chief to be “a kind of prisoner in a space which the tribe does not let
him leave,”[191] Captain Johnson outlines the relationship between the pirate
crews and their captains with the famous words: “They only permit him to
be captain on the condition that they may be captain over him.”[192] And while
Clastres calls the Indian chief “the effective instrument of his society,”[193]
Rediker calls the pirate captain “the creature of his crew.”[194] Like Clastres in
his analysis, pirate historians describe “a chieftainship without authority”[195]
in which the chief “has no instituted weapon other than his prestige, no other
means of persuasion, no other rule than his sense of the group’s desires” and
is “more like a leader or a star than a man of power… always in danger of
being disavowed, abandoned by his people.”[196]
The parallels reach even further,[197] to the point where the analysis of Indian
chiefdom implies social mechanisms against state formation. This is of significant importance for the political investigation of golden age pirate communities. It is worth quoting Clastres once more at length:
Hence there is no king in the tribe, but a chief who is not a chief of
State. What does that imply? Simply that the chief has no authority at
his disposal, no power of coercion, no means of giving an order. The
chief is not a commander; the people of the tribe are under no obligation to obey. The space of the chieftainship is not the locus of power,
and the ‘profile’ of the primitive chief in no way foreshadows that of a
future despot. There is nothing about the chieftainship that suggests
the State apparatus derived from it.[198]
The biggest danger in the dependency of the chief’s power on his warring
abilities lies in his desire for war as a way to consolidate his power. In Clastres’
words, “it occasionally happens that a chief tries to *play the chief:* [199]
Occasionally a chief… attempts to put his personal interest ahead
of the collective interest. Reversing the normal relationship that
determines the leader as a means in the service of a socially defined
end, he tries to make society into the means for achieving a purely
private end: the tribe in the service of the chief and no longer the chief
in the service of the tribe. If it ‘worked,’ then he would have found the
birthplace of political power, as force and violence; we would have the
first incarnation, the minimal form of the State. But it never works.[200]
There were certainly some pirate captains who tried to “play the chief.”
Most famous is the tale of Blackbeard who justified shooting and crippling a
crew member for no apparent reason with the remark that “if he did not now
and then kill one of them, they would forget who he was.”[201] Stephen Snelders
also reckons that “toward the end of his career, [Captain] Davis, and his most
important lieutenants seem to have lost some of their egalitarian character,”[202]
while the reaction of Nathaniel North to being elected captain, as related by
Captain Johnson, does not exactly evoke the praised egalitarian character of
the pirate community either: “The ceremony is ended with an invitation from
the captain to such he thinks fit to have dine with him.”[203] The same can be
said for Bartholomew Roberts—according to David Cordingly, a “man with
a natural flair for leadership”[204]—who allegedly accepted his role as captain
by saying that “since he had dipped his hands in muddy water, and must be a
pirate, it was better being a commander than a common man.”[205] As in Captain
David’s case (Roberts’ predecessor on the *Rover*), a group of crew members
under Roberts’ command apparently also established a privileged vanguard,
unattractively named the *House of Lords.*[206]
Whether these pirate captains and their cronies succeeded in “playing the
chief” or not, is hard to tell, as their lives were cut short.
*** 2.4. *Potlatches, Zero-Production, and Parasitism: Pirate Economy*
The economy of the golden age pirates combines “primitive” and “criminal”
features in a curious blend. Let us consider the former first.
**** *Pirate Economy as “Primitive” Economy*
***** *Work*
Pirate historians across the political spectrum seem to agree that work was
not high on the agenda of Caribbean buccaneers and pirates. Frank Sherry
states that “the crew of a pirate ship worked only as much as was necessary,”[207]
while Peter Earle suggests that “less work because of large crews was…one of
the attractions of service on a pirate ship.”[208] David Cordingly expands on the
later point:
The daily routine on a pirate ship was considerably easier than life
on a merchantman because the crew were not driven by owners and
captains to make the fastest possible passage with the biggest possible
cargo, and because the pirates operated with very much larger crews.
The typical crew of a merchantman of a hundred tons was around
twelve men. A pirate ship of similar size would frequently have a crew
of eighty or more.[209]
Contemporaneous accounts seem to confirm the buccaneers’ and pirates’
lack of enthusiasm for work. Exquemelin wrote about the buccaneers that, “so
long as they had cash to spend, it was difficult to persuade them to the sea,”[210]
while “Père Labat, a priest who sailed with the flibustiers on their raids into
the South Sea… attributed their preference for the use of barques or sloops,
vessels with a simple sail-rig that called for a minimum of seamanship, ‘to a
dislike of work in the first place.’”[211]
The parallels to so-called primitive societies are obvious. Clastres states
candidly that “the Indian devoted very little time to what is called work,”[212]
and explains further: “Primitive societies are, as Lizot writes with regard
to the Yanomami, societies characterized by the rejection of work: ‘The
Yanomamis’ contempt for work and their disinterest in technological progress per se are beyond question.’ The first leisure societies, the first affluent
societies, according to M. Sahlins’ apt and playful expression.”[213] Sahlins himself writes: “Tribal people work less than we do, as well as less regularly. They
probably also sleep more in the daytime.…Working conditions are hardly
ideal, and perhaps tribesmen ought to have a union [but] about the hours they
needn’t complain.”[214]
Arguably, a highlight of the pirates’ work was taking other ships, especially
when we consider Stephen Snelders’ description of pirate life as one in which
“everything happened at once [after] nothing happened for whole days.”[215] This,
once again, evokes images of a primitive economy as a “necessary cycle of
extreme activity and total idleness.”[216] According to Douglas Boting, “pirates
suffered prolonged agonies of boredom.”[217] In any case, the golden age pirate
was certainly a strong competitor to the hunter when it came to “the lowest
grades in thermodynamics—less energy/capita/year.”[218]
***** *Non-Accumulation/Potlatch*
The above scenario confirms the buccaneers’ and pirates’ “penchant for living
for the day.”[219] In direct relation to so-called primitive societies, “this means
that once its needs are fully satisfied nothing could induce primitive society
to produce more, that is, to alienate its time by working for no good reason
when that time is available for idleness, play, warfare, or festivities.”[220] It also
indicates “the determination to make productive activity agree with the satisfaction of needs. And nothing more.”[221]
The fact that the buccaneers (and later the golden age pirates) displayed a
similar attitude used to frustrate those who dedicated themselves to the economic advancement of the Caribbean colonies. Jean-Baptiste Ducasse, governor of the French colony of Saint-Domingue (founded in 1659 and comprising Hispaniola’s western part—the modern-day Haiti), reportedly despaired in his anxiety about economic development, since this was a mater “which
was absolutely indifferent to the Brothers of the Coast.”[222]
Contrary to popular belief, most buccaneers or pirates never demonstrated a big interest in accumulating wealth. It is probably going too far to
cite them as an example of Marshall Sahlins’ original affluent society and its
Zen approach of desiring little (some—if distant—dreams of material riches
must have haunted most buccaneers and pirates who were, after all, subjects
of an early capitalist society), but there certainly existed a common behavioral trait that anthropologists call *prodigality:* “the inclination to consume at
once all stocks on hand.”[223]
The buccaneers’ and pirates’ economic wastefulness is indeed legendary.
The eye-witness Exquemelin reports how the buccaneers “spend with great
liberality, giving themselves freely to all manner of vices and debauchery.”[224]
He writes that “according to their custom [they] wasted in a few days in taverns all they had gained…Such of these pirates are found who will spend two
or three thousand pieces of eight in one night, not leaving themselves peradventure a good shirt to wear in the morning.”[225] Likewise: “They squander in
a month all the money which has taken them a year or eighteen months to
earn.”[226] Sometimes the riches didn’t even last until “the crew went ashore and
indulged in an orgy of riotous living,”[227] as Cordingly and Falconer report:
“After plundering Maracaibo in 1625 L’Ollonais, the French buccaneer,
divided the spoils so that each man received one hundred pieces of eight. He
and his men returned to Tortuga and ‘in three weeks they had scarce any
money left them, having spent it all in things of little value or at play of cards
and dice.’”[228] Maurice Besson sums up the buccaneers’ attitude towards gathering riches convincingly: “In a few hours, the booty was dissipated on gambling, woman and drink. Without a country, with no home, with no care for
the future, the flibustiers fought, not to enrich themselves, not so that one day
they might rest upon their laurels, with a comfortable fortune; they fought to
conquer, to pillage, and to make the best of what the moment offered.”[229] The
assessments of other pirate researchers ring equally true: Ulrike Klausmann
and Marion Meinzerin suggest that “these pirates did not view plundering
as a means to becoming wealthy. Their goal instead was to attain booty as
quickly as possible, at a minimum expense of labour, so as to squander it just
as quickly.… ‘Why save, when tomorrow we could be dead?’ That was their
motto.”[230] Chris Land confirms this: “in this sense ‘booty’ was incorporated
into the way of life the pirates were developing, rather than an end goal to
which that life was subordinated.”[231] Finally, Stephen Snelders even offers a
Marxist analysis of the buccaneers’ and pirates’ spending habits: “A pirate
kept the surplus value of his work for himself and his comrades, to spend on
the good things of life.”[232]
Once again, the similarities to so-called primitive economies are striking:
We are accustomed, because of the nature of our own economy, to
think that human beings have a ‘natural propensity to truck and
barter,’ and that economic relations among individuals or groups are
characterized by ‘economizing,’ by ‘maximizing’ the results of effort,
by ‘selling dear and buying cheap.’ Primitive peoples do none of these
things, however; in fact, most of the time it would seem that they do
the opposite. They ‘give things away,’ they admire generosity, they
expect hospitality, they punish thrift as selfishness.[233]
Gustavo Martin-Fragachan tells us that the Taino, the Indians who mainly
(or exclusively) populated the island of Hispaniola at the time of Columbus’
arrival, celebrated “large festivals…in part, to consume all the excess that
had been produced, in a phenomenon that reminds us of the potlatch so
well known to anthropologists and ethnologists.”[234] The Taino culture was
reportedly extinct by the mid-1500s, but it does not seem too far-fetched to
see a continuation of potlatch-like rituals in the behavior of the region’s buccaneers and pirates.
For some radical authors, the golden age pirates “consciously chose a non-
accumulative life.”[235] If there is any truth to this claim, then Silver, one of the
pirate girls in Kathy Acker’s *Pussy, King of the Pirates,* might indeed, against
all common presumptions, express the true spirit of golden age piracy when
rejecting her share in a chest of gold: “I’d rather go a-pirating… If me and my
girls take all this treasure, the reign of girl piracy will stop, and I wouldn’t
have that happen.”[236]
***** *No Division or Alienation of Labor*
Since the daily work that had to be done by buccaneer and pirate communities (mainly the handling and maintenance of their ships) constituted no
separate sphere of their existence, one could argue that labor as an autonomous aspect of life did not exist within the pirate community, and hence none
of the alienation processes associated with it existed either. The same would
be true for a division of labor since it is hard to divide something that does not
exist. Here, too, one finds compelling parallels to “primitive” societies:
It is difficult at any time to say just what actions of hunters and gatherers are economic or political or religious, or even artistic. This unspecialized characteristic of primitive society results in one especially important contrast to modern civilization. It means that an individual
adult participates much more fully in every aspect of the culture than
do the people of more complicated societies.[237]
With this in mind, the social experiment of the golden age pirates did
indeed throw a monkey wrench into the industrialization process. As
Marshall Sahlins writes about societies who do not abide by this process:
Work is not divorced from life. There is no ‘job,’ no time and place
where one spends most of one’s time not being oneself. Nor are work
and life related as means to an end (as they often are for us): the former a necessary evil tolerated for the sake of the later, ‘living,’ which
is something to do after business hours, on your *own* time, if you have
the energy. The Industrial Revolution split work from life. The reintegration has not yet been achieved.[238]
***** *Self-Management*
Apart from the relative lack of work, the refusal to engage in accumulative
practices, and the absence of a distinct labor sector and alienation processes,
the golden age pirates’ economy distinguished itself in another important
way from the capitalist development that surrounded it: namely, the pirates
controlled their own means of production. This is one of the aspects of golden
age piracy that does indeed mark a break with the tradition of the privateering buccaneers. As Frank Sherry points out, while “privateer crews…were still only hired hands despite the fact that they received fair shares of their ship’s plunder, pirates regarded themselves as self-employed, collective owners of their own ships.”[239]
***** *No Exploitation*
As there was no contradiction between means and forces of production, there
was also no room for exploitation in the economic set-up of the golden age
pirate communities either. Again, in contrast to the privateers who still paid
a share of their plunder to the ship owner (and often enough to the political authorities), the pirates kept all their own profits. Some of these profits were shared by the crew in a way reminiscent of both Friedrich Engels’
simple description of “original communism” (“whatever was produced and
used in common was common property”[240]) and the “generalized reciprocity”
described by Sahlins and other anthropologists as “a form of exchange based
on the assumption that returns will balance out in the long run.”[241] Among
the buccaneers and pirates, this mainly concerned the part of the booty that
was to be used communally until the end of a voyage. (“Pirate Utopias,” the
article from *Do or Die,* suggests that “this sort of share system was common
in mediaeval shipping, but had been phased out as shipping became a capitalist enterprise and sailors wage labourers.”[242]) The rest of the prize was divided
according to the specific articles drawn up by each crew, most of the time in
a very egalitarian way. Even then, however, exceptions could be made for the
common good, as Basil Ringrose reports:
On that day, therefore, a little Spanish shock-dog, which we had found
in our last wine-prize, taken under the equinoctial and had kept alive
till now, was sold at the mast by public cry for forty pieces-of-eight,
his owner saying that all he could get for him should be spent upon
the company at a public merriment. Our commander, Captain Sharp,
bought the dog, with intention to eat him, in case we did not see land
very soon. This money, therefore, with one hundred pieces-of-eight
more, which our boatswain, carpenter, and quartermaster had refused
to take at this last dividend, for some quarrel they had against the
shares thereof, was all laid up in store till we came to land, with the
intent of spending it ashore, at a common feast or drinking bout.[243]
Possessions were not always shared so smoothly, of course. Peter Earle, in
quoting S. C. Hill, relates an anecdote about fourteen pirates who “by consent divided themselves into sevens to fight for what they had (thinking they
had not made a voyage sufficient for so many), one of the said sevens being all
killed and five of the other, so that the two which survived enjoyed the whole
booty.”[244]
**** *Pirate Economy as “Criminal” Economy*
Since the pirates’ means of procuring wealth were illegal, they shared a world
with others engaged in illegal, i.e. “criminal,” economic acquisition and transaction. If a serious comparative study of the economy of golden age piracy was
conducted, the pirates’ dependency on smugglers, corrupt officials and black
markets would have to be as much investigated as the structural similarities of
their economies to those of wreckers or bandits on land. Pirates were without
doubt part of an economic underground—or an underground economy.[245]
***** *Zero-Production/Parasitism*
While the economies of “primitive” people have been described as voluntary
“underproduction” by Marshall Sahlins,[246] the golden age pirates’ economy
must be described in terms of “zero-production.” Practically all their means
for survival came from robbing and raiding. Not a single commodity is known
that pirates produced for themselves or economic profit. This again reveals
parallels to nomadic societies. Sahlins writes:
As is the lot of pastoral nomads, constant movement also restricted
the quantity and character of Plains Indians’ wealth. They made no
pottery, cloth, or basketry, and developed only early manufactures
in wood, stone, and bone; but relied instead on leather products
and metal trade goods, and lavished most attention on their beaded,
bangled, and befeathered costumes.[247]
This is arguably true for golden age pirates as well.[248]
While the Plains Indians’ economy was largely built on hunting, the golden
age pirates’ economy was almost exclusively built on plunder. (Turtling is the
only productive activity that is fairly commonly reported. Just like fishing, it
seems to have been mostly the task of Indians, however, who traveled with
buccaneer and pirate crews.[249]) Ever since the buccaneers’ existence as hunters ended, their supply of “clothes, arms and ships…depended on the loot
they acquired.”[250] Cordingly and Falconer maintain that the golden age pirate
was “essentially an opportunist, and many of the necessities of life were taken
from his victims. Medicines, food and ship’s stores were all valuable.”[251] On
another occasion, Cordingly explains “that much of the loot which was stolen
consisted of ship’s gear and what might be termed ‘household goods.’ This
is a point that does not come across in pirate stories of fiction.”[252] Peter Earle
concurs:
What [the pirates] chiefly sought aboard a prize were those things
which would enable them to maintain their ships and sustain themselves and their way of life, the life itself being as or more important
than the dream of returning home rich. And so, while they always
looked for money and other valuables, their main focus was on food
and drink, clothes, arms and ammunition, cables and sails and whatever else they might need for themselves or for the ship.[253]
It has even been suggested that “unlike the pirates of fiction, these maritime
criminals never expected to plunder cargoes of gold and silver, but preyed on
the everyday commerce of the Colonial Americas.”[254]
It is hence not surprising when Anne Pérotin-Dumon suggests that pirates
were “mere parasites.”[255] Stressing the lack of self-sufficiency in more academic
terms, A. M. Khazanov speaks of the “non-autarky” or “in many cases… anti-
autarky,” of nomadic societies.[256] In any case, the “zero production” related
to their illegal modes of acquisition as well as their nomadic existence is a
notable aspect separating the golden age pirates from many other pirate communities who were still connected to a certain territory and certain forms of
production: fishing, agriculture, even craftsmanship.
***** *Fast Riches*
Though seldom a common occurrence or a prime objective of the golden age
pirates, it is hard to imagine that the lure of wealth played no role at all in
enticing men to sail under the Jolly Roger, even if this role seldom amounted
to more than chasing a distant dream. After all, the life of a pirate provided
two things that the life of a sailor on a merchantman or a man-of-war did
not: the *possibility* of becoming rich very fast (there were pirates such as the
crews of Every, Tew, Taylor, or Condent who retired wealthy after one big
score, many of them taking their shares and vanishing or bribing their way
back into mainstream society), and a generally decent income combined with
much less effort and much more freedom. Especially considering that “the
life of an ordinary sailor was no less dangerous… than that of a pirate,”[257] these
advantages seem so strong that one can indeed conclude with Charles Grey
that “with so many convincing reasons why they should become pirates, it
does seem strange that so many mariners, who had the opportunity, refrained
from going ‘On the Account.’”[258] This echoes the fact that it is not surprising to
see many gangsters in economically underprivileged communities—what is
surprising is not to see more. The logic that Philip Gosse applies to the buccaneers can be applied to all poor communities: “When a man has for years
lived the free life, sailed out from Jamaica a pauper, to return in six weeks or
less with, perhaps, a bag of gold worth two, three, or four thousand pounds,
which he has prided himself on spending in the taverns and gambling-hells
of Port Royal in a week, how can he settle down to humdrum uneventful toil,
with its small profits?”[259]
The individual dimension expressed here is mirrored by a collective
dimension that once again reminds us of the similarities between the golden
age pirates and (other) nomadic societies: due to the usual economic imbalances between sedentary and mobile folk, “raid must often present itself to
the nomads a better choice than trade.”[260] In short, the pirate economy was an
expression of people refusing to accept their lack of privilege, obey orders and
toil for crumbs. Instead, they decided to live off of others—ideally the rich,
but probably often enough those who simply sailed into their ambushes.
***** *Redistribution of Wealth*
As a “criminal” economy, pirate economy helped to redistribute some of
the wealth in the Caribbean. Thanks to the buccaneers and the golden age
pirates, significant amounts of the money from international trade found its
way into local economies. As Franklin W. Knight explains: “The ill-gotten
plunder of the buccaneers, lavishly dispensed in the local towns, boosted the
local economies and compensated adequately for the otherwise detestable
social manners of these men.”[261]
The world over, many communities turn a blind eye to known gangsters as
long as they do not interfere with local commerce, but fuel it with goods and
money attained on the outside. This is also a traditional asset of the bandit as
a social rebel who contributes to the accumulation of local capital:
What do they do with the rustled cattle, the travelling merchant’s
goods? They buy and sell. Indeed, since they normally possess far
more cash than ordinary local peasantry, their expenditures may form
an important element in the modern sector of the local economy,
being redistributed, through local shopkeepers, innkeepers and others, to the commercial middle strata of rural society.… It is therefore
a mistake to think of bandits as mere children of nature roasting stags
in the greenwood. A successful brigand chief is at least as closely in
touch with the market and the wider economic universe as a small
landowner or prosperous farmer. Indeed, in economically backward
regions his trade may draw him close to that of others who travel, buy
and sell.[262]
*** *2.5. No State, No Accumulation, No History: Pirates as “Primitives”?*
If we subscribe to Pierre Clastres’ division of societies into two main groups,
namely “primitive societies, or societies without a State” and “societies with
a State,”[263] then the society of golden age pirates clearly falls on the primitive
side. This seems even more evident when we also accept Clastres’ assessment
that “faithless, lawless, and kingless” were the “terms used by the sixteenth-
century West to describe the Indians”[264]—after all, the same terms would
be used a century later to describe the golden age pirates who “opposed the
high and mighty of their day and by their actions became the villains of all
nations.”[265]
To further strengthen the case for golden age pirates constituting a society without a state, let us consider Marshall Sahlins’ definition of a “state society”:
(1) there is an official public authority, a set of offices of the society
at large conferring governance over the society at large; (2) ‘society at large,’ the domain of this governing authority, is territorially defined and subdivided; (3) the ruling authority monopolizes
sovereignty—no other person or assembly can rightly command
power (or force) except by sovereign delegation, leave, or consent; (4)
all persons and groups within the territory are *as such* —by virtue of
residence in the domain—subject to the sovereign, to its jurisdiction
and coercion.[266]
None of this applies to the golden age pirate communities. At the same
time, we can draw plenty of startling parallels to so-called primitive societies.
Elman R. Service, for example, calls a primitive or “band society” one with
“no specialized or formalized institutions or groups that can be differentiated as economic, political, religious, and so on.”[267] In response to the infamous
Hobbesian assumption about the lives of primitive, stateless people as “nasty,
brutish and short,” Service writes that “primitive peoples’ lives are usually
short, but not always nasty, and never brutish.”[268] This description applies to
many pirates’ lives as well.
The absence of written records from pirate ships also allows for interesting
comparisons. It would clearly be too daring to deduce an “archaic culture”[269]
from Captain Johnson’s remark that amongst the pirates living in Madagascar
in the 1690s there was not “a man amongst them, who could either read or
write.”[270] But to speak of an *oral culture* in the case of the golden age pirates
seems hardly exaggerated. This appears particularly interesting when considering that it was largely the keeping of written records that marked the
moment when “Time became History.”[271]
Another notable aspect is community size. Clastres writes:
In fact it is very probable that a basic condition for the existence of
primitive societies is their relatively small demographic size. Things
can function on the primitive model only if the people are few in
number. Or, in other words, in order for a society to be primitive, it
must be numerically small. And, in effect, what one observes in the
Savage world is an extraordinary patchwork of ‘nations,’ tribes, and
societies made up of local groups that take great care to preserve their
autonomy within the larger group of which they are a part, although
they may conclude temporary alliances with their nearby ‘fellow-
countrymen,’ if the circumstances—especially those having to do
with warfare—demand it. This atomization of the tribal universe is
unquestionably an effective means of preventing the emergence of the
State, which is a unifier by nature.[272]
Once again, this applies almost word for word to the golden age pirate
communities.[273] According to Marshall Sahlins, the society of the golden age
pirates could be interpreted as a *segmentary tribe:*
A tribe is specifically unlike a modern nation in that its several communities are not united under a sovereign governing authority, nor
are the boundaries of the whole thus clearly and politically determined.…Such a cultural formation, at once structurally decentralized and functionally generalized, is a primitive segmentary society.…The segmentary tribe is sharply divided into independent local
communities (‘primary political segments’). These communities are
small. They rarely include more than a few hundred people, usually
many less… [274]
The following description is as apt: “Certain groups may ally for a time
and purpose, as for a military venture, but the collective spirit is episodic.
When the objective for which it was called into being is accomplished, the
alliance lapses and the tribe returns to its normal state of disunity.”[275] Finally,
Sahlins’ explanation of how the tribe maintains its identity through cultural
similarity rather than a continuously shared existence is striking with respect
to pirate communities:
Perhaps most critical in giving a tribal people that measure of coherence and identity they do possess is their cultural similarity. The local
groups are like each other in custom and speech, even as they often
differ in these respects from others. Cut from the same cloth, they
have a common destiny or, more technically, a ‘mechanical solidarity.’ Insofar as these groups are alike, they respond the same way to
the world and thus develop an historic identity if not exactly a polity.
Also important is the social nexus linking neighboring settlements
of a tribe.…Then there are certain *pan-tribal institutions,* widespread
tribal associations: not exactly ‘groups’ since they do not act as collectives, but more like fraternal orders with chapters established in
different locales—so that for the price of a secret handshake one may
be able to cadge a free lunch in another place.[276]
*** 2.6. *“Cultural Contact”: Pirates and the Non-European People of the Caribbean*
In his study “Frei-Beuter: Charakter und Herkunf piratischer Demokratie
im frühen 18. Jahrhundert” [“Freebooters: Character and Origin of Pirate
Democracy in the Early 18th Century”], German scholar Rüdiger Haude
defines four crucial influences for the democratic organization of the golden
age pirates’ communities. Apart from “spontaneous emergence,” “the school
of the sea,” and “expatriated radicalism,”[277] Haude also names “cultural contact.” Haude’s parameters suggest that the parallels drawn between golden
age piracy and “primitive” societies above do not just illustrate structural
commonalities of stateless people, but possibly indicate an actual influence of
Native American/Caribbean culture on the European renegades who formed
the buccaneer community.
Here, a lack of sources not only concerning the buccaneers and pirates,
but also the lives of people who inhabited the Caribbean realm prior to
the Europeans’ arrival, prevents the proposal of more substantial theories.
Anthropological research on the Caribbean’s pre-European societies has
largely had to rely on archaeological material (which allows few conclusions
on maters of political organization and the social dimensions of inter-cultural
contact) and missionary records (scarcely known for objectivity). Julian
Granberry sums up the situation as follows:
Archaeologists are gradually piecing together the prehistoric backgrounds and migrations of the native peoples of the Caribbean,
but even that picture is in a state of flux today. The official Spanish
accounts of the time, preserved in the Archives of the Indies in
Seville, with few exceptions discuss only the Indies’ potential for
wealth and the conversion of the native peoples to Christianity.
Almost the only interest shown in the people per se was as a source
of unpaid, baptized labor. There is some information of ethnographic
interest in these early accounts but regrettably little.[278]
In fact, the available material is so sparse that no strict cultural divisions
have ever been established. Irving Rouse, a well-regarded specialist on the
anthropological history of the Caribbean, distinguished three main ethnic
groups in the 1948 *Handbook of South American Indians:* the Arawak (with
the Taino as the biggest sub-group), the Carib, and the Ciboney.[279] Today, this
categorization is challenged by various scholars—some preferring to speak of
Island-Arawak, Island-Carib, and Guanahatabeys/Guanahacabibes instead,
others questioning the three categories altogether.[280] Since most of the literature that discusses contacts between buccaneers/pirates and Indians follows
Rouse’s classification, and since commonly accepted alternatives are missing, Rouse’s terms will be employed here despite the obvious need for future
modification.
If the historical records are to be believed, the Carib were the only one of
the three mentioned groups that could have had contact with the buccaneers
and pirates of the Caribbean. The Arawak, whose society has been described
as one of *theocratic chiefdoms,* [281] were reputedly extinguished by the mid-1500s.[282]
(This is particularly shocking in light of their numbers having been estimated
at several hundred thousand at the time of Columbus’ arrival only half a century earlier. It suggests a genocide of enormous proportions.) The Ciboney,
who have been described as “hunters and gatherers with a political organization which probably did not develop beyond that of the nomadic band,”[283] might
have already been extinct at the time of Columbus’ arrival. Groups of Caribs,
however, survived and put up fierce resistance to the European settlement on
the Leeward Islands of St. Christopher, Nevis, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, and
St. Vincent. Eventually the Carib, too, would reach the brink of extinction.
Today a couple of hundred Caribs live in a reserve on Dominica, and descendants of Caribs and African slaves, the “Black Caribs” (also called Garifuna),
populate the Caribbean coast of Central America.
According to the records, two more Indian peoples apart from the Carib
had regular contact with buccaneers and pirates: the Cuna of the Darién (the
easternmost region of Panama) whom the buccaneers encountered during
their frequent raids on Spanish towns in the area, and the Mosquito Indians,
inhabitants of the coast of the same name, in modern-day Honduras and
Nicaragua. Contact with the later was to a large degree maintained via the
logwood settlements in the Bays of Campeche and Honduras.
There is certainly evidence for material influences on the European arrivals, most notably in form of the Carib practice of smoking meat in a *buccan,*
which supposedly gave the buccaneers their name, the common buccaneer
usage of Indian dugout canoes, and the logwood cutters’ and other Caribbean
renegades’ habit of sleeping in hammocks off the ground.[284]
It is interesting to note Stephen Snelders’ suggestion that “in reaction [to
colonial aggression] the Caribs developed strategies of piracy that resembled
those of the buccaneers. In their periaguas, large canoes that carried fifty
or sixty warriors, they moved swiftly among distant islands conducting hit
and run raids armed mainly with the bow and arrow, with which they were
as skilled as the buccaneers with their muskets.”[285] It is hard not to wonder
whether it was really the Caribs who were influenced by the buccaneers.
Could it not have been the other way round? Maybe it was the buccaneers
who adopted Carib raiding techniques—techniques which, for all we know,
probably preceded the colonial era. Is this just another overlooked gift the
Europeans received from American and Caribbean Indians?[286]
Influences on the socio-cultural level are much harder to determine,
but some parallels are nonetheless striking. While the traditional forms of
the Cuna’s social organization appear too stratified for a comparison with
Caribbean buccaneer and pirate communities,[287] descriptions of both the
Caribs and the Mosquito Indians suggest non-authoritarian societies “distinguished by their sense of democracy and taste for equality.”[288]
According to Irving Rouse, the Caribs “relied more upon fishing than upon
agriculture; their villages were only semipermanent; they had more elaborate
canoes [than the Arawak]; placed greater emphasis upon warfare; choosing
their leaders by prowess in fighting rather than by inheritance; lacked elaborate ceremonies; had no worship of idols; and were cannibals.”[289] It would without doubt be too bold to construe a Carib influence on the practices of certain
buccaneer captains who allegedly enjoyed gnawing on their enemies’ hearts,[290]
but all other points listed by Rouse can also be applied to the buccaneers and
pirates (at least if we agree that hunting and raiding are closer to fishing than
to agriculture). Rouse even speaks of “elected temporary war chiefs”[291] among
the Caribs and claims: “Although he [the Carib chief] was treated with deference, he had little authority. The Carib men were individualists, and they
looked down upon the Europeans for taking orders.”[292]
Many features reported in connection with the Mosquito Indians—
apparently the most regular Indian companions of the buccaneers and
pirates[293]—seem to agree deeply with the Caribbean buccaneer and pirate
culture as well. Their warfare was reputedly highly organized, the office
of their chiefs was not hereditary, and they see, in the description of Paul
Kirchhoff, “a man who has been wronged [as a] a coward if he does not avenge
himself”[294]—a notion with central significance for golden age pirate ethics.[295]
Whether there were indeed significant socio-cultural influences of the
Caribbean’s Indian peoples on the buccaneers and pirates remains unresolved, though attempting to find answers would certainly make for fascinating research.
** 3. “Social Origins,” or The European Legacy
Golden Age Piracy and Cultural Studies
Not all historians have understood the culture of the Caribbean buccaneers and pirates as radically separate from the European culture that provided their backgrounds. Franklin W. Knight, for example, notes:
Although the buccaneers were essentially stateless individuals, they
retained strong links with the general culture and society with which
they were familiar.…The buccaneers did not try, as did the American
Maroons, to create a separate culture and society. Buccaneers had
their culture and knew their social origins quite well. What they
sought—at least for a time—was freedom from the restraints and
obligations of that culture and that society. Most of those who survived the occupational hazards of their profession, returned to those
societies.[296]
Such an assessment suggests a study of golden age piracy as a European
subculture rather than as its own culture. The term *subculture* is of course,
as Chris Jenks fittingly put it, “an idea with a highly restricted currency.”[297]
Subculture Studies build on various different definitions of the concept.[298] It
will be used here in its widest common sense: as a cultural form showing distinctive features while remaining heavily influenced and dependent on the
majority culture in which it has developed.
*** 3.1. *Fashion, Food, Fun, Lingo: Circumscribing the Pirate Subculture*
Some general features that often demand initial attention within the study of
subcultures are demography, style, and cultural identifiers.
As we have seen, not much is known about the origins of the buccaneering community. Throughout the decades, however, its demography became
more apparent and has been described with some consistency. Cordingly
writes that the buccaneers “included soldiers and seamen, deserters and runaway slaves, cutthroats and criminals, religious refugees, and a considerable
number of out-and-out pirates,”[299] while Marcus Rediker summarizes as follows: “The early makers of the tradition were what one English official in the
Caribbean called ‘the outcasts of all nations’—convicts, prostitutes, debtors,
vagabonds, escaped slaves and indentured servants, religious radicals, and
political prisoners, all of whom had migrated or been exiled to the new settlements ‘beyond the line.’”[300] This blend of outsiderdom would later still characterize the golden age pirates who, in the words of Philip Gosse, were “a queer
lot,”[301] “a collection of the flotsam and jetsam of the seas.”[302]
The average age of the golden age pirate has been estimated at twenty-
seven by David Cordingly.[303] It must be assumed that it was somewhat higher
among the buccaneers—especially if one extends the buccaneer community
to their accomplices and beneficiaries ashore: the crooked merchants, smugglers, and prostitutes. It was a community that was predominantly white and
almost exclusively male.
The flamboyant pirate fashion prominently featured in Howard Pyle’s
paintings, in all commercial representations of piracy, and at every Mardi
Gras seems to have some historical ground, even though many details are
almost certainly fanciful artistic additions. It seems, for example, unlikely
that pirates wore earrings, at least not to the degree highlighted in pirate representations of the 20th century. There is also no documentation of golden age
pirates being tattooed. Modern Euro-American tattooing only became popular in connection with the European exploration of the South Pacific—an era
which had hardly commenced when the golden age of piracy ended.[304] Then
again, Europe’s own tattooing tradition never died out completely,[305] practices
of tattooing and scarification are reported from both Carib and Mosquito
Indians,[306] and in 1691 the heavily tattooed Jeoly (Giolo), from the island of
Meangis (most probably today’s Miangas, Indonesia’s northernmost island),
arrived with William Dampier’s crew in London.[307] So, contrary to what is
sometimes argued, it is difficult to imagine that the practice was altogether
unknown to golden age pirates.
Most historians seem to agree that pirates wore, at least on occasion,
elaborate clothing. Robert C. Ritchie suggests that the golden age pirates
“delighted in such brilliant costumes because in Europe the use of luxury
fabrics was confined by law to the upper classes. On the peripheries of empire
they could indulge themselves and flaunt sumptuary legislation.”[308] One of
the most detailed summary of the pirates’ fashion exploits can be found in
Stephen Snelders’ The Devil’s Anarchy:
At a time when seamen generally wore short blue jackets, checkered
shirts, long canvas trousers or baggy breeches, red waistcoats, and
scarves around their necks, pirates added all kinds of plundered silks,
velvets, and brocades to their outfits—flouting the dress codes of
European society, where luxury fabrics were only worn by the upper
classes. Labat notes… that after capturing a caique, Captain Daniel’s
men ‘dressed themselves up in all kinds of fine clothes, and were a
comical sight as they strutted around [Aves] Island in feathered hats,
wigs, silk stockings, ribbons and other garments.’ When Compaen
finally returned to Holland his men were ‘richly and costly attired,’
and his arms were covered with gold jewelry. According to Senior,
Compaen’s contemporary, the English pirate Kit Oloard, dressed
himself ‘in black velvet trousers and jackets, crimson silk socks, black
felt hat, brown beard and shirt collar embroidered in black silk.’ Pirate
captains wore flashy adaptations of the costumes of gentlemen in a
deliberate flouting of social dress codes that emphasized the pirates’
penchant for enjoying the moment and taunting their social ‘betters.’[309]
Certain popular representations of gaudy pirate dress might have still been
exaggerated. Angus Konstam at least suspects that “the figure of Captain Hook
with his wig, ruffed sleeves, and trimmed beard would have been laughed out
of the Caribbean.”[310] Konstam also challenges the idea that pirates wore fancy
clothing even on deck.[311] He sees the practice confined to land excursions and
stresses that “at sea, practicality took precedence over elegance”—which suggests that during voyage the pirate appearance would not have been all that
different from that of ordinary sailors.[312]
The style of the original Hispaniola buccaneers was a different story
altogether. According to Cordingly, “they dressed in leather hides and, with
their butchers’ knives and bloodstained appearance, looked and smelled like
men from a slaughterhouse.”[313]
As far as other (sub)cultural identifiers are concerned, the three most noted
among the Caribbean buccaneers and pirates concern food/drink, entertainment, and language.
**** *Food/Drink*
Pirate cuisine should not be overrated. There are a fair number of “pirate
cookbooks” available, but it is often hard to see how they differ from ordinary Caribbean or Madagascan cookbooks. One dish, however, is commonly
recognized as a pirate special: *salmagundi.* One of the more sophisticated
descriptions reads as follows:
Meat of any kind—including turtle, duck, or pigeon—was roasted,
chopped into chunks, and marinated in spiced wine. Imported salted
meat, herring, and anchovies also were added. When ready to serve,
the smoked and salted meats were combined with hard-boiled eggs
and whatever fresh or pickled vegetables were available, including
palm hearts, cabbage, mangoes, onions, and olives. The result was
stirred together with oil, vinegar, garlic, salt, pepper, mustard seed,
and other seasonings.[314]
While this does sound somewhat appealing—at least to omnivores—the
only other notable pirate special does not: “In times of scarcity they would
eat *crackerhash* —broken-up ship’s biscuit shaken in a bag with the week’s
leftovers.”[315] Worth mentioning are also the pirates’ table manners—or lack
thereof. Edward Lucie-Smith reports: “One source gives a most graphic
description of piratical table-manners, which bears out the impression of
chaos: ‘They eat in a very disorderly manner, more like a kennel of hounds
than like men, snatching and catching the victuals from one another… It
seemed one of their chief diversions and, they said, looked martial-like.’”[316]
Unsurprisingly—given the popular image—more buccaneer and pirate
focus was laid on drink. Here, a few classics were created, first and foremost,
*rumfustian,* “a blend of raw eggs, sugar, sherry, gin, and beer…no rum.”[317]
Other popular pirate drinks included: *Sir Cloudesley,* “brandy mixed with
a little beer, frequently sweetened or spiced, with an added touch of lemon
juice” (apparently called flip without the lemon);[318] mum, a “strong beer made
of wheat and oat malts and flavoured with herbs;”[319] and bumboo, according to
Jenifer G. Marx, “a concoction of rum, water, sugar, and nutmeg,”[320] though
Philip Gosse makes this the teetotaler pirate drink by describing it as nothing
but “limes, sugar and water” and suggesting that it was enjoyed by the few
“dry” pirates.[321]
**** *Entertainment*
There are no indications that buccaneers or pirates excelled in any way in
the arts. Most of them reportedly enjoyed music, usually provided by musicians who often joined them as forced men. Musicians among Bartholomew
Roberts’ arrested crew reported ill-treatment to the degree where “their fiddles and often their heads broke, only for excusing themselves or saying they
were tired when any fellow took it to his head to demand a tune.”[322]
Apart from music and drinking, “the pirates’ only other recreation was to
hold mock trials,” as Neville Williams put it.[323] This unique type of political
satire might certainly count as an artistic innovation. Captain Johnson shares
an account “of these merry trials” that he found “diverting” in the *General
History:* [324] After the “attorney-general” presents judge and jury “a sad dog, a
sad, sad, dog” who “not having the fear of hanging before his eyes…went on
robbing and ravishing man, woman and child, plundering ships’ cargoes fore
and aft, burning and sinking ship, bark and boat, as if the devil had been in
him,” the judge turns to the prisoner: “Hearkee me, Sirrah, you lousy, pitiful,
ill-looked dog; what have you to say why you should not be tucked up immediately and set a-sun-drying, like a scarecrow? Are you guilty or not guilty?”
The prisoner pleads not guilty, upon which the judge replies: “Say so again,
Sirrah, and I’ll have you hanged without any trial.” Attempts by the prisoner
to speak in his defense are rejected by the judge, very much to the delight of
the attorney-general who reckons: “Right my lord! For if the fellow should be
suffered to speak he may clear himself, and that’s an affront to the court.” Te
end of the trial is worth quoting at length:
Pris.: Pray, my Lord, I hope your Lordship will consider-
Judge: Consider! How dare you talk of considering? Sirrah, Sirrah, I
never considered in all my life. I’ll make it treason to consider.
Pris.: But I hope your lordship will hear some reason.
Judge: D’ye hear how the scoundrel prates? What have we to do with
reason? I’d have you know, rascal, we don’t sit here to hear reason; we
go according to law. Is our dinner ready?
Ator.-Gen.: Yes, my lord.
Judge: Then heark’ee, you rascal at the bar, hear me, Sirrah, hear me.
You must suffer for three reasons; first, because it is not fit I should sit
here as judge and nobody be hanged; secondly, you must be hanged
because you have a damned hanging look; and thirdly, you must be
hanged because I am hungry; for know, Sirrah, that ’tis a custom that
whenever the judge’s dinner is ready before the trial is over, the prisoner is to be hanged of course. There’s law for you, ye dog! So take him
away, gaoler.[325]
**** *Language*
To develop its own vernacular and jargon is undeniably a strong feature of
any subculture, as, in the words of Peter Lamborn Wilson, “a language (however crude and jury-rigged) is a culture, or at least the sure sign of an emerging culture.”[326] The Caribbean buccaneers and pirates not only mixed different languages within the multinational buccaneer and pirate communities
(Philip Gosse even speaks of a “sort of Esperanto”[327]), but also partook in the
distinct language of the seafarers. The resulting idioms were further modified as the Caribbean buccaneers and pirates formed an exclusive community
of high sea raiders with “their own slang and code words.”[328] Among these,
cuss words apparently featured prominently. A passenger on a ship taken by
Bartholomew Roberts’ crew reports that “there was nothing heard among
the pirates all the while, but cursing, swearing, dam’ing and blaspheming to
the greatest degree imaginable.”[329] In this regard, pirate eloquence might have
reached its apex with Captain Fly, the last renowned Anglo-American pirate
captain of the golden age. One of his outbursts reported in Captain Johnson’s
*General History* is directed at a Mr. Atkinson, who, after having been taken
prisoner as the passenger of a captured vessel, dared to ask for his freedom:
Look ye, Captain Atkinson, it is not that we care a t-d for your company, G-d d-n ye; G-d d-n my soul, not a t-d by G-d, and that’s fair; but
G-d d-n ye, and G-d d-n’s b-d and w-ds if you don’t act like an honest
“Social Origins,” or The European Legacy
man G-d d-n ye, and offer to play us any rogues’ tricks by G-d, and
G-d sink me, but I’ll blow your brains out. G-d d-n me, if I don’t.[330]
*** 3.2. *“Villains of all Nations?”: Piracy and (Trans)Nationality*
The Caribbean buccaneers’ and pirates’ relation to the concept of the nation
is somewhat curious. They have been described as “supranational”[331] and
“multinational”[332]—but also as an “outlaw nation.”[333] Obviously, some of these
apparent contradictions can easily be resolved by acknowledging different
understandings of the term. There is a basic difference in whether “nation”
refers to a “nation-state” or to a community of people with a shared destiny.
In the later sense, Frank Sherry’s description of the golden age pirates as an
“outlaw nation” does make as much sense as Stephen Snelders’ or Marcus
Rediker’s suggestions that the golden age pirates were anti-nationalist since
they did not hold the nation-state in high regard.
As this is not the place to venture too deep into a discussion of the meaning
and usage of the term, the following analysis will focus only on the relation
of the Caribbean buccaneers and pirates to the nation-state. This is a crucial
part of their history and identity, and one that appears to have created some
misunderstandings. The biggest of these is the assertion that the Caribbean
buccaneers developed a culture that indeed went beyond the nation-state
concept. This seems to have become a commonplace view among radicals
sympathizing with the buccaneer and pirate culture, though there is litle evidence to support it. In fact, available evidence indicates rather the opposite.
Part of the problem lies in wrong assumptions. The authors of “Pirate
Utopia,” for example, write: “The Caribbean islands in the second half of the
17th century were a melting pot of rebellious and pauperised immigrants from
across the world.”[334] This is a rather bold statement. Aside from the controversial
description of “rebellious and pauperized,” the vast majority of the people who
migrated to the Caribbean in the 17th century came from Spain, the British
Isles, and France. There were small numbers of Dutch and Scandinavians, and
a smatering of individuals from other European countries who found their
way to the ports of the European Atlantic coast and arranged a passage to
the West Indies. Of course, there were the African slaves who arrived in ever
greater numbers towards the end of the century, but to count them as part of
a “melting pot” and a community of “immigrants” appears almost cynical.
The buccaneer communities reflected the general migrant paterns of the
Caribbean. It is true that men of some nations united as buccaneers, but there
were not many. At least 80 percent of the buccaneers seemed to have been
English, French, or Dutch, the rest consisting mainly of Scots, Irishmen,
Portuguese, and Scandinavians. Most non-European men who lived among
the buccaneers worked for them as slaves. Furthermore, many of the buccaneers united because they shared a common sentiment: namely, “a biter
hatred” of the Spanish.[335] In this sense, calling their union a transnational
model would be similar to hailing the allied forces during World War ii as
transnationalists. Still, some radical commentators appear so convinced of
the alleged buccaneer and pirate anti-nationalism that they offer contradictions in terms: “As long as they could hunt Spaniards it didn’t mater to them
whether they did so with English, French, Dutch, or Portuguese privateering
commissions. They were not interested in, and absolutely unwilling to die for,
the interstate rivalries of the European powers.”[336] The reality of the opportu-
nistic politics in the colonial Caribbean seems much more aptly illustrated by
the following anecdote: “[The French and English] combined very amicably
in a murderous atack upon the natives, and then fell to quarrelling about the
possession of an island to the south.”[337]
It appears that national unities among the buccaneers were as pragmatic
and ephemeral as national alliances in times of war. It is therefore not surprising that the composition of buccaneer crews changed with the political (colonial) climate in the Caribbean. As Peter Earle writes in connection with the Nine Years War (1689 to 1697): “Former pirate now fought
former pirate as privateers in the service of England, France, Holland, and
Spain.”[338] Accordingly, many buccaneers—most famously the knighted Henry
Morgan—were hailed as national heroes. The related anti-Spanish sentiments are confirmed to this day. Recent US reprints of Philip Gosse’s pirate
books read on the back cover:
The author has also endeavored to point out the tremendous influence
of the buccaneers upon our country and people. Had it not been for
these picturesque sea rovers, England would have been hard pressed
to retain her hold in the New World, and the United States might now
be under Spanish rule. The downfall of Spain’s sea power was largely
due to the sea rovers and, no mater how despicable they were in many
ways, we cannot fail to feel a debt of gratitude to the buccaneers.[339]
The buccaneers’ national allegiances became particularly obvious after
the English takeover of Jamaica in 1655. From this year on, the English
and French buccaneers were strongly divided along national lines. Angus
Konstam states that “while buccaneers always fought under their national
flags, increasingly they did so against fellow buccaneers.”[340] In fact, mutual
raids become so frequent that “neither the French in Tortuga nor the English
in Port Royal could suppress their own pirates unless they could be sure that
the other side would do the same.”[341] For many decades, “buccaneers did not
usually atack the colony from which the leader of the band originated or the
citizens related in nationality or culture to the majority of the members.”[342]
Men like Jérémie Deschamps, who “obtained… simultaneous commissions
from both the English and the French and successfully played one power
against the other,”[343] were certainly the exception.
Some buccaneers—mostly those oppressed by the English or French at
home—even sided with the Spanish. Irish captains working in the Spanish
fleet were particularly prominent, like Don Philip Fitz-Gerald,[344] or John
Murphy who guided the Spanish atacks on Tortuga in 1634/35.[345] A historian’s description of the crews of Spanish privateers in the 1680s includes
“Corsicans, Slavonians, Greeks.”[346] Slavonians and Greeks were hardly heard
of in the English and French dominated buccaneer crews, and the presence of
Corsicans among the Spanish would indicate a transposition of their animosity towards the French colonizers of their island into the West Indies.
The eventual rejection of any national allegiance marks the biggest difference between the golden age pirates and the buccaneers who preceded them.
Among the golden age pirates, the anti-national notion becomes stronger, not least in the adoption of the Jolly Roger as their truly transnational
symbol. Some golden age pirates might have indeed “no longer thought of
themselves as English or Dutch or French but as pirates,”[347] and “as people
without a nation.”[348] When formulated categorically, however, the following
assumptions still appear problematic: “Pirates doubly defied the nationalist logic…first by forming themselves of the ‘outcasts of all nations’ (mixing together the seafarers of all countries, as suggested earlier), and second
by atacking vessels regardless of the flag flying at the mainmast, making all
nations and their shipping equal prey.”[349] First, the composition of golden age
pirate crews appears not to have differed all that much from those of buccaneer
crews. Anglo-American sailors, in fact, appeared particularly dominant now.
If the analysis of David Cordingly is to be believed, then “of the 700 known
pirates who were active in the Caribbean between 1715 and 1725, almost all
came from the English-speaking Atlantic and Caribbean basin. Englishmen
accounted for the majority, at 35 percent; 25 percent were American, 20 percent came from the West Indies, 10 percent were Scotish, and 8 percent were
from other seafaring countries, such as Sweden, Holland, France, and Spain.”[350]
Some historians even suggest that the Cross of St. George was still flown on
occasion, alongside the Jolly Roger (and not as a decoy as many other flags
were).[351] Second, pirate captains and crews were certainly not beyond national
prejudice, especially with respect to the Spanish. Bartholomew Roberts and
his crew, for example, were said to hate men from Bristol (I don’t know why)
as much “as they do the Spaniards.”[352] Roberts apparently also held a grudge
against the Irish,[353] not to mention the hatred towards folks from Barbados
and Martinique documented on his flag that marked two skulls ABH, “a
Barbadian’s head,” and AMH, “a Martinican’s head,” respectively.
At the same time, it is without doubt true that “in a world increasingly
dominated by the nation-state system, it became an issue of first importance
that pirates ‘had not any Commission from any Prince or Potentate,’”[354] and
that they posed a significant threat to the nation-state—both confirmed by
their reputation as “banditi of all nations”[355] and the fact that legal scholars
have called piracy the “first international crime.”[356] There are also examples of
pirate crews that seem to have truly transcended national rivalries. Neville
Williams tells us that the crew of Augustino Blanco, a Spanish pirate who
operated from the Bahamas for twenty years, “consisted of English, Scots,
Spaniards, Portuguese, mulatos and negroes.”[357] Furthermore, we must not
forget the symbolic significance of a free-roaming community under a non-
nation-state flag, especially in light of the ever increasing regulation of migra-
tion and border control. The golden age pirates’ obvious defiance of any such
notions must stand as a powerful reminder of how things ought to be, and as
an unrelenting protest against conditions that force millions of people every
year to cross borders under hazardous circumstances. Many of these people
do not survive these crossings—some of them drown in the very waters that
the golden age pirates once proudly roamed. By taunting the nation-state, the
golden age pirates expressed a simple truth: namely, that “it signified nothing
what part of the World a man liv’d in, so he Liv’d well.’”[358]
*** 3.3. Satanists and Sabbatarians: Piracy and Religion
The hatred expressed by many European powers (and individuals) against the
Spanish was often coated in religious terms. For Angus Konstam, the English
privateers of the 16th century already combined “religious and national
rivalry with greed.”[359] Hans Turley calls the hatred of Catholics a “principle”
among the buccaneers,[360] to the degree where those tortured and murdered
during the raid on Panama in 1671, “were not seen as individuals by Morgan
and the other buccaneers [but] were lumped together as Spanish Catholics,
hated by late-seventeenth-century English readers leery of ‘popish plots.’”[361]
Stephen Snelders states that the buccaneers’ “motivation was as much lust for
booty as hatred of Spaniards and Catholics,”[362] and the introduction to Howard
Pyle’s Book of Pirates adds—in characteristically dramatic manner—that “in
this left-handed war against Catholic Spain many of the adventurers were,
no doubt, stirred and incited by a grim, Calvinistic, puritanical zeal for
Protestantism.”[363] It is not surprising then, that the buccaneers have also been
referred to as “corsarios luteranos.”[364] In this sense, the killing of monks, friars
or priests[365] ought not be interpreted as proof of an anti-Christian, but rather
an anti-Catholic, agenda. The religious rivalries even complicated national
loyalty, for example when “protestant Frenchmen served aboard English
pirate ships.”[366]
The anti-Catholic fervor of the Protestant buccaneers was often justified
as a reaction to the Spanish oppression of the Indian communities.[367] It is said
that Montbars the Exterminator, one of the cruelest buccaneer captains of
legend, “joined the buccaneers after reading a book which recorded the cruelty of the Spaniards to the American natives.”[368] However, it seems somewhat
surprising that people who themselves raided Indian setlements and kept
Indian slaves would have been so scandalized by the Spaniards doing the
same. One cannot help but suspect that these stories mostly emerged as part
of the so-called Black Legend—the deliberate distortion of Spanish culture,
conduct, and politics by their rival powers in the 16th and 17th centuries. The
controversy around whether Spain deserved the accusations levied against it,
or whether it was the victim of ideological propaganda, remains unresolved.
Assumptions that the Spanish were the worst of all European colonizers seem
rather simplistic, however, aside from the consideration that the ranking of
atrocities is a very dubious act in itself.
Religious adherence among Catholic buccaneers—who often formed their
own units[369]—was strong as well. The French Catholic buccaneer crews of the
late 17th century were said to keep their own priests.[370] Famous is the story of
Captain Daniel shooting a member of his crew who had appeared inatentive
during mass and responded to a rebuke with a blasphemy.[371]
John Masefield’s suggestion that “no crew put to sea upon a cruise without
first going to church to ask a blessing on their enterprise”[372] may be exaggerated, but Christian identity was certainly important for many buccaneers and
pirates. Philip Gosse atributes the uprising against Captain Sharp in 1681
(documented in Basil Ringrose’s account of the journey[373]) to the captain’s
“ungodliness.”[374] According to Captain Johnson, during the golden age, the
articles of each pirate crew were usually sworn upon the Bible,[375] and some
pirate captains, most notably the “worshipful Mr. Roberts,”[376] were known
“Sabbatarians.”[377] (Once, Roberts’ crew apparently tried to woo a clergyman
traveling on a taken vessel into joining them and, upon his refusal, “kept
nothing which belonged to the church, except three prayer books and a bottle-screw.”[378]) The Protestant-Catholic rivalries had not disappeared either.
Captain Condent apparently humiliated captured priests because Condent’s
master had been a papist.[379] To Nathaniel North, papists still seemed beter
than infidels, however. After he and his crew had a number of children with
Madagascan women, he decided to “place fortunes for them in the hands
of some honest priest, who would give them a Christian education (for he
thought it beter to have them papists, than not Christians).”[380]
There are also references to pirates who ventured into the Red Sea because
they meant to atack non-Christian ships: one of them stated at his trial that
it seemed “very lawful… to plunder ships and goods etc., belonging to the
enemies of Christianity;” another “proposed to mutiny and cruise in the Red
Sea, ‘for, said he, there can be no harm in robbing those Mahometans;’”[381]
finally, one Darby Mullins was convinced to engage in piracy by “it being
urged that the robbing only of infidels, the enemies of Christianity, was an
act, not only lawful, but one highly meritorious.”[382] Such arguments were not
welcome by all pirates though. Philip Gosse tells us that one pirate crew threw
their captain in irons after he had refused to atack a Dutch merchantman and
declared that he only wanted to atack “Moorish ships.” (Later, the captain’s
“scruples against taking Christian ships eased enough to permit him to bag a
brace of English ships.”)[383]
Alongside tales about pirate adaptations of Christianity, there are also
those of rejection, ridicule, and derision. The poor French buccaneer killed
by his captain for lack of reverence during mass has already been mentioned. David Cordingly tells the story of one Dolzell, “a forty-two-year-old
Scotsman described by the Ordinary as pernicious and dangerous, [who]
refused to look at the Bible and threatened to tear it up,”[384] and states that “a
surprising number of pirates showed defiance at the end and refused to die
in the contrite and penitent manner expected of them.”[385] Captain Johnson
relates that during the mutiny on the Elizabeth, one Alexander Mitchel told
the captain, “D-n your blood…no preaching,” before his co-mutineer and
later pirate captain William Fly interfered: “Damn him, answered Fly, since
he’s so devilish godly, we’ll give him time to say his prayers, and I’ll be parson. Say
after me. Lord, have mercy on me. Short prayers are best, so no more words, and
over with him, my lads.” Then, “the captain still cried for mercy, and begged an
hour’s respite only, but all in vain; he was seized by the villains, and thrown
overboard.”[386] Similar atitudes seemed to have been dominant among the
crew of Captain John Gow. According to Johnson, on one occasion one of
their victims “desired earnestly to live till he had said his prayers, but the villains not moved thereat, said, D—n you, this is no time to pray, and so shot him
dead.”[387]
These anecdotes portray the pirates in a way in which many radicals fancy
them: secular, sacrilegious, anti-clerical. Marcus Rediker suggests that
some pirates indeed “embraced Lucifer, the most rebellious of angels,”[388] and
Captain Johnson says of Blackbeard that “some of his frolics of wickedness
were so extravagant as if he aimed at making his men believe he was a devil
incarnate.”[389] However, when the pirates “inverted the values of Christianity”[390]
and “turned the religious world, like the social world, upside down,”[391] they
only confirmed how deeply rooted in the Christian tradition their culture
was. The Jolly Roger might illustrate this best: “All of the chosen symbols on
the black colors were rooted in the Christian cultures from which most of
the pirates came. [Sailors and freebooters] played with these godly symbols,
drew on their power, manipulated and inverted them, and gave them new
meanings derived from their own maritime experience.”[392] Positive or negative, reverent or defiant, earnest or mocking, Christian symbolism stood at
the heart of golden age pirate culture. Stephen Snelders’ observation that “in
a society where all social relationships are laden with religious ideology, heresy and apostacy are both political choices and modes of social rebellion”[393]
only confirms this—as does the dependence on the dark side of Christianity
to induce fear: “In announcing that they were on their way to hell, pirates
affirmed what respectable, God-fearing people never tired saying about
them—that they were devils, all bound for hell.”[394]
Pirate satanism was, however, not the only possible way to render the
pirates’ Christian atachments subversive. The rather revolutionary Deism
championed by Captain Misson and his “lewd priest”[395] sidekick Caraccioli
was probably an invention of Captain Johnson, but with respect to buccaneers the following observation might very well be based in fact: “According
to Father du Tertre… they owed allegiance only to God, except for whom, the
earth whereon they lived had no masters than themselves.”[396]
*** 3.4. A Colorful Atlantic? Piracy and Race
Paul Gilroy, in his seminal study The Black Atlantic, contends:
I have setled on the image of ships in motion across the spaces
between Europe, America, Africa, and the Caribbean as a central
organising symbol for this enterprise and as my starting point. The
image of the ship—a living, micro-cultural, micro-political system
in motion—is especially important for historical and theoretical
reasons that I hope will become clearer below.… It should be emphasised that ships were the living means by which the points within the
Atlantic world were joined. They were mobile elements that stood for
the shifting spaces in between the fixed places that they connected.
Accordingly they need to be thought of as cultural and political units
rather than abstract embodiments of the triangular trade. They were
something more—a means to conduct political dissent and possibly a
distinct mode of cultural production.[397]
Considering that Linebaugh and Rediker have pointed out that one aspect
of the Atlantic ship of the late 17th century was its potential for “a seting of
resistance,”[398] the prospect of an anti-racist pirate ship—arguably, the most
resisting ship of them all—becomes tremendously enticing. It could be seen
as “a place to which and in which the ideas and practices of revolutionaries…escaped, re-formed, circulated, and persisted.”[399] While some historians
have suggested that such anti-racist pirate ships did indeed exist, the question
remains whether this suggestion is really convincing. There does not seem
to be any disagreement concerning the fact that the buccaneers kept both
American/Caribbean Indians and Africans as slaves. Not only are slaves listed
as possible payments in Exquemelin’s example for a buccaneer contract,[400] but
the buccaneering accounts of Exquemelin, Dampier, and Ringrose are all dotted with references to Indians and “negroes” working involuntarily on their
boats.[401] In fact, Exquemelin even writes that “the said buccaneers are hugely
cruel and tyrannical towards their servants; insomuch that commonly these
had rather be galley slaves in the Straits, or saw brazilwood in the rasp-houses
of Holland, than serve such barbarous masters.”[402] One buccaneer account tells
us that some of their indentured laborers “fell sick of a disease called coma,
which was a sort of despair from which they surely died, since it was the effect
of brutality in treatment and want of rest.”[403] It has also been alleged that some
regular buccaneer haunts, like the logwood communities along the Mosquito
Coast, doubled as early slave trading posts.[404]
Towards the end of the buccaneering era, when many Caribbean islands
had been turned into plantation societies and become dependent on the
slave trade, so-called slave raids became a prime factor in the feuds between
rival buccaneer communities. Maurice Besson writes that in the 1680s, the
French buccaneers “so frequently raided Jamaica, where, for the greater profit
of the young plantations of Saint Domingue, they made off with negroes and
negresses, that on the coast of Saint Domingo… the island of Jamaica was
called simply Litle Guinea.”[405]
The situation does not appear much different among the golden age pirates.
Captain Johnson’s stories are doted with references to Indians and Africans
working under slave-like conditions on pirate ships or onshore pirate rendezvous.[406] His account of Captain Condent, for example, starts with the story of
an Indian who threatens to blow up the ship after being beaten by different
members of the crew. Once the heroic Condent killed him, “the crew hacked
him into pieces, and the gunner ripping open his belly, tore out his heart,
broiled and ate it.”[407]
The relations between golden age piracy and slavery were particularly pronounced in Madagascar where the pirates “went to war [for local tribes] and
were paid in friendship and slaves. Because of their knowledge of local conditions they rapidly became intermediaries in the slave trade. Merchants who
desired to enter the trade were advised that an incoming ship could expect
to find someone ready to assist. That someone was invariably a pirate.”[408] The
center of this enterprise was the pirate trading port at St. Mary’s, established
in 1691 by the former buccaneer Adam Baldridge. Baldridge collaborated
closely with the unscrupulous New York businessman Frederick Philipse
who turned into the “chief broker for the Madagascar pirates.”[409] Captain
Johnson describes a typical trip between New York and St. Mary’s as a delivery of “wine, beer, etc.” and a return journey with “300 slaves.”[410] According to
Earle, “when the slavers returned to America they usually carried, in addition
to their shackled cargo, a score or so of pirates who now wanted to return to
civilisation after their years of looting and boozing in the Indian Ocean.”[411] In
1697, Baldridge’s post was destroyed by locals in resistance to his slave trad-
ing endeavors.
It seems that when golden age pirates took slave ships, the slaves were often
seen as part of the cargo[412] and presumably sold at the next best opportunity;
many an illegal slave trader along the West African coast apparently made
good business with the pirates, particularly those who had erected camp at
the Sierra Leone River, “men who in some part of their lives have been either
privateering, buccaneering or pirating.”[413] There are also accounts of slaves
being burned with the ships the pirates decided to destroy, most famously
when “eighty of those poor wretches” died after Bartholomew Roberts’ crew
set ablaze the Porcupine at Whydah—in Captain Johnson’s estimation, “a cruelty unparalleled.”[414]
A lot of the anti-slavery sentiments that radicals claim for the golden age
pirates seem to rest on wishful thinking. The only pirate captain who ever
explicitly condemned the slave trade was Captain Misson—almost certainly
a fictional character. There might be a misinterpretation of Marcus Rediker’s
convincing theory that the golden age pirates posed a threat to the slave trade
and “had to be exterminated in order for the new trade to flourish.”[415] There is
much reason to believe that “the defeat of Roberts and the subsequent eradication of piracy off the coast of Africa represented a turning point in the slave
trade and even in the larger history of capitalism,”[416] that “in the immediate
aftermath of the suppression of piracy, Britain established its dominance on
the western coast of Africa,” and that “in the decade of the 1730s England has
become the supreme slaving nation in the Atlantic world.”[417] The threat that
the golden age pirates posed to the slave trade, however, did not come from
the pirates’ struggle for equal rights or an early abolitionist conviction, but
from interrupting its routes, stealing its “cargo” and making its ventures more
costly. In fact, it was not even a threat that affected the slave trade per se—it
only affected the government-sponsored and -protected slave trade trying
to protect its monopoly. The golden age pirates posed a threat to the official
slave trade in about the same way in which distributors of pirated porn pose a
threat to the San Fernando Valley porn industry. This, too, might be disruptive of corporate capitalism—but it is hardly a noble cause to embrace.
Several stories do tell of good relations and mutual aid between Caribbean
buccaneers/pirates and the Indian societies of the region. According to
Pérotin-Dumon, “in 1619–20 French corsairs, returning from a failed venture that had led them through the Atlantic and the Pacific, stayed several
months with Caribs in Martinique. Their sick and starving crewmembers
were rescued and adopted by the Indians. The evocative account of their
stay reveals that it had been a current practice for several decades.”[418] Philip
Gosse tells us about a Captain Blewfield who, in the 1660s “was known to
be living among the friendly Indians at Cape Gratia de Dios on the Spanish
Main,”[419] a Captain Bournao who sailed in the same area in the early 1680s
and “was much liked by the Darien Indians,”[420] and a Captain Christian who,
likewise, “was on very friendly terms” with the Darién Indians some twenty
years later.[421] Exquemelin provides similar examples,[422] and Dampier recalls
a rather emotive episode in which his crew picks up a Mosquito Indian on
a remote Atlantic island after he had been lef behind three years earlier.[423]
Manuel Schonhorn indicates that pirate captain Francis Spriggs found refuge
among the Mosquito Indians in 1726.[424] Finally, there is the famous account
of Lionel Wafer who lived among the Cuna for several months in 1681.[425]
Other accounts paint a different picture. Dampier, for example, writes
about the Indians on the Pearl Islands: “Here are but a few, poor, naked
Indians that live here; who have been so often plundered by the privateers that
they have but litle provision; and when they see a sail they hide themselves;
otherwise ships that come here would take them, and make slaves of them;
and I have seen some of them that have been slaves.”[426] Given the sometimes
euphoric radical embrace of the logwood cuters of the Bays of Campeche
and Honduras—many of whom were part-time buccaneers and all of whom
maintained strong relations to the buccaneering community—Dampier’s
account of some of their exploits is even more troubling: “[They] often made
sallies out in small parties among the nearest Indian towns; where they plundered and brought away the Indian women to serve them at their huts, and
sent their husbands to be sold at Jamaica.”[427] Such practices seem confirmed
by Exquemelin who tells us about the Indians of Boca del Toro ending business relations with the buccaneers “because the pirates commited many
barbarous inhumanities against them, killing many of their men on a certain
occasion, and taking away their women.”[428]
Exquemelin’s writings also offer an insight into what was probably a rather
typical buccaneer atitude towards the Indians of the Caribbean. He calls
the Indians of the De las Pertas Islands “properly savages” in comparison to
“civil people” (purportedly including the buccaneers).[429] In a more general
comment, he refers to Indians as “a barbarous sort of people, totally given
to sensuality and a brutish custom of life, hating all manner of labour, and
only inclined to run from place to place, killing and making war against their
neighbours, not out of any ambition to reign, but only because they agreed
not with themselves in some common terms of language.”[430]
Radical buccaneer and pirate sympathizers seem to frequently misunderstand the occasional alliances between buccaneers and Indian communities
when interpreting them as proof of the buccaneers’ decency and openness.
Most of these alliances were based on the buccaneers and the Indians fighting
a common enemy: the Spanish. While this shared animosity may have created unions between English, French, and Dutch, it is not clear just how close
the allied communities felt or how much they respected each other. These
were opportunistic unions caused by contingent historical circumstances,[431]
and concluding that Indians in the Caribbean were treated well by the buccaneers because they assisted them in raiding Spanish towns[432] is like concluding that Indians in North America were treated well by the French because
they assisted them in their wars against the British.
Things look even more troubling when we consider that some of the Indian
communities with whom the buccaneers were most friendly, like the Cuna
or the Mosquito, apparently also assisted them in slave trading operations.
Anthropologists have suggested that among the Cuna, the “object of waging
war was evidently to take slaves”[433] (presumably primarily for their own use,
albeit it seems likely that they would have traded with Europeans), and that
“the Mosquito took prisoners to be sold as slaves to the Whites.”[434]
The occasional alliances between pirates and the native people of
Madagascar have to be seen in a similar light. They, too, were mainly fostered by pragmatic interests: many locals appreciated the pirates’ firepower
when fighting their rivals, while the pirates appreciated the supply of slaves
that such assistance promised them. However, more than once, pirates were
“commiting such outrageous acts that they came to an open rupture with the
natives.”[435] This corresponds to the situation along Africa’s west coast where
the relations between pirates and Africans mostly concentrated on trade,
often enough in slaves. Violent confrontations erupted here as well.[436]
There is also confusion about the presence of Indians on buccaneer and
pirate ships. Mosquito Indians especially seemed to have been popular companions among the buccaneers and “through the frequent converse and
familiarity these Indians have with the pirates… [they] sometimes [went] to
sea with them, and remain[ed] among them for whole years, without returning home.”[437] However, no account would give the impression that they sailed
as equal members of the crew. They might not have had the status of slaves,
but their popularity mainly seemed to rest on their qualities as superb lookouts, expert fishermen (in Dampier’s famous assessment, “one or two of them
in a ship, will maintain 100 men”[438]), and mean fighters.[439] As Peter Earle puts it: “No wonder pirates liked to have one or two of these paragons in their
crews.”[440]
The evidence is unclear about the role of Africans on pirate ships. The
observation that “‘Negroes and Molatoes’ were present on almost every
pirate ship”[441] means for many that they were integral parts of the crew. This,
however, is less evident than it may seem. Some Africans might have indeed
been full crew members (Caesar of Blackbeard’s crew is a famed example[442]), but many might have been used as laborers, some as slaves, and some
might have been simple “plunder.” The seventy-five Africans captured on
Bartholomew Roberts’ ships in 1722, for example, were not put on trial for
piracy (like all the Europeans) but rather sold into slavery.[443] This might only
indicate the prejudices of the British officials, but it more likely suggests that
most Africans on pirate ships were known to be laborers or slaves rather than
full crew members.
Even if some stories of prominent black members in buccaneer and pirate
crews are based in fact, the overall picture still seems to point to these as
exceptions rather than the anti-racist rule; certainly, there are no popular
images of black pirate captains. Marcus Rediker’s suggestion that “Black
pirates also made up part of the pirates’ vanguard, the most trusted and fearsome members of the crew who boarded a prospective prize,”[444] and Kenneth
J. Kinkor’s claim that “Blacks are accordingly found as leaders of predominantly white crews”[445] are therefore surprising. Rather, we might concur with
David Cordingly, who writes: “The pirates shared the same prejudices as other
white men in the Western world. They regarded black slaves as commodities
to be bought and sold, and they used them as slaves on board their ships for
the hard and menial jobs: working the pumps, going ashore for wood and
water, washing and cleaning, and acting as servants to the pirate captain.”[446]
This is not to say, however, that the complex history of piracy and race contains no encouraging examples. Hugh Rankin’s assertion that pirates “did not
seem too concerned about color differences”[447] might be very well true, not
least because of the undeniable truth that “shared feelings of marginality are a
solvent which can ameliorate racial…barriers.”[448] Kinkor’s assessment that “it
would seem that the deck of a pirate ship was the most empowering place for
blacks within the eighteenth-century white man’s world” rings equally true.[449]
It can finally be assumed with Frank Sherry that “blacks, who usually feared
a return to slavery even more than they feared death, were often far more
willing than white pirates to fight and die in defense of their ships and their
freedom.”[450]
The potential prospect of living a relatively free life on a pirate ship would
have been inspiring for many slaves on the Caribbean Islands and a motivation for revolt. Apparently, authorities in the American colonies did indeed
fear alliances of pirates and revolting slaves. Frank Sherry tells of at least
one occasion: “The largest recorded mass escape of black slaves at this time
took place in Martinique, where fify blacks, supposedly stirred up by a white
man, had risen against their French master and had fled the island ‘to seek a
career in piracy.’”[451] Still, there might be not enough reason for the enthusiasm
expressed in the following conclusion—even if it truly was the perfect pirate
answer to the ship allegory laid out by Paul Gilroy:
Piracy clearly did not operate according to the black codes enacted
and enforced in Atlantic slave societies. Some slaves and free blacks
found aboard the pirate ship freedom, something that, outside of the
maroon communities, was in short supply in the pirates’ main theater
of operations, the Caribbean and the American South. Indeed, pirate
ships themselves might be considered multiracial maroon communities, in which rebels used the high seas as others used the mountains
and the jungles.[452]
Regardless of the exact levels of racism and anti-racism among the
Caribbean buccaneers and pirates, and regardless of whether it is really apt
to call them maroon communities,[453] there is one aspect that such optimistic
estimations will always cloud: no mater how subversive, how rebellious or
how countercultural the buccaneers and pirates might have been, they were
still part of a colonial enterprise of oppression, enslavement, and genocide.
This cannot be denied, no mater the angle of analysis. Whatever their exact
role, the buccaneers and pirates were overwhelmingly of European origin
and, along with their fellow European setlers, took possession of lands and
resources that they stole from other people. This is true not only in the case
of those who, like many buccaneers, were directly involved in the European
colonial expansion, but also of those who, like many golden age pirates, sabotaged certain aspects of it. A history of genocide still haunts the Caribbean—
and so does the buccaneers’ and pirates’ part in it.
*** 3.5. Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and a Co-opted Myth: Piracy and Gender
As stated earlier, the buccaneer community preceding the golden age pirates
was almost exclusively male. Some historians have even called the buccaneers
“woman-haters” to whom “women and comfort spelt sofness and defeat,”[454]
and who were “loathing the sight of a kirtle as intensely as any cloistered
monk.”[455] While such an assumption seems surely exaggerated, the following
description might, unfortunately, come close to the truth: “For them women
had but the single atraction of their sex; they were playthings to be used and
cast aside.”[456] Ulrike Klausmann and Marion Meinzerin, authors of Women
Pirates, agree: “Their atitude towards women was also no different from that
of the other invaders. For the buccaneers, women were simply goods to be
robbed, traded, or shared in ‘brotherly’ fashion.”[457]
Whatever the individual buccaneers’ atitudes towards women were, their
community remained exclusively male throughout the 17th century and this
exclusivity extended into the pirates’ golden age. We know of exactly two
female pirates who sailed on golden age pirate ships (even though there might
have been more who remained undetected): Mary Read and Anne Bonny.
While the story of Read and Bonny is definitely an inspiring story of liberation, the political credit often seems misplaced. It has been suggested repeatedly that their story proved the potential that pirate society offered to individuals—“even women”—to liberate themselves. Had it been up to the pirates,
however, Read and Bonny would not have even been allowed on their ships,
and their presence did not indicate a subversion of patriarchal norms. They
had to enter pirate society disguised as men and had to maintain their right to
be part of it by “acting as men.” How much they seemed to identify with this
role is piercingly expressed in Anne Bonny’s comment on the execution of
her former lover, John “Calico Jack” Rackam: “she was sorry to see him there,
but if he had fought like a man, he need not have been hanged like a dog.”[458]
Mary Read and Anne Bonny’s story confirms that “just as freedom meant
noble status for a man, it meant male status for a woman”[459]—among golden
age pirates as much (or more so?) as in other communities. What makes their
story a story of liberation is the remarkable strength and perseverance they
demonstrated in a male-dominated world. In other words, Mary Read and
Anne Bonny owe their achievements to themselves and not to pirate society.
Yes, they “proved that a woman could find liberty beneath the Jolly Roger,”[460]
but this in spite of, not thanks to the pirates. In this sense, assertions that
make them part of a “utopian experiment beyond the reach of the traditional
powers of family, state, and capital”[461] are misleading and suggest an unmerited progressiveness of pirate communities while diminishing the feat of two
determined women who defied the odds.
Read and Bonny’s story is special—and beter known than those of other
women defying the odds by passing as men—because of its sensationalist
pirate frame. Other than that, there is nothing characteristically piratical
about it, not even the respect they gained from fellow pirates for their “man-
like” qualities; everyone respected them for that. Tey have created a “many-
sided and long-lasting legacy”[462] within mainstream society because “Anne
Bonny’s life at sea, in particular, seems to have followed the career of the
archetypal female warrior as a ‘high-metled heroine who disguises herself
as a soldier or sailor and goes to war for her beloved.’”[463] Along these lines,
Marcus Rediker sums up the two most compelling aspects of the story of
Mary Read and Anne Bonny well when he writes that “their very lives and
subsequent popularity represented a subversive commentary on the gender
relations of their own times as well as ‘a powerful symbol of unconventional
womanhood’ for the future.”[464]
Aside from the glamorous story of Read and Bonny, the search for other
images of women in the context of golden age piracy seems to prove John C.
Appleby’s remark that studies of individual heroines “inflate the importance
of women’s role in piracy and piratical activity.”[465] Some individual examples
notwithstanding,[466] there seems to be no real life pirate “named Pussycat, who
was truly the meanest of all the pirates.”[467] The most common connection
between piracy and the fate of women is that “wherever piracy flourished so
did the business of prostitution.”[468]
The buccaneer diaries as well as Captain Johnson’s General History abound
with tales of women being mistreated and raped. Exquemelin tells us about
the Cape of Gracias à Dios: “The custom of the island is such that, when any
pirates arrive there, every one has the liberty to buy for himself an Indian
woman, at the price of a knife, or any old axe, wood-bill or hatchet.”[469] Captain
Johnson reports that Edward England’s crew “forced [women] in a barbarous
manner to their lusts;”[470] that after Tomas Anstis’ crew had taken a female
prisoner, “twenty-one of them forced the poor creature successfully, afterwards broke her back and flung her into the sea;”[471] that after two girls had been
taken by members of John Gow’s crew, they “were hurried onboard, and used
in a most inhumane manner;”[472] and that after Tomas Howard had retired
from pirate life and married an (Asian) Indian woman, “being a morose ill-
natured fellow, and using her ill, he was murdered by her relations.”[473]
These stories correspond with the picture of the general social traits of the
buccaneers and pirates. Common sense suggests that David Cordingly is right
in claiming that “in the tough, all-male regime of the pirate community, many
of the men cultivated a macho image which was expressed in hard drinking, coarse language, threatening behaviour and casual cruelty.”[474] Ulrike
Klausmann and Marion Meinzerin remark that “the band of buccaneers were
no less racist or sexist than the rest of the world in the eighteenth century.”[475]
Despite all this, the world of the golden age pirates does hold a fascination
for many radical women. Some historians provide curious explanations of
this phenomenon, first and foremost David Cordingly:
As all women know and some men can never understand, the most
interesting heroes of literature and history have always been flawed
characters.…So it is with the pirates. They are seen as cruel, domineering, drunken, heartless villains, but it is these very vices which
make them atractive. A degenerate and debauched man is a challenge
which many women find hard to resist.[476]
A more palatable theory is that the appeal of the pirates’ reach for freedom
is strong enough to shater the gender conventions of the pirates themselves.
This does not make the real pirate community of the golden age any beter
than it was; but, as Klausmann and Meinzerin tell us in the opening pages
of Women Pirates, it allows a group of radical feminists to occupy a luxury
yacht under the Jolly Roger. This is a perfect example of the radical potential
of golden age piracy that this book tries to highlight, a potential that lies in
relating to the anti-authoritarian and rebellious spirit that lies at golden age
piracy’s core, elevating it beyond its cultural context, and situating it within
contemporary struggles. In this sense, there are without doubt many women
pirates out there, some certainly “leaping about and looking for booze and
doing whatever pirate girls do regardless of what they’re supposed to be
doing.”[477]
*** 3.6. On Sodomites and Prostitutes: Piracy and Sexuality
Given the all-male character of the Caribbean buccaneer and pirate communities, lively discussions among historians about the frequency of homosexual encounters abound. Tese were further fueled by the matelotage system of
the Hispaniola and Tortuga buccaneers in which two men united to live and
share their possessions together. This system must not be over-interpreted,
however. Exquemelin’s original description of matelotage reads as follows:
It is a general and solemn custom amongst them all to seek out for a
comrade or companion, whom we may call partner, in their fortunes,
with whom they join the whole stock of what they possess, towards
a mutual and reciprocal gain. This is done also by articles drawn and
signed on both sides, according to what has been agreed between
them. Some of these constitute their surviving companion absolute
heir to what is lef by the death of the first of the two. Others, if they
be married, leave their estates to their wives and children; others to
other relations.[478]
This sounds mostly like a sophisticated, yet predominantly pragmatic
union between buddies, and not much like “a kind of homosexual union.”[479]
In fact, some matelots were known to share their wives after women arrived
on Tortuga in 1666 (they were French prostitutes meant to be bought as
wives by the buccaneers—this was part of a scheme to “civilize” them). Cruz
Apestegui relates an amusing account of the event:
The men had formed a semicircle on the beach; many had shaved.
The women were brought to land in groups of ten.…They did not
dare look at the men… and the men seemed indifferent. Suddenly,
one of the brothers stepped out and, leaning on his rifle, began a long
ceremonious, grandiloquent speech. He spoke of good behaviour, of
honesty, of loyalty and even of redemption. He ended by telling the
women that since they had chosen this line of conduct they should
continue at all costs and correct their bad instincts. The sale took
place without incident.[480]
According to Angus Konstam, the matelotage system died out in the
1670s.[481]
This, of course, does not answer the question of whether homosexual
encounters among Caribbean buccaneers and pirates were more frequent
than those within other all-male societies, like prison populations, army
units, or crews of common sailors. In his candidly titled Sodomy and the Pirate
Tradition, B. R. Burg strongly argues for the existence of a buccaneer culture
(extending into the period of golden age piracy) in which “homosexual contact” was not only “the ordinary form of sexual expression,”[482] but “the only
form of sexual expression engaged in,”[483] while “heterosexual contact” was
considered “a genuinely exotic manner of sexual expression.”[484]
The opinions of other historians on Burg’s suggestion are rather uniform.
David Cordingly diplomatically states that “it is an interesting theory and
there may be some truth in it, but there is litle evidence to prove things
one way or the other.”[485] Peter Earle writes that “the argument rests on the
fanciful deduction from the undoubted fact that most pirate ships were all-
male institutions, and no real evidence is given to support the assertion.”[486]
Robert C. Ritchie states that “although I agree that homosexuality existed,
there is too much evidence of pirate heterosexuality in too many sources for
me to accept this thesis.”[487] And Hans Turley, who also exploits the homo-
erotic theme in his Rum, Sodomy and the Lash, concludes that “the evidence
for piratical sodomy is so sparse as to be almost nonexistent.”[488]
All this is rather persuasive. Burg’s theory, while alluring, offers little in
terms of evidence and some of its socio-psychological considerations are rather
dubious. There is no reason to believe that the ratio between homosexuals on
the one hand and hetero- or bisexual men engaging in homosexual practices
on the other would have been significantly higher among the Caribbean buccaneers and pirates than in other all-male communities. As P. K. Kemp and
Christopher Lloyd mater-of-factly put it: “Since cruises often lasted a year or
more, homosexuality was common. Such was the custom of the coast.”[489]
Further, the accounts that reach us of the buccaneers’ and pirates’ sexual
life ashore indicate a predominantly heterosexual orientation. Hans Turley
quotes from a 1740 History of Jamaica: “Wine and women drained their
[the buccaneers’] wealth to such a degree that in a litle time some of them
became reduced to beggary. They have been known to spend 2 or 3000 pieces
of eight in one night; and one of them gave a strumpet 500 to see her naked.”[490]
Cruz Apestegui says that the famed buccaneer captain “[Henry] Morgan
blamed the prostitutes for the state of poverty in which his men lived.”[491]
Captain Johnson speaks of Blackbeard’s crew and the “liberties he and his
companions often took with the wives and daughters of the planters,”[492] of
Edward England’s and Olivier La Buse’s crews “making free with the negro
women,”[493] of Captain Cornelius’ crew falling ill because of “being too free
with the women,”[494] and of Captain North’s crew living in Madagascar as
“polygamists.”[495]
Even if the buccaneer and pirate crews did not include an above average
number of homosexuals, however, the acceptance of same-sex encounters
within them seemed much stronger than in comparable groups. While “the
Royal Navy periodically conducted savage antibuggery campaigns to repress
homosexual practices among men who might often be confined at sea for
years,”[496] “it is… significant that in no pirate articles are there any rules against
homosexuality.”[497] Even if the occasional maltreatment of a pirate engaging in
homosexual acts is reported,[498] it might very well be true that “life in the pirate
setlements offered greater latitude of individual behavior than anywhere
else.”[499] It might also be true that for homosexual exploits, the pirate crews
were “probably just about the safest place you could be.”[500] In this sense, there
are implications of Burg’s theory that seem convincing: “Among the men of
this seafaring community, there was no need to hide sexual orientation, and
the anxieties, psychological disruptions, and psychopathological difficulties that often result from this type of guilt and repression did not emerge.”[501]
And:
The almost universal homosexual involvement among pirates meant
homosexual practices were neither disturbed, perverted, exotic, nor
uniquely desirable among them, and the mechanisms for defending
and perpetuating such practices, those things that set the modern
homosexual apart from heterosexual society, were never necessary.
The male engaging in sexual activity with another male aboard a pirate
ship in the West Indies three centuries past was simply an ordinary
member of his community, completely socialized and acculturated.[502]
According to Michel Foucault, the general history of homosexuality in
European society begins in the early 18th century (right around the golden
age of piracy) with homosexuality becoming “one of the forms of sexuality
when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior
androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary
aberration; the homosexual was now a species.”[503] Foucault concludes that
it is the agency of sex that we must break away from, if we aim—
through a tactical reversal of the various mechanisms of sexuality—to
counter the grips of power with the claims of bodies, pleasures, and
knowledges, in their multiplicity and their possibility of resistance.
The rallying point for the counteratack against the deployment of
sexuality ought not to be sex-desire, but bodies and pleasures.[504]
*** 3.7. Escaping Discipline and “Biopolitics”: The Pirate Body
If, as Foucault suggests, the control exerted over the individuals in European
societies since the 18th century is to a significant degree exerted as a control
over their bodies, it is worth comparing the body of the pirate with the body
of the controlled and disciplined European worker. This comparison becomes
particularly revealing when tying Foucault’s analysis to Marcus Rediker’s
descriptions of the merchant ship.
With respect to the control of the proletariat, Foucault points out that
“there had to be established a whole technology of control,” namely “schooling, the politics of housing, public hygiene, institutions of relief and insurance, the general medicalization of the population, in short, an entire administrative and technical machinery.”[505] An important part of this control was the regulation of space:
Disciplinary space tends to be divided into as many sections as there
are bodies or elements to be distributed. One must eliminate the
effects of imprecise distributions, the uncontrolled disappearance
of individuals, their diffuse circulation, their unusable and dangerous coagulation; it was a tactic of anti-desertion, anti-vagabondage,
anti-concentration. Its aim was to establish presences and absences,
to know where and how to locate individuals, to set up useful communications, to interrupt others, to be able at each moment to supervise
the conduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculate its
qualities or merits. It was a procedure, therefore, aimed at knowing,
mastering and using. Discipline organizes an analytical space.[506]
Foucault calls this process focusing on the control of the individual an
“anatomo-politics of the human body.” [507] This politics is soon accompanied—
and eventually surpassed—by a “bio-politics of the population,”[508] described
by Foucault as
something new emerging in the second half of the eighteenth
century: a new technology of power, but this time it is not disciplinary.…Unlike discipline, which is addressed to bodies, the new
nondisciplinary power is applied not to man-as-body but to the living
man, to man-as-species. To be more specific, I would say that discipline tries to rule a multiplicity of men to the extent that their multiplicity can and must be dissolved into individual bodies that can be
kept under surveillance, trained, used, and, if need be, punished. And
that the new technology that is being established is addressed to a
multiplicity of men, not to the extent that they are nothing more than
their individual bodies, but to the extent that they form, on the contrary, a global mass that is affected by overall processes characteristic
of birth, death, production, illness, and so on. So after a first seizure
of power over the body in an individualizing mode, we have a second
seizure of power that is not individualizing but, if you like, massifying,
that is directed not at man-as-body but at man-as-species. After the
anatomo-politics of the human body established in the course of the
eighteenth century, we have, at the end of that century, the emergence
of something that is no longer an anatomo-politics of the human body,
but what I would call a ‘biopolitics’ of the human race.[509]
Marcus Rediker’s brilliant study of seamen culture in the 17th and 18th
centuries, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, provides many examples
that confirm Foucault’s theory. Rediker illustrates the original disciplining
of individuals in the context of the 17th-century “expansion of the world capitalist economy and its need for new types of authority and discipline” when
pointing out
that any worker who came from a workshop, a farm, or an estate to
the ship entered not only one of the great technological wonders of
the day but a new set of productive relations as well. The seaman was
confined within a spatially limited laboring environment, forced to
cultivate regular habits and keep regular hours, and place in cooperative relationships with both other workers and the supervisors of his
labor. In all of these ways, the seaman’s experience foreshadowed
that of the factory worker during the Industrial Revolution. New
paterns of authority and discipline were crucial to the process of
industrialization.[510]
Confirming Foucault’s timeline, Rediker writes “that questions of author-
ity and labor discipline at sea took on special significance after 1690.”[511] He
also describes the gradual shif from anatomo-politics to bio-politics within
the authoritarian institution of the ship: “The ship was a ‘total institution’
in which the captain had formal powers over the labor process, the dispensing of food, the maintenance of health, and general social life on board the
ship. Such formal and informal controls invested the captain with near-
dictatorial powers and made the ship one of the earliest totalitarian work
environments.”[512] And: “Control over physical punishment and food equaled
a measure of control over health, a mater of special importance among men
who notoriously suffered from yellow fever, malaria, dysentery, and scurvy. A
fully documented case from 1731 reveals how these issues of discipline, food,
and health intertwined in an intricate spiral of power and authority.”[513]
Through various shifs and modifications, these processes have continued
to define our politics to this day, leading Giorgio Agamben to conclude that
“because politics in our age had been entirely transformed into bio-politics
was it possible for politics to be constituted as totalitarian politics to a degree
hitherto unknown.”[514] Adding that, “from this perspective, the camp—as
the pure, absolute, and impassable biopolitical space (insofar as it is founded
solely on the state of exception)—will appear as the hidden paradigm of
the political space of modernity,”[515] the subversive imagery of the pirate ship
comes alive. While as a “total institution” any ship can resemble a camp, as
an archetype, it remains opposed to any such notion: it indicates movement,
floating, the crossing of borders; it defies the “disciplining” of space. In this
context, the organization of the pirate ship differed radically from the rigid
regime on navy and merchant ships by all accounts. Instead of disciplined
individual sailors assigned to certain times, places, and duties, we encounter a wild variety of bodies and “a regime that was relaxed and easy-going.”[516]
Christopher Hill describes the difference as one “between a factory and a co-
operative,”[517] which gives yet another boost to the pirate ship’s anti-disciplinary and anti-bio-political symbolism. While “Western civilization has had
persistent trouble in honoring the dignity of the body and diversity of human
bodies,”[518] it seems that the golden age pirates escaped this flaw.
*** 3.8. Eye Patches, Hook Hands, and Wooden Legs: Piracy and Disability
It must be one of the most notable achievements of the Caribbean buccaneers
and pirates that they are about the only communities in Western history that
have managed to make physical disabilities look cool.[519] Many kids have gone
through strenuous efforts to sport peg legs and hook hands at Halloween,
while the much easier applied eye patch is a perennial costume favorite.
Even though the presence of peg legs, hook hands and eye patches was
certainly exaggerated by popular representations of the pirates in the 20th
century, there are indications that they were a fairly common reality among
buccaneers and pirates. Some successful buccaneer captains, like the Dutch
Cornelis Corneliszoon Jol or the French François le Clerc, wore peg legs. So
did the pirate vouching for the captured Captain Mackra in one of the best
known episodes from Johnson’s General History,[520] and William Phillips, a
pirate standing trial in Boston in 1724.[521] Peter Earle also cites documents that
mention one “John Fenn, ‘a one-handed man,’”[522] and “‘Domingo Fort, a lame
man whom the Court deem’d an object of pity.’”[523] Furthermore, the declaration of loyalty that Captain Tew received from his crew in the General History
seems telling: “A gold chain, or a wooden leg, we’ll stand by you.”[524]
The implications of readily embracing physical disabilities in the pirate
context are not all rosy of course. The main reason that pirates lift disability beyond deficiency is that they render it as proof of manliness, courage,
and audacity. As documented in the eye-opening volume Disabled Veterans in
History, this has always distinguished disabled war veterans—“often… sentimentally lionized in the abstract as heroes”[525]—from other disabled men and
women in Western societies to the point of causing rifs in the movement for
disability rights (especially since disabled veterans were often not perceived
as the recipients of welfare but of “a reward for… service”[526]). Obviously, this
points to a political ambivalence. While the acceptance of disability itself
must be uncompromisingly welcomed, the underlying values must not. The
2005 documentary film Murderball, dedicated to disabled quad rugby players, strikingly exemplifies the problem: while the players’ atitudes towards
their disabilities are tremendously uplifing, the film’s underlying values
of traditional masculinity are deeply troubling. What remains nonetheless
remarkable in the pirate context is that those who did suffer a permanent disability were often provided for by their crew. While the articles of the buccaneer crews already included payments for injuries that led to permanent
disabilities, these payments were compensations rather than actual social
service. The golden age pirate crews introduced the later. Article number
six of the pirate crew sailing under Captain George Lowther promised not
only compensating payment for “he that shall have the misfortune to lose
a limb” but also to “remain with the company as long as he shall think fit.”[527]
Even pirate historians beref of all romanticism concede: “While injured
naval ratings were cast ashore to beg or starve, pirates looked after their own.
Pirate codes were revolutionary social charters for their time.”[528] In Marcus
Rediker’s words, the golden age pirates “anticipated a modern idea that many
consider one of the most humane of our times: creating their own social security system.”[529]
An exciting, yet enormously challenging project would be to relate the discussion of pirate homosexuality to that of pirate disability, providing a fascinating case study for the relatively new field of Crip Theory whose most
prominent exponents declare that “compulsory heterosexuality is contingent
on compulsory able-bodiedness, and vice versa.”[530] If, as Robert McRuer suggests in Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability, “Crip Theory
comes along to show that another world is possible,”[531] then maybe the golden
age pirates provided first glimpses in this respect. The subversive dimensions
of the acceptance of physical disability within their ranks seem clear. While
“Western nations embraced capitalism, a system predicated on able-bodied
ideals,”[532] the pirates’ embraced plunder and zero-production, a system predicated on multi-bodied ideals.
The difference between the two arguably best known disabled characters
in the history of Anglo-American literature, Louis Stevenson’s Long John
Silver and Herman Melville’s Ahab, is striking. Long John Silver, though
hardened and fearsome, is an entertaining and cheerful fellow. Ahab is biter
and dedicates his entire life to revenge on the creature he holds responsible
for his disability. Rosemarie Garland Tomson, author of the groundbreaking Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and
Literature, locates Ahab’s anger in the fact that, in his mind, he is “not a self-
made man, but a whale-made man.”[533] This makes him “the quintessential
disabled figure in American literature”[534] whose “disabled body exposes the
illusion of autonomy, self-government, and self-determination and underpins
the fantasy of absolute able-bodiedness.”[535]
If there is truth in this analysis, it would render the acceptance of physical
disability among the golden age pirates a simultaneous rejection of this illusion and an acknowledgment of our individual incompleteness and dependence on others—a truly revolutionary concept in the face of the cuthroat
individualism that has become the ideological foundation of Western life.
** 4. “Ni dieu, ni maître”
Golden Age Piracy and Politics
*** 4.1. From “Brethren of the Coast” to a “Commonwealth of Outlaws”: Pirate Organization
A lot has been writen about the egalitarianism and democratic character—or “the defiant, stateless, peripatetic collectivity”[536]—of the Caribbean
buccaneer and pirate communities. Even non-radical historians concede
that the “pirate communities were…democracies. A hundred years before
the French Revolution, the pirate companies were run on lines in which liberty, equality and brotherhood were the rule rather than the exception.”[537]
The buccaneer’s society has been called “the most democratic institution in
the world of the seventeenth century,”[538] and “essentially communistic in its
organisation.”[539] Maritime metaphors like “floating democracy”[540] or “floating
republic”[541] abound.
According to Jenifer G. Marx, “the Tortuga buccaneers began to call themselves the Brethren of the Coast about 1640. To become a member of this
democratic confraternity a man vowed to subscribe to a strict code called the
Custom of the Coast.”[542] It is worth quoting Exquemelin’s version of the code
at length:
They [the buccaneers] agree upon certain articles, which are put in
writing, by way of bond or obligation, which every one is bound to
observe, and all of them, or the chief, set their hands to it. Herein they
specify, and set down very distinctly, what sums of money each particular person ought to have for that voyage, the fund of all the payments
being the common stock of what is goten by the whole expedition; for
otherwise it is the same law, among these people, as with other pirates.
No prey, no pay. In the first place, therefore, they mention how much
the captain ought to have for his ship. Next the salary of the carpenter, or shipwright, who careened, mended and rigged the vessel. This
commonly amounts to one hundred or an hundred and fify pieces of
eight, being, according to the agreement, more or less. Afterwards for
provisions and victualling they draw out of the same stock about two
hundred pieces of eight. Also a competent salary for the surgeon and
his chest of medicaments, which usually is rated at two hundred or
two hundred and fify pieces of eight. Lastly they stipulate in writing what recompense or reward each one ought to have, that is either
wounded or maimed in his body, suffering the loss of any limb, by that
voyage. Thus they order for the loss of a right arm six hundred pieces
of eight, or six slaves; for the loss of a left arm five hundred pieces of
eight, or five slaves; for a right leg five hundred pieces of eight, or five
slaves; for the left leg four hundred pieces of eight, or four slaves; for
an eye one hundred pieces of eight, or one slave; for a finger of the
hand the same reward as for the eye. All which sums of money, as I
have said before, are taken out of the capital sum or common stock of
what is got by their piracy. For a very exact and equal dividend is made
of the remainder among them all. Yet herein they have also regard to
qualities and places. This the captain, or chief commander, is alloted
five or six portions to what the ordinary seamen have; the master’s
mate only two; and other officers proportionate to their employment.
After whom they draw equal parts from the highest even to the lowest
mariner, the boys not being omited. For even these draw half a share,
by reason that, when they happen to take a beter vessel than their
own, it is the duty of the boys to set fire to the ship or boat wherein
they are, and then retire to the prize they have taken. They observe
amongst themselves very good orders. For the prizes they take, it is
severely prohibited to every one to usurp anything in particular to
themselves. Hence all they take is equally divided, according to what
has been said before. Yea, they make a solemn oath to each other not
to abscond, or conceal the least thing they find among prey. If afterwards any one is found unfaithful, who has contravened the said oath,
immediately he is separated and turned out of the society.[543]
The most noteworthy aspects of this account seem to be: 1. the collective and egalitarian character of formulating the articles and agreeing on
them; 2. the relative equality in shares; 3. the communal arrangement of
provisions; 4. the compensation for injuries; 5. the high value put on honesty
and justice; 6. the punishment by exclusion; 7. the mentioning of slaves as
currency.
What distinguishes the buccaneers’ articles most notably from those of
the golden age pirates are the division of shares (they would become more
equitable in the golden age), and the temporal character of the contract that
remains bound to a certain expedition rather than constituting a design for
possible long-term company. The listing of slaves as potential currency hints
at a general problem of the buccaneer society (later—albeit under different circumstances—reproduced by the golden age pirates): while “brotherhood” and solidarity are emphasized among the buccaneers, others remain
excluded from their moral universe. This, however, does not change the fact
that “the buccaneer vessels were autonomous units operating on a democratic regime,”[544] and that “there should…be no doubt that, where a sailor on
a ‘normal’ ship was subject to a despotic regime, among the Brethren of the
Coast he was considered a man among equals with a full vote in the adoption
of decisions.”[545]
Many of the buccaneers’ principles later got translated into the articles of
the golden age pirates. Captain Johnson lists three detailed sets of articles:
those of the companies of Captain Bartholomew Roberts, Captain George
Lowther, and Captain John Phillips. Johnson writes that the articles of
Captain Phillips were “taken verbatim,”[546] while those of Bartholomew Roberts
only constitute “the substance of the articles, as taken from the pirates’ own
informations,”[547] since, before being captured, “they had taken care to throw
overboard the original they had signed and sworn to.”[548] There is no specification with respect to the origins of Captain Lowther’s articles, quoted here:
i. The Captain is to have two full shares; the master is to have one
share and a half; the doctor, mate, gunner and boatswain, one share
and a quarter.
ii. He that shall be found guilty of taking up any unlawful weapon on
board the privateer or any prize by us taken, so as to strike or abuse
one another in any regard, shall suffer what punishment the Captain
and majority of the Company shall think fit.
iii. He that shall be found guilty of cowardice in the rime of engagement shall suffer what punishment the Captain and the Majority shall think fit.
iv. If any gold, jewels, silver etc., be found on board of any prize or
prizes, to the value of a piece-of-eight, and the finder do not deliver it
to the quartermaster in the space of 24 hours, shall suffer what punishment the Captain and the Majority shall think fit.
v. He that is found guilty of gaming, or defrauding another to the
value of a shilling, shall suffer what punishment the Captain and
majority of the Company shall think fit.
vi. He that shall have the misfortune to lose a limb, in time of
engagement, shall have the sum of ₤150 sterling, and remain with the
company as long as he shall think fit.
vii. Good quarter to be given when called for.
viii. He that sees a sail first, shall have the best pistol or small arm on
board her.[549]
All of these articles are confirmed by those of Phillips and Roberts. Their
articles are more specific, however, when it comes to the sort of punishment handed out—“death or marooning”—and include some interesting
details not found among Lowthers’: Phillips’ articles announce punishment
for those who sign up with another pirate ship “without the consent of our
company,” for those who “strike another whilst these articles are in force,” for
those who “smoke tobacco in the hold without a cap to [the] pipe, or carry a
candle lighted without a lanthorn,” and for those who “shall not keep [their]
arms clean, fit for an engagement.” They end with the threat that “if at any
time you meet with a prudent woman, that man that offers to meddle with
her, without her consent, shall suffer present death”—a remark interesting
as much for its apparent necessity and the no-nonsense punishment as for
the troubling specification of “prudent” women.[550] Roberts’ articles stipulate
the need “to keep [the] piece, pistols and cutlass clean and fit for service,” and
include some further specifics, especially with respect to the democratic and
communal structures on board: “Every man has a vote in affairs of moment;
has equal title to the fresh provisions or strong liquor at any time seized, and
[may] use them at pleasure unless a scarcity…make it necessary for the good
of all to vote a retrenchment.” The articles also include a punishment for thef
from a fellow company member that is reminiscent of the buccaneers’ original practice: “sliting the ears and nose of him that was guilty, and set him
on shore, not in an uninhabited place but somewhere where he was sure to
encounter hardships.” Furthermore, “no boy or woman” was allowed among
the men, and “if any man were found seducing the later sex, and carried her
to sea disguised, he was to suffer death.” Also, “lights and candles [were] to be
put out at eight o’clock” and “if any of the crew after that hour still remained
inclined to drinking, they were to do it on the open deck.” (A measure, as
Captain Johnson comments, that meant to “give a check to [the pirates’]
debauchs” but “proved ineffectual.”) “The musicians,” finally, were “to have
rest on the sabbath day, but the other six days and nights none, without special favour.”[551]
Overall, the articles indicate a radically egalitarian and democratic community—a characteristic that to many defines the backbone of the golden age pirates’ social experiment. It is worth quoting Robert C. Ritchie’s interpretation of this at length:
The marauders wandered the seas, dividing and coalescing like
amoebas. They lived in small self-contained democracies that usually
operated by majority vote, with the minority asked (or forced) to leave
in order to keep the remaining crew in happy consensus. The marauders raided fishing vessels, towns, ships—virtually anything ashore
or afloat—in search of supplies or loot. Every so often they would
return to a safe port to sell their goods and enjoy themselves. Shortly
thereafter they would go back to sea again. Many men remained at
sea for years, or retired to small setlements in out-of-the-way places,
or else crossed into non-European societies. In this sense they were
marginal men freed from social conventions, living beyond restraint
except for the few rules they set for themselves. Few ever returned
home again; the sea, hunger, thirst, disease, and fighting all took their
toll and most of the survivors preferred the free life of the pirate to
the restrictive conventions of European society. By the end of the seventeenth century the deep-sea marauders were increasing in number
and extending their range. As we shall see, changing values, prosperity, and defense needs made piracy less and less atractive to officials
and merchants, who gradually withdrew their sponsorship. The field
was left to marauders, who continued to cluster around the periphery
of empire.[552]
One important aspect of the golden age pirates’ organization—also in
comparison to that of the buccaneers—was the role of the quartermaster,
atractively described by Captain Johnson: “The quartermaster’s opinion is
like the mufti’s among the Turks. The captain can undertake nothing which
the quartermaster does not approve. We may say the quartermaster is a humble imitation of the Roman Tribune of the people; he speaks for and looks
after the interest of the crew.”[553] He was also appointed by the crew. A court
transcript of a pirate trial tells of one John Archer who, “being asked how
he came to be quartermaster, answered that the company thought him the
fitest man for a quartermaster and so chose him.”[554] It seems that the pirate
crews made a conscious effort to, first, reduce the considerable gap that still
existed between captain and crew among the buccaneers, and, secondly, keep
the captain in check (almost like one of Clastres’ “mechanisms” employed
by Indian communities to avoid the formation of authoritarian chiefdom).
According to Joel Baer, the encroachment on the captain’s privileges was also
expressed in the physical features of the pirate ship itself: “The upper work on
a pirate ship was sometimes removed, cabin and all, primarily to improve its
agility but also to eliminate class differences among its crew.”[555]
All important decisions were made by the pirates’ council. Marcus Rediker
suggests that “the decisions the council made were sacrosanct. Even the
boldest captain dared not challenge its power. Indeed, councils removed a
number of captains and other officers from their positions.”[556] Rediker also
illustrates the democratic founding moments of a pirate company: “In their
founding moment, after a mutiny or when the crew of an overcrowded vessel
split and formed a new pirate ship, the crew came together in a council to
elect their captain, draw up their articles, and declare to be true to each other
and their flag, all amid merriment, festivity, eating, drinking, and the firing
of cannon.”[557]
The versions of the pirate articles that existed on different ships appeared
so similar in essence that they indeed constituted a common golden age
pirate culture or, in Frank Sherry’s words, a commonwealth: “Because of the
similarity of these ships’ articles, pirates—like the citizens of any commonwealth—always shared a general understanding of what was acceptable and
unacceptable behavior, no mater what port they might be visiting or what
ship they might be serving on.”[558] This, without doubt, contributed to the
strong sense of community shared across the various golden age pirate companies. For one, “meeting brother pirates suspended their sense of isolation.”[559]
But there was more to it: “There was the joy of meeting another pirate, saluting him with the great guns and celebrating in days of ‘mutual civilities’ the
solidarity of the pirate community, ‘l’ensemble du peuple pirate,’ in its war
against all the world.”[560] Marcus Rediker sums up this sense of pirate solidarity in Villains of All Nations:
Pirates did not prey on one another. Rather, they consistently showed
solidarity for each other, a highly developed group loyalty. Here I turn
from the external social relations of piracy to the internal in order to
examine this solidarity for their ‘fellow creatures’ and the collectivistic ethos it expressed. Pirates had a profound sense of community.
They showed a recurring willingness to join forces at sea and in port,
even when the various crews were strangers to each other.[561]
Frank Sherry, in his usual dramatic manner, suggests that “in the course
of their war, fought over millions of square miles of ocean from Madagascar
to the Bahamas to the steamy west coast of Africa, the pirate outlaws became
fused into a loose-knit but powerful confederacy—a rough-and-ready republic of rebels, robbers, and rovers;”[562] a “true ‘Republic of Rogues’”[563] whose
members “met each other again and again, on ships and in safe ports, working
together and drifing apart.”[564]
Marcus Rediker has done formidable work on tracing this community in
more detail. He comes to the conclusion that about 4,000 pirates roamed the
sea during the golden age’s heyday from 1716 to 1726, with about 1,500–2,400
sailing in about 20 to 25 ships at a time. [565] Most of these, as an impressive chart
in Villains of all Nations illustrates,[566] were in some concrete way connected
to one another through shared experiences as crew members or amicable
splits of pirate companies. According to Rediker, “it was primarily within
and through this network that the social organization of the pirate ship took
on its significance, transmiting and preserving customs and meanings, and
helping to structure and perpetuate the pirates’ social world.”[567]
As Captain Johnson relates through his protagonist Captain Misson,
the strong sense of solidarity among the golden age pirates was also an
expression of “the necessity of living in unity among themselves, who had
the whole world for enemies.”[568] This implied strong commitment. Certain
pirates—as Frank Sherry suggests, out of sheer “loyalty… to their fellow
outlaws”[569]—attacked “the shipping of places where pirates had been tried
and hanged, Blackbeard for instance making a habit of destroying ships from
New England for this reason.”[570] Captain Johnson tells of Captain Condent’s
crew cuting off the ears and noses of some Portuguese fellows because they
had taken pirates prisoners along the Brazilian coast.[571] Among themselves,
their sense of solidarity with one another was expressed in unconditional
support. This had already been true for the buccaneers: “The buccaneers
were true to each other and as time went on their organisation became astonishingly sound. Tose afloat could rely upon the integrity of those ashore and
vice versa. Indeed, they formed a community of singularly united villains.”[572]
These assumptions are confirmed by Exquemelin: “Among themselves, and
to each other, these pirates are extremely liberal and free. If any one of them
has lost all his goods, which often happens in their manner of life, they freely
give him, and make him partaker of what they have.”[573] Given the reason why
some of the crew members were lef without means at the end of the journey
documented by Basil Ringrose, his account provides an astonishing example
of such generosity: “Hereupon we agreed among ourselves to give away, and
leave the ship to them of our company who had no money lef of all their purchase in this voyage, having lost it all at play; and the to divide ourselves into
two ships, which were now bound for England.”[574]
Conflicting opinions among pirate crew members often led to cordial
separation rather than to in-fighting and disharmony. Marcus Rediker writes
that it was such separations that helped the “radical democratic social order
and culture” of the pirates to spread, “hydralike.”[575] Not all separations were
harmonious of course. There exist a fair number of accounts in which minorities were simply marooned rather than provided with a fair share of the company’s riches. On occasion, the principle of “might is right” probably outweighed all democratic culture. Nonetheless, the following words of Rediker
remain convincing:
The social organization constructed by pirates was flexible, but
it could not accommodate severe, sustained conflict. Those who
had experienced the claustrophobic and authoritarian world of the
merchant ship cherished the freedom to separate. The pirates’ democratic exercise of authority had both negative and positive effects.
Although it produced a chronic instability, it also guaranteed continuity; the very process by which new crews were established helped to
ensure a cultural continuity among the pirates.[576]
According to Rediker, the progressive character of social organizing on
the pirate ship can be traced to elements inherent in general seamen culture
of the 17th century: “Building on the lower-class/lower-deck values of collectivism, anti-authoritarianism, and egalitarianism, the pirates realized,
through their social order, tendencies that had been dialectically generated
and in turn suppressed in the normal course of alienated work and life at
sea.”[577] Rediker even calls piracy “a ‘structure’ formed upon a ‘foundation’
of the culture and society of Anglo-American deep-sea sailors in the first
half of the eighteenth century.”[578] He specifically lists the following values:
1. Collectivism—specified as a “collectivity formed among the common tars,
constituted in the confrontation with capital, created over and against the
logic of discipline and cooperation for the sake of profit. Collective labor
passed easily into collective self-defense as seamen sought to protect themselves from harsh conditions, excessive work, and oppressive authority.”[579]
2. Anti-authoritarianism—maybe best described by those most frightened
by it: “When the authorities came into contact with the pirates, they were
often shocked by their democratic tendencies. The Dutch governor of the
stopover colony of Mauritius commented after meeting a pirate crew, ‘Every
man has as much say as the captain and each man carries his own weapons in
his blankets.’”[580]
3. Egalitarianism—according to Rediker, “institutionalized
aboard the pirate ship,”[581] and explained as follows: “The seaman’s egalitarianism was of a piece with other aspects of his culture. It was an essential part of
an emphasis on hospitality and cooperation, reciprocity and mutuality, and
generosity over accumulation.”[582]
The term brotherhood has been used extensively to describe the strong
sense of loyalty, solidarity, and community among buccaneers and pirates.
The buccaneers have been called an “autarchic ‘Brotherhood’”[583] or a “brotherhood of sea-sharks,”[584] the golden age pirates an “outlaw brotherhood”[585]
or a “transnational brotherhood.”[586] The problem with such appellations is
that two troubling features are tied into almost all praises of brotherhood:
masculinity and exclusivity. Afer all, stories of extraordinary generosity
and solidarity can also be told of boy scouts, right-wing fraternities, neo-
Nazi gangs, Marines, or Hell’s Angels.[587] The notion of standing by someone,
“a favorite among pirates,”[588] tops most virtue lists in such communities—
and gives some plausibility to Cordingly and Falconer’s deriding description of the pirate articles as “a living example of ‘honour amongst thieves.’”[589]
Equally prominent is another integral virtue of male bonding, namely that
of “courage;” according to Rediker, “a principal means of survival”[590] among
pirates, and “the antithesis of law.”[591] In this context it is not surprising that
the governor of New England would say after a particularly audacious raid by
Bartholomew Roberts that “one cannot withhold admiration for his bravery
and daring.”[592] “Real men” think alike. And they bar others from their exclusive communities. As strong as the commitments of buccaneers and pirates
were to each other, their conduct outside of their communities was bound by
few moral considerations. For Stephen Snelders—who appears very sympathetic to the buccaneers and pirates—the account of Jan Erasmus Reyning
“exposes the atrocities they commited on outsiders.”[593]
Understanding oneself as part of a vanguard is a double-edged sword.
When Marcus Rediker writes that “by walking ‘to the Gallows without a
Tear,’ by calling themselves ‘Honest Men’ and ‘Gentlemen,’ and by speaking
self-servingly but proudly of their ‘Conscience’ and ‘Honor,’ pirates flaunted
their certitude,”[594] this certainly conveys an inspiring sense of rebellion. Afer
all, the pirates held no positions of institutionalized power and were “outcasts” and “outlaws.” At the same time, flaunting their certitude towards their
victims (most of who were not worldly or clerical authorities), to common
sailors, women and Indians, had nothing to do with rebellion and everything
to do with a despicable exercise of power.
A peculiar understanding of pirate loyalty, solidarity and community
has been voiced in the early 1980s in a German essay, entitled “Parasitäre
Piraten” [“Parasitic Pirates”]. Heiner Treinen, the essay’s author, asserts that
the pirates’ “solidarity” was rather opportunistic than value-driven:
The decision to join the pirates as a particular form of ‘organization’
was exclusively based on the calculated gains of every individual. This
was the only reason that made cooperation and acceptance of the collective power structure possible. This structure was endured because
it promised the satisfaction of individual goals.…The investment in a
social structure among the pirates was inherently temporary.[595]
Treinen suggests that even the relative lack of racial or national discrimination among pirate crews was merely the consequence of their individualism:
While out there raiding, racial and religious discrimination did not
occur, even though the raiding was often justified on racial or religious grounds. The absence of discrimination is no utopian anarchist
ideal. It exists when, as in the case of the pirates, the individuals who
work together do not really have an interest in living together; when
there are no actual common goals.[596]
Treinen’s views may appear cynical, but Captain Johnson’s General History
contains passages that also portray pirate togetherness as serving primarily
tactical purposes, i.e. as something imposed by a crew’s specific existential
circumstances rather than by political or ethical convictions. One example
concerns the situation of Captain North’s crew among the Madagascan
natives:
They thought, and very justly, that unity and concord were the only
means to warrant their safety; for the people being ready to make
war on one another upon the slightest occasion, they did not doubt
but they would take the advantage of any division which they might
observe among the whites, and cut them off whenever a fair opportunity offered. North often set this before them, and as often made them
remark the effects of their unanimity, which were, the being treated
with great respect and deference, and having a homage paid them as
to sovereign princes. Nature, we see, teaches the most illiterate the
necessary prudence for their preservation, and fear works changes
which religion has lost the power of doing.[597]
Of course, Johnson’s account might be purely fictional, and Treinen’s analysis might simply be false (or in any case too negative). In fact, one might even
argue that all displays of social virtues are essentially ego-driven since this is
how human beings work—in which sense the pirates’ mutual aid would not
lose any value, even if it was indeed only based on the fact that “the harshness of life at sea made mutual aid into a simple survival tactic.”[598] Still, both
Treinen’s reflections and the passage from Johnson’s General History seem
to reveal a problem inherent in golden age pirate society: namely, that their
“brotherly” ideals were not framed by a wider social and political vision or
ambition. We will return to this problem frequently.
*** 4.2. Flying the Black Flag: The Jolly Roger
The golden age pirate brotherhood, commonwealth, or confederacy was most
tangibly expressed by its menacing flag, the Jolly Roger. No other pirate symbol—and not many symbols overall—have had such a lasting impact on the Western mind and its popular culture.
The origins of the Jolly Roger are not entirely clear. It was first reported
by navy officers chasing French pirate captain Emanuel Wynn in the Cape
Verde Islands in 1700. Wynn’s flag was described as “a sable ensign with
crossbones, a Death’s head and an hour glass”[599] against a black background.
This design—albeit with variations—soon became a standard signifier for pirate ships. As David F. Marley writes, “when the Spanish War of
Succession ended thirteen short years later, most pirates were using a black
background for their personal standards.”[600] This means that “within 15 years,
pirates frequently used black flags and, by 1714, they were a clearly recognized symbol.”[601]
Although the Jolly Roger did come in different varieties, all of them shared
the same basic themes, in essence symbols associated with death: skull and
crossbones,[602] skeletons, hour glasses, cutlasses, bleeding hearts.[603] “The primary
symbolism of the flag was straightforward. Pirates intended its symbols—
death, violence, and limited time—to terrify their prey, to say, unequivocally,
to merchantmen that their time was short, they must surrender immediately,
or they would die a bloody death.”[604]
There are different theories about the origin of the name. The two most
common and convincing are: 1. Jolly Roger is an English corruption of the
French la jolie rouge which referred to the red flags hoisted by maritime crews
to announce batle. 2. Jolly Roger is a variation of Old Roger which was a common moniker for the devil.[605]
Whatever the origin of its name, the Jolly Roger defines the era of piracy
studied in this book (the golden age) and confirms the sense of unity that
must have existed among its pirate crews. Marcus Rediker writes:
When pirates created a flag of their own, as they did for the first time in
the early eighteenth century, they made a new declaration: they would
use colors to symbolize the solidarity of a gang of…outlaws, thousands strong and self-organized in daring ways, in violent opposition
to the all-powerful nation-states of the day. By flying the skull and the
crossbones, they announced themselves as ‘the Villains of all Nations.’[606]
Rediker also confirms that “the flag was very widely used; no fewer, and
probably a great many more, than twenty-five hundred men sailed under it.”[607]
In Chris Land’s analysis, “the pirates’ choice of flag made explicit their rejection of the nation-state as a foundation for community and their challenge to
its monopoly on violence.…Once the Jolly Roger was raised the pirates broad-
cast their rejection of the very foundation of the contemporary geo-political
order, placing themselves outside its sphere of government and justice.”[608]
At a Paris rally in 1880, Louise Michel carried—in protest against the
hypocrisy of the official socialist movement—a black flag instead of a red one
and created one of the most characteristic and renowned anarchist symbols.
Louise Michel might not have thought of the golden age pirates. Nonetheless,
it is hard to believe that her choice of color was purely coincidental.
*** 4.3. Is This Anarchy? Matters of Definition i
The associations of golden age piracy with anarchy are legion. In fact, it
seems impossible to read a book about piracy without at least one reference
to anarchy, no mater the author’s political persuasion. We can read about
“anarchic behaviour,”[609] “anarchic crews,”[610] “anarchic strains,”[611] “sexual and cultural anarchy,”[612] “anarchy with no form of self-discipline,”[613] “ordered anarchy,”[614]
“a cacophonous floating anarchy,”[615] ”the very picture of anarchy,”[616] “mini-
anarchies,”[617] or “the life of a buccaneer [which] could in some ways be seen
as anarchistic.”[618] A recent academic essay on piracy even introduces the term
“an-arrgh-chy.”[619]
What can we make of this? Apart from the fact that some of these atributes are negative ascriptions by conservative writers, the critical question is:
were the golden age pirates really anarchists?
There appear to be two main ways to respond: 1. If being anarchistic means
to live outside the control of the nation-state, or any form of institutionalized
authority, then the golden age pirates were surely anarchistic—as much as
the nomadic and “primitive” people they have been compared to. 2. If being
anarchistic means to consciously atempt to realize social ideals of universal
equality and justice, then the golden age pirates were hardly anarchistic. Too
many indications exist that they had no social ideals at all, or at least none
that extended beyond a community of “brothers” who pledged loyalty to one
another.
If there was an anarchism of golden age pirates, it hence lay in their rejection of institutionalized authority and in atempts at egalitarian community
building. This is summed up well by Chris Land:
By signing up to these articles a sailor joined the pirate community
and agreed to the practices that enabled it to be sustained despite the
absence of a transcendent law—such as national law or religion—that
might impose order from without. In this sense the organization of
the pirate ship in the early 18th century was an experiment in radical, anarchistic forms of democratic organizing which were explicitly
opposed to the systems of authority on conventional sailing vessels.[620]
At the same time, there was no anarchist fight for the benefit of all. Often
enough, the pirates’ actions would have sabotaged any such fight. Nonetheless,
both their uncompromising anti-authoritarianism and their truly utopian
micro-democratic experiment are of tremendous importance and lie at the
heart of radical adaptations of piracy to this day.
*** 4.4. The War Machine: Reading Piracy with Deleuze and Guatari
It is never easy to employ the term war analytically. However, the common
references to the “war” that the golden age pirates were engaged in as well
as fiting theoretical concepts operating with the notion of war—most notably by Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guatari—demand some reflection.
The importance of Foucault’s contribution lies in his interpretation of all
historical struggle as war, and of war as “a principle for the analysis of power
relations.”[621] In this sense, we are confronted with a war that never ends. What
we call peace only marks a certain phase of the underlying war: “Society, the
law, and the State are [not] like armistices that put an end to wars, or… the
products of definitive victories. Law is not pacification, for beneath the law,
war continues to rage in all the mechanisms of power, even in the most regular. War is the motor behind institutions and order. In the smallest of its cogs,
peace is waging a secret war.”[622] Foucault explains in conclusion: “Why do
we have to rediscover war? Well, because this ancient war is a…permanent
war. We really do have to become experts on batles, because the war has not
ended, because preparations are still being made for the decisive batles, and
because we have to win the decisive batle.”[623]
The significance of these notions for golden age piracy becomes obvious
when Foucault describes a 17th century shif in the understanding of war:
from warring against a representation of power (most commonly a king) to
warring against “culture” or “civilization”:
From the seventeenth century onward,… the idea that war is the uninterrupted frame of history takes a specific form: The war that is going
on beneath order and peace, the war that undermines our society and
divides it in a binary mode is, basically, a race war.… It is this idea that
this clash between two races runs through society from top to botom
which we see being formulated as early as the seventeenth century.[624]
Foucault’s employment of the term race in this context must be controversial. However, what he means seems pertinent: namely that—instead of
the war waged between two (economically defined) classes—the decisive
war is the one waged between two categories (“races”) of people who are
defined as “civilized” and “savage.” It is not coincidental that this shif in discourse correlates with the onset of the colonial European enterprise. Certain
people needed to be “dehumanized.” This meant non-Europeans as much
as Europeans who fell outside the norms of their own society. As Rediker
reports, pirates were “denounced… as sea monsters, vicious beasts, and a
many-headed hydra—all creatures that…lived beyond the bounds of human
society.”[625] Indeed, as late as in the early 20th century, some would call pirates “monsters in human form,”[626] or “an odd mixture of human trash.”[627]
Piracy has always been associated with war. The frequency of war references rivals that of anarchy references. Most famous is Captain Johnson’s
repeated declaration that pirates had declared war against all the world.[628] Since
then, historians have writen about “the final batles of the pirate war on the
world,”[629] shared the observation that “many perceived piracy as an activity
akin to war,”[630] or, like Peter Earle, have dedicated the titles of their books to
the theme (in this case The Pirate Wars).
The French philosopher-psychoanalyst duo Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guatari introduced the concept of the nomadic war machine in their 1980
book A Tousand Plateaus. To them, “the war machine is like the necessary consequence of nomadic organization.”[631] It is “exterior to the State
apparatus.”[632] What is important in their theory is that “the war machine has
an extremely variable relation to war itself.”[633] It does “not in fact have war as
its primary object, but as its second-order, supplementary or synthetic objective, in the sense that it is determined in such way as to destroy the State-form
and city-form with which it collides.”[634] It is only when the state “appropriates
the war machine” that it takes “war for its direct and primary object” and that
“war becomes subordinated to the aims of the State.”[635] As long as the war
machine is in the hands of the nomads, it “has as its object not war, but the
tracing of a creative line of flight, the composition of a smooth space and of
the movement of people in that space.”[636]
This last aspect explains the relevance of the concept for the golden age
pirates. In Deleuze and Guatari’s terminology, the golden age pirates constituted a nomadic war machine as an inevitable aspect of their struggle for
freedom from state and capitalist oppression. The “creative line of flight,” the
“composition of a smooth space” and the “movement of people in that space”
were all literal aspects of the pirate existence during the golden age. Their war
machine did not mean to establish totalitarian orders—it meant to destroy
the state and its cronies. In this sense the following rings very true:
Each time there is an operation against the State—subordination,
rioting, guerilla warfare or revolution as act—it can be said that a
war machine has revived, that a new nomadic potential has appeared,
accompanied by the reconstitution of a smooth space or a manner of
being in space as though it were smooth.… It is in this sense that the
response of the State against all that threatens to move beyond it is to
striate space.[637]
Even if the nomadic war machine does “not in fact have war as its primary
object,” the pirates’ warfare was more than merely “metaphoric” or “symbolic.” Although the violence of the Caribbean buccaneers and pirates has
probably been historically exaggerated for different reasons,[638] they were no
flower-sniffin’ hippies either. Stephen Snelders is one of many authors who
confirms that the buccaneers “paid close atention only to their most prized
possessions and tools, their firearms and cutlasses.”[639] Angus Konstam has
compiled an impressive overview of the weapons used by the buccaneers,[640]
and there are stories about engagement in batle as pirate initiation rites.
Marcus Rediker, for example, tells us that “pirate captain Tomas Cocklyn
apparently felt that the ‘new-entered men’ would not truly be part of the pirate
community until they had seen action in batle.”[641]
If we accept the concept of the nomadic war machine and its application to
the anti-statist tradition developed by the Caribbean buccaneers and brought
to bloom by the golden age pirates; and if we accept the conclusions of Pierre
Clastres, then the buccaneers’ and pirates’ readiness to go to war would indicate a necessary and effective means of preventing falling under the brutal
power of the state, since “Clastres [identifies] war in primitive societies as the
surest mechanism directed against the formation of the State: war maintains
the dispersal and segmentarity of groups, and the warrior himself is caught
in the process of accumulating exploits, a process which leads him on to solitude and a prestigious death, but without power.”[642]
One aspect of Deleuze and Guatari’s analysis that is of particular significance for Caribbean buccaneers and pirates is the war machine’s adaptation
by the state. This for two reasons. First, the nomadic war machine created by
the buccaneers became appropriated for the state’s ends every time they were
sent out as privateers to bolster the colonial enterprise and inter-state rivalry.
This led Alexander Winston to conclude his book on privateering with the
prophetic words: “If privateering is ever needed, it will be back.”[643] Second,
war machines created by the state became uncontrollably “nomadic” once
they served their purpose and were abandoned by the state. The later especially is of extreme importance for Caribbean history. There is a lot of truth
in Janice E. Tomson’s simple observation that “the practice of privateering produced the problem of piracy.”[644] This is confirmed by considerations
expressed in contemporaneous sources. Captain Johnson formulated the
problem in the following manner:
Yet the observation is just, for so many idle people employing themselves in privateers for the sake of plunder and riches, which they
always spend as fast as they get, that when the war is over and they can
have no farther business in the way of life they have been used to, they
too readily engage in acts of piracy; which being but the same practice
without a commission, they make very litle distinction betwixt the
lawfulness of one, and the unlawfulness of the other.[645]
Edmund Dummer, running a mail service to the Caribbean just after the
outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession, remarked that “it is the opinion of every one this cursed trade [privateering] will breed so many pirates
that, when peace comes, we shall be in more danger from them than we are
now from the enemy.”[646] According to Philip Gosse this is exactly what happened after the war ended in 1713:
Thousands of privateersmen were thus thrown out of employment,
and there was not nearly enough merchant shipping to give honest
work to all the crews. Some men no doubt setled down on shore to
one kind of work or another, but hundreds of the roughest sort were
still without means of making a living. The consequence was that
these formed companies and went to sea as before, but now without a
commission. To such desperate men nothing came amiss, and in truth
was it said that they had ‘declared war upon all nations.’[647]
This, without doubt, contributed decisively to golden age piracy reaching
its zenith only a short time later.
The contemporary parallels are striking. From US-trained and sponsored
“Islamic fundamentalists” who have turned against their former mentors,
to Latin American contras continuing their terror campaigns after their
employment by political interest groups has ended, to militias formed from
the remains of former state socialist security agencies, to the government-
equipped Janjaweed of Sudan’s Darfur region, to the thousands of guerrillas-
turned-bandits in all corners of the earth—the state creating its own worst
enemy is a recurring theme. The reason is that it depends on a violence it cannot always control. This, once again, reminds us of the pirate as a politically
ambiguous figure: while all the mentioned defectors can potentially turn into
freedom fighters, they can also all turn into callous assassins. It is not always
clear where on this spectrum we can place the golden age pirate…
*** 4.5. Tactics: Pirates and Guerrilla Warfare
According to Stephen Snelders, the golden age pirates, after the end of the still
land-based buccaneering tradition, “reverted to guerrilla tactics, preying on
the sea routes of the West Indies, Africa, and the Arabian and Indian coasts.”[648]
The choice of words here ought not be considered arbitrary. In its methods
and tactics, the golden age pirates indeed engaged in guerrilla warfare as laid
out by some of the great guerrilla warfare theorists, in particular Mao Tse-
Tung, Che Guevara, and Carlos Marighella. Their nomadic war machine was
a guerrilla war machine.
The parallels begin with striking structural similarities. When Mao says
that “guerrilla warfare…is a weapon that a nation inferior in arms and military equipment may employ against a more powerful aggressor nation,”[649] then
this accurately describes the pirate situation, only that we must replace the
“inferior” nation with a “non-nation” and the “more powerful” nation with
“all nations.” It is important, however, to stress that the parallels between
golden age pirates and guerrillas concern methods and tactics, not politics.
Politically, the golden age pirates’ war against all the world would not qualify
as a guerrilla war. First, it lacks the political consciousness that all theorists of
guerrilla warfare see as a defining feature. Marighella, for example, stresses
that “we must avoid the distortion of [the] political objective and prevent
the guerrilla, urban or rural, from transforming itself into an instrument of
banditry, or unifying with bandits or employing their methods.”[650] Secondly,
the golden age pirates lack a people and its assistance. For Mao, “guerrilla
warfare basically derives from the masses and is supported by them.”[651] For
Che Guevara, “guerrilla warfare is war by the entire people against the reigning oppression.”[652] The war of the golden age pirates never was such a war. In
fact, in Guevara’s judgment, this makes them “robber bands” rather than
guerrilla units:
For the individual guerrilla, then, wholehearted help from the local
population is the basis on which to start. Popular support is indispensable. Let us consider the example of robber bands that roam
a certain region. They possess all the characteristics of a guerrilla
band—homogeneity, respect for their leader, bravery, familiarity with
the terrain, and frequently even thorough understanding of tactics.
They lack only one thing: the support of the people.[653]
One could, of course, try to make a case for alleged bandits or robbers
being a legitimate part of a people’s struggle against oppression. In fact, Mao
did make such provisions in his guerrilla army concept:
The seventh [and last] type of guerrilla organization is that formed
from bands of bandits and brigands. This, although difficult, must be
carried out with utmost vigour lest the enemy use such bands to his
own advantage… It is only necessary to correct their political beliefs
to convert them. In spite of inescapable differences in the fundamental types of guerrilla bands, it is possible to unite them to form a vast sea of guerrillas.[654]
Whether this applies to the golden age pirates will be discussed in the
subsequent sections of this chapter. The following pages will—by the use
of original quotes from guerrilla handbooks and corresponding passages
from pirate histories—try to illustrate the methodical and tactical parallels
between pirate warfare and guerrilla warfare. (In the case of Marighella, the
specification of urban guerrilla warfare has been omited in the quotations as
it does not seem relevant to the systematic comparisons drawn here.) Apart
from some minor exceptions—like Guevara’s demands of “alcohol is out” or
“on the march, strict silence”[655]—the similarities are striking.
**** Basics
Marighella’s descriptions of the “technique of the…guerrilla” and the
advantages he has in his struggle could be used word for word to define
the pirates’ situation:
The technique of the…guerrilla has the following characteristics: 1. it
is an aggressive technique, or in other words, defensive action means
death for us. Since we are inferior to the enemy in firepower and have
neither his resources nor his power base, we cannot defend ourselves
against an offensive or a concentrated atack by the gorillas. And that
is the reason why our urban technique can never be permanent, can
never defend a fixed base nor remain in any spot waiting to repel the
circles of reaction; 2. it is a technique of atack and retreat by which
we preserve our forces; 3. it is a technique that aims at the development of urban guerrilla warfare, whose function will be to wear out,
demoralize, and distract the enemy forces.…The initial advantages
[of the guerrilla] are: 1. he must take the enemy by surprise; 2. he
must know the terrain of the encounter beter than the enemy; 3.
he must have greater mobility and speed than the police and other
repressive forces; 4. his information service must be beter than the
enemy’s; 5. he must be in command of the situation and demonstrate
a decisiveness so great that everyone on our side is inspired and never
thinks of hesitating, while on the other side the enemy is stunned and
incapable of responding.[656]
In this context, Marighella’s description of the guerrilla’s training makes
Hispaniola sound like a guerrilla warrior boot camp:
The…guerrilla can have strong physical resistance only if he trains
systematically.…Useful forms of physical preparation are hiking,
camping, the practice in survival in the woods, mountain climbing,
rowing, swimming, skin diving,…fishing, harpooning, and the hunting of birds and of small and big game.[657]
**** Shooting
- Marighella: “The…guerrilla’s reason for existence, the basic condition in
which he acts and survives, is to shoot.… In unconventional warfare, in
which…guerrilla warfare is included, the combat is at close range, often
very close. To prevent his own extinction, the…guerrilla has to shoot
first and he cannot err in his shot.”[658]
- David Marley: “The rovers’ rise to world-wide predominance during the
second half of the seventeenth century can be atributed primarily to one
factor: firepower. Now mater how few in numbers, most pirate bands
felt they could carry any objective through guile, mobility and superior
musketry.…With the exception of Saint-Domingue’s boucaniers and
other such sharpshooting hunters, most privateersmen waited until they
could unleash volleys from close range during batle.”[659]
- Stephen Snelders: “One advantage of the Brethren’s independence of
spirit was that they were excellent skirmishers.”[660]
**** Arms
- Marighella: “Light arms have the advantage of fast handling and easy
transport.”[661]
- Mao: “In regard to the problem of guerrilla equipment, it must be
understood that guerrillas are lightly armed atack groups, which require
simple equipment.”[662]
- Stephen Snelders: “The basis of their [Buccaneers] way of life, their most
common characteristic and in a sense their raison d’être, lay in their expertise with small firearms: muskets, blunderbusses, and pistols. With these
weapons they stalked the island in small bands of five or six hunters… ”[663]
**** Supplies
- Mao: “The equipment of guerrillas cannot be based on what the guerrillas want, or even what they need, but must be based on what is available for their use.”[664]
- Guevara: “Keep in mind that the guerrilla’s most important source of
supply is the enemy himself.”[665]
- Cordingly and Falconer: “The clothes, arms and ships of these motley
bands, composed of the adventurers of all nations, depended on the loot
they acquired.”[666]
**** Expropriation
- Marighella: “As to the vehicle, the…guerrilla must expropriate what
he needs. When he already has resources, the…guerrilla can combine the expropriation of vehicles with other methods of acquisition.
Money, arms, ammunition and explosives…must be expropriated. And
the…guerrilla must rob banks and armories and seize explosives and
ammunition wherever he finds them. None of these operations is undertaken for just one purpose. Even when the assault is for money, the arms
that the guards bear must also be taken.”[667]
As has been highlighted earlier, the golden age pirates were completely
dependent on “expropriation.” The eccentric “gentleman pirate” Stede
Bonnet is known as the only pirate who “showed such a nicety of feeling”
as to buy his own ship.[668]
**** Traps
In his book on Revolutionary Warfare, James Connolly describes the
significance of a “defile” for the guerrilla struggle: “A street is a defile in
a city. A defile is a narrow pass through which troops can only move by
narrowing their front, and therefore making themselves a good target for
the enemy.”[669]
In Paterns of Pillage, Paul Galvin explains the significance of Tortuga for
the buccaneers in its “hold over maritime choke points” and “vulnerable
botlenecks.”[670]
**** Speed
- Régis Debray: “In time of war questions of speed are vital, especially
in the early stages when an unarmed and inexperienced guerrilla band
must confront a well-armed and knowledgeable enemy… ”[671] Mao also
speaks of “lightning-like tactical decisions.”[672]
- Cordingly and Falconer: “Speed was essential for a pirate ship to enable
her to make a successful atack and a rapid getaway.”[673]
- Douglas Boting: “Speed and surprise were of the essence.”[674]
**** Surprise
- Marighella: “To compensate for his general weakness and shortage of
arms compared to the enemy, the…guerrilla uses surprise.”[675]
- Mao: “Although the element of surprise is not absent in orthodox
warfare, there are fewer opportunities to apply it than there are during
guerrilla hostilities. In the later, speed is essential. The movements of
guerrilla troops must be secret and supernatural rapidity; the enemy
must be taken unaware, and the action entered speedily. There can be no
procrastination in the execution of plans; no assumption of a negative or
passive defence; no great dispersion of forces in many local engagements.
The basic method is the atack in a violent and deceptive form.”[676]
- Guevara i: “The way a guerrilla army attacks is also different: a sudden,
surprise, furious, relentless atack, then, abruptly, total passivity.…An
unexpected lightning blow is what counts.”[677]
- Guevara ii: “Some disparaging people call this ‘hit and run.’ That is
exactly what it is! Hit and run, wait, stalk the enemy, hit him again and
run, do it all again and again, giving no rest to the enemy. Perhaps this
smacks of not facing up to the enemy. Nevertheless, it serves the goal of
guerrilla warfare: to conquer and destroy the enemy.”[678]
- Angus Konstam: “Stealth and surprise were the key elements in buccaneer atacks.”[679]
- Douglas Boting: “Essentially, they were hit-and-run raiders, and their
tactics were designed to that end.”[680]
- Cordingly and Falconer: “When there was a fight, the most popular ploys
were stealth, surprise and trickery… ”[681]
The following summary by Marighella again applies word for word to
what we know about the Caribbean buccaneers’ and pirates’ warfare:
The technique of surprise is based on four essential requisites: 1. we
know the situation of the enemy we are going to attack, usually by
means of precise information and meticulous observation, while the
enemy does not know he is going to be attacked and knows nothing
about the atacker; 2. we know the force of the enemy that is going to
be atacked and the enemy knows nothing about our force; 3. attacking by surprise, we save and conserve our forces, while the enemy is
unable to do the same and is lef at the mercy of events; 4. we determine the hour and the place of the atack, fix its duration, and establish its objective. The enemy remains ignorant of all this.”[682]
**** “Smooth Space”
- Mao: “When the situation is serious, the guerrillas must move with the
fluidity of water and the ease of the blowing wind. Their tactics must
deceive, tempt, and confuse the enemy. They must lead the enemy to
believe that they will atack him from the east and north, and they must
then strike him from the west and the south. They must strike, then
rapidly disperse.”[683]
- Régis Debray: “At the beginning they keep out of sight, and when they
allow themselves to be seen it is at a time and place chosen by their
chief.”[684]
- David Cordingly: “The navy also had the problem which has always
faced the forces of law and order when confronted by well-armed rebels,
guerillas or terrorists: knowing when and where the next atack might
take place.”[685]
- Paul Galvin: “Their movements were less predictable than those of their
piratical predecessors, and they were difficult to catch.”[686]
**** Terrain
- Marighella i: “The… guerrilla’s best ally is the terrain and because this is
so he must know it like the palm of his hand.”[687]
- Marighella ii: “It is an insoluble problem for the police in the labyrinthian terrain of the…guerrilla, to get someone they can’t see, to repress someone they can’t catch, to close in on someone they can’t find.”[688]
- Guevara i: “When we analyse the tactics of guerrilla warfare, we see that
the guerrilla must possess a highly developed knowledge of the terrain
on which he operates, avenues of access and escape, possibilities for rapid
manœuvre, popular support, and hiding places.”[689]
- Guevara ii: “The guerrilla must…know the theater of operations like
the palm of his hand.”[690]
- Peter Earle i: “As in the earlier campaigns, they [the pirates] knew the
waters where they cruised beter than their pursuers and were often able
to use that knowledge to their advantage.”[691]
- Peter Earle ii: “On one occasion HMS Mermaid was chasing a sloop
commanded by the pirate Low and with a good wind was catching up
fast. ‘But it happened there was one man on board the sloop that knew of
a shoal ground thereabouts who directed Low to run over it; he did so;
and the man-of-war who had so forereached him as to sling a shot over
him… ran a ground upon the shoal and was dismasted.”[692]
**** Mobility
- Marighella i: “Te…guerrilla should always be mobile.”[693]
- Marighella ii: “Face to face with the enemy, he must always be moving
from one position to another, because to stay in one position makes him
a fixed target and, as such, very vulnerable.”[694]
- Mao: “When we discuss the terms ‘front’ and ‘rear’, it must be remembered, that while guerrillas do have bases, their primary field of activity is in the enemy’s rear areas. Tey themselves have no rear.”[695]
- Guevara i: “The guerrilla relies on mobility. This permits him quickly to
flee the area of action whenever necessary, constantly to shift his front,
to evade encirclement (a most dangerous situation for the guerrilla), and
even to counter-encircle the enemy.”[696]
- Guevara ii: “One cannot conceive of static guerrilla warfare.… the withdrawal must be swif.”[697]
We can recall several passages quoted in earlier sections on golden age pirate life here:
- Stephen Snelders: “All pirates knew themselves to be homeless.”[698]
- Robert C. Ritchie: “Anarchistic marauding involved leaving behind the
base of operation and wandering for months—even years—at a time.”[699]
- David Cordingly: “A study of the tracks of the pirate ships shows many
zig-zagging all over the place without apparent reason.”[700]
**** Organization
- Marighella i: “Leadership in our organization, and in the coordination
and command groups in particular, is very simple and is always based
upon a small number of comrades who, in order to merit confidence,
distinguish themselves in the most hazardous and responsible actions
by their capacity for initiative and their intransigence in the defense and
application of the revolutionary principles to which we are commited.”[701]
- Marighella ii: “…guerrillas, on the contrary, are not an army but small
armed groups, intentionally fragmented.”[702]
- Mao i: “In all armies, obedience of the subordinates to their superiors
must be exacted. This is true in the case of guerrilla discipline, but the
basis for guerrilla discipline must be the individual conscience. With
guerrillas, a discipline of compulsion is ineffective.”[703]
- Mao ii: “In a revolutionary army, all individuals enjoy political liberty
and the question, for example, of the emancipation of the people must
not only be tolerated but discussed… ”[704]
- Mao iii: “Officers should live under the same conditions as their men, for that is the only way in which they can gain from their men the admiration and confidence so vital in war.”[705]
- Guevara: “Food was distributed share and share alike. This is important, not only because the distribution of food is the one regular daily event, but also because the soldiers are sensitive to fancied injustices and displays of favouritism.”[706]
Again, several passages on golden age pirate life can be recalled:
- David Cordingly: “Pirate communities were…democracies.”[707]
- Marcus Rediker: “The decisions the council made were sacrosanct. Even
the boldest captain dared not challenge its power.”[708]
- Marcus Rediker ii: “The social organization constructed by pirates was
flexible… ”[709]
- Frank Sherry: “For the most part pirates chose their captains on the basis
of merit.”[710]
- Stephen Snelders: “Regardless of how pistol-proof, bold, terrifying, or
beloved a pirate captain might be, all hierarchy and authoritarianism
were constantly questioned.”[711]
- Robert C. Ritchie: “The marauders…lived in small self-contained
democracies that usually operated by majority vote”[712]
**** Initiative
Finally, a number of passages from the guerrilla handbooks confirm the overall sense of pirate initiative expressed throughout this volume:
- Marighella i: “The small initial group of combatants is oriented toward
construction of an infrastructure that will permit action, instead of worrying about building a hierarchical structure through meetings of delegates or the calling together of leaders of the old conventional parties.”[713]
- Marighella ii: “Office has no value. In a revolutionary organization there
are only missions and tasks to complete.”[714]
- Marighella iii: “The…guerrilla has no mission other than to atack and
retreat.”[715]
- Mao: “The tactics of defence have no place in the realm of guerrilla
warfare.”[716]
- Mao ii: “The attack must be made on guerrilla initiative; that is, guerrillas must not permit themselves to be manœuvred into a position where they are robbed of initiative and where the decision to atack is forced upon them.”[717]
- Guevara i: “Another characteristic of the individual guerrilla is his initiative. In contrast to the rigidity of classical warfare, the guerrilla invents his own tactics for each moment of batle and constantly surprises his enemy.”[718]
- Guevara ii: “Combat comes as a welcome relief from this drudgery and
leaves the band with freshened spirits. It begins at the right moment,
upon discovering an enemy encampment sufficiently weak to be wiped
out, or upon entry of a hostile column into guerrilla territory.”[719]
- Guevara iii: “Combat is the climax of guerrilla life. Though each individual encounter may be only of brief duration, each batle is a profound
emotional experience for the guerrilla.”[720]
In conclusion, it seems significant that Lenin talks about guerrilla warfare
as a “form of struggle [that] was adopted as the preferable and even exclusive form of social struggle by the vagabond elements of the population, the
lumpen proletariat and anarchist groups.”[721] Both lumpen proletariat and anarchist groups point towards the golden age pirates—whose guerrilla tactics
were, if we believe the authors of “Pirate Utopias,” far from ineffective: “They
launched raiding parties so successful that they created an imperial crisis,
atacking British trade with the colonies, and crippling the emerging system
of global exploitation, slavery and colonialism.”[722] Did this make the golden
age pirates revolutionaries despite a lack of revolutionary consciousness?
*** 4.6. Revolutionary, Radical, and Proletarian Pirates? Matters of Definition ii
The question of what constitutes a revolutionary identity often turns into
a mere fight over words. As with the question of what constitutes an anarchist identity, much depends on maters of definition. If being revolutionary requires a conscious all-encompassing political agenda—i.e. an agenda
to fundamentally change all of society’s organizational structures—then
it appears unlikely that many golden age pirates would qualify, as such an
agenda seems missing. Yet, if being revolutionary means contributing to a disruption of society’s organizational structures that pose a fundamental threat
to the political order, then golden age pirates did have revolutionary traits and
their actions could indeed be described as revolutionary.[723] Afer these clarifications, the question becomes how much sense such descriptions make.
Not all historians deny the golden age pirates political consciousness.
Marcus Rediker claims that they “self-consciously built an autonomous,
democratic, egalitarian social order of their own, a subversive alternative to
the prevailing ways of the merchant, naval, and privateering ship and a counterculture to the civilization of Atlantic capitalism with its expropriation and
exploitation, terror and slavery,”[724] and adds:
Pirates perceived themselves and their social relations through a
collectivistic ethos that had been forged in their struggle for survival,
first as seamen, then as outlaws. They had reasons for what they did,
and they expressed them clearly, consistently, confidently, and even,
on occasion, with a degree of self-righteousness. In and through their
social rules, their egalitarian social organization, and their notions of
revenge and fairness, they tried to establish a world in which people
‘were justly dealt with.’[725]
Hans Turley offers a somewhat weaker form of such claims when writing
that “unlike the buccaneers and the privateers, the golden-age pirates not only
chose to live outside the parameters of social conventions, but… embraced a
life that challenged those conventions.”[726]
There are examples among the records on golden age piracy that support
the theory of a self-conscious political aspect to their actions. One document
names merchant captain Tomas Checkley who reported that pirates referring to themselves as “Robin Hoods Men” had taken his ship.[727] According to
Captain Johnson, some members of Bartholomew Roberts’ crew commented
on their death sentences by alluding that “they were poor rogues… and so
hanged, while others, no less guilty in another way, escaped,”[728] while another
pirate crew returned what they had taken from a ship after they had found out
that most of the booty belonged to “innocent children.”[729] Johnson also relates
one of the most socially conscious declarations of a famed pirate, when Mary
Read approves of capital punishment for her kind because otherwise “many
of those who are now cheating the widows and orphans, and oppressing the
poor neighbours who have no money to obtain justice, would then rob at sea,
and the ocean would be crowded with rogues like the land.”[730] There were also,
during the last phases of golden age piracy, the courts of justice meted out
against merchant captains of taken vessels.[731] Finally, political authorities were
freely mocked: victims of an atack by Bartholomew Roberts’ crew recalled
that “they [the pirates] often ridiculed and made a mock at king George’s
acts of grace with an oath, that they had not got money enough, but when
they had, if he then did grant them one, after they sent him word, they would
thank him for it.”[732] Still, none of these examples seems to suggest a particular
political or social vision in the golden age pirates’ self-consciousness as “poor
rogues.” Even if certain victims might have been regarded as more honorable
targets than others, the overall picture suggests a prety indiscriminate pattern of those who were targeted. The records seem to refute any claim that
golden age pirates atacked only the rich, or behaved benevolently towards
the poor. They much rather fit the picture of the social bandit laid out by Eric
Hobsbawm, discussed in a later section of this chapter.
The best known atempt at finding traces of conscious political activism
in the Caribbean buccaneer and pirate communities has been undertaken by
Christopher Hill who, in 1984, published the essay “Radical Pirates?”
It is noteworthy that some pirate-passionate radicals have shown a tendency to ignore the question mark at the end of the essay’s title. Hill ends his
essay with the cautious comment: “I suggest… that it might be worth investigating more carefully the West Indies as a refuge for political radicals after the
defeat of the [English] Revolution.”[733] In this sense, Hill makes no claims, he
only points to tantalizing research opportunities. He also, however, suggests,
“we may conclude that the survival of some radical ideas among the pirates
whom Defoe [Captain Johnson] describes is not impossible: it is, indeed,
likely.”[734] This is certainly what got many radicals excited.
To recapture the main points of Hill’s essay: Hill suggests that with
Cromwell’s expedition to the West Indies in 1654/55 (which, most significantly, brought England Jamaica as a colony—and a buccaneer headquarters)
a number of radicals moved to the West Indies. There they either found their
way into buccaneer and pirate ranks, or helped create a social climate in which
dissident ideas could grow and inspire others to join. In particular, Hill mentions adherents of the Ranters and Quakers, anti-clerical Christian rebels. He
also cites the presence of “faded red coats of the New Model Army”[735]—the
military wing of England’s republican revolution in the mid-17th century—
within the ranks of the buccaneers. What are we to make of this?
The Ranters would fit wonderfully into this volume with their libertarian
pantheism, especially when we consider Hill’s description that “theirs was
‘a heroic effort to proclaim Dionysus in a world from which he was being
driven.’”[736] The problem is that not only do we lack records of Ranters traveling to the West Indies (let alone establishing themselves there as a recognized community), we lack reliable records about the Ranters movement in
general—which has led some historians to argue that there never really was
a Ranters movement:
The primacy of the indwelling spirit, the pantheistic sense that God
is in possession of or infuses all things, the fisson of millenarian
perception, the juggling of inversions, these common features of the
mid-seventeenth-century landscape of spiritual enthusiasm cannot
be confined to a Ranter group and, accordingly, they are not adequate
discriminators for identifying such a group.…Such evidence as there
is, therefore, suggests that the Ranters did not exist either as a small
group of like-minded individuals, as a sect, or as a large-scale, middle-
scale or small movement.…There was a Ranter sensation.[737]
Even if we assume that a Ranters movement existed and reached the
Caribbean, there seems to be hardly any indication that it would have influenced buccaneers and pirates. One perpetually cited example is that of
“Ranter Bay” in Madagascar, where one James Plantain established himself
as a “Pirate King” around 1720.[738] To conclude, however, that this proves a
Ranter strain in the pirate community, seems rather daring. For one thing,
all the standard dictionaries list to rant as a common 17th- and 18th-century
term for “talking foolishly” or “raving.”[739] Ranter Bay hence seems a likely self-
ironic name for a pirate post without any political connotations—especially
when considering that this post was established 70 years after the Ranter
movement had its short (real or alleged) moment. Another possibility is that
the name derived from the Dutch word ranten—meaning much the same as
to rant. Cross-lingual variations were common among the English-French-
Dutch alliances of buccaneers and pirates, as the cases of boucanier/buccaneer,
zeerover/sea rover, jolie rouge/Jolly Roger and others demonstrate. A Dutch
pirate presence on Madagascar is recorded.[740] Most importantly, however,
John Plantain’s self-proclaimed status as a king, his self-declared rule over
the native population, his involvement in the slave trade, and the “harem” of
native women he supposedly kept, can hardly allow us to go gung-ho over the
name he gave his bay, whatever its origins or allusions.[741]
Quakers definitely setled in the Caribbean. In fact, like Rhode Island on
the North American coast, Barbados soon developed into a Quaker center
in the so-called New World. The suggestion that Quakerism could have had
an impact on the Caribbean buccaneer and pirate societies, however, seems
hardly convincing for several reasons: 1. Quakerism simply arrived too late
to influence the buccaneers’ Custom of the Coast, i.e. the foundation of the
Caribbean buccaneer and pirate culture. The custom was well established in
the 1650s when the first Quakers appeared on the Caribbean scene. 2. George
Fox, Quakerism’s most prominent early figure, did visit Barbados and Jamaica
for several months in 1671. No connections—in whatever way—between
him and the buccaneer community are recorded. 3. Despite expressing noble
ethical ideals, including early condemnations of slavery, Quakerism did
litle to challenge economic injustices—a political incentive of the golden
age pirates if there was any. One of Barbados’ early and most active Quaker
leaders was in fact “a wealthy sugar-planter, who was a great friend of the
governor.”[742] 4. As far as the Quakers’ noble ethical ideals are concerned, it
was pacifism that soon occupied the most prominent role, not piratism. This
is clearly expressed in the account of the Quaker Captain Knot in the General
History: Knot was the commander of a “very peaceable ship,” one that “had
neither pistol, sword nor cutlass on board.” Some pirates of Captain Walter
Kennedy’s crew thought they could use his ship as a cover to reach the shores
of the American colonies—only to be disclosed by Knot and hanged.[743] 5.
The ethical antagonism between Quakers and pirates seems particularly pronounced when we consider the fate of those Quakers we might call political
activists. Some of them shared their fate with that of many pirates and ended
on the gallows. Not for robbery and murder, however, but for principled pacifist defiance—like the Barbadian William Leddra who became one of the four
Boston Martyrs when, one year after Mary Dyer, he was hanged in 1661 by the
Massachusets authorities for violating the Quaker entry ban. This, I believe,
is where we find the Quaker spirit of the West Indies—and not underneath
the Jolly Roger.
As far as the “faded red coats of the New Model Army” go, Hill references
the 1961 book Brethren of the Coast: Buccaneers of the South Seas by P. K.
Kemp and Christopher Lloyd. Kemp and Lloyd twice make references to
these coats as part of the Morgan expedition to Panama. They do not cite
a direct source, but it can be assumed that one of the sources they list at the
end of their book gave reason to the remark. In any case, whether the coats
were worn by some buccaneers or not seems politically rather irrelevant.
Since the expedition sent to the West Indies by Cromwell in 1654 marks
an important step in the history of English setlement in the West Indies, it
should not be surprising if New Model Army coats found their way across
the Atlantic as well. How much this said about the political consciousness of
those who wore them—especially 15 years later—is another question altogether. Most importantly, however, the political legacy of the New Model
Army itself remains controversial. Although radical elements, Levellers and
others, certainly played their part, in Ian Gentles’ perspective “Calvinistic
puritanism”—and not “libertarian antinomianism”—was the driving force
behind and within the army.[744] Oliver Cromwell’s “Speech at the Opening of
Parliament 1656” would confirm this. Cromwell used the speech to call the
Spaniard a “natural enemy” and the “head of the Papal interest” (which he
equated with an “anti-Christian interest”)—someone “you could not have an
honest nor honourable peace with,” and who has “an enmity put into him by
God” that stands “against all that is of God…in you.”[745] Needless to say, the
Irish—to name just the most obvious example—have always had a hard time
swallowing the radical romanticization of the New Model Army.
Mentioning the Irish hints at another aspect that seems problematic in
Hill’s account. A large part of the English expedition to the Caribbean consisted of Irish and Scotish prisoners of war who were used as indentured
laborers.[746] They must have constituted the likeliest recruiting force for the
English-speaking buccaneers and pirates. However, given both the national
and religious rivalries of the region, not too many of these indentured laborers found a place among them—or wanted to. If they managed to escape
their situation, they often ended up in the service of the Spanish. Somewhat
ironically, it must be assumed that out of the indentured laborers arriving in
the Caribbean as part of the 1654/55 expedition, the most rebellious groups
might have joined the Spanish forces, while the likeliest group to join the buccaneers were the English royalists. The political consciousness they would
have added to their ranks can only be imagined.[747]
Hill lists a few other disputable indications for the putative presence of
politically conscious forces among the Caribbean buccaneers and pirates.[748]
One is the alleged presence of “theorists among pirates” which he finds “suggested by the fact that at trial they were denied benefit of clergy.”[749] I imagine there could have been a number of reasons why clergy would have been
denied to pirates. Hill further points to the fact that “we find…expressions
of sympathy for Monmouth’s rebellion made by West Indian pirates and
privateers.”[750] Even if this were true, the radical implications of the Monmouth
Rebellion seem as questionable as those of the New Model Army—unless
each and every Protestant and anti-Catholic rebellion of the 17th-century was
considered “radical.”
Hill also offers an explanation for the absence of any hard evidence suggesting that the radical ideas that swept England in the mid-1650s did indeed
travel to the Caribbean: “The dependence of the West Indian economy on
slaves and subjected Indians must have made these ideas hard to sustain,
especially when piracy seemed to offer the only means of livelihood.”[751] This
is a curious statement for two reasons. First, Hill seems to suggest that by
turning pirate, a radical gave up his ideas—this, however, would undermine
his very thesis, namely the influence of these ideas on piracy. Second, with all
due respect to the difficulties posed by dire economic circumstances, it seems
doubtful that they ever eradicate solid political ideas; they might force people
to compromise their ideas, but politically conscious people forced to compromise their ideas out of economic necessity usually reflect upon, explain
and (convincingly or unconvincingly) justify this. No such debates among
buccaneers or pirates seem to be on record.
In fact, not only is there a lack of solid indications for a political pirate
consciousness, but there are also a fair number of indications suggesting
that such a consciousness simply did not exist (to the point where it might
be true that pirate captains like Bartholomew Roberts fought a “personal war
against the world”[752] more than anything else). The complete lack of political
declarations on part of the golden age pirates—and the buccaneers, for that
mater—seems indeed stunning; at least if it is fair to assume that any self-
consciously political pirate would have, at least at some point, felt the urge to
share an articulated explanation of his exploits with the world. This, however,
apparently never happened. There seem to be no records of political declarations at pirate trials that go beyond the faint references to social injustice
quoted above. The same goes for their executions. There is no pirate equivalent to, say, August Spies’ declaration on the day of the Haymarket Martyrs’
death that “the day will come when our silence will be more powerful than
the voices you strangle today.” Closest come some remarks of the pirates
hanged in New Providence in 1718 under the eyes of many of their former
companions. Dennis Macarty recalled “the time when there were many brave
fellows on the island who would not have suffered him to die like a dog,”[753]
and, according to Philip Gosse, Humphrey Morrice accused the reformed
pirate onlookers of “‘pusillanimity and cowardice’ because they did not res-
cue him and his fellow-sufferers.”[754] However, as much as these sentiments
express disappointment at the lack of “brotherly loyalty,” they do not indicate
any particular political ideals one way or another.
Certainly no one in the crowd demonstrated rebellious political consciousness. This seems telling for the overall political consciousness of the pirate
community insofar as the several hundreds of pirates who had accepted the
King’s pardon and Woodes Rogers’ governorship constituted around half of
the pirates frequenting New Providence at the time of Rogers’ arrival.[755] This
would indeed indicate that vast parts of the pirate community did not see
themselves as part of a revolutionary vanguard, but had taken to piracy as a
mater of circumstance or because they had fallen in with a crowd to which
they did not really want to belong.
Of course, half of the New Providence pirates had refused to give up their
pirating ways, but did they do so for self-conscious political reasons? Although
they certainly were “those renegades who possessed the greatest pugnacity,”[756]
they were probably more concerned about their personal freedom (a very
political motivation in a certain way—not in another) than in saving mankind. Some, in fact, might have simply mistrusted the pardon. It was known
that the authorities would often enough, usually by means of strictly legalistic
interpretations of the terms, persecute them nonetheless.[757] The only political declarations that reach us from their ranks appear neither anarchistic nor
revolutionary, but concern a quarrel between royals. Some golden age pirate
crews gave their ships Jacobite names—“King James, Royal James or Queen
Anne’s Revenge”[758]—in honor and support of the deposed House of Stuart.[759]
Apart from the debate about a political pirate consciousness, there is an
interesting discussion about whether pirates were part of an underprivileged,
proletarian class. It is once again Marcus Rediker who endorses such a notion
most prominently. Not only does he call the golden age pirates “proletarian
outlaws”[760] and interprets their “self-rule and social order” as part of a “volatile,
serpentine tradition of opposition…within both maritime and working-class
culture,”[761] but he even suggests that pirates were engaged in an “undeclared
class war,”[762] and were indeed “class-conscious.”[763] These suggestions have been picked up enthusiastically by some radicals. The authors of “Pirate Utopias,”
for example, suggest that “piracy was one strategy in an early cycle of Atlantic
class struggle” and that “pirates were perhaps the most international and
militant section of the proto-proletariat constituted by 17th and 18th century sailors.”[764]
How useful are such descriptions? Within Marxist theory, class is surprisingly one of the concepts that have never been “systematically defined and
elaborated.”[765] In most interpretations, however, they seem at least in some
way connected to people’s status within the process of economic production. Within this logic, pirates—not being part of any such process—would
rather constitute a non-class.[766] Yes, their exploits might have been “rooted in
a rejection of the class system of European society,”[767] and their social order
might have expressed a “levelling of class inequalities,”[768] but not because
they assumed the working class’ revolutionary agenda—rather because they
rejected class society altogether. In this light, it becomes understandable why
Hans Turley would call Rediker’s argument “overdetermined.”[769] The golden
age pirates—as a people with no recorded history—seem once again closer to
so-called primitive communities than to the Euro-American proletariat: “It is
said that the history of peoples who have a history is the history of class struggle. It might be said, with at least as much truthfulness, that the history of
peoples without a history is the history of their struggle against the State.”[770]
Perhaps there was neither anarchist nor revolutionary consciousness
among the pirates of the golden age—but they certainly carried anarchist
and revolutionary momentum.
*** 4.7. Pirates as Social Bandits: Homage to E. J. Hobsbawm
Golden age piracy as a form of social resistance[771] might best be studied within
the analytical framework of social banditry provided by Eric Hobsbawm.
While applying criteria of self-conscious political movements to the golden
age pirates might give the impression that there was nothing revolutionary
about them at all, analyzing them as social bandits might help tease out the
revolutionary implications of their actions.
Many authors have commented on the startling parallels between golden
age pirates and the bandit communities analyzed by Hobsbawm.[772] Most of
these comments have been in passing. This might partly be due to an obvious difficulty that needs to be overcome in order to relate Hobsbawm’s analysis to golden age piracy in more detail. After all, Hobsbawm analyzes social
banditry as a peasant phenomenon. Obviously, golden age pirates were no
peasants. Still, we can concur with Kenneth J. Kinkor, who writes that golden
age piracy was “‘social banditry’ carried out in a maritime context.”[773] This is
echoed by Marcus Rediker’s observation that “pirates, of course, were not
peasants, but they fit Hobsbawm’s formulation in every other respect.”[774]
**** The Framework
In his highly popular study, Bandits, Eric Hobsbawm explains that “in this
book we shall be dealing only with some kinds of robbers, namely those who
are not regarded as simple criminals by public opinion.”[775] This certainly fits the
perception of golden age pirates. Edward Lucie-Smith is just one who raises
questions like the following: “Granted that piracy is really no more than robbery at sea, how did the crime come to acquire the aura of sinister glamour
that still clings to it, an aura which sets the pirate apart from other and more
commonplace malefactors?”[776] In its simplicity, Philip Gosse’s answer might
point at the heart of the explanation: “Piracy may be a blot on civilization and
its practitioners criminals whom it is a duty to extirpate. Yet there will always
be a sympathetic response in the human heart to the appeal of the adventurer
who dares go to far and dangerous places and in defiance of all organized
respectability take his courage in both hands to carve out his fortune.”[777]
The “sympathetic response” that Gosse evokes also explains why he would
find a significant difference between the pirates of the golden age and those
of other eras. He calls, for example, the pirates of the 19th century (who were,
as some historians suggest, more numerous and successful than those of the
golden age[778])
worse than any… that existed before. The earlier pirates, with all their
black faults and their cruelty, were not without some trace of humanity, and on occasion could fight bravely. Tese new pirates were cowards without a single redeeming feature. Formed from the scum of the rebel navies of the revolted Spanish colonies and the riff-raff of the
West Indies, they were a set of bloodthirsty savages, who never dared
atack any but the weak, and had no more regard for innocent lives
than a butcher has for his victims. The result is a monotonous list of
slaughterings and pilferings from which scarcely one event or a single
character stands out to strike a spark from the imagination.[779]
In a very similar vein, Peter Lamborn Wilson would write many decades
later that “sea-going muggers who prey on the poor, and murder them as well,
would seem to have forfeited all claim to consideration as social bandits or
even ‘real pirates.’”[780]
There are clear indications that the golden age pirates were, in the eyes
of many, “social bandits [who] are considered by their people as heroes,
as champions, avengers, fighters for justice, perhaps even leaders of liberation, and in any case as men to be admired, helped and supported.”[781] There
remains the question, of course, who the pirates’ people were. Even though
the pirates “had spies and sympathisers throughout the West Indies,”[782] and
“not a few…of those on shore who received their goods… aided them,”[783]
these folks did not constitute the tight-knit peasant communities that the
social bandits analyzed by Hobsbawm could retire to and count on. We will
return to this question below. First, let us consider some of the most obvious
parallels between Hobsbawm’s definition of social banditry and golden age
piracy in Hobsbawm’s own words:
It is a commonplace that brigands flourish in remote and inaccessible
areas such as mountains, trackless plains, fenland, forest or estuaries with their labyrinth of creeks and waterways, and are atracted
by trade-routes and major highways, where pre-industrial travel is
naturally both slow and cumbrous.[784]
Socially it seems to occur in all types of human society which lie
between the evolutionary phase of tribal and kinship organization,
and modern capitalist and industrial society… [785]
Banditry tended to become epidemic in times of pauperization and
economic crisis.[786]
The robber band is outside the social order which feters the
poor, a brotherhood of the free, not a community of the subject.
Nevertheless, it cannot opt out of society. Its needs and activities,
its very existence, bring it into relations with the ordinary economic
social and political system.[787]
All this means that bandits need middlemen, who link them not
only to the rest of the local economy but to the larger networks of
commerce.[788]
If they had any model of social organization, it was the male broth-
erhood or society.[789] (This quote refers to the haiduks of the Balkans,
a prime example of the bandits analyzed by Hobsbawm. Hobsbawm
adds—in light of the Mary Read and Anne Bonny story—an interesting
explanation with respect to the women who had joined the haiduk: “it
seems that for the time of their haiduk life, these runaway girls were
men.”[790]
Banditry is freedom… [791]
There are many other and more specific aspects in Hobsbawm’s analysis
that reveal similar parallels. Hobsbawm, for example, places certain bandits
“on the turbulent frontier between state and serfdom on the one hand, the
open spaces and freedom on the other,”[792] and sees them moving in “open
spaces…where lordships, serfdom and government had not yet arrived.”[793] It
is notable who makes up an important part of the bandits’ ranks: “escaped
serfs, ruined freemen, runaways from state or seignorial factories, from jail,
seminary, army or navy, men with no determined place in society… among
such marginals, soldiers, deserters and ex-servicemen played a significant
part.”[794] As those who are “in some ways the most important category of
potential bandits,” Hobsbawm names
men who are unwilling to accept the meek and passive social role
of the subject… the stiffnecked and recalcitrant, the individual
rebels… the ‘men who make themselves respected’…These are the
men who, when faced with some act of injustice or persecution, do
not yield meekly to force or social superiority, but take the path of
resistance and outlawry.…They may be the toughs, who advertise
their toughness by their swagger, their carrying of arms, sticks or
clubs, even when peasants are not supposed to go armed, by the casual
and rakish costume and manner and costume which symbolizes
toughness.[795]
Finally, Hobsbawm describes a general socio-political patern that can be
applied word for word to the history of golden age piracy:
Where the state is remote, ineffective and weak, it will indeed be
tempted to come to terms with any local power-group it cannot defeat.
If robbers are successful enough, they have to be conciliated just like
any other centre of armed force. Every person who lives in times when
banditry has got out of hand knows that local officials have to establish
a working relationship with robber chiefs…The only difficulty is that
the closer a bandit comes to the people’s ideal of a ‘noble robber,’ i.e.
to being the socially conscious champion of the rights of the poor, the
less likely it is that the authorities will open their arms to him. They
are much more apt to treat him as a social revolutionary and hunt him
down. This should normally take them not more than two or three
years, the average span of a Robin Hood’s career…[796]
**** Three types of bandits
Hobsbawm defines three main types of bandits: “the noble robber or Robin
Hood, the primitive resistance fighter or guerrilla unit of what I shall call the
haiduks, and possibly also the terror-bringing avenger.”[797] Golden age pirates
represented all three.
***** Robin Hood
We have already seen that members of at least one golden age pirate crew
called themselves Robin Hoods men.[798] According to Marcus Rediker, Henry
Every was referred to as a “maritime Robin Hood.”[799] In Hobsbawm’s definition, the Robin Hood bandit “does not seek to establish a society of freedom
and equality.”[800] His role is rather “that of the champion, the righter of wrongs,
the bringer of justice and social equity.”[801] This seems reflected both in what is
known about the golden age pirates’ real-life activities and in their mythical
reputation: they were not out to create any particular kind of society for all,
they were out to live independently, take a stand, and bring justice to their
enemies. It is in this sense that the golden age pirate is, in Edward Lucie-
Smith’s words, “a symbol of equality, a leveller.”[802]
***** Guerrilla
Hobsbawm states that “guerrilla movements… are obliged to follow substantially similar tactics as social bandits.”[803] He uses the example of the Balkan
haiduks—impoverished peasants who formed militia units both to fight
Otoman rule and secure a livelihood—to describe the bandit as guerrilla
more specifically. While the haiduk “would see himself, above all, as a free
man—and as such as good as a lord or a king; a man who had in this sense
won personal emancipation and therefore superiority,”[804] he would, at the same
time, “not automatically [be] commited to rebellion against all authority.”
The haiduks could accept—and even make arrangements with—authority
as long as this did not interfere with their personal freedom. In Hobsbawm’s
words: “They could, as in some parts of Hungary, become atached to lords
whom they provided with fighters against a recognition of their status as free
men.”[805] The same is true for both the Caribbean buccaneers (clearly) and the
golden age pirates (who dealt with many corrupt officials). Concerning their
social organization, the haiduks shared the buccaneers’ and pirates’ egalitarian sensitivities: “Freedom implied equality among haiduks and there are
some impressive examples of it. For instance, when the King of Oudh tried
to form a regiment of Badhaks, much as the Russian and Austrian emperors formed haiduk and cossack units, they mutinied because the officers had
refused to perform the same duties as the men.”[806] An important parallel lies
also in Hobsbawm’s judgment that the haiduks, in their guerrilla-like organization and operations, constituted a kind of “permanent and formalized
banditry” and were “therefore automatically…potentially more ‘political’”[807]
than the noble robber. In other words: “Haiduk banditry was therefore in
every respect a more serious, a more ambitious, permanent and institutionalized challenge to official authority than the scatering of Robin Hoods.”[808]
Hobsbawm calls haiduk banditry “the highest form of primitive banditry,
the one which comes closest to being a permanent and conscious focus
of…insurrection.”[809]
***** Avenger
Hobsbawm introduces his third social bandit type with the following
observation:
It is at first sight strange to encounter bandits who not only practice
terror and cruelty to an extent which cannot possibly be explained as
mere backsliding, but whose terror actually forms part of their public
image. They are heroes not in spite of the fear and horror their actions
inspire, but in some ways because of them. They are not so much men
who right wrongs, but avengers, and exerters of power; their appeal
is not that of the agents of justice, but of men who prove that even the
poor and weak can be terrible.[810]
If we agree with the following assertion of Marcus Rediker, then golden
age pirates fit this picture well: “In truth, pirates were terrorists of a sort. And
yet we do not think of them this way. They have become, over the years, cul-
tural heroes, perhaps antiheroes, and at the very least romantic and powerful
figures in an American and increasingly global popular culture. Teirs was a
terror of the weak against the strong.”[811] Christopher Hill, intentionally or not,
uses Hobsbawm’s exact words when he says that “some pirates must have seen
themselves as egalitarian avengers.”[812] Hobsbawm explains this by stating that
“killing and torture is the most primitive and personal assertion of ultimate
power.”[813] This is strongly connected to the fact that “cruelty is inseparable from
vengeance, and vengeance is an entirely legitimate activity for the noblest of
bandits.”[814] Vengeance, in turn, lies at the heart of the golden age pirates’ concept of justice, and will be examined in a later section of this chapter.
How is it possible to get around the main problem in applying Hobsbawm’s
analysis to golden age piracy, namely that Hobsbawm sees his bandits rooted
in peasant society? It cannot suffice to simply widen the peasant identity or to
replace the peasant community with another. Besides, there is no community
in connection with the golden age pirates that could serve as a substitute. Te
golden age pirates do not represent any particular community—they are outcasts, separated from all society, warring against all the world.
Or are they? Obviously, many folks throughout the centuries have not
seen them as their enemies, but rather as symbols with which to identify.
Symbols that all appear in connection with Hobsbawm’s social bandits: fee
men, strong men, noble men, levellers, avengers, rebels. In fact, this is possibly
truer for golden age pirates than for any other group of outcasts who have
challenged the rules of law and order. It might be that the golden age pirate—
for whatever reason: his elusiveness, the powerful metaphor of the ship and
the sea, the exotic location of his tales, the ideals of equality and democracy
that he represents—has become the bandit of the Western world. He is a sort
of archetypical bandit, a social or primitive rebel (to use other terms employed
by Hobsbawm) who almost all of us, in some way, can relate to and find sympathy with. Hobsbawm himself says that “the bandit is not only a man, but a
symbol.”[815] Maybe we all are the golden age pirates’ people. Hobsbawm writes
that “the country which has given the world Robin Hood, the international
paradigm of social banditry, has no actual record of social bandits after, say,
the early seventeenth century.”[816] Is this is because the buccaneers and pirates
took over that role?
Hobsbawm himself concedes that a shif away from the close connection
of the social bandit to peasant communities might have been inevitable given
the industrialization process that undermined the very identity of peasant
communities. In his own words: “In a broader sense ‘modernization,’ that is
to say the combination of economic development, efficient communications
and public administration, deprives any kind of banditry, including the social,
of the conditions under which it flourishes.”[817] Yet among the population a psychological need for images of social bandits remained. Did this mean an ever
stronger shif of the social bandit to his symbolic side? Hobsbawm compares
the social bandits of the peasantry to what he calls “the criminal underworld
of urban or vagrant elements”:[818]
Criminal bands thus lacked the local roots of social bandits, but at the
same time they were not confined by the limits of the territory beyond
which social bandits could rarely venture in safety. They formed part
of large, if loose networks of an underworld which might stretch over
half a continent, and would certainly extend into the cities which were
terra incognita for peasant bandits who feared and hated them. For
vagrants, nomads, criminals and their like, the kind of area within
which most social bandits lived out their lives, was merely a location
for so many markets or fairs a year, a place for occasional raids, or
at most (for instance if strategically placed near several frontiers) a
suitable headquarters for wider operations. Nevertheless, criminal
robbers cannot be simply excluded from the study of social banditry.
In the first place, where for one reason or another social banditry did
not flourish or had died out, suitable criminal robbers might well be
idealized and given the atributes of Robin Hood, especially when
they concentrated in holding up merchants, rich travellers, and others
who enjoyed no great sympathy among the poor.[819]
If we follow this analysis, golden age pirates might have been the “suitable
criminal robbers” who have taken on this role—so suitable, in fact, that they
took on this role not only for peasants and the poor, but for all of us. Given the
universal appeal that the golden age pirates have always exerted, this seems
like a compelling proposition. The fact that, according to this theory, only
a symbolic social bandit remains does not make his influence any less real.
Many fictional and mythical heroes have very real influence on people and
their cultures: Barbie, Spiderman, the Easter Bunny…
What is the political significance of the golden age pirate as a (symbolic)
social bandit? Is there any?
Hobsbawm has been taken to task by many radicals for his assumptions
that “social banditry has next to no organization or ideology,” is “totally
inadaptable to modern social movements,” proves “ineffective” (even in “its
most highly developed forms, which skirt national guerrilla warfare”),[820]
and remains “a modest and unrevolutionary protest.”[821] The critics have
pointed out—probably rightfully so—that these assumptions are based
on Hobsbawm’s own ideological biases which veer towards more orthodox
(some would say “authoritarian”) strains of the left.
As far as Hobsbawm’s political analysis of social banditry (without the ideological implications) is related to golden age piracy, though, his comments
seem convincing. Golden age piracy had “next to no organization or ideology,” can hardly be described as a “social movement,” and—in the sense of
establishing long-lasting alternative social orders—was “ineffective.” As with
the haiduks, it can probably also be said of the golden age pirates that “class-
consciousness was not normally the motive which drove [them].”[822]
However, some might say that it is a good thing that “banditry is a rather
primitive form of organized social protest, perhaps the most primitive
we know.”[823] The lack of ideology, organization, and class-consciousness
can certainly be seen as refreshing, even liberating. As far as social movements go—aren’t they kind of boring? And effectiveness? Isn’t a Temporary
Autonomous Zone in form of a pirate utopia much more effective than tedious
party politics? Maybe the “mentality of roving insurgents” that entered the
Red Army due to Mao’s inclusion of “outlaws” and “declassed elements”
should have never been “remedied [through] intensified education”?[824] Maybe
the whole point of being revolutionary is to “prove that justice is possible,
that poor men need not be humble, helpless and meek,” since no one will ever
completely “abolish oppression”?[825] Maybe it is beter to be “activists and not
ideologists or prophets, from whom novel visions or plans of social and political organization are to be expected”?[826]
It should be possible to find answers to these questions that lie somewhere
between a yes and a no. On the one hand, some of Hobsbawm’s judgments can
easily be perceived as too strong. For example: “What part, if any, do bandits
play in… transformations of society? As individuals, they are not so much
political or social rebels, let alone revolutionaries…En masse, they are litle
more than symptoms of crisis and tension in their society—of famine, pestilence, war or anything else that disrupts it.”[827] Reducing people who refuse to
obey the political and/or clerical authorities and who partake in the creation
of alternative social orders by virtue of stepping outside the dominant social
orders to “symptoms” of social developments and categorically denying them
any revolutionary identity seems disrespectful, even condescending. Yet,
some of Hobsbawm’s conclusions are compelling and appear applicable to
the golden age pirates:
They right wrongs, they correct and avenge cases of injustice, and
in doing so apply a more general criterion of just and fair relations
between men in general, and especially between the rich and the
poor, the strong and the weak. This is a modest aim, which leaves the
rich to exploit the poor (but no more than is traditionally accepted as
‘fair’), the strong to oppress the weak (but within the limits of what is
equitable, and mindful of their social and moral duties). It demands
not that there should be no more lords…[828]
“Bandit-heroes are not expected to make a world of equality. They can
only right wrongs and prove that sometimes oppression can be turned upside
down.”[829] Equally applicable to the situation of the golden age pirates is the
following passage (even if the golden age pirates did not drive Cadillacs):
“Paradoxically therefore the conspicuous expenditure of the bandit, like the
gold-plated Cadillacs and diamond-inlaid teeth of the slum-boy who has
become world boxing champion, serves to link him to his admirers and not
to separate him from them; providing that he does not step too far outside
the heroic role into which the people have cast him.”[830] With many golden age
pirates—and certainly with many buccaneers—in mind, it becomes easy
to conclude with Hobsbawm that “the more successful he is as a bandit, the
more he is both a representative and champion of the poor and a part of the
system of the rich.”[831]
Still, Hobsbawm might underestimate the revolutionary connotations
of the social bandit’s activities and rate them too strongly against his own
ideas of political resistance, which he reveals in passages hailing the power
of “political organizations” and conclusions that “there is no future” for those
who—like the social bandits—“do not take to the new ways of fighting.”[832] In
other words, even though Hobsbawm himself admits that “social banditry
has an affinity for revolution,”[833] he refuses to accept the implications of this
concession. In Bandits, for example, Hobsbawm states that social bandits are
people “who, in their own limited way, have shown that the wild life in the
greenwood can bring liberty, equality and fraternity to those who pay the
price of homelessness, danger, and almost certain death.”[834] How can seting
such an example not be revolutionary? In Primitive Rebels, Hobsbawm writes:
“Only the ideals for which they fought, and for which men and women made
up songs about them, survive, and round the fireside these still maintain the
vision of the just society, whose champions are brave and noble as eagles.”[835]
Again, how can the power of inspiration expressed in this quote stop short of
being revolutionary power?
It seems that their role as social bandits confirms the revolutionary moment
and potential of the golden age pirates—after all, a wild life is not reduced
to the greenwood, it can be had on the oceans too. Whether this is enough
to make them revolutionaries remains a mater of definition. It should mater
litle to us. The golden age pirates are gone. Their moment and their potential,
however, are not.
*** 4.8. Libertalia: Another Reading
No story has occupied radical minds fascinated by pirates like that of Captain
Misson’s utopian community Libertalia, told in the second volume of Captain
Johnson’s General History of the Pirates. Johnson divides the story into two
parts, “Of Capt. Misson and his Crew” and “Of Capt. Tew and his Crew.” Te
later contains the foundation of Libertalia. It is commonly accepted today
that the story is fictional.[836] This does not deter politically interested pirate
scholars from discussing its political significance. Peter Lamborn Wilson
raises an interesting point by suggesting that the story remained unchallenged at the time of its publication because it seemed “inherently believable”
and hence “could have been real,” and that this should form the basis for our
discussions.[837] Other authors have argued that Libertalia was “based upon the
realities of pirate organizations during the golden age,”[838] and that “because
Johnson’s chapter ‘Of Captain Misson’ is a history, and because Misson is a
product of Johnson’s imagination, the liberty espoused by Misson is a literary—or fictional—reality.”[839] Marcus Rediker explains in more detail:
Was [Libertalia] fiction? Since a man named Misson and a place
named Libertalia apparently never existed, the literal answer must
be yes. But in a deeper historical and political sense Misson and
Libertalia were not simply fictions…Libertalia was a fictive expression of living traditions, practices and dreams of an Atlantic working
class, many of which were observed, synthesized and translated into
discourse by the author of A General History of the Pyrates. A mosaic
assembled from the specific utopian practices of the early eighteenth-
century pirate ship, Libertalia had objective bases in historical fact.[840]
Chris Land draws the convincing conclusion that “the historical veracity
of Of Captain Misson is perhaps not as important as its lasting influence…on
the insurrectionary imagination.”[841] William Burroughs’ Ghost of Chance, featuring a lemur- and (no surprises there) drug-loving Captain Misson, is just
one example.
Marcus Rediker also links the inspiring utopian aspect of Libertalia to the
subversive social trajectory that he and Peter Linebaugh defined as Hydrarchy
in the modern-day classic The Many-Headed Hydra:
Our discussion of Hydrarchy and Libertalia raises questions about
the process by which subversive popular ideas and practices are kept
alive, underground and over water, for long periods of time. Indeed,
the pirates’ alternative social order might be seen as a maritime
continuation of the traditional peasant utopia, in England and continental Europe, called ‘The Land of Cockaygne.’ The dislike of work,
the abundance of food, the concern with good health, the levelling
of social distinctions and the turning of the world upside down, the
redivision of property, the ease and the freedoms—all of the elements of primitive communism that informed the medieval myth
were expressed in Libertalia and at least partially realized on the
pirate ship. And yet if Hydrarchy and Libertalia echoed the dreams of
Cockagyne in centuries gone by, so did they speak to the future, to the
development of mass radical-democratic movements. Hydrarchy and
Libertalia may be intermediate popular links between the defeated
republicans of the English Revolution and the victorious republicans
of the age of revolution more than a century later. The relative absence
of piracy in the Atlantic between 1750 and 1850 may in the end owe
something to the utopian prospect of an earlier age and the ruthless
repression they called forth. But so too might the age of revolution
owe something to the utopian dimensions of earlier popular struggles.
Maybe pirates themselves may have died upon the gallows, defeated,
but Hydrarchy and Libertalia had many victories yet to claim.[842]
The gist of this utopian prospect and its legacy are perhaps best expressed in
Larry Law’s introduction to his charming mini-edition of the Misson story:
As with Robin Hood there is more than a trace of wishful thinking
in the story of Misson. But the wish was there and if nothing else the
story of Misson stands as a tribute, over 250 years’ old, to the concept
of a society run on a system of co-operation and mutual aid, which
cared for its old and disabled, was merciful to its malefactors, ran its
own affairs and needed neither money nor policemen.[843]
Stephen Snelders sees this concept rooted in the Caribbean buccaneer
culture:
In linking the European mercenary traditions to the discontent of
oppressed sailors, the Brotherhood of the Coast became a sanctuary
for dropouts, deserters, outcasts and social failures, and so created
a myth of freedom and independence that eventually developed
into the dream of Libertalia. In their rough way they kept the ideals
of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity that exploded the world of the
Ancien Regime more than a century later.[844]
It seems persuasive that it does not mater much whether Libertalia was
real or not. What maters is the story’s political significance and strength. It is
curious, however, that a closer look at the story, as told by Captain Johnson,
does not necessarily provide much ground for radical euphoria.
In the story, Captain Misson is a young Frenchmen from a wealthy family who travels to Rome for a proper Christian education. Soon disillusioned
with the Catholic Church, he meets an equally disillusioned and eloquent
Italian student by the name of Caraccioli, who becomes Misson’s life-long
companion and ideological mentor. The two end up going to sea together,
sail to the Caribbean, and, after the captain, second captain and the three
lieutenants of their ship are killed in an engagement with an English man-of-
war, Misson is elected captain.[845] He eventually leads his men to Madagascar,
while propagating a number of noble causes related to individual freedom
and the equality of men in elaborate speeches. In Madagascar he meets with
(the very non-fictional) Captain Thomas Tew, convinces him to become his
cohort, and founds the utopian setlement of Libertalia, which after some
time is destroyed by native Madagascans. While sailing towards France contemplating his future, Misson and his crew die in a storm.
Several aspects of this story seem to have received no atention in radical
circles, or have been played down and misrepresented.
1. Misson and Caraccioli make it clear that they do not want to be pirates.
According to Captain Johnson,
Caraccioli objected that they were no pirates, but men who were
resolved to assert that liberty which god and nature gave them, and
own no subjection to any, farther than was for the common good of
all. Tat indeed, obedience to governors was necessary, when they
knew and acted up to the duty of their function, were vigilant guardians of the people’s rights and liberties, saw that justice was equally
distributed, were barriers against the rich and powerful when they
atempted to oppress the weaker.[846]
For these reasons, Caraccioli also objects to the Jolly Roger as their flag:
As we then do not proceed upon the same grounds with pirates, who
are men of dissolute lives and no principles, let us scorn to take their
colours. Ours is a brave, a just, an innocent, and a noble cause; the
cause of liberty. I therefore advise a white sign, with Liberty painted
in the fly, and if you would like the moto, A Deo a Libertate, for God
and Liberty, as an emblem of our uprightness and resolution.[847]
These are serious declarations. In fact, the passages reveal the role of
Misson’s tale in Captain Johnson’s General History: it is the moral antipode to
the exploits of the pirate captains, the warning index finger, conscience rising
above selfishness. Citing Captain Misson as golden age piracy’s most shining example drastically corrupts the story. A simultaneous embrace of golden
age piracy and Captain Misson seems impossible. Rather, we have to make
a choice: either we believe in the revolutionary virtue of a band of outlaws
under the black flag—or we believe in the revolutionary virtue of a man of
principle under the white flag. You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.
2. How revolutionary were Caraccioli and Captain Misson’s principles
and demands? The passages quoted above already confirm that they objected
neither to governors per se (Caraccioli praises a good governor as “a real
father”[848]) nor to distinctions between the “rich and powerful” on the one
hand and the “weaker” on the other, as long as there existed institutional
“barriers” to prevent oppression. (How can oppression be avoided in an economically unjust society?) What, then, defines the progressiveness of Misson
and Caraccioli? Misson is democratic: “He then gave the sentiments of those
who were against him, and their reasons, and begged that every one would
give his opinion and vote according as he thought most conducive to the good
of all; that he should be far from taking it ill if they should reject what he
had proposed, since he had no private views to serve.”[849] Misson would “force
no man.”[850] Misson objects to slavery: “For his part, and he hoped he spoke
the sentiments of all his brave companions, he had not exempted his neck for
the galling yoke of slavery, and asserted his own liberty, to enslave others.”[851]
Misson advocates common property, “telling… all should be in common
and the particular avarice of no one should defraud the public.”[852] Misson is
a humanist who
was under an obligation to recommend to them a brotherly love to
each other; the banishment of all private piques and grudges, and a
strict agreement and harmony among themselves. That in throwing off
the yoke of tyranny…he hoped none would follow the example of the
tyrants, and turn his back upon justice; for when equity was trodden
under foot, misery, confusion and mutual distrust naturally followed.[853]
Misson objects to the death penalty, “a barbarity by which he would not
purchase his security.”[854] Misson treats his prisoners justly: “He then enquired
into the circumstances of every particular [prisoner] and what they had lost,
all of which he returned… ”[855] Misson abides by the virtues of grace and
forgiveness: “He was averse to everything that bore the face of cruelty and
thought a bloody revenge, if necessity did not enforce it, spoke a groveling
and timid soul.”[856] All these sentiments together shape Misson’s unique sea
robbing agenda:
Self-preservation, therefore, and not a cruel disposition, obliging
him to declare war against all such as should refuse him the entry of
their ports, and against all, who should not immediately surrender
and give up what their necessities required; but in a more particular
manner against all European ships and vessels, as concluded implacable enemies. And I do now, said he, declare such war, and, at the same
time, recommend to you my comrades, a humane and generous behaviour
towards your prisoners, which will appear by so much more the effects of
a noble soul, as we are satisfied we should not meet the same treatment
should our ill-fortune, or more properly our disunion, or want of courage,
give us up to their mercy.[857]
This of course is all very noble, extremely remarkable for its time, and certain aspects—especially the final declaration—must surely be considered
radical. Still, does it make Misson a revolutionary? Or rather a mixture of a
holy man, a social reformer, and a Robin Hood? Could such a mixture be revolutionary? Maybe Misson’s own resolution—the setlement of Libertalia—
provides the answer.
3. The aim of Libertalia is never in doubt: it is supposed to be a social
order with a government and coercive laws. In other words: the objective
of establishing Libertalia is to establish a state, complete with naval force
and all. Captain Johnson explicitly confirms that the “great many wholesome laws… enacted” were “registered in a State book,” while Caraccioli
fills the position of “Secretary of State.” Government is deemed a “necessity
to… conservation,” the coercive laws considered indispensable because otherwise “the weakest would always be the sufferers, and everything must tend
to confusion.” Both government and law are the answers to “men’s passion
[which is] blinding them to justice, and making them ever partial to themselves… ”[858] At this point it becomes uterly clear that Misson’s ideas build on
the assumptions of Tomas Hobbes, the ideological godfather of the modern
nation-state. Libertalia then simply becomes a Leviathan with humanitarian
coating. Such Leviathans define today’s political landscape. Are they really
“working-class dreams”?[859]
It has been suggested that Libertalia was communistic and anti-capitalist.[860] Tese assumptions seem somewhat baffling given Captain Johnson’s
outline of Libertalia’s economy: “The treasure and cattle they were masters
of should be equally divided, and such lands as any particular man would
enclose should, for the future, be deemed his property which no other should
lay any claim to, if not alienated by a sale.”[861] Accordingly, “an equal division
was made of their treasure and catle, and everyone began either to enclose
land for himself or his neighbor, who would hire his assistance.”[862] Does this
not just sound like plain old pety-bourgeois liberalism?
The most radical aspects of Libertalia were its governing council, consisting “of the ablest among them, without distinction of nation or colour,” and
the fact that “the different languages began to be incorporated, and one made
out of many”[863]—which corresponds to the name of Libertalia and “the name
of Liberi to his people, desiring… that might be drowned the distinguished
names of French, English, Dutch, Africans, etc.”[864] Still, Libertalia was a state
and all states are coercive, no mater how council-based; after all, soviet means
council, too.
That the governing council of Libertalia took its coercing role seriously is
revealed in the following episode of the Libertalia story. Some months prior
to its establishment, Tew’s former quartermaster led a group of renegade
crew members who separated from their captain and established their own
Madagascan setlement. When Libertalia’s governing council discussed the
proposal of inviting the group to join them, we find “the council rejecting this,
alleging that as they deserted their captain, it was a mark of mutinous temper,
and they might infect others with a spirit of disorder.”[865] Since when do the
dreams of radicals condemn “mutinous temper” or a “spirit of disorder”?
Stephen Snelders, however, seems to be the only radical author who discusses this part of the Libertalia story. (Peter Lamborn Wilson also speaks
of the “‘anarchist’ schism” caused by Tew’s former quartermaster, but only in
passing.[866]) Snelders writes:
If we compare the chapter on Misson with what we have learned
about the organization on board the pirate ships, the radically dissident pirates appear more typical of the politics of Old Roger than
Libertalia’s proto-democracy, with its Lockean original contract and
movement towards the formation of a liberal state with private property and formal democracy to protect it. The anarchists who refuse
to accept the democratic pirate utopia and have no use for laws of any
kind may be the truest reflection of the pirate ethos.[867]
It is hard to see the basis for such claims in Captain Johnson’s text; Snelders’
conclusion appears as curious as the romanticization of Libertalia, and by
far the most puzzling in his outstanding The Devil’s Anarchy. According to
Johnson, after the council rejects the dissidents, Captain Tew is granted
permission to see them nonetheless in order to give notice about Libertalia:
“If, they made it their earnest entreaty to be admited, and would desert the
quartermaster, it should be granted as a particular favour done to them at the
instance of the admiral [Tew], and upon his engaging a parole of honour for
their quiet behaviour.”[868] Tew makes the journey to the setlement, is received
“mighty civily” by the quartermaster, and tells him about Libertalia. (Why
he would talk to the one person who, according to the council, needs to be
deserted as a condition for the others to join, remains a mystery.) The quartermaster tells him “that he could see no advantage to themselves in changing
their present situation,… that they…enjoyed all the necessaries of life, were
free and independent of all the world, and it would be madness again to subject themselves to any government which, however mild, still exerted some
power.”[869] So far into the story, Snelders’ interpretation would make sense.[870]
This perception changes, though, when the quartermaster continues:
However, if you will go to America or Europe and shew the advantages which may accrue to the English by fixing a colony here, out of
love we bear for our country, and to wipe away the odious appellation
of Pirates, with pleasure we’ll submit to any who shall come with a
commission from a lawful government. But ’tis ridiculous to think we
will become subjects to greater rogues than ourselves… [871]
In other words, the community that represents for Snelders “the truest
reflection of the pirate ethos” not only wants to rid itself of the “odious appellation of Pirates,” but would also be ready to function as a colonial English
outpost, among other reasons because “a setlement here would be a curb on
Pirates and a protection as well as a great conveniency to our east India ships,
who might here be stored with fresh or salt provisions.” This is formulated in
a leter that the quartermaster fetches before Tew’s departure, urging him to
present it to the English authorities back in America. The letter lists a number of arguments for granting colony status to their setlement. Among these
arguments, we find not only the quoted condemnations of piracy, but also the
following calculation:
Negroes in Barbadoes are at ₤30, ₤40, or ₤50 a head, and I dare answer
to 10S. in European goods will purchase a negro slave at Madagascar,
since we have purchased one for an old coat, a lusty fellow. Food is very
dear at Barbadoes and here you may feed a slave, as well as yourself
without expense, consequently he will do more work than a Barbadoes
slave, who is, by the dearness of provision, half-starved.[872]
In the end, the tale of Libertalia features two political options: a democratic-
liberal state (whose utopian notion never really exceeded that of Thomas
More[873]), and a rough-and-ready colonial station. Neither option appears terribly attractive for radical politics.
*** 4.9. Safe Havens, Onshore Setlements, Pirate Utopias: Pirates on Land
In comparison to the most probably fictional Libertalia, an illustration of the
pirate setlements whose existence is beyond doubt will beter help explore
their political dimensions. What is certain is that these setlements scared
the authorities. As Linebaugh and Rediker state: “Some among the powerful
worried that pirates might ‘set up a sort of Commonwealth’ in areas where
no power would be able ‘to dispute with them.’ Colonial and metropolitan
merchants and officials feared incipient separatism in Madagascar, Sierra
Leone, Bermuda, North Carolina, the Bay of Campeche, and Honduras.”[874]
Snelders calls these areas “illegal autonomous zones”[875] and “border areas of
civilization”[876]—both apt descriptions and much more fiting than “quasi-
states.”[877]
**** Caribbean
The Caribbean buccaneers and pirates used various land bases from the
1620s to the 1720s. Providence Island was an early privateering station for
the English in the 1630s, Martinique developed into a center for French
buccaneers and pirates some decades later, and the Virgin Islands (in particular Saint Tomas) were a regular rendezvous for pirates from many
nations throughout the century. The most important centers, however,
were Hispaniola, the stomping ground of the early buccaneer community;
Tortuga, the “buccaneers’ ‘acropolis’”[878] across a strait of Hispaniola’s north-
western tip where most of the buccaneers moved once they had turned from
hunters to sea robbers; Pêtit-Goave on western Hispaniola, where most of the
Tortuga buccaneers returned in the 1660s; Port Royal, Jamaica, which, in the
words of David Cordingly and John Falconer, developed into “a paradise for
buccaneers”[879] after the English takeover in 1655; the Bays of Campeche and
Honduras, centers of the notorious logwood cuters during the last decades of
the 17th century; and New Providence, which served as the golden age pirates’
“sanctuary”[880] for two short years from 1716 to 1718.
**** Hispaniola
Descriptions of everyday life on western Hispaniola during the buccaneer
heyday make life sound like a step short of a primitivist Eldorado. Father du
Tertre, an early missionary in the Caribbean, writes about an “unorganized
rabble of men from all countries” who “would not suffer any chiefs”:
In general they were without any habitation or fixed abode, but only
rendezvoused where the catle were to be found, and some sheds covered with leaves to keep off the rain and to store the hides of the beasts
they had killed until some vessel should pass to barter with them for
wine, brandy, line, arms, powder, bullets, and cooking vessels which
they needed and which were the only moveables of the buccaneers.[881]
Du Tertre also remarked: “You would say that these are the butcher’s vilest
servants who have been eight days in the slaughterhouse without washing
themselves.”[882] A graphic illustration is also provided by Clark Russell:
The Island of San Domingo, or Hispaniola as it was then called, was
haunted and overrun by a singular community of savage, surly, fierce
and filthy men.…These people went dressed in shirts and pantaloons of coarse linen cloth, which they steeped in the blood of the
animals they slaughtered. They wore round caps, boots of hogskin
drawn over their feet, and belts of raw hide, in which they stuck their
sabres and knives…They were hunters by trade, and savages in their
habits…They ate and slept on the ground, their table was a stone,
their bolster the trunk of a tree, and their roof the hot and sparkling
heavens of the Antilles.[883]
This community of hunters was driven from Hispaniola by the Spaniards
who killed off the game in the 1630s. Most buccaneers moved across a small
strait to the island of Tortuga off Hispaniola’s northwestern tip.
**** Tortuga
Tortuga probably had some semi-permanent setlers (mostly traders) starting in the 1620s. The island then experienced a rather turbulent colonial
history and changed hands between the English, French, and Spanish a few
times, until the French established a hold over it in 1642 with governor Jean
le Vasseur fortifying the island and turning it into a strong sea-raiding base.
Despite continued Spanish atacks, the French and the buccaneers remained
(with short interruptions) until the 1770s before the last buccaneer generation established itself around the thriving setlement of Petit-Gôave on Hispaniola.
Philip Gosse has called Tortuga “a buccaneer republic, where the seamen
made their own laws and cultivated the land for sugar-cane and yams,”[884]
while John Masefield suggests that the Tortuga buccaneers “soon became
so numerous that they might have made an independent state had they but
agreed among themselves.”[885] A vivid description of Tortuga in its heyday
comes from Basil Fuller and Ronald Leslie-Melville:
The Brethren of the Coast lived a life which was an extraordinary
mixture of idealism and savagery. Gradually their haven became more
prosperous. A beter harbour and beter defences were built. The standard of living in Tortuga rose as wealth flowed into it in ever increasing tides. But still no atempt was made to add to the luxury of the haven.
Amazingly the buccaneers maintained their determination to eschew
comforts, fearful to their softening effects. So Tortuga was raised from
the insignificant island it had once been to the dignity of a dangerous
lair, over which ministers in far-away Whitehall scratched their heads,
and Spanish grandees fumed and cursed. The secret of the success of
the haven lay in the true ‘brotherhood’ of its people, who realised to
an astonishing degree, considering what stamp of men they were, the
truth of the old tag ‘united we stand, divided we fall.’ The buccaneers
stuck to each other with a loyalty which compels our admiration.[886]
**** Petit-Gôave
Petit-Gôave, located in Hispaniola’s southwest, served as the base of the
French buccaneers during the dying phases of the community from the 1670s
to the 1690s. Described as the capital of “a population of tramps and rebels,”[887]
hundreds of buccaneers were based there until the late 1680s.[888] By 1700, however, the town had become “a sleepy French colonial backwater.”[889]
**** Port Royal
When the restoration of Charles II in 1660 brought an increase in privateering
licenses on Jamaica, the harbor town of Port Royal developed into the major
center for English buccaneers, many of whom flocked into the new English
colony from Hispaniola and Tortuga. By 1665, the town counted more than
2,000 buccaneers who regularly embarked on journeys from its port.[890] When
the English stopped using privateers in the 1680s, the buccaneer community
came to an end. This did not stop the “mushroom growth” of Port Royal,
though, which “immediately before the earthquake that destroyed it in June
1692…was nearly twice as large as New York at the same period.”[891] Many
saw the earthquake itself as a kind of divine intervention, since Port Royal
had a “hell-raising reputation”:[892] “It was, according to one righteous visitor,
the ‘Sodom of the New World.’ A clergyman claimed, ‘its population consists
or pirates, cut-throats, whores and some of the vilest persons in the whole
of the world.’”[893] Port Royal has further been described as the “the wickedest town in America,”[894] “the most corrupt and debauched town in all His
Majesty’s dominions,”[895] “the Gomorrah of the times,”[896] and “the receptacle of
vagabonds, the sanctuary of bankrupts, and a close-stool for the purges of our
prisons.”[897] Somewhat more informative is of Neville Williams’ description:
Port Royal developed very rapidly as a bleary-eyed town of
unashamed debauchery, where seamen of every rank seemed only too
happy to be parted from their money. There were more dram shops
there than in London, almost as many brothels as in Paris and more
sudden deaths than in the whole of Scotland. The men who sailed into
Port Royal after only a moderately successful cruise for plunder threw
their money about with incredible prodigality.[898]
**** Bay of Campeche/Bay of Honduras
The Bays of Campeche and Honduras developed into the center of the English
logwood cuters in the 1670s. The logwood cuters were tightly connected
to the buccaneers who also served as important trading partners. Many of
the logwood cuters were ex- or part-time buccaneers themselves. Logwood
was used for dying clothes, and the cuters—all in all no more than “260 to
270 men” in Dampier’s estimation[899]—made good money living in conditions
similar to those of the early buccaneers on Hispaniola: “The logwood cuters
had a reputation not unlike that of the original buccaneers who hunted catle
on the island of Hispanolia: hard men earning a difficult living in primitive
conditions, unfetered by the constraints of civilized society.”[900] In fact, the
logwood cuters engaged in hunting expeditions on the side—as we have seen
previously, they also engaged in raids on Indian communities. Nonetheless,
Linebaugh and Rediker have called them part of “a landed extension of
hydrarchy” exercising a kind of “primitive communism.”[901] Given the fact that
we have hardly any documentation of life in these communities other than
the notes taken by Dampier, which sketch a tough male frontier society, this
appears somewhat idealistic.[902]
**** New Providence
For two short years, from 1716 to 1718, the island of New Providence in the
Bahamas became, in the words of one historian, “the pirate capital of the New
World.”[903] The island had already served as a pirate base in the 1690s, but it
was only with the reemergence of piracy in 1713 (after the end of the War of
the Spanish Succession) that pirate crews started flocking en masse to what
was perceived to be a perfect pirate haven. There they created, depending on
which fanciful phrase we prefer, a “nest of pirates,”[904] a “colony of rogues,”[905] a
“rough-and-ready republic,”[906] or an “outlaw state.”[907] In Stephen Snelders’ estimation, “between 1716 and 1718… the pirate brotherhood was numerically
as strong as the old Brotherhood of the Coast had been.”[908] Neville Williams
writes that “within a few months this ‘Pirate Republic’ boasted a population
of some 2,000 desperate men. New Providence was both a retreat for outlaws, where ships could careen and water in safety, and a first-class operational base.”[909]
David F. Marley explains why New Providence made such a formidable
pirate base: “Its harbour was too shallow and tricky for heavy men-of-war to
enter easily, while the surrounding hills afforded excellent vantage points for
espying passing ships. Furthermore, the island’s reefs teemed with lobster,
fish and turtle, and the well-wooded interior featured fresh-water springs and
an abundance of fruit and game.”[910] In the lofty words of Douglas Boting,
New Providence was “the most felicitous haven that ever met the squinting
gaze of an outlaw seaman.” Besides, “there was no law in Nassau except that
of the fist and cutlass.… In that part a pirate felt truly unfettered; he was cut
from the moorings of social constraint.”[911]
According to Jenifer G. Marx, “whores and outcasts, mangy dogs, and mul-tiplying rats added to the fluctuating population. Merchants and traders were
drawn to the setlement. Tey catered to the outlaws’ needs and purchased
their plunder, much if which was smuggled to the colonies for resale.”[912] A
graphic illustration, worth quoting at length, also comes from Frank Sherry:
The town of Nassau, once a torpid waterside hamlet, had by 1716
become the capital city of the reborn pirate confederacy. Nassau
reflected both the values and the style of the brigands who made it
their headquarters: impermanent, licentious, and chaotic. A shanty-
town—a zany collection of stores, shacks, whorehouses, and saloons,
cobbled together from drifwood and canvas with palm thatch for
roofs—stretched in a half circle along the sandy shore of the harbor.
The wreckage of captured prizes lay roting on the beach, their ribs
exposed like long-dead carcasses. Dozens of vessels—pirate sloops
and captured merchants—crowded the harbor, their masts looked
like a leafless forest from the shore. In this place, their own crazy
metropolis, the pirates of the western world drank, argued among
themselves, gambled away fortunes, paid in stolen coin for the bodies
of the prostitutes who flocked to the town, and lived in an uproarious
present until their coin was gone and they had to go to sea once more.
It was said that the stench from Nassau—a combination of roasting
meat, smoke, human offal, rum, unwashed bodies, and roting garbage, all stewing together under the tropical sun—could be detected
far out to sea, long before the island itself was visible. New Providence
and its wild harbor town were in many ways a pirate heaven as well as
a pirate haven. Free from all laws other than the laws of piracy, it made
available all the rough joys that the outlaw brotherhood held dear.[913]
As far as these “laws of piracy” are concerned, it has been suggested that
the island was “ruled by a council of captains and quartermasters, just as if it
had been a very large pirate ship,”[914] but there seems litle evidence for such a
level of organization. As far as the reference to New Providence as a “pirate
heaven” goes, the image apparently did indeed enter the pirates’ own mythology: “It was said that every pirate’s wish was to find himself not in heaven
after death but back on that island paradise where the resting rovers could
laze in their hammocks beneath the palms, swinging gently in the fanning
breezes. There were whores aplenty, continuous gambling, the camaraderie
of fellow rovers, and unlimited drink.”[915]
Some historians challenge the notion of a pirate paradise, however. Neville
Williams writes:
There was litle romance about the pirate’s life ashore for the base on
New Providence developed as a fiendish shanty town to which only
Hogarth could have done justice. The men were spendthrif, and most
shares were fritered away on liquor and on half-bred women; the idea
of buried treasure is a myth, for the dram shops and the brothels took
every available piece of eight.[916]
David Mitchell’s judgment is similar: “Nassau was a shanty town of driftwood and palm fronds and old sails draped over spars to make tents.…Every
other hovel was a grog shop or a brothel with Negro and mulato prostitutes.…The general atmosphere resembled that of Hogarth’s Gin Lane in
balmy climate, or of a resurrected and even sleazier Port Royal.”[917]
For a more diplomatic description we may finally quote Paul Galvin:
The piratical fraternity of New Providence…has often been painted
(one might say with decidedly romantic license) as a near-utopian,
ultra-democratic or anarchistic haven: a brutish yet noble ‘Pirate
Republic’…There is an element of truth to this myth, but the reality
of the pirates’ setlement was probably closer to Woodbury’s ‘marine
hobo jungle… a place of temporary sojourn and refreshment for a
literally floating population.’[918]
The pirate hold over the island ended in 1718 with the arrival of Governor
Woodes Rogers.
**** Madagascar
Probably none of the pirate strongholds—including New Providence—
received as much romantic atention as the island of Madagascar, which
developed into a central base for American and Caribbean pirates in connection with their excursions into the Indian Ocean.
Most significantly, Adam Baldridge, a former buccaneer, established a
trading post at the island of St. Mary’s on Madagascar’s northeast coast in
1691. Baldridge’s post soon served both pirates and slave traders. A similar
post was established a few years later by Abraham Samuel on the southern tip
of Madagascar at Fort Dauphin. St. Mary’s remained the center of the pirate
community, though, and David F. Marley suggests that in the late 1690s it
was inhabited by around 1,500 Europeans.[919] Cordingly and Falconer’s estimate is more conservative; according to them, no more than several hundred
pirates setled on Madagascar at any one time.[920] Peter Earle concurs: “After
1695, the most pirate-infested year, there were seldom more than six pirate
ships operating in the Indian Ocean and some six or seven hundred men in
their crews or enjoying themselves somewhere ashore, but these men made a
great noise in the world.”[921]
The reasons for the atention the Madagascan pirates received despite
their rather modest numbers were, according to Cordingly and Falconer, the
following:
The mystery of the island (litle-known despite its size), its exotic
reputation and the absence of other European setlers caused it to be
seen as a ‘pirate island’ in the popular imagination. Soon stories of
pirate chiefs living in tropical splendour and ruling whole tribes of
natives began to filter back to Europe, endowing the pirates with a
lifestyle and riches few of them can have known.[922]
The stories were impressive enough to worry the English authorities who,
in 1704, released a parliamentary warning that if the Madagascar pirates’
“numbers should be increased, they may form themselves into a settlement
of robbers, as prejudicial to trade as any on the Coast of Africa & should be
enticed to come home for love of country, otherwise children will be ‘foreign
English.’”[923]
In reality, St. Mary’s, even in its heyday, “had a shifing population, the
fairly small numbers of pirates who had setled there permanently, resting
between voyages or waiting for a passage home, being increased dramatically when one or more of the pirate ships came in from a cruise.”[924] In Robert
C. Ritchie’s words, “the pirate setlement on the island was by all accounts a
ramshackle affair. It consisted of a few houses, a low palisade, and a couple of
cannon.”[925] Nonetheless, some authors on pirate history, most notably Frank
Sherry, continue the Madagascar romanticism deep into the 20th century.
Sherry declares that “in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,
there was only one true democracy on earth: the pirate brotherhood forged in
Madagascar.”[926] He also calls the community a “maritime state” with “formed
fleets”[927] and something “new in the experience of the world: international in
scope, well financed, numerous, independent, and apparently powerful.”[928]
Powerful, maybe. But in what way? If the Madagascan pirates’ documented
involvement in the slave trade alone does not clear the romantic mist surrounding them, then perhaps the following lengthy passage from the General
History in which Captain Johnson describes the life of these “sovereign
princes among the inhabitants” thus:[929]
When our pirates first setled amongst them, their alliance was
much courted by [the local] princes, so they sometimes joined one,
sometimes another. But wheresoever they sided, they were sure to be
victorious; for the negroes here had no firearms, nor did they understand their use. So that at length these pirates became so terrible to
the negroes, that if two or three of them were only seen on one side,
when they were going to engage, the opposite side would fly without
striking a blow. By these means they not only became feared, but
powerful; all the prisoners of war, they took to be their slaves; they
married the most beautiful of the negro women, not one or two, but
as many as they liked, so that every one of them has as great a seraglio
as the Grand Seignior at Constantinople. Their slaves they employed
in planting rice, in fishing, and hunting, etc.; besides which, they had
abundance of others, who lived, as it were, under their protection, and
to be secure from the disturbances or atacks of their powerful neighbours; these seemed to pay them a willing homage. Now they began
to divide from one another, each living with his own wives, slaves and
dependants, like a separate prince; and as power and plenty naturally
beget contention, they sometimes quarrelled with one another and
atacked each other at the head of their several armies; and in these
civil wars, many of them were killed.… If power and command be the
thing which distinguish a prince, these ruffians had all the marks of
royalty about them, nay more, they had the very fears which commonly disturb tyrants, as may be seen by the extreme caution they
took in fortifying the places where they dwelt.[930]
If Johnson can be trusted here, these lines must resoundingly shatter any
romantic image of a true democracy, even for those turning a blind eye to the
slave trade. It should also render it of litle surprise that Baldridge’s post was
eventually razed by an atack of Madagascan natives. It was soon replaced by
a new post under the administration of one Edward Welsh—it became neither as successful nor as legendary as Baldridge’s.[931]
The following description of the daily routine on St. Mary’s probably
describes whatever freedom the pirates had on the island much beter than
any talk about democracies and republics: “Life in this exotic pirate settlement appears to have been pleasant enough with, sad to say, slaves to wait on
the freedom-loving pirates, plenty of women, locally produced beef and rice
to eat, and drink from the slavers’ store or from the natives who fermented
honey and sugar to produce a powerful form of mead called toke.”[932]
The significance of Madagascar as a pirate haunt waned with the overall
recess in piracy caused by the privateering boom during the Spanish War of
Secession (1701–1713). Cordingly and Falconer summarize:
When the English privateer Woodes Rogers was at the Cape in
1711 he was told by two ex-pirates who had spent some years in
Madagascar that only 60 to 70 pirates remained, and that they, far
from reigning as kings in tropical paradise, lived in squalor and
distress, ‘most of them very poor and despicable, even to the natives.’
In 1719 the East Indiaman St George visited St. Mary’s, and found the
dispirited remnants of the pirate John Halsey’s company, some 17
men worn down by the tedium of exile, who ‘wanted but one hit more
and then to go home, for they were aweary of their course of life.’[933]
Around 1720, as a belated consequence of the new rise of piracy in the
Caribbean, the defeat of New Providence as a pirate headquarters, and the
overall increasing persecution of piracy in the West Indies, Madagascar once
again became a center of the trade. It was during this time that James Plantain
founded his “kingdom” at the infamously named “Ranter Bay” (not far from
St. Mary’s Island). However, this second boom was over within a few years,
and Madagascar never regained the reputation as a pirate paradise that it had
held in the 1690s.
**** West Afica
The west coast of Africa was the last addition to the list of prominent golden
age pirate hunting grounds, mainly due to the lucrative slave trade that
evolved along its shores.
Despite rumors about their alleged existence, no known pirate setlement
akin to New Providence or St. Mary’s was ever established in West Africa.
Pirates had safe havens but those appear to have been small illegal trading
posts that never had more than a dozen permanent inhabitants and a maximum of two or three pirate ships visiting at the same time. Compared to the
Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, relatively few pirates operated here, and
they did so usually en route between the Caribbean and Madagascar. Only
Bartholomew Roberts’ crew seemed to enjoy a longer stint in the region in
1721/22, before being captured off modern-day Gabon.
The most important of the mentioned trading posts was the one at the
mouth of the Sierra Leone River. It is also the one usually serving as the
only example for alleged West African pirate setlements. The forthright
description of the post as “a tiny outlaw colony of European smugglers and
interlopers, who were not adverse to trading with pirates”[934] seems more convincing, however, than the claim that it constituted a “pirate stronghold” in
which the pirates’ “communitarian urge… took landed form.”[935]
If it is true that, as Peter Lamborn Wilson argues, “pirates’ activities on land
(pirate utopias or temporary autonomous zones) should be considered just as
significant as their activities at sea,”[936] then Heiner Treinen’s judgment is not
too encouraging:
The history of the parasitic radical democracy of the Caribbean ends
with the pirates leaving their ships. No case of a successful community established by pirates on land has ever been known. This is not
self-explanatory. Atempts have been made.…However, the purpose
of these has hardly ever been to establish anarchist communities;
usually, the on-land pirate communities were founded because pirates
could not return to their home countries. The one thing that all the
atempts shared was that they all dissolved very quickly—if they were
able to avoid violent internal conflict. Even though litle outside pressure was put on these communities, they were never able to turn into functioning anarchic societies.[937]
Treinen’s perspective will definitely sound too negative for those who insist
that pirates were—at least on occasion—able to “carry over… the democratic
organization to which they had become accustomed aboard ship.”[938] Be that as
it may, what appears hard to challenge in Treinen’s analysis is that we know of
no on-land pirate setlement that prevailed.
*** 4.10. “Piratical Imperialism,” Hypocrisy, and the Merchants’ Wrath: Piracy and Capitalism
Turning into a dominant force in world history in the 17th century, capitalism, along with its demands and its logic, played a decisive part in the rise
and fall of golden age piracy. Neville Williams sees piracy “interwoven—like
rogue’s yarn in a dockyard hawser—with… commercial interests.”[939] Franklin
W. Knight sums up the role of the buccaneer communities by stating that
they “represented a stage in the transition from pioneering colonialism to
organized imperialism.”[940] Other authors speak of a “piratical imperialism,”
a policy according to which “many governments supported or at least condoned piracy commited by their own subjects, seeing it as a cheap and effective way of advancing trade and empire.”[941] Chris Land describes the role of the privateering buccaneers in detail:
Privateers were generally commissioned by a head of state to disrupt
the trade of hostile nations and seek plunder and wealth for the crown.
They were agents of a form of primitive accumulation…based upon
the monarchic state. As Jacques Gélinas…has noted, this period was
crucial to the monetization of the European economy and the end of
barter, particularly the exploitation of Aztec and Inca gold and silver
from South America. Without monetization the commodity form
could not have become generalized and industrial capitalism as we
know it could not have developed. The privateers were indispensable
to the eventual development of industrial capitalism in England.[942]
This was not only true for England and its European rivals, but for the
Americas and the Caribbean, too. The buccaneers proved essential in a two-
step infiltration of the region by European powers competing with the Spanish.
First, the buccaneers “destabilized the Spanish colonial system and made it
possible for other nations to gain a foothold in the Western Hemisphere.”[943]
Secondly, once these powers were established, they facilitated “a crude form
of imperial revenue-sharing.”[944] Colonies struggling to get a strong legal economy off the ground welcomed the sea robber’s trade deep into the golden age.
“The two colonies which had perhaps the worst reputation for favoring pirates
were Carolina and Rhode Island. Once, when a prisoner was actually foolish
enough to plead guilty to piracy, a Rhode Island jury assured that they must
of course have misheard him, and acquited nonetheless.”[945] John Franklin
Jameson states that the privateers’ and pirates’ “activities had an important
influence on the development of American commerce” and calls privateering
“one of the leading American industries” during certain periods (for example
the American Revolution).[946]
Once the Spanish dominance over the Americas was broken and other
colonial powers and their colonies’ economies were well established, the
buccaneers turned from a useful mercenary force to a nuisance and potential
danger. According to Janice E. Tomson, “colonial support for piracy began
to erode in mid-1699” because “by that time there were so many pirates off
the southeast coast of the United States that there was not enough ‘glamorous
plunder’ for all, and they began seizing colonial commodities, like tobacco.”[947]
Angus Konstam concludes that “when piracy began to hinder the economic
development of the American colonies and cut into the profit margins of
European merchants and investors, the climate changed.”[948] For Peter Earle,
“this change reflected a growing belief in mercantile and shipping circles that
piratical imperialism had served its purpose and that it should henceforth be
the duty of the government and the navy to eradicate piracy and so make the
seas safe for trade and shipping.”[949]
As Peter Earle also points out, “the colonists would still have liked to buy
cheap pirated goods, but their governors increasingly would not let them do
so.”[950] Even though there were exceptions to this rule—most notably North
Carolina governor Charles Eden who remained friendly with the pirates till
the late 1710s—Earle’s observation would also indicate that the golden age
pirates had indeed sympathizers among the “common folk” in the Caribbean
and the Americas and that those most afraid of them where the ones who
had riches to protect. It was certainly the rich who now went after them most
fervently, after having profited from sea robbery in the Caribbean and the
Americas for nearly a century.
Various authors on piracy have shared their version of the situation. Robert
C. Ritchie: “Infant economies everywhere on the peripheries of empire
eagerly sought easy money. When they eventually became established, the
colonial merchants found the rough ways of the pirates too high a price to
pay and turned against the buccaneers, but for nearly a century they provided
sanctuary.”[951] David F. Marley: “Around the globe, Europe’s colonies were
growing increasingly stable and prosperous, and no longer dependent upon
privateers for their security. Instead they now regarded these as an impediment to good trade, and so gradually eradicated them.”[952] Franklin W. Knight:
“Individual, uncontrolled marauding became politically counterproductive to the genesis of exploitation societies based on slave-operated plantations and organized international commerce.”[953] Stephen Snelders: “When
merchant capitalism grew more setled in the Caribbean, pirates became a
kind of aberration, a reminder of the earlier times of original accumulation
that was no longer welcome.”[954] Chris Land: “As mercantile capitalism and a
more open form of trade became the dominant form of accumulation, piracy
became more and more of a hindrance to the effective development of world
trade and the pirates ceased to be politically or economically useful. As
France, England and Spain entered a period of relative peace and sought to
secure accumulation through more open trade, piracy became a problem that
needed to be ‘exterminated.’”[955]
This is reminiscent of the fate of social bandits, as explained by Hobsbawm:
“With economic development the rich and powerful are increasingly likely
to see bandits as threats to property to be stamped out, rather than as one
factor among others in the power-game. Under such circumstances bandits
become permanent outcasts.”[956] Paul Galvin summarizes the corresponding
consequences for the buccaneers: “When their benefactors consolidated sufficient power and territory on their own, the buccaneers had outlived their
usefulness. Tose who could not conform to the new colonial establishment—and they were many—either removed to the outer frontier, perhaps
trying their hand at the logwood trade, or struck out on their own account as
freebooters.”[957]
The War of the Spanish Succession caused a last delay in the common effort
of the colonial powers to erase golden age piracy as it “quickly devolved into a
global contest of commercial interceptions and blockades.”[958] Privateers were
needed, and, as always, the borders to “out-and-out piracy” were blurred.
Once the war was over and the need for privateers had ceased, the authorities of all nations united in their now uncompromising campaign against sea
robbery that, to them, had turned into “the terror of the trading part of the
world.”[959]
The golden age pirates’ effectiveness in disrupting some of the world’s main
trade routes seems confirmed by Jamaican governor Nicholas Lowes who
wrote to the English authorities in 1718: “There is hardly any ship or vessel
coming in or out going out of this island that is not plundered.”[960] According
to Marcus Rediker, the golden age pirates “practiced indirect terror against
the owners of mercantile property”[961] and “Anglo-American pirates created
an imperial crisis with their relentless and successful atacks upon merchants’
property and international commerce between 1716 and 1726.”[962] David F.
Marley asserts that Bartholomew Roberts’ crew alone had “by the spring of
1721…nearly brought Antillean commerce to a standstill.”[963] The seriousness
of these actions seems confirmed by Captain Johnson who quotes a court
speech directed at the members of Bartholomew Roberts’ crew during their
trial at Cape Coast Castle: “To a trading nation nothing can be so destructive
as piracy, or call for more exemplary punishment; besides, the national reflection it infers. It cuts off the returns of industry and those plentiful importations that alone can make an island flourishing; and it is your aggravation that
ye have been the chiefs and rulers in these licentious and lawless practices.”[964]
The pirates not only robbed—they also destroyed. The eye-witness report
of an atack on a merchant ship by Roberts’ crew, published in the Boston
News-Letter in 1720, reads like this:
The next thing they did was, with madness and rage to tore up the
hatches, enter the hold like a parcel of furies, where with axes, cutlasses, etc., they cut, tore and broke open trunks, boxes, cases and
bales, and when any of the goods came upon deck which they did not
like to carry with them aboard their ship, instead of tossing them into
the hold again they threw them overboard into the sea.[965]
Peter Earle believes that “perhaps above all, pirates liked to burn ships for
the sheer joy of seeing these mercantile symbols of the world they had lef
behind go up in flames, such entertainment being explained by one captured
pirate when asked why he burned ships which turn’d to no advantage among
’em. The prisoner laughed and replied ’twas for fun.”[966]
Once again, this is reminiscent of social bandits:
Primitive…insurgents have no positive programme, only the negative
programme of geting rid of the superstructure which prevents men
from living well and dealing fairly, as in the good old days. To kill, to
slash, to burn away everything that is not necessary and useful to the
man at the plough or with the herdsman’s crook, is to abolish corruption and leave only what is good, pure and natural. Thus the brigand-
guerrillas of the Italian South destroyed not only their enemies and
the legal documents of bondage, but unnecessary riches. Their social
justice was destruction.[967]
It is not surprising that the authorities soon employed all means to
destroy the golden age pirates’ “counterculture to the civilization of Atlantic
capitalism.”[968] Peter Earle describes the situation thus:
Henceforth, English governments would be commited to what has
been called by one historian mercantile imperialism, ‘a grand marine
empire,’ in which trade, shipping and the empire itself would be
promoted, protected and controlled for the benefit of merchants and
government alike. The state would provide protection for trade and,
in return, would receive a flow of revenue from increased wealth and
customs duties and a pool of trained sailors to fight in its naval wars.
There was to be no place for pirates in this new world, no place for
individualist marauders on the periphery of empire. The state would
have a monopoly of violence at sea, through its navy at all times and
through privateers properly commissioned and policed in times of
war. Pirates were to be destroyed, not just as enemies of mankind but
as enemies of capitalism and commercial expansion, a nice turn-
around from the position only a litle earlier in English history when
piracy had been condoned as a promoter of the expansion of trade.[969]
In the succinct summary of the authors of “Pirate Utopias,” “the pirates’
war on trade had become too successful to be tolerated.”[970] In response, the
state unleashed its own war—a war that seemed to confirm Deleuze and
Guatari’s theory that “the factors that make State war total war are closely
connected to capitalism.”[971] Indeed, it seems that right down to its end, this
war was fueled by merchants’ interests. Marcus Rediker tells us that “when
two groups of merchants petitioned Parliament for relief in early 1722, at
the very peak of Roberts’ depredations, the House of Commons ordered an
immediate drafing of another bill for the suppression of piracy, which, with
Robert Walpole’s assistance, was quickly passed.”[972] Rediker adds that “pirates
now had to be exterminated in order for the new trade to flourish.”[973]
The pirates’ odds were terrible: “Unlike their buccaneer forebears, they
enjoyed no cloak of legitimacy from any government… and were therefore
doomed to swif eradication.”[974] The grizzly story of the “extermination campaign” that brought golden age piracy to its end has been told earlier.[975] The
outcome was that in the 1720s, “the long war of atrition against smugglers
and pirates was finally won, and the seas were left free for English merchants
to make profits in.”[976] Once again it is to Marcus Rediker that we owe a splendid summary—this time of capitalism’s role in eliminating what had turned
from a tactical ally for expansion into one of its worst enemies:
If the plantation capital of the Caribbean, allied with the merchant
capital of the metropolis, killed the first generation of pirates—
the buccaneers of the 1670s—and if the capital of the East India
Company killed the pirates of the 1690s, when the company’s ships
were hothouses of mutiny and rebellion, it was the African slave-
trading capital that killed the pirates of the early eighteenth century.
Pirates had ruptured the Middle Passage, and this would not be tolerated. By 1726 the maritime state had removed a major obstacle to the
accumulation of capital in its ever-growing Atlantic system.[977]
The hypocrisy of the authorities throughout the history of Caribbean buccaneering and pirating has been pointed out by both contemporary victims
and 20th-century commentators. Pirate John Quelch, hanged in Boston in
1704, stated before his execution that “they should also take care how they
brought money into New-England, to be hanged for it!”[978]His fellow pirate
Erasmus Peterson evoked the eternal fate of the underdog when he stated—
against the backdrop of the riches made by the criminals in office—that “it
is very hard for so many men’s lives to be taken away for a litle gold.”[979] As far
as the double standards involved in the official responses to Caribbean sea
robbery go, historian David F. Marley states with respect to Bartholomew
Roberts that “half a century earlier his intelligence, charisma and courage
might have earned him a knighthood.”[980]
Golden age piracy might have marked the biggest threat to international
maritime trade ever and remains a powerful “symbolic focus for anti-Capital’s desire.”[981] As David Cordingly and John Falconer state: “Individual piratical acts continued to occur for the rest of the [18th] century and beyond, but
with declining frequency and without the previously devastating effects on
trade and the commerce in the area.”[982]
*** 4.11. Victims of Circumstance or Bloodthirsty Sadists? Piracy and Violence
One of many startling passages in Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of
Morals reads as follows: “When man wanted to create a memory for himself,
this could never be done without blood, pain, sacrifice; the most gruesome
gifts and sacrifices… the most appalling mutilations…—all this finds its origin in the instinct which understands that pain is the strongest mnemonic
tool.”[983] With respect to the Caribbean buccaneers and pirates, this would sug-
gest that without their legendary violence they would have never entered the
popular legacy of the Western world in the way they did. Indeed, the violence
of the Caribbean sea robber is, as Hans Turley puts it, “part of his mystique.”[984]
While Exquemelin’s account of the buccaneers excels in “bloodthirsty
stories,”[985] Captain Johnson tells that “in the commonwealth of the pirates, he
who goes the greatest length or wickedness is looked upon with a kind of envy
amongst them, as a person of a more extraordinary gallantry, and is thereby
entitled to be distinguished by some post, and if such a one has but courage,
he must certainly be a great man.”[986] As if to illustrate his point, Johnson pep-
pers his accounts of pirate captains with comments like: “[He, Edward Low]
took a fishing boat off of Block Island, but did not perpetrate so much cruelty
to her, contenting himself with only cuting off the master’s head.”[987]
Following is a list of ten famed examples of buccaneer and pirate atrocities. Almost all are based on Exquemelin and Johnson. A couple of early ones
relate to Francis l’Ollonais, in the words of Philip Gosse, “a monster of cruelty, who would, had he lived to-day, have been confined in an asylum for
lunatics.”[988]
1. The buccaneers allegedly punished members of their own community by
cuting off their noses and ears.
2. L’Ollonais is said to have hacked torture victims who would not provide
information instantly to pieces with his cutlass, “licking the blood from
the blade with his tongue.”
3. L’Ollonais is also said to have cut out the heart of a prisoner and forced
another to eat it.
4. Rock Braziliano was allegedly prone to spiting prisoners on wooden
stakes and roasting them, “like killing a pig.”
5. Mountbars the Exterminator apparently opened the abdomen of a prisoner, nailed his intestines to a post and chased the prisoner with a torch.
6. Captain Nicolo, after taking a merchantman, reportedly cut off the master’s head and the hand of each seaman.
7. Edward Low allegedly cut off the lips of a Portuguese prisoner and
broiled them before his face.
8. There apparently existed a common practice of wrapping a rope around a
prisoner’s head and slowly twisting it tighter to make his eyeballs pop out.
9. Another practice consisted of “tying men back to back and throwing
them into the sea.”
10. Finally, the practice of sweating is reported in which the victim was
stripped naked, pierced with sail needles and thrown into a barrel with
cockroaches.
These and similar stories have led authors to fanciful descriptions. John
Masefield, for example, tells us of the buccaneers: “They discovered that the
cutting out of prisoners’ hearts, and eating of them raw without salt, as had
been the custom of one of the most famous buccaneers, was far less profitable
than the priming of a prisoner with his own acqua-vitae.”[989] Yet, the references
to the buccaneers’ and pirates’ random cruelty are too common to simply disregard them. In fact, the suggestion that one buccaneer captain whipped a
crew member to death “for no apparent reason” appears not inconceivable.[990]
Sometimes, the cruelty seems to have caught up with the buccaneers and
pirates themselves. Angus Konstam wryly comments on Francis l’Ollonais’
death: “L’Ollonais was killed and probably eaten; an appropriate end for such
a vicious man.”[991]
There has been plenty of debate among contemporary pirate scholars as to
how violent the buccaneers and pirates really were. Opinions seem to differ
much according to political orientation. While Stephen Snelders, for example, formulates somewhat defensively that “there should be no doubt that
buccaneers and flibustiers were very dangerous cuthroats, with a salting of
desperate and even sadistic elements,”[992] David Cordingly seems less inhibited in his judgment when stating that “the real world of the pirates was often
closer to some of today’s horror movies than anything which appeared in contemporary books or plays.”[993] Overall, however, historians seem to agree that
the reports on the buccaneers’ and pirates’ violence were exaggerated. As far
as the accounts of Exquemelin and Johnson go, we ought not forget that they
meant to sell copies, and that gory sensationalism probably proved as effective for that purpose at the time as it does today. As far as the buccaneers’ and
pirates’ enemies are concerned, we can image that the more gruesome the former’s reputation was, the easier it became to justify their persecution. Finally,
the buccaneers and pirates themselves might have had an interest in grooming such a reputation. It might have made their looting easier as it prompted
their victims to abstain from resistance in fear of terrible retribution. Douglas
Boting has called the pirates “masters of psychology”[994] and their cultivated
image a “basic weapon”[995] in their raiding efforts. According to the records,
the tactic seemed effective. It appears as if golden age pirates hardly ever had
to use actual violence to take a merchantman—hoisting the Jolly Roger and
firing a couple of warning shots usually sufficed.
Many authors have made efforts to to see the violence of the buccaneers
and pirates in its historical frame. Marcus Rediker suggests that the reason
for their gruesome acts was that they could neither “resolve the contradictions of their times”[996] nor “escape the system of which they were a part.”[997]
Stephen Snelders argued the importance of viewing the pirates’ actions in
perspective,[998] stating “we must realize that in the seventeenth century the use
of torture in no way deviated from ‘normal’ conduct in society,” and that “torture and other forms of physical violence were very much the standard in all
kinds of social activities.”[999] B. R. Burg suggests that “buccaneers lived in an
age when the infliction of pain was an art form,”[1000] and even David Cordingly
and John Falconer concede that the “numerous… acts of violence and cruelty
commited by the buccaneers [should be] set in the context of their time.”[1001]
Many buccaneer and pirate sympathizers would certainly subscribe to
Stephen Snelders assertion that “when we address the problem of ‘cruelty’ the
point is not whether the buccaneers were cruel (they often were), but whether
they were worse than their enemies and contemporaries—and whether there
were reasons for their cruelty and bloodlust.”[1002]
To a certain extent, this is true. It is important to understand the reasons
for the violence of the buccaneers and pirates, and it is important to consider
the historical circumstances under which it occurred. It seems probable that
their violence was no worse (and possibly less) than the violence of merchant
and navy captains or of the colonial authorities. It seems also probable that
the violence of the later contributed to the violence of the pirates. This is as
much expressed in Robert I. Burns’ succinct statement that “every generation
gets the pirates it deserves,”[1003] as in the pirate John Philps’ accusation levied
against one of his former officers that “it was such dogs as he that put men on
pirating.”[1004] Likewise, it is probably true that “the harsh conditions of indenture produced physically tough and spiritually callous individuals, capable of
surviving the exacting and hazardous conditions of international piracy,”[1005]
and that “the mistreatment of captive masters and officers was a passionate
discharge of the rancor that the sea outlaws felt toward a detested and feared
civilization as personified by a cruel ship’s captain.”[1006] At the same time, this
does not resolve the problem of how people today can relate to this violence.
The above declarations turn the golden age pirate into a role-model for contemporary political struggle. Despite all the inspiration that can be drawn
from the golden age pirate experiment, it hardly seems appropriate to brush
aside the unpleasant parts with the simple explanation that they happened in
a different age. No slave-trading community, for example, ought to become
an unqualified reference point for political radicals. Whether it existed 30 or
300 years ago maters litle. Stephen Snelders may be right when he says that
the ambiguities inherent in the golden age pirates’ communities “need not
be resolved.”[1007] Yet radicals today need to resolve their own ambiguities—
also with respect to violence. An uncritical embrace of the violence of the
Caribbean buccaneers and pirates will do litle to advance the cause. What
seems mandatory is to strengthen theory and praxis by accepting contradictions in the radical past to improve the radical future.
During the last phase of the golden age, the pirates were caught in a downward spiral. Violence and cruelty increased dramatically. Marcus Rediker
writes: “In its final phase, the war turned savage. As naval captains and executioners killed more and more pirates, those who remained at large became
more enraged, more desperate, more violent, and more cruel. The dialectic
of terror… reached a climax in carnage.”[1008] In Frank Sherry’s words, “a handful of pirate captains carried on a last-ditch combat on the sea-lanes against
the forces of law and order. As happens with most lost causes, these… fought
with special fury and cruelty.”[1009]
This should not surprise us. It seems to be a common patern among “criminal” as well as “revolutionary” outlaws that once defeat seems certain and
they feel the full force of the “law,” their desperation and hence their violence
increases, which causes even more counter-violence, etc. As the authors of
“Pirate Utopias” point out, in the case of the golden age pirates “there developed a deadly spiral of increasing violence as state atacks were met with
revenge from the pirates leading to greater state terror.”[1010] With respect to
banditry, Hobsbawm describes the phenomenon thus:
Banditry, we have seen, grows and becomes epidemic in times of
social tension and upheaval. These are also the times when the conditions for such explosions of cruelty are most favorable. They do not
belong to the central image of brigandage, except insofar as the bandit
is at all times an avenger of the poor. But at such times they will no
doubt occur more frequently and systematically. Nowhere more so
than in those…insurrections and rebellions which have failed to turn
into social revolutions, and whose militants are forced to fall back into
the life of outlaws and robbers: hungry, embitered, and resentful even
against the poor who have lef them to fight alone.[1011]
According to Marcus Rediker, the Caribbean buccaneers and pirates
employed violence for three reasons: “to avoid fighting; to force disclosure of
information about where booty was hidden; and to punish ship captains.”[1012]
The third reason is at the heart of the following section.
*** 4.12. Vengeance as Justice: Pirate Ethics
Is there such a thing as “pirate ethics”?[1013] The golden age pirates undoubtedly
sailed with certain principles—their articles being only the most tangible
expression of this. In a very basic sense, principles alone can constitute an
ethics, especially when they relate to a particular understanding of justice.
The principles of the golden age pirates clearly did this, stressing fair distribution of property, equal influence on decision-making processes, and honesty
and loyalty as important values within their community. Marcus Rediker
even calls the golden age pirates’ notion of justice “the foundation of their
enterprise.”[1014] As far as the interior workings of the golden age pirate communities are concerned, an ethics would thus be defined.
Things become more complicated, however, if our definition of ethics
implies a universal application of one’s principals—an extension of one’s own
values to the “outside world.” Arguably, this was not the case with the golden
age pirates. In general, their ethical world seemed reduced to the confines of
their own exclusive social realm. Beyond that, one was hardly bound by principles at all. Still, there was one feature—ever more pronounced the closer
golden age piracy drew to its end—that would suggest a principle’s universal
application: meting out justice against those who have done wrong. No matter how rudimentary the concept, and no mater how vague the understanding of “justice” and of “doing wrong,” as the avenger described by Hobsbawm,
the golden age pirate becomes an ethical figure by all standards—someone
who designs an ethics of vengeance by employing a negative notion of justice:
justice is done by avenging what is perceived as injustice, namely the arbitrary
violence and domination exercised by those with “authority.” In the context
of many pirates’ lives, this meant first and foremost the cruel and sadistic
captain of the merchant ship who would become the focus of their ethics of
vengeance—an ethics that is perhaps best expressed in the famed Pirate Song
of unknown origins: “’Tis to drink to our victory—one cup of red wine. /
Some fight, ’tis for riches—some fight, ’tis for fame: / The first I despise, and
the last is a name. / I fight, ’tis for vengeance! I love to see flow, / At the strike
of my sabre, the life of my foe.”
An emphasis on vengeance among sea robbers was no invention of the golden age—we might recall the famous buccaneer Montbars the Exterminator.
However, among the golden age pirates vengeance as a guiding principle
became ever more pronounced. Frank Sherry calls “the chance to take vengeance on the cruel and unjust society that most pirates had left behind” one
of the age’s most important reasons to turn pirate.[1015] Similarly, Chris Land
states that “one of the main motivators for a pirate was not profit but revenge.”[1016]
The account of William Snelgrave, whose ship was taken by Howell Davis’
crew off the West African coast, confirms this. Snelgrave was apparently told
by one of the pirates that “their reasons for going a pirating were to revenge
themselves on base Merchants, and cruel commanders of ships.”[1017]
In this sense, “numerous sailors, once they became pirates, seized their
new and unusual circumstances to setle old scores in vengeful ways.”[1018] David
F. Marley confirms that this was particularly pronounced during the golden
age’s final phase: “Unlike their precursors from the 1690s, this generation
was noticeably not motivated by a lack of potential prizes in the New World,
but rather by an excess of official retaliation.”[1019]
Among the last of the golden age pirate captains, this retaliation seems to
have reached an organized level. Captain Johnson tells us in his account of
Captain John Evan’s crew: “Upon seizing of this ship, the pirates began to
take upon themselves the distribution of justice, examining the men concerning their master’s usage of them, according to the custom of other pirates.”[1020]
Peter Earle adds an interesting observation concerning the composition of
the pirate crews of that period:
This business of judging and punishing merchant captains is unique
in the history of piracy and reflects the radical, ‘world-turned-upside-
down’ nature of the golden age of piracy. How sailors must have loved
to see the powerful brought low and the oppressor oppressed. Such
vengeance also reflects the make-up of the pirate crews, for never
before had these been drawn predominantly from the more disgruntled members of the crews of merchant ships. Few buccaneers had
served on long journeys in merchant ships and they could not care less
how the Spanish captains of their prizes treated their crews, though
they might kill them simply because they were Spaniards. But large
numbers of the pirates of the years 1715–25 had served on transatlantic or West African voyages or in the Newfoundland fishery where the
effects of harsh captains would have been most severely felt. And for
them such cruel revenge must have been very sweet.[1021]
Earle also cites a dispatch that illustrates the scope that the pirates’ vengeance could reach: “Erring captains might have their nose and ears cut off,
‘for but correcting his own sailors,’ wrote the Governor of Virginia in a leter
begging for a naval vessel to carry him home to England lest he suffer the
same fate.”[1022]
The flipside of this was, of course, that merchant captains who had treated
their sailors well could expect mercy. We find a famous story about such an
event in Captain Johnson’s account of Captain Edward England, when a “fellow with a terrible pair of whiskers, and a wooden leg” (already encountered
in the section on piracy and disability) saves the captured Captain Mackra
by stating that he had “formerly sail’d with him” and that he was “an honest fellow.” A similar picture reaches us of captain William Snelgrave, held
prisoner by pirates off the West African coast: he was saved from pirate retaliation because no one of his crew had any complaints about him.[1023] Rediker
believes that by demonstrating leniency to those who had proven good or
honest, “pirates hoped to show these merchants that good fortunes befell
good captains.”[1024] The fact that Marcus Rediker calls the case of William
Snelgrave “the best description of pirates’ notions of justice” demonstrates
once more the ethical ambiguity that haunts golden age pirate society: after
all, the “good captain” Snelgrave was also a slave trader.
Within their own communities, the golden age pirates usually summoned
councils to deal with maters of justice related to their principles and articles.
The cases at hand were discussed and brought to a conclusion communally.
Sometimes these councils could take on the forms of quasi-courts. Captain
Johnson’s General History of the Pirates includes a remarkable passage lauding
the advantages of the pirate courts:
Here was the form of justice kept up, which is as much as can be said
of several other courts that have more lawful commissions for what
they do. Here was no seeing of council, and bribing of witnesses was
a custom not known among them; no packing of juries, no torturing
and wresting the sense of the law, for by ends and purposes, no puzzling or perplexing the cause with unintelligible canting terms, and
useless distinctions; nor was their sessions burdened with numberless
officers, the ministers of rapine and extortion, with ill-boding aspects,
enough to fright Astrea from the court.[1025]
This serves as a powerful reminder of the concrete notions of justice that
can be exercised in small (“primitive”) communities whose social forums
allow for an equal participation of all. Adding to the “primitive” comparison,
it might also be noted that the harshest punishment the golden age pirates
commonly executed against their own, namely marooning, bears a striking
resemblance to the ostracism that is known as one of the harshest punishments among many so-called primitive societies.[1026] It confirms the fact that
in tight-knit communities, exclusion from the social body has always equaled
symbolic death.
In conclusion, the pirate understanding and execution of justice, in its
immediacy and concreteness, must have at least lacked the systematic arbitrariness inherent in every system of formal law, especially in a class society. Let us, for example, recall the sorrow of the convicted members of
Bartholomew Roberts’ crew who said that they were “hanged, while others,
no less guilty in another way, escaped.”[1027]
In a Nietzschean sense the most important—and maybe for radicals the
most inspiring—aspect of pirate justice was that the pirates went beyond
dominant moral conventions and created their own moral principles and
codes. As Snelders writes: “Since they lived outside the bounds of what
was normally defined as good and evil, pirates behaved as they liked within
the confines of their own customs.”[1028] In fact, the connections between a
Nietzschean philosophy and the life of the golden age pirates are striking in
many ways.
*** 4.13. Dionysus in the West Indies: A Nietzschean Look at Golden Age Piracy
While it is difficult to define golden age piracy politically, the possibilities
for radical adaptations remain wide open, since at the core of golden age
pirate life lies an unrestrained existential vitality, or, in Nietzsche’s terms, a
Dionysian philosophy—an incredibly strong and powerful anti-authoritarian
and liberatory force that knows no restriction by social considerations, ethical principles, or political ideals. It is a force that can therefore turn into anything: an ally in the fight for freedom or justice, or a dreadful fascist enemy.
Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, ecstasy, festivity, and, according to some,
“inspired madness,” plays a principal role in Nietzsche’s philosophy since his
first published work, The Birth of Tragedy (1872). In this essay, Nietzsche analyzes Greek tragedy as an art that blends both “Apollonian” and “Dionysian”
elements—the later often being neglected in our lives and finally totally abandoned by the “Socratian tendency.”[1029] Nietzsche, however, urges us to “believe
in the Dionysian life”[1030] and, to his last texts, declares himself the defender of
the “Dionysian spell.”[1031] In one of his best known works, Beyond Good and Evil
(1886), he calls himself “the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus.”[1032] So
what does the Dionysian moment stand for?
It is, according to Nietzsche, “a fundamental counter-doctrine and counter-evaluation of life, purely artistic, purely anti-Christian.”[1033] Its desires are
characterized by “initiative, audacity, revenge, cleverness, rapacity, lust for
power,”[1034] its values by “a vigorous physicality, a blooming, rich, abundant
health, and by everything this depends on: war, adventure, hunting, dance,
fighting, and everything that implies strong, free, joyful activity.”[1035] In the
words of Gilles Deleuze, arguably the most sophisticated representative of
what has been dubbed a lef Nietzscheanism, “it is Dionysus’ task to make us
graceful, to teach us to dance, to give us the instinct of play.”[1036]
It would be wrong to suggest that golden age pirates represented a Dionysian
community in Nietzsche’s eyes. Given his cultural elitism, Nietzsche would
have probably seen the festive excesses of pirate crews as the expression of
a “grotesque and vulgar” Dionysianism which he criticizes in the Birth of
Tragedy.[1037] Nonetheless, disregarding Nietzsche’s own possible objections, it is
certainly revealing to analyze the golden age pirates’ social experiment from
a Dionysian perspective.
**** Affirmation
“Dionysian art wants to persuade us of the eternal joy of being,” writes
Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy,[1038] and this “affirmation of life,” “the Dionysian
yes”[1039] remains a crucial theme throughout his work. Against the perceived
“decadence” and “nihilism” of his era, Nietzsche uses the figure of Dionysus
to champion an uncompromising embrace of life in all its dimensions, not
inhibited by bourgeois values and limitations. Dionysus “is the god for whom
life does not have to be justified, for whom life is essentially just.”[1040]
Golden age pirates seem to have shared this sentiment. Philip Gosse relates
that Captain William Jennings explained that he was a pirate “for the love of
the life,”[1041] while one George Bendall is quoted by Peter Earle as saying that
“he wished he had begun the life sooner for he thought it was a very pleasant
one, meaning the piratical way.’”[1042] In the same vein, Captain Johnson tells
us of two pirates, Phineas Bunce and Dennis Macarty, who, soon after they
had accepted a royal pardon, “began to ratle and talk with great pleasure and
much boasting of their former exploits when they had been pirates, crying up
a pirate’s life to be the only life for a man of spirit.”[1043]
All this seems to confirm Stephen Snelders conclusion that buccaneering
“was not simply a way to make a living, but a way of life.”[1044] A decisive factor—confirming the affirmation so important in Nietzsche’s thought—is that
the lives of the buccaneers and pirates were created by themselves; they had
seized their lives by their own motivation and activity. Nietzsche would have
rejoiced at the observation of Marcus Rediker that the pirate Walter Kennedy
“like the others, was not merely escaping oppressive circumstances. He was
escaping to something new, a different reality… ”[1045]
**** Liberty
Nietzsche writes in The Gay Science:
Indeed, we philosophers and ‘free spirits’ feel as if a new dawn shines
on us when we hear that the ‘old God is dead;’ our heart overflows
with gratitude, awe, intuition, expectation—finally, the horizon is
free again… and we can finally board our ships and sail into whatever
danger we will encounter. Those eager to know can be daring again;
the sea, our sea, has been opened once more; in fact, maybe there has
never been a sea that ‘open’![1046]
“There is another world to discover—and more than just one! Onto the
ships, philosophers!”[1047]
The allegories might be random, but the notion of liberty associated with
them echoes those of the golden age pirates. Various authors concur that the
thirst for liberty was a decisive factor in motivating seamen to go on the account.
Peter Lamborn Wilson writes that “looking at the whole picture, rather than
individual careers, we get the impression that desire for total liberty constituted perhaps the deepest motive for classical piracy;”[1048] for Stephen Snelders
the pirates were “maximizing the liberty of seamen;”[1049] Frank Sherry calls “the
chance that piracy offered to ordinary sailors to live as free men [piracy’s] real
lure;”[1050] Chris Land believes that “for many pirates the self conscious pursuit
of liberty and autonomy became the main reason for their choice of life;”[1051]
and Marcus Rediker observes that “in the popular mind, the pirate was not
‘the common enemy of mankind’ but rather the freest of mankind.”[1052]
Nietzsche adds an important distinction when he compares “free-thinkers” to “free-doers”: “The free-doers are at a disadvantage to the free-thinkers,
since action makes humans suffer much more than thought.”[1053]
**** Defiance
The notion of liberty combined with Nietzsche’s demand for a “transvaluation
of values”[1054] (the creation of new, self-determined moralities) and a “twilight of
the idols”[1055] (the rejection of everything we are taught to revere) corresponds
markedly to the golden age pirates’ anti-authoritarianism: “Pirates constructed a culture of masterless men. They were as far removed from the traditional authority as any men could be in the early eighteenth century. Beyond
the church, beyond the family, beyond disciplinary labor, and using the sea to
distance themselves from the powers of the state, they carried out a strange
experiment.”[1056] “Indeed, there was ‘so litle Government and Subordination’
among pirates that ‘they are, on Occasion, all Captains, all Leaders.’”[1057]
**** Self-Determination
In direct relation to the above, Nietzsche declares: “It is only for the few to
be independent—it is only for those who are strong. Those who assert their
independence—with every right but without being forced—prove that they
are not only strong but fearless and audacious. They leap into a labyrinth and
multiply the dangers of life by a thousand.”[1058]
This sense of independence, or, as we might more aptly say, self-determination, is echoed in a number of depictions of the golden age pirates’ life. In
order to illustrate what he conceives as a “kind of proto-individualist-anarchist atitude,” Peter Lamborn Wilson relates the following anecdote: “At one
time, Eston was told that James I of England had offered him a pardon. ‘Why
should I obey a king’s orders,’ he asked, ‘when I am a kind of king myself ’?”[1059]
Marcus Rediker elaborates on the imagery: “Perhaps this illuminates Daniel
Defoe’s description of pirates, where every man was ‘in his own Imagination
a Captain, a Prince, or a King.’ Such positions of authority may not have
been so bad as long as everyone could claim a title.”[1060] Accordingly, the traditional authorities were regarded with litle respect. Bartholomew Roberts’
crew allegedly told the captain of the raided merchantman Samuel: “We shall
accept no Act of Grace, may the King and Parliament be damned with their
Act of Grace for us… ”[1061] Rediker deduces that “the pirate was someone with
whom ‘no Faith, Promise, nor Oath is to be observed.’”[1062] Stephen Snelders,
pondering on why we enjoy the pirates’ stories despite the early “moral judgment” they received, comes to the conclusion that it is “because a pirate takes
his life in his own hands.” Claes G. Compaen, for example, a Dutch buccaneer portrayed by Snelders, “played his own game. And for three years he
got away with it, which is much longer than most of us will ever even try.”[1063]
Paraphrasing the Situationists’ “Teses on the Paris Commune,” Snelders
later notes that “the pirates had become masters of their own history, not so
much on the level of ‘governmental’ politics as on the level of their everyday
life.”[1064] Finally, it is worth quoting once more the famous outburst that Captain
Johnson ascribes to Saul Bellamy, directed at the captain of a recently taken
merchantman after his refusal to join Bellamy’s crew:
You are a devilish conscientious rascal, d-n ye, replied Bellamy. I am a
fee prince, and I have as much authority to make war on the whole world
as he who has a hundred sail of ships at sea, and an army of 100,000 men
in the field, and this my conscience tells me. But there is no arguing with
such snivelling puppies, who allow superiors to kick them about deck at
pleasure and pin their faith upon a pimp of a parson, a squab, who neither
practices not believes what he puts upon the chuckle-headed fools he
preaches to.[1065]
**** Merit
The notions of liberty, defiance and self-determination imply another defining aspect of golden age pirate life, namely the possibility for individuals to
find a place within the community based on merit alone. While Robert C.
Ritchie remarks on Captain Every that “like so many of the pirates, his life is
a blank until he emerged from the ranks of faceless sailors to captain a pirate
ship,”[1066] Stephen Snelders writes with respect to Jan Erasmus Reyning, that
“his life is an example of how the Brotherhood could take a sailor with no
prospects and offer him new opportunities, roving on the account in a life
that was continuously adventurous and dangerous.”[1067]
According to Maurice Besson, in the world of the Caribbean buccaneers
and pirates, “courage alone conferred distinction.”[1068] A notion that echoes all
of Nietzsche’s ideals of the masters—an aristocracy not defined by birth but
by standing the test of life itself.[1069]
**** Festival
Being the god of wine, Dionysus is inextricably linked to festival and celebration. Nietzsche speaks of “Dionysian delights,”[1070] “the ecstatic aspects of the
Dionysian festival,”[1071] “the Dionysian celebration.”[1072] Deleuze evokes the “trinity of dance, play and laughter.”[1073] It seems apt that Stephen Snelders would
call a book chapter dedicated to the buccaneer and pirate lifestyle “Joie de
Vivre: An Eternal Festival.”[1074] The authors of “Pirate Utopias” comment casually: “The pirates certainly seem to have had more fun than their poor suffering counterparts on naval or merchant vessels. Tey sure had some pretty wild parties.”[1075]
According to Marcus Rediker, the pirates “made merry. Indeed, ‘merry’ is
the word most commonly used to describe the mood and spirit of life aboard
the pirate ship.”[1076] Rediker further explains: “Not surprisingly, many observers of pirate life noted the carnivalesque quality of pirate occasions—the eating, drinking, fiddling, dancing, and merriment—and some considered such
‘infinite Disorders’ inimical to good discipline at sea.”[1077] The special role of the
musicians on pirate ships ought not surprise then. According to Frank Sherry,
they were “by far the most popular members of any pirate crew… , men who
could coax a song out of a pipe or a horn, and who were often excused from
the most onerous duties in recognition of their tuneful talent.”[1078]
**** Chance
The festive character of pirate life implied that the moment of chance was
a decisive one. The life of the golden age pirates has been described as “a
life insecure in the extreme—one could not know what might happen even
within the next few hours.”[1079] This corresponds to Nietzsche’s conviction that
the “true philosopher…lives ‘unphilosophically’ and ‘unwisely,’ especially
unreasonably, and feels the call and duty to engage in hundreds of experiments and temptations of life—he risks himself all the time, he plays the evil
game.”[1080] He belongs to those who “love danger, war, and adventure.”[1081]
The golden age pirates’ life was a life that depended on moments of intensity,
philosophically embraced in (post)modern times by Jean-François Lyotard
and others.[1082] In Stephen Snelders’ words: “Nothing happened for whole days
except the flowing of the seas and the passing of fish and birds. Then everything happened at once, danger and excitement soared, and a moment could
make them rich or dead.”[1083] When Snelders proceeds to speak of a “veritable
feast on the Wheel of Fortune,”[1084] we cannot help but recall Nietzsche asking:
“Shall we not role the dice only because we might lose?”[1085] The metaphor seems
particularly apt with respect to the pirates’ well-documented obsession with
gambling. According to Maurice Besson, what the Caribbean buccaneers and
pirates needed “were combat and assault, and when they returned, orgies and
the gambling board.”[1086]
**** Flux
Intrinsically linked to the notion of chance is the fact that golden age pirate
life was characterized by instability and insecurity, permanent change, and
flux. Daniel Boting writes: “Pirate crews were… , in every sense, a floating
population, in a constant state of flux, never the same size or composition
from one month to another, owing allegiance to nothing and no one, neither
ship, nor captain, nor cause.”[1087] Marcus Rediker adds: “Occasionally upon
election of a new captain, men who favored other leadership drew up new
articles and sailed away from their former mates.…Those who had experienced the claustrophobic and authoritarian world of the merchant ship cherished the freedom to separate.”[1088]
An interesting detail to consider in relation to this aspect of Caribbean
pirate culture is that the buccaneers apparently gave up their names when
joining the community of the Brethren of the Coast. In the words of Maurice
Besson, the buccaneer’s “past was forgoten; he became a unit in a troop
ceaselessly decimated and as ceaselessly renewed.”[1089] If this is true, then the
proto-individualism of the buccaneers and pirates depicted by Peter Lamborn
Wilson would have met with a rejection of the subject that should have post-
structuralist theorists rejoice with delight, and that, in any case, reminds us of
Nietzsche’s assertion that “the ban of individuation is shatered by Dionysus’
jubilant howl.”[1090]
**** Fear
Nietzsche never denies that a life of insecurity and chance does include
cruelty and fear. In fact, it is a crucial aspect of his philosophy that he
demands these aspects of life to be embraced as part of embracing life itself.
In The Gay Science, Nietzsche defines being heroic as “simultaneously heading
towards one’s most severe suffering and one’s highest hopes.”[1091] In simple
words: it is worth being afraid if this means that we can live exciting lives,
and no life can be exciting without danger; fear then simply becomes the
inevitable supplement. In the words of Gilles Deleuze: “‘Those who affirm
the superabundance of life’ make suffering an affirmation in the same way as
they make intoxication an activity.”[1092] Nietzsche himself states: “Who would
not prefer to fear when he can admire at the same time; rather than not fear
but be condemned to watch ill-bred, weakened, degenerated, poisoned men
only?…We suffer of man, there is no doubt. But not because we fear him.
Rather because there is nothing in him to fear anymore. He has turned into
a worm.”[1093]
**** Death
Nietzsche not only embraces fear as a part of life, but death as well. In Thus
Spoke Zarathustra, he notes: “Many die too late, and some die too early.…Die
at the right time! Thus spoke Zarathustra. Then again: He who never lives at
the right time, how shall he die at the right time?”[1094]
The lives of many golden age pirates seemed to reflect this sentiment. The
possibility of death was always near—and became a reality for many. Marcus
Rediker relates that “premature death was… the pirate’s lot” and that “at least
one in four died or was killed.”[1095] In an entry in The Pirates’ Who’s Who, Philip
Gosse mentions that one Tomas Hazel, hanged at the age of 50, “is one of the
longest lived pirates we have been able to hear of.”[1096]
Still, the possibility of death seemed to be no deterrent for most pirates to
pursue their trade. There are probably some psycho-sociological explanations
for this, like the one by David Cordingly: “Despite the great risk of being captured and executed for your deeds, piracy was an atractive alternative to
dying of starvation, becoming a beggar or thief on land, or serving in appalling conditions on a ship with no chance of substantial financial reward.”[1097] This
is confirmed by one Robert Sparks, seaman of the Abington, who is quoted by
Marcus Rediker as saying “that their ship ‘would make a good Pirate Ship,
for,’ he insisted, ‘they had beter be dead than live in Misery.’”[1098] This conviction even translated into belitling the prospects of execution: “As more and
more pirates were hanged, and as the likelihood of death for anyone who went
‘upon the account’ increased, pirates responded by intensifying their commitment to each other, ‘one and all.’ And they did so with a laugh.”[1099]
The golden age pirates’ atitude towards death (and life) was most famously
captured in a quote that Captain Johnson ascribes to the famed pirate captain
Bartholomew Roberts: “‘In an honest service,’ says he, ‘there is thin commons,
low wages, and hard labour; in this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power; and who would not balance creditor on this side, when all
the hazard that is run for it, at worst is only a sour look or two at choking. No,
a merry life and a short one, shall be my moto.’”[1100] Indifference towards the
likely prospect of death was also a main feature of many variations of the Jolly
Roger: “Some records of pirate flags show dancing skeletons, meaning dancing a jig with death, synonymously playing with death, or not caring about
fate. This was also the symbolism behind raised drinking glasses, the image
referring to a toast to death in store—those flying this flag didn’t care about
their fate.”[1101] Marcus Rediker suggests that “a defiance of death” was not only
the meaning of the pirate flag, but perhaps “of piracy altogether.”[1102] In another
famous quote related by Johnson, Mary Read says “that as to hanging, she
thought it no great hardship, for were it not for that, every cowardly fellow
would turn pirate, and so infest the seas that men of courage must starve.”[1103]
Even if hanging was thus accepted as deterrence, it is only fiting that many
pirates, in their self-determined ways, were set on denying the authorities
the gratification of executing them even when they were ready to die. Men
of Bartholomew Roberts’ crew allegedly told passengers on one of the vessels
they took that they would not “go to Hope Point to be hanged a-sun-drying,”
but that, “if it should chance that they should be atacked by any superiour
power or force, which they could not master, they would immediately put fire
with one of their pistols to their powder, and go all merrily to hell together!”[1104]
According to Marcus Rediker, “indeed, many crews pledged to each other
that ‘They would blow up rather than be taken.’”[1105]
Together with their defiance of death, many pirates seemed to forsake
heaven too. William Snelgrave reports that members of pirate captain Tomas
Cocklyn’s crew affirmed that they were on a “voyage to hell.”[1106] Once again, it
is a quote from Captain Johnson’s General History that sums up the sentiment
best. When To. Suton, one of the captured pirates of Bartholomew Roberts’
crew, asks a fellow praying prisoner, “What he proposed by so much noise and
devotion,” and receives, “Heaven, I hope,” as an answer, he declares: “Heaven,
you fool…Did you ever hear of any pirates going thither? Give me h-ll, it’s a
merrier place; I’ll give Roberts a salute of 13 guns at entrance.”[1107]
**** Destruction
The associations between golden age piracy, raiding, and cruelty pose no
problem in the context of Nietzsche’s philosophy. In fact, Nietzsche sees
direct links between destructive activity and existential advance. An often
quoted passage from Beyond Good and Evil inevitably reminds of the golden
age pirates’ endeavors:
Let us clarify without reservations how each higher form of culture
began that the earth has known: Men who were still in touch with
their natural selves, barbarians in each terrible sense of the word, raiders who still had unconstrained will and a desire for power, atacked
weaker, more civilized, more peaceful races—maybe traders or pastoralists representing old and weary cultures in which the last glimpses
of life have disappeared behind the overwhelming charades of reason
and ruin. The most noble caste was originally always the barbarian
caste: their dominance was not primarily physical but spiritual—they
were more complete human beings.[1108]
Gilles Deleuze ties the meaning of destruction to the Dionysian moment
in Nietzsche’s thought:
Destruction becomes active to the extent that the negative is transmuted and converted into affirmative power: the ‘eternal joy of
becoming’ which is avowed in an instant, the ‘joy of annihilation,’ the
‘affirmation of annihilation and destruction’…This is the ‘decisive
point’ of Dionysian philosophy: the point at which negation expresses
an affirmation of life, destroys reactive forces and restores the rights
of activity. The negative becomes the thunderbolt and lightning of a
power of affirming.[1109]
It is not surprising then that Nietzsche states that “the active, atacking,
importunate human is in any case a hundred steps closer to justice than the
reactive,”[1110] and that he would praise a “justice of punishment,”[1111] reminiscent of the core of the golden age pirates’ ethics.
**** Intoxication
Dionysus being the god of wine and, in Nietzsche’s words, the “artist of
intoxication,”[1112] it seems impossible not to mention the significance of drink
within the pirate community. Stephen Snelders contents himself to point out
that “alcohol was a binding element among the pirates.”[1113] Other commentators, however, are more bold: while Marcus Rediker suggests that “for one
man (and probably a great many more) who joined the pirates, drink was more
important than the wealth that he might gain,”[1114] Frank Sherry writes that “it
was the freedom to drink as much and as often as he liked that the ordinary
sea outlaw prized above all others.”[1115] Indeed, while Exquemelin suggests that
the buccaneers drink brandy “as liberally as the Spaniards do clear fountain
water,”[1116] Captain Johnson relates that “nay, sobriety brought a man under a
suspicion of being in a plot against the commonwealth, and in their sense,
he was looked upon to be villain that would not be drunk.”[1117] Another entertaining passage from the General History confirms the esteem that alcohol
was held in by the pirates: When planters from Mauritius visited a food-poisoned pirate crew aboard their ship, “they advised their drinking plentifully
of strong liquors, which was the only way to expel the poison… [The pirates]
readily followed this advice, as the prescription was agreeable.”[1118]
Nietzsche would have probably not approved of the golden age pirates’
drinking orgies. In fact, in The Dawn he criticizes those who “perceive intoxication as their true life, as their actual self” and who believe in “intoxication
as the life within life.”[1119] Nonetheless, he declares in The Birth of Tragedy that
“the essence of the Dionysian principle becomes most comprehensible for us
through the analogy of intoxication.”[1120]
Maybe the West Indies really were a welcoming place for Friedrich
Nietzsche—or, in any case, for the god of wine, Dionysus. In the Genealogy of
Morals Nietzsche writes:
It seems like the moralists hate the jungle and the tropics; it seems
that they have to discredit the ‘tropical human’ by all means—be it
that they call him a disease or a degenerated being, be it that they suggest him living in hell, a sort of earthly purgatory. But why? To defend
the ‘temperate zones’?[1121]
The political ambiguities that we have encountered throughout this book can-
not be resolved by arguments over the ‘right’ interpretations. This will only
lead us into ideological dead-ends. The said ambiguities can only be resolved
by adaptation instead. It is too late for both Nietzsche and the golden age
pirates to do this. It is not too late for us.
** 5. Conclusion: The Golden Age Pirates’ Political Legacy
The history of radical adaptations of the pirate theme is long. The authors
of “Pirate Utopias” mention that “the Paris Commune…had a daily paper
called Le Pirate.”[1122] One of the widest and most dedicated resistance movements
to the Nazi regime in Germany was called Edelweißpiraten (Edelweiss Pirates).
Today, Ramor Ryan writes a “pirate journal,”[1123] the website of the anarchist
CrimethInc. project is adorned by a CrimethInc.-characteristic Jolly Roger
spin-off,[1124] a Capt’n Mayhem explains in a pamphlet entitled Long Live Mutiny!
how “pirate tactics” can inspire radical organizing,[1125] and a radical fan culture
with global appeal has formed around the pirate flag of the St. Pauli soccer
club supporters.[1126] We even have a group of folks sailing the oceans as Pirates
for Peace [1127]—a misnomer so apparent that it is bound to arouse interest. Even
academics use the skull and crossbones to add some extra radical credibility
to their oeuvres, as anyone who visits the Constituent Imagination website can
testify to.[1128] In fact, there are at least two popular books by radical intellectuals
whose titles include a pirate reference even though they are not about pirates
at all: Noam Chomsky’s Pirates and Emperors (a book about US imperialism
in the Middle East), and Tariq Ali’s Pirates of the Caribbean (a book about new
lefist movements in Latin America).
Of course the Jolly Roger not only adorns radical websites but also—in
much higher numbers—baby socks, plastic plates, beer can coolers, corporate
toys, video games, and records by really bad bands—not to even mention the
ubiquitous Oakland Raiders paraphernalia. To many radicals this is a major
source of irritation since (another) one of “their” symbols has become commercialized. There seems to be no reason to despair, however. The ambiguity
of the golden age pirates’ politics has been one of the main topics of this book.
Radical and revolutionary elements did exist within golden age pirate culture—“something menacing… that even Hollywood can’t erase,” as the editors of No Quarter, an Anarchist Zine about Pirates, preciously state.[1129] At the
same time, the golden age pirates can hardly be unconditionally embraced
as radicals and revolutionaries. This means that radicals find themselves on
shaky ground if they cry foul every time they see pirate symbols in a context
they do not like. Actually, it seems likely that many pirates of the golden age
would derive more satisfaction from the multi-billion dollar movies that are
based on their lives than from finding their insignia on the walls of some run-
down squat. Besides, making money off the pirate glory is no new invention.
Historians tell of “a sailmaker’s widow in a hovel in Nassau [who] made a
precarious living” by stitching Jolly Rogers.[1130]
In short, the golden age pirates are not “ours”—but their legacy is ours to
take. The radical and revolutionary aspects of golden age piracy have to be
teased out and applied to contemporary radical and revolutionary politics.
Such an approach seems liberating in fact. By not claiming ownership or
“true representation” of the golden age pirates, quite a few rather trite—and
in the end often pointless—arguments can be avoided: whether they were
more violent than merchant captains, whether the Africans on their ships
were crew members or slaves, whether they had an anti-capitalist consciousness or not, etc. Instead, we can focus our energies on proving the radical and
revolutionary aspects of golden age piracy by bringing them alive in our politics. And this too would probably satisfy at least some of the pirates who, we
can safely assume, would rather continue to provide sparks of freedom than
survive as mere objects of history.
Unconditionally embracing the golden age pirates as role models for radical politics has repeatedly been questioned in this book. The reasons might
be summed up by focusing on the two most central problems:
1. *The golden age pirates lacked a wider ethical and political perspective.* Pirates
were, in the end, mainly concerned with their own well-being. They failed, as
Chris Land puts it, “to offer a…vision of a new political-economic order.”[1131]
This of course leads us back to century-old discussions about “individualism
vs. collectivism/socialism.” There seems litle point in revisiting these discussions here. However, abandoning any commitment to making life beter
for all seems hard to accept for a radical political movement. Individualist
theories of liberation stressing the need to liberate yourself (and the rest will
follow) build on a strict dichotomy between the individual and society that, in
the end, only serves capitalism and the state, as it undermines the collective
effort necessary to bring about the fundamental social change needed to free
us all. The individual cannot exist without society nor can society exist without the individual. Neither form of liberation—individual or collective—is
superior to the other. They are one and the same. Trying to separate them
will doom our struggle to failure. In fact, the golden age pirates might be a
case in point.
2. * The golden age pirates lacked a level of coordination that could have allowed
for establishing a sustainable counterculture and an effective communal defense
against their enemies.* The golden age pirates did share a common culture that
implied solidarity and feelings of collective identity but this never translated
into the kind of concrete network that would have been necessary to sustain
their nomadic, libertarian and independent lifestyle in the face of the powers that came after them. It is worth quoting two historians at length whose
observations sum this up very convincingly. Kenneth J. Kinkor writes:
Unable to mobilize their own full strength, as well as the potential
support of other oppressed segments of the society they had rejected,
the eighteenth-century pirates were, at their strongest, a tenuous
collection of loosely linked, amorphous, floating commonwealths
surviving only by predation on the very societies from which they had
divorced themselves. ‘Inability to disengage themselves fully from
their enemy was the Achilles heel of maroon societies throughout the
Americas.’ While discipline and centralized authority helped land-
based maroon societies survive, and even flourish, the central feature
and paramount atraction of piracy was its libertarian character. It is a
profound irony that it was, in part, the pirates’ own thirst for freedom
which doomed them in an ‘aimless rebellion [which] ended by suppressing itself.’[1132]
In the same vein, Marcus Rediker explains:
Pirates themselves unwitingly took a hand in their own destruction.
From the outset, theirs had been a fragile social world. They produced
nothing and had no secure place in the economic order. They had no
nation, no home; they were widely dispersed; their community had
virtually no geographic boundaries. Try as they might, they were
unable to create reliable mechanisms through which they could either
replenish their ranks or mobilize their collective strength. These deficiencies of social organization made them, in the long run, relatively easy prey.[1133]
It is enlightening to return once more to the theorists of guerrilla warfare
in this context. Let us compare the following observations of Che Guevara
and Mao Tse-Tung with the analyses above. Guevara writes:
The guerrilla army comprises all the people of a region or a country.
That is the reason for its strength and for its eventual victory over
whatsoever power tries to crush it; that is, the base and grounding of
the guerrilla is the people. One cannot imagine small armed groups,
no mater how mobile and familiar with the terrain, surviving the
organized persecution of a well-equipped army without this powerful
assistance. The test is that all bandits, all brigand gangs, eventually
succumb to the central power.[1134]
Mao states:
Ability to fight a war without a rear is a fundamental characteristic
of guerrilla action, but this does not mean that guerrillas can exist
and function over a long period of time without the development of
base areas. History shows us many examples of… revolts that were
unsuccessful, and it is fanciful to believe that such movements, characterized by banditry and brigandage, could succeed in [an] era of
improved communications and military equipment.[1135]
It is not only the lack of social organization that has been named as a reason for the pirates’ inability to resist the authorities’ atack. Edward Lucie-
Smith is but one who has argued that “what mitigated against the long
continuation of piracy on the grand scale was not so much the success of
the authorities in dealing with it as the inherent weakness of pirate society.
Perhaps more pirates died of drink and disease than were ever imprisoned or
hanged.…Many ships were wrecked, rather than sunk or captured.”[1136] Some
passages from Captain Johnson’s volumes seem to confirm this. One pirate
crew is described as having lost “their captain and thirty men, by the distemper they contracted,”[1137] while another “lost 70 men by their excesses; having
been long without fresh provision, the eating immoderately, drinking toke (a
liquor made of honey) to excess and being too free with the women, they fell
into violent fevers which carried them off.”[1138]
Marcus Rediker has pointed to another aspect that helps explain the golden
age pirates’ failure to generate a long-lasting community. It seems trivial yet
persuasive: “By limiting the role of women aboard their ships, pirates may
have made it more difficult to reproduce themselves as a community and
hence easier for the state to wage its deadly assault upon them.”[1139] The observation reflects Hobsbawm’s verdict on the haiduks: “Haiduks were always free
men, but in the typical case of the Balkan haiduks they were not free communities. For the četa or band, being essentially a voluntary union of individuals
who cut themselves off from their kin, was automatically an abnormal social
unit, since it lacked wives, children and land.”[1140]
Finally, there is the question of economic sustainability which the golden
age pirates had no provisions for. In Chris Land’s words: “The pirates of the
golden age appear to have had no vision of an alternative political economy
and their uprising would have failed had it brought an end to the Atlantic
trade.”[1141] In the final analysis, this rendered their “anti-capitalist” activities
ineffective: “The pirates did litle to overthrow the power of the European,
colonial states or the global flows of capitalist accumulation.”[1142]
However, as has been argued consistently throughout this volume, the
impossibility of embracing golden age pirates as radical role models does not
render them insignificant for contemporary radical politics. In fact, the ways
in which golden age pirates can inform these are multifold:
1. *The golden age pirates are sources of inspiration.*
When Eric Hobsbawm writes that the “tragedy” of the bandits was that their
“contribution to modern revolutions was… ambiguous, doubtful and short
[because] as bandits they could at best, like Moses, discern the promised
land,”[1143] the assumption that this was a tragedy may be challenged. It does
not necessarily seem tragic to “discern the promised land.” In fact, it might
rather be a remarkable achievement. As Marcus Rediker succinctly puts it,
the pirates “dared to imagine a different life, and they dared to try to live
it.”[1144] If there is no inspirational momentum in such a venture, where can
inspirational momentum come from? Frank Sherry’s conclusion seems apt:
“Clearly the brigands of Madagascar and New Providence still speak to us.
They tell us, even across the centuries, that if men are denied the chance to
live in freedom, they will make their own freedom, even if the specific shape
of that freedom may not be beautiful or idealistic.”[1145] We ought also consider
Anton Gill’s insightful interpretation of William Dampier’s atraction to the
logwood cuters in the Bay of Campeche: “They were free men, and it was
the freedom of their way of living, not the way they lived, that appealed to
Dampier.”[1146]
2. *The golden age pirates’ forms of social organizing imply potential for
revolutionary organizing.*
Eric Hobsbawm concedes that there are “two things” that can turn the
“modest, if violent, social objective of bandits…into genuine revolutionary
movements”:[1147] one, to become “a symbol, even the spearhead, of resistance;”[1148]
and two, to evoke the “human life dream of… a world of equality, brotherhood and freedom, a totally new world without evil.”[1149]
The golden age pirates became such a symbol and they evoked such
a dream—and it is this momentum that contemporary radicals have to
invigorate.
The three most concrete aspects in which such momentum manifested
itself during the golden age were: One, anti-authoritarianism, or the above-
mentioned “proto-individualist-anarchist atitude” with which
“a pirate
entered the political spheres of anarchist organization and festival.”[1150]
Two, defiance, which seems best illustrated by yet another comparison to
Hobsbawm’s social bandit: “He is an outsider and a rebel, a poor man who
refuses to accept the normal roles of poverty, and establishes his freedom
by means of the only resources within reach of the poor, strength, bravery,
cunning and determination. This draws him close to the poor: he is one of
them.”[1151] And three, internal democracy and egalitarianism, which created “an
alternative to the appalling conditions under which ordinary seamen had to
live.”[1152] Rediker summarizes this as follows:
The early-eighteenth-century pirate ship was a ‘world turned upside
down,’ made so by the articles of agreement that established the rules
and customs of the pirates’ social order.…Pirates distributed justice,
elected officers, divided loot equally, and established a different discipline. They limited the authority of the captain, resisted many of the
practices of the capitalist merchant shipping industry, and maintained
a multicultural, multiracial, multinational social order. They sought
to prove that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive
ways of the merchant service and the Royal Navy.[1153]
That all three of these aspects had a high political significance cannot only
be deduced from Hobsbawm’s concession that a bandit “forms a nucleus of
armed strength, and therefore a political force,”[1154] but also from the authorities’ reactions at the time. Even if the defense of commercial interests was a
prime motivation for embarking on their crusade against the pirates, there
was more to it. The golden age pirates did pose a political threat as well. Partly
due to the inherently political character of commerce which rendered the
pirates’ atacks on merchant ships, as Janice E. Tomson puts it, “a protest
against the obvious use of state institutions to defend property and discipline
labor,”[1155] but partly also because the golden age pirates brought to mind the
realistic possibility of an alternative way of life. As Marcus Rediker states,
“the more that pirates built and enjoyed the merry, autonomous existence the
more determined the authorities grew to destroy them.”[1156]
3. *There is a libidinal dimension to the golden age pirates’ revolt that has proven
essential in liberatory politics throughout the ages.*
This dimension of the pirate protest is closely tied to Nietzsche’s vitalism and
Dionysian philosophy. It is one that no subversive movement wanting to sustain itself and atract new comrades can forgo. Stephen Snelders says it well:
“The social rebellion involved in piracy resembles the instinctive and violent
social rebellion of Bonnie and Clyde: as much concerned with having a good
time as with shooting down the enemy.”[1157]
4. *The golden age pirates, their actions, their lore and their imagery form the
backdrop to various effective radical interventions in contemporary politics.*
Chris Land’s essay “Flying the Black Flag” does a wonderful job relating
golden age piracy to current political activism—and distinguishing these
relations from commercial ones. As Land points out: “So long as people keep
consuming piracy—rather than practicing it—then capitalism won’t have
a problem. But if people started actually engaging in piracy, Disney would
be one of the first up in arms.”[1158] There are a number of examples in which
the “more oppositional and insurgent figure of piracy”[1159] and its “subversive
tradition”[1160] shows itself today and proves that “the pirates’ political legacy
has been long lasting and has made a significant contribution to the development of the contemporary culture of radical, anti-capitalist and anarchist dissent.”[1161]
a) There is the strong tradition of the Temporary Autonomous Zone that the
golden age pirates—among many others—have been part of.[1162] This tradition manifests itself today from underground social centers to squats, radical
neighborhoods, open cyberspaces, intentional communities, self-controlled
workshops, independent indigenous communities, free festivals, or roaming groups of wanderers and travelers. All of them, as much as the golden
age pirates, confirm that, at least temporarily, a life of “freedom, equality,
harmony, and abundance”[1163] through practical experiment is possible. They
“make some part of the myth real, if only for a short time.”[1164]
b) Anti-capitalist protesters around the world rightfully adopt pirate
emblems to indicate their unwillingness to participate in a system of exploitation, oppression, and economic injustice. At the 2005 anti-G8 protests
in Gleneagles, for example, the Jolly Roger was highly visible in various
forms, turning into a sort of unofficial symbol for the organizing network
Dissent!.[1165]
c) Copyright violation is not incidentally called pirating. (Also the term
bootlegging has long been used in reference to pirates—Philip Gosse, for
example, calls the original rum-running bootleggers of the early 20th century “worthy descendents of the pirates.”[1166]) The copyright violators expropriate and redistribute wealth the way the golden age pirates did. Chris Land
points to the irony that “those in the entertainment industry who are so busy
commodifying the pirates of the Caribbean are also those most vociferously
opposed to its current practice.”[1167] Unfortunately, a lot of copyright violation
is egotistically and commercially motivated and lacks political consciousness, and it would be hard to make an argument for it having per se revolutionary momentum. At the same time, politically conscious copyright violation
does, without doubt, give the pirate label radical credibility in this context.
Pioneering groups include Sweden’s Piratbyrån and its offshoot, The Pirate
Bay.[1168] The threat that such initiatives pose is reflected in the ever-increasing
efforts to implement legal as well as technological barriers. The persecution
of the Swedish activists, initiated by the corporate entertainment industry
(well-known for its Piracy. It’s a Crime trailers), has been depicted in the
documentary Steal this Film (Part 1). It has not stopped popular sympathy.
In June 2009, Swedish voters sent the Pirate Party, the liberal wing of the
country’s file sharing movement, to the European Parliament in Brussels. Te
party received a convincing 7.1 percent of the popular vote.
d) The copyright pirates are only one group of current activists that warrant comparisons to the golden age pirates regarding questions of economy.
The so-called freegan movement advocates turning capitalism’s excess into a
source of sustainability rather than contributing to its cycle of production and
consumption.[1169] Similar sentiments can be found among sympathizers of the
CrimethInc. project, an open network of anarchists stressing the revolutionary potential of interventions in everyday life.[1170] Evasion, an anonymous travel
diary published by CrimethInc. and relating the exploits of an anti-consumerist young male traveling the US by means of trainhopping and hitchhiking, has become a defining book for many who embrace what the author calls
“militant unemployment.” Both freegans and CrimethInc. adherents have
had to deal with the critique of being “parasitic” rather than “revolutionary”
for a long time. While such a distinction might make sense at face-value, the
revolutionary potential of radical adaptations of a “parasitic economy” ought
not be disregarded too quickly. If embedded in political consciousness, it can
be a practical—and ethically sound—survival technique within a wider revolutionary struggle. For those who can afford such a lifestyle, it promises to
free time and energy both to weaken this very system and build alternatives
in the process. Besides, it creates many possibilities for fusing fun and revolution (which does not necessarily mean mistaking one for the other)—we
might say a very pirate way to go about things. The problems of a parasitic
existence are obvious: self-indulgence, exclusivity, stagnation. But to categorically discredit dumpster diving, shoplifing or anti-corporate scams—
cornerstones of a more militant freegan lifestyle (though many freegans do
not engage in illegal activities)—as “irrelevant” in the fight against capitalism, would render the golden age pirates’ atacks on merchantmen irrelevant
too. The impact of our actions alone (which was certainly bigger in the case of
golden age piracy) should not lead to a difference in judgment.
e) There are several examples for “pirate” interventions in social semiotics and public space. The best known of these may be the pirate radio. In the
introduction to Seizing the Airwaves: A Free Radio Handbook, Ron Sakolsky,
commenting on “the controversy that surrounds the term ‘pirate’ in micro-
power radio circles,” explains the aptness of the pirate label in this context
convincingly:
Personally, I have never objected to the term pirate.…Since I do not
believe that the money that has been privately accumulated by banks
is any more the result of an equitable distribution of wealth than that
the oligopoly over the airwaves that presently reigns is a fair distribution of a public resource, I would contend that the term radio pirate
as it is commonly used is a positive poetic metaphor relating to the
redistribution of resources between the haves and have nots.[1171]
The question of space has always been significant for piracy. The example
of the golden age pirates demonstrates how important it is to defend space as a
means to freedom. This, of course, means airspace too. Defying the atempts
to control it, radio pirates, no doubt, make important contributions to radical politics. Equally effective “pirate tactics” in reclaiming and appropriating
space are employed by graffiti writers, or, more generally, street artists—see,
for example, Josh MacPhee’s superb collection *Stencil Pirates.*
These examples are only the latest expressions of a legacy. As Chris Land
states, the golden age pirates’ “ever-present insurrectionary potential…has
actualized itself in diverse setings throughout the last 300 years.”[1172] Marcus
Rediker illustrates this contention:
The sailors’ hydrarchy was defeated in the 1720s, the hydra beheaded.
But it would not die. The volatile, serpentine tradition of maritime
radicalism would appear again and again in the decades to come, slithering quietly below decks, across the docks, and onto the shore, biding
its time, then rearing its heads unexpectedly in mutinies, strikes, riots,
urban insurrections, slave revolts, and revolutions.[1173]
Despite all the bourgeois and commercial exploitation of the golden age
pirates, radicals can still fly the Jolly Roger proudly—all they have to do is
earn the right.
** 6. Notes on Pirate Literature
For radicals interested in the history of golden age piracy, the definitive
work is Marcus Rediker’s Villains of all Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden
Age (2005). The book contains—in slight alterations—most of Rediker’s previous work on piracy, including the pirate chapters from Between the Devil and
the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime
World, 1700–1750 (1987), and The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves,
Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (with Peter
Linebaugh, 2000), as well as articles from various anthologies. Both Between
the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea and The Many-Headed Hydra are immensely
valuable sources for understanding and analyzing golden age piracy in a
wider context: the maritime culture of the 17th and 18th century (Between the
Devil… ) and alternative forms of communities resisting the colonial-capitalist paradigm of the Caribbean and the Americas (Many-Headed Hydra).
Out of the non-radical history books on piracy with important sections
on the golden age, I find three particularly noteworthy: Robert C. Ritchie—
albeit mainly focusing on Captain William Kidd—provides plenty of eye-
opening analysis in Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates (1986). David
Cordingly analyzes the popular legacy of golden age piracy meticulously in
Life Among the Pirates: The Romance and the Reality (1995). And Peter Earle
adds a lot of valuable material, found mainly in the Admiralty records, in
The Pirate Wars (2003). The literary nucleus of all golden age piracy research
remains of course Captain Charles Johnson’s General History of the Robberies
and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates (1724–1726).
There exist several well researched and lavishly illustrated coffee table
books on piracy. The most distinguished are perhaps Daniel Boting’s The
Pirates (1979), David Cordingly and John Falconer’s Pirates: Fact & Fiction
(1992), David F. Marley’s Pirates: Adventurers of the High Seas (1995), and two
volumes by Angus Konstam, The History of Pirates (1999; newly edited 2007
as Pirates: Predators of the Seas), and Scourge of the Seas: Buccaneers, Pirates
and Privateers (2007).
Several pirate anthologies include important essays on the golden age.
Particularly useful for this book proved Pirates: An Illustrated History of
Privateers, Buccaneers, and Pirates fom the Sixteenth Century to the Present
(US edition: Pirates: Terror on the High Seas fom the Caribbean to the South
China Sea) and Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader, edited by C. R. Pennell
(2001). The later includes essays of special interest to radical readers, most
notably Anne Pérotin-Dumon’s “The Pirate and the Emperor: Power and the
Law on the Seas, 1450–1850,” John L. Anderson’s “Piracy and World History:
An Economic Perspective on Maritime Predation,” and Kenneth J. Kinkor’s
“Black Men under the Black Flag.” C. R. Pennell’s “Introduction: Brought
to Book: Reading about Pirates” provides a very comprehensive overview
of English pirate literature. Another recommended essay by Anne Pérotin-
Dumon is “French, English and Dutch in the Lesser Antilles: from privateering to planting, c. 1550—c. 1650,” which appeared in the second volume of
General History of the Caribbean.
Philip Gosse’s volumes The Pirates’ Who’s Who (1924) and The History of
Piracy (1932) provide a good impression of research on piracy in the early
20th century (and include many delightful turns of phrase). Neville Williams’
Captains Outrageous: Seven Centuries of Piracy (1961) serves as a good example for the pirate historiography of his period.
The volume Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative
Documents, edited by John Franklin Jameson (1923), contains many important historical documents for the study of piracy’s history, such as court transcripts, newspaper articles, etc.
For anyone interested in the history of the pirate legend, it is probably worth
looking into Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates: Fiction, Fact and Fancy Concerning
the Buccaneers and Marooners of the Spanish Main, compiled by Merle Johnson
(1921). Pyle’s work remains one of the most influential sources for the pirate
image of the 20th century.
Out of the many popular books writen on golden age pirate history—
those whose “quality depends on the literary skill of the authors rather than
on content”[1174]—I particularly enjoyed Frank Sherry’s Raiders & Rebels: The
Golden Age of Piracy (1986). Despite a definite exaggeration of the significance of the Madagascan pirate community, questionable political terminology, and a sometimes melodramatic prose, the book is well researched and a
very engaging read. I would also recommend Edward Lucie-Smith’s Outcasts
of the Sea: Pirates and Piracy (1978); much less sensationalist than Sherry’s in
approach and very sophisticated in presentation, it contains a number of interesting musings on the pirate phenomenon. The recent The Republic of Pirates
by Colin Woodard (2007) also contains valuable details, especially concerning the role of New Providence as a major pirate haunt from 1716 to 1718.
As far as the history of the Caribbean buccaneers is concerned, I believe
that there is litle substitute for the original sources. Very little has come to
light about the lives of the buccaneers since and—even more so than with
Captain Johnson’s work and the history of golden age piracy—almost all
histories draw on Exquemelin’s The Buccaneers of America, and, to a lesser
degree, on the accounts of William Dampier, Basil Ringstone, and Raveneau
de Lussan. Probably the best summary is C. H. Haring’s The Buccaneers in
the West Indies in the XVII Century (1910), even though the more compact
P. K. Kemp and Christopher Lloyd’s The Brethren of the Coast: Buccaneers of
the South Seas (1961) is very instructive as well. For a short yet comprehensive
introduction, Angus Konstam’s Buccaneers (2000) is highly recommended.
For those particularly interested in Dutch privateers and buccaneers,
Virginia W. Lunsford presents an amazing collection of material in Piracy
and Privateering in the Golden Age Netherlands (2005); this book will mainly
appeal to academics, however.
For special interest areas, R. B. Burg’s Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition:
English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean (1983), though highly
contested, remains an interesting read. Hans Turley’s Rum, Sodomy and the
Lash: Piracy, Sexuality & Masculine Identity (1999) is a much more complex
(and arguably more interesting) study, but is laden with academic jargon.
Paul Galvin’s Paterns of Pillage: A Geography of Caribbean-based Piracy in
Spanish America, 1536–1718 (1999) seems to be one of the most underrated
books on piracy, although it contains a lot of valuable information for even
the most well-read students of Caribbean sea robbery. Janice E. Tomson’s
Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence
in Early Modern Europe (1994) includes a careful analysis of the connections
between piracy, commerce, and the state. With respect to women pirates,
Ulrike Klausmann and Monika Meinzerin’s Women Pirates (1997) remains
a pioneering and provocative study. Also noteworthy—albeit not focused on
the golden age—is John C. Appleby’s essay “Women and Piracy in Ireland:
From Gráinne O’Malley to Anne Bonny,” published in Bandits at Sea.
As far as the field of “radical piratology” is concerned, the must-reads—
apart from Rediker’s work—are Christopher Hill’s essay “Radical Pirates?”
(1984) (there are also important remarks on piracy in Hill’s Liberty Against
the Law: Some Seventeenth-Century Controversies, 1996); Peter Lamborn
Wilson’s Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes (1995)
(even though it focuses on piracy along the North African Barbary Coast, the
book includes much thought-provoking commentary on the pirate phenom-
enon in general and golden age piracy in particular); Stephen Snelder’s Te
Devil’s Anarchy (2005) (which also includes valuable first-hand accounts of
Dutch privateers and buccaneers); and the essays “Pirate Utopias: Under the
Banner of King Death” in the anarchist Do or Die journal (Vol. 8, 1999), and
Chris Land’s “Flying the black flag: Revolt, revolution and the social organization of piracy in the ‘golden age’” (Management & Organizational History 2,
no. 2, 2007), which draws many inspiring comparisons between Golden Age
piracy and contemporary radical movements. Another much referenced
essay among radical scholars is J. S. Bromley’s “Outlaws at Sea, 1660–1720:
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity among the Caribbean Freebooters,” which
I, admitedly, find a bit tedious. The work by German authors Heiner Treinen
and Rüdiger Haude was highly valuable for this volume, but is unfortunately
not available in English. William S. Burrough’s Ghost of Chance (1991) and
Kathy Acker’s Pussy, King of the Pirates (1996) are both enticing literary adaptations of the pirate theme. Finally, a DIY treat for all radical pirate fans is the
No Quarter zine hailing from Calgary, Canada.
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[1] Chris Land, “Flying the Black Flag: Revolt, Revolution and the Social
Organization of Piracy in the ‘Golden Age,’”Management & Organizational
History 2 (2007): 170.
[2] Edward Lucie-Smith, Outcasts of the Sea: Pirates and Piracy (New York
& London: Paddington Press, 1978), 7.
[3] Jenifer G. Marx, “The Brethren of the Coast” in Pirates: An Illustrated
History of Privateers, Buccaneers, and Pirates fom the Sixteenth Century to the
Present, ed. David Cordingly (London: Litle, Brown and Company, 1995), 37.
[4] Douglas Boting, The Pirates (Amsterdam: Time-Life Books, 1979), 177.
[5] David Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates: The Romance and the Reality
(London: Litle, Brown and Company, 1995), 282.
[6] Ibid., 3.
[7] Marcus Rediker, Villains of all Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden
Age (London & New York: Verso, 2004), 176.
[8] Peter Earle, Sailors: English Merchant Seamen 1650–1775 (London:
Methuen, 1998), 181. Similarly, Philip Gosse has stated: “The picturesque
swashbuckler, with pistols stuck in his belt and curses pouring from his
mouth, makes a very good subject for a story, but ... the genuine article was on
the whole a coward and a cut-throat” (The History of Piracy, New York: Tudor
Publishing Company, 1932; Glorieta, NM: The Rio Grande Press, 1990, 298).
[9] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 176.
[10] Angus Konstam, The History of Pirates (New York: The Lyons Press,
1999), 189.
[11] Philip Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who: Giving Particulars of the Lives
& Deaths of the Pirates & Buccaneers (London: Dulau and Company, 1924;
Glorieta, NM: The Rio Grande Press, n.d.), 21.
[12] John Exquemelin’s The Buccaneers of America, first published in
Dutch in 1678, is by far the most influential. Exquemelin spent several years
living among the buccaneers. Raveneau de Lussan tells of the two years he
spent among French buccaneers (1685/86) in his Memoirs. The account
of Jan Erasmus Reyning—transcribed by a physician friend—covers
the period from 1668 to 1671, was published in Amsterdam in 1691, and
has only recently been related in English thanks to the work of Stephen
Snelders (The Devil’s Anarchy). William Dampier traveled several years with
privateers and spent some time among the logwood cuters in the Bay of
Campeche. His accounts were published as Dampier’s Voyages between 1697
and 1699. Basil Ringrose’s The Dangerous Voyage, first published in 1685,
tells about a buccaneer excursion under Captain Bartholomew Sharp.
[13] The identity of Captain Johnson remains disputed. In the 1930s,
literary historian John Robert Moore announced that Captain Charles
Johnson was a nom de plume for the famed novelist Daniel Defoe. He
supported his thesis so convincingly in the book Defoe in the Pillory and
Other Studies (1939) that some editions of A General History even began
to carry Defoe’s name. However, in 1988, P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens
published The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe and profoundly challenged
Moore’s assumptions, insisting that there was “not a single piece of external
evidence to support, and quite a few pieces of such evidence to argue
(apparently) against” Defoe’s authorship (102). For those interested in
the details of the debate, the references in Marcus Rediker’s Villains of
all Nations, 179–180, are a good starting point. In recent years, German
scholar Arne Bialuschewski has identified journalist and newspaper editor
Nathaniel Mist as a likely author of the General History (Woodard, Te
Republic of Pirates, 325).
[14] C. R. Pennell, ed., Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader (New York: New
York University Press, 2001), 9.
[15] Peter Earle, Pirate Wars (London: Methuen, 203), 129.
[16] Profane Existence, “Anarchy, Punk, and Utopia,” Profane Existence
Catalog 12 (1995): 29.
[17] Lucie-Smith, 9.
[18] Maurice Besson, ed., The Scourge of the Indies: Buccaneers, Corsairs
and Filibusters (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1929), xf.
[19] Konstam, History of Pirates, 188.
[20] Hans Turley, Rum, Sodomy and the Lash: Piracy, Sexuality & Masculine
Identity (New York and London: New York University Press, 1999), 7.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Konstam, History of Pirates, 189.
[23] A note on referencing Marcus Rediker: Rediker has regularly used
revised versions of previously published texts for subsequent publications. I
have done my best to quote and reference the latest published versions only,
but cannot guarantee that I have done so in each and every case.
[24] Peter Earle states in Pirate Wars: “I was brought up to admire the
navy and my instincts are on the side of law and order, so that the navy
rather than the pirates has my support” (12).
[25] Marcus Rediker, “Hydrarchy and Libertalia: The Utopian
Dimensions of Atlantic Piracy in the Early Eighteenth Century” in David J.
Starkey, et al., Pirates and Privateers: New Perspectives on the War on Trade in
the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Exeter: University of Exeter Press,
1997), 81.
[26] Pennell, Bandits at Sea, 9.
[27] “Life Under the Death’s Head” was never intended to be a scholarly
contribution to pirate history. I tried to tie the litle I knew about piracy
to certain theories I deemed subversive. The idea was to stimulate radical
thought and politics. While the intention of this book is very similar, it
rests on much more solid historical study and hopes to have lef behind the
original essay’s pretentiousness.
[28] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 14.
[29] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 6.
[30] Treinen, “Parasitäre Anarchie: Die karibische Piraterie im 17
Jahrhundert,” Unter dem Pflaster liegt der Strand 9 (1981): 11.
[31] Turley, Rum, Sodomy and the Lash, 29.
[32] See Janice E. Tomson, Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns: State-
Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1994), 107.
[33] Ulrike Klausmann, Gabriel Kuhn and Marion Meinzerin, Women
Pirates and the Politics of the Jolly Roger (Montreal: Black Rose, 1997),
166–167.
[34] Used by the Romans as a legal definition for sea robbers, the phrase
was resurrected in golden age piracy trials. (Rediker, Villains of all Nations,
174.)
[35] See Marcus Rediker’s book of the same name.
[36] Klausmann et. al., 166–167.
[37] See Tomson, 107.
[38] Earle, The Pirate Wars, 108.
[39] Ibid., 101.
[40] Peter T. Leeson, “An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate
Organization,” Journal of Political Economy 15 no. 6 (2007): 1052.
[41] Konstam, History of Pirates, 10.
[42] “The Tryal, Examination and Condemnation, of Captain Green
1705” in Turley, 44.
[43] Robert C. Ritchie, Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), v.
[44] For an overview of these pirate communities consult any of the
general pirate histories recommended in the “Notes on Pirate Literature.”
[45] Ritchie, 19.
[46] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death,” Do
or Die 8 (1999).
[47] Charles Johnson, A General History of the Robberies and Murders
of the Most Notorious Pirates, ed. Arthur L. Hayward, 4th ed. (London: T.
Woodward, 1726; George Routledge & Sons, 1926), 560.
[48] Konstam, History of Pirates, 11.
[49] Marx, “The Brethren of the Coast,” 38.
[50] Tomson, 54.
[51] Konstam, History of Pirates, 11.
[52] Ibid., 126.
[53] Neville Williams, Captains Outrageous: Seven Centuries of Piracy
(London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1961), x.
[54] Earle, The Pirate Wars, 93–94.
[55] Jan Rogoziński, A Brief History of the Caribbean:From the Arawak and
Carib to the Present (New York: Facts on File, 1999), 77.
[56] Ibid., 63.
[57] Peter R. Galvin, Paterns of Pillage: A Geography of Caribbean-based
Piracy in Spanish America, 1536–1718 (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), 110.
[58] Basil Fuller and Ronald Leslie-Melville, Pirate Harbours and Their
Secrets (London: Stanley Paul & Co.: 1935), 69.
[59] Anne Pérotin-Dumon, “French, English and Dutch in the Lesser
Antilles: from privateering to planting, c. 1550—c. 1650” in General History
of the Caribbean, ed. P.C. Emmer (London and Basingstoke: UNESCO
Publishing, 1999), 2: 149.
[60] C.H. Haring, The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century
(London: Methuen & Co., 1910), 59.
[61] Apart from boars and catle, there were also wild dogs and horses on
Hispaniola. Exquemelin was not too fond of them, however: “They are but
low of stature, short-bodied, with great heads, long necks, and big or thick
legs. In a word, they have nothing that is handsome in all their shape” (John
Exquemelin [Esquemeling], The Buccaneers of America, London: Swan
Sonnenschein & Co. / New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893, 37).
[62] John Masefield, On the Spanish Main (London: Methuen & Co.,
1906), 120.
[63] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 12.
[64] Konstam, History of Pirates, 74.
[65] Stephen Snelders, The Devil’s Anarchy: The Sea Robberies of the Most
Famous Pirate Claes G. Compton & The Very Remarkable Travels of Jan
Erasmus Reyning, Buccaneer (New York: Autonomedia, 2005), 67.
[66] Marx, “The Brethren of the Coast,” 38.
[67] Besson, 6–7.
[68] Marx, “The Brethren of the Coast,” 38.
[69] Fuller and Leslie-Melville, 74.
[70] Ritchie, 22.
[71] Haring, 58.
[72] Galvin, 110.
[73] J. H. Parry and P.M. Sherlock, A Short History of the West Indies
(London: Macmillan & New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1957), 82.
[74] Fuller and Leslie-Melville, 169.
[75] Peter Wood, The Spanish Main (Amsterdam: Time-Life Books,
1980), 104.
[76] Snelders, 94.
[77] Carl Bridenbaugh and Roberta Bridenbaugh, No Peace Beyond the
Line: The English in the Caribbean 1624–1690 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1972), 176.
[78] Angus Konstam, Buccaneers (Oxford: Osprey, 2000), 10.
[79] Lucie-Smith, 158.
[80] Konstam, Buccaneers, 52.
[81] Marx, “The Brethren of the Coast,” 38.
[82] Ritchie, 22.
[83] Franklin W. Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented
Socialism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 97–98.
[84] Earle, Pirate Wars, 92–93.
[85] Christopher Hill, “Radical Pirates?” in Collected Essays: People and
Ideas in 17th Century England (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1986), 174.
[86] Parry and Sherlock, 93.
[87] Snelders, 168.
[88] David F. Marley, Pirates: Adventurers of the High Seas (London: Arms
and Armour Press, 1997), 119.
[89] Earle, Pirate Wars, 149.
[90] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 168.
[91] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 236.
[92] Earle, Pirate Wars, 155.
[93] Ritchie, 234.
[94] Earle, Pirate Wars, 192.
[95] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[96] Galvin, 66–67.
[97] Ibid., 67.
[98] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 234–235.
[99] Konstam, History of Pirates, 96.
[100] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 170.
[101] Earle, Pirate Wars, 198. Earle goes on to quote John Atkins, the
surgeon of the Swallow, responsible for the death of Roberts and the arrest
of his crew: “Discipline is an excellent path to victory; and courage, like
a trade, is gained by an apprenticeship, when strictly kept up to rules and
exercise. The pirates though singly fellows of courage, yet wanting such a tie
of order and some director to unite that force, were a contemptible enemy.
They neither killed or wounded a man in the taking; which ever must be the
fate of such rabble” (198).
[102] Ibid., 203–204.
[103] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 37.
[104] Earle, Pirate Wars, 204.
[105] Ibid., 166–167. Robert C. Ritchie even suggests that “if ordinary
mariners refused to join a pirate crew, they were abused, tortured, and even
killed” (234).
[106] James Burney, History of the Buccaneers of America, quoted in Lucie-
Smith, Outcasts of the Sea, 176.
[107] Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant
Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750
(Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 283.
[108] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 236.
[109] Earle, Pirate Wars, 206.
[110] Johnson, 416.
[111] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 43.
[112] Ibid., 47.
[113] Lucie-Smith, 197.
[114] Johnson, 57.
[115] Ibid., 302.
[116] Snelders, 187.
[117] Ibid., 205.
[118] Ibid., 3.
[119] Ibid., 173.
[120] Ibid., 205.
[121] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[122] Treinen, 18.
[123] Rüdiger Haude, “Frei-Beuter: Charakter und Herkunf piratischer
Demokratie im frühen 18. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrif für Geschichtswissenschaf
7/8 (2008): 607.
[124] Frank Sherry, Raiders & Rebels: The Golden Age of Piracy (New York:
Quill, 1986), 20.
[125] Ibid., 95.
[126] Peter Lamborn Wilson, Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European
Renegadoes, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Autonomedia 1995 & 2003), 22.
[127] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 168
[128] Ibid., 85
[129] Ibid., 16.
[130] Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 285.
[131] Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra:
Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary
Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), 156.
[132] See also Earle, Pirate Wars, 101.
[133] David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (Chicago:
Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004), 11–12.
[134] A. M. Khazanov, Nomads and The Outside World, trans. Julia
Crookenden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 15–16.
[135] Ibid., 15.
[136] Snelders, 198.
[137] See, for example, Johnson, 536.
[138] David Cordingly and John Falconer, Pirates: Fact & Fiction (London:
Collins and Brown, 1992), 32.
[139] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 110.
[140] Elman R. Service, The Hunters, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966 & 1979), 4.
[141] Khazanov, 3.
[142] Knight, 90.
[143] Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 248.
[144] David E. Sopher, The Sea Nomads:A Study Based on the Literature
of the Maritime Boat People of Southeast Asia, Memoirs of the National
Museum 5 (Singapore, 1965), 46.
[145] Sopher, 253.
[146] Khazanov, 1.
[147] Ibid., 1–2.
[148] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guatari, Nomadology: The War Machine
(New York: Semiotext(e), 1986), 73.
[149] Bridenbaugh and Bridenbaugh, 62.
[150] Marley, Pirates, 7.
[151] Haude, 598.
[152] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 25.
[153] Lucie-Smith, 177.
[154] Deleuze & Guatari, Nomadology, 61.
[155] Ibid., 34.
[156] Marshall D. Sahlins, Tribesmen (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1968), 36.
[157] Johnson, 6.
[158] Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guatari, A Tousand Plateaus (New York &
London: Continuum, 2004), 13–14.
[159] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[160] Haring, 76.
[161] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 241.
[162] Gosse, The History of Piracy, 1. New York: Tudor Publishing
Company, 1932.
[163] See also “The Geographical Backdrop to Piracy,” in Pennell, Bandits
at Sea, 62–64.
[164] Deleuze and Guatari, Nomadology, 61–62.
[165] Earle, Pirate Wars, 150.
[166] Snelders, 172.
[167] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 258.
[168] Marley, Pirates, 152.
[169] Lucie-Smith, 245.
[170] Ritchie, 238.
[171] Clastres mainly studied Indian societies of the Amazon but claims
that his analysis applies to most American Indian cultures. See Society
Against the State, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Zone Books, 1987), 28.
[172] Clastres, 27–47.
[173] Ibid., 28.
[174] David Cordingly, introduction to The History of Pirates by Angus
Konstam (New York: The Lyons Press, 1999), 6.
[175] Johnson, 167–168.
[176] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 18.
[177] Basil Ringrose, “The Dangerous Voyage and Bold Assaults of Captain
Bartholomew Sharp and Others, Performed in the South Sea, for the Space
of Two Years, etc.” in Exquemelin, 399.
[178] Sherry, 128.
[179] Snelders, 187.
[180] Deleuze and Guatari, Nomadology, 11.
[181] Johnson, 544.
[182] Clastres, 30.
[183] Johnson, 185.
[184] Sahlins, Tribesmen, 78. Sahlins also lists several pages worth of
examples for this practice in Stone Age Economics (London: Tavistock
Publications, 1974), 246–264.
[185] Sahlins, Tribesmen, 79.
[186] Clastres, 30.
[187] Ibid., 31.
[188] Johnson, 108.
[189] Clastres, 30.
[190] Treinen, 31.
[191] Clastres, 207.
[192] Johnson, 185.
[193] Clastres, 209.
[194] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 65.
[195] Clastres, 29.
[196] Deleuze & Guatari, Nomadology, 11.
[197] Similar parallels can be drawn to the description of nomadic
chiefdoms. “Where there was a supreme chief his functions frequently
were partially similar to those of a chief in a sedentary society, for legal
procedure, ceremonial and external relations. However, no less, if not more
important were his other functions, for mediation in internal conflicts and
military leadership.… In normal circumstances absences of a legitimate and
coercive power to enforce decisions is even more characteristic of nomadic
leaderships than it is of the leaderships of a sedentary chiefdom… the
chiefdoms themselves to a certain extent may be called dispositional. It is
for this reason that nomadic chiefdoms are usually extremely unstable, that
their leadership is diffuse and decentralized and their composition fluid and
impermanent” (Khazanov, 166–169).
[198] Clastres, 206.
[199] Ibid., 207.
[200] Ibid., 209.
[201] Johnson, 56.
[202] Snelders, 181.
[203] Johnson, 543.
[204] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 132.
[205] Johnson, 168.
[206] Ibid., 230.
[207] Sherry, 131.
[208] Earle, Pirate Wars, 11.
[209] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 111.
[210] J. S. Bromley, “Outlaws at Sea, 1660–1720: Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity among the Caribbean Freebooters,” in History fom Below:
Studies in Popular Protest and Popular Ideology in Honour of George Rudé, ed.
Frederick Krantz (Montréal: Concordia University, 1985), 309.
[211] Snelders, 96.
[212] Clastres, 193.
[213] Ibid., 196.
[214] Sahlins, Tribesmen, 79.
[215] Snelders, 108.
[216] Sahlins, Stone Age Economics, 35.
[217] Boting, 45.
[218] Sahlins, Stone Age Economics, 1.
[219] Snelders, 205.
[220] Clastres, 197.
[221] Clastres, 195.
[222] Besson, 197.
[223] Sahlins, Stone Age Economies, 1–2. On the “original affluent society”
specifically, see the chapter of the same name, 1–39.
[224] Exquemelin, 40.
[225] Ibid., 72.
[226] Ibid.
[227] Cordingly and Falconer, Pirates, 114.
[228] Ibid.
[229] Besson, 14.
[230] Klausmann et. al., 165 & 169.
[231] Land, 178.
[232] Snelders, 10.
[233] Service, 16.
[234] Gustavo Martin-Fragachan, “Intellectual, Artistic and Ideological
Aspects of Cultures in the New World,” in General History of the Caribbean,
ed. P. C. Emmer (London and Basingstoke: UNESCO Publishing, 1999), 2:
274.
[235] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[236] Kathy Acker, Pussy, King of the Pirates (New York: Grove Press,
1996), 276.
[237] Service, 74–75.
[238] Sahlins, Tribesmen, 80.
[239] Sherry, 122.
[240] Friedrich Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und
des Staats, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke, Band 21, 5. Auflage
(Hotingen-Zürich: Schweizerische Genossenschafsdruckerei, 1884;
Berlin: Dietz, 1975), 155.
[241] Service, 16–17. For Sahlins’ description see Tribesmen, 82–95, and
the chapter “On Sociology of Primitive Exchange” in Stone Age Economics,
185–275, with many practical examples relevant for the pirate comparison
on pages 263.
[242] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.“
[243] Ringrose, 500–501.
[244] Earle, The Pirate Wars, 130.
[245] As far as land bandits are concerned, see “Social Bandits” which
includes a number of comparisons. For wreckers, see the work of Trevor
Bark, for example “Victory of the Wreckers,” Mayday: Magazine for
Anarchist/Libertarian Ideas and Action 1 (2007/2008).
[246] Sahlins, Stone Age Economics, 41–99.
[247] Sahlins, Tribesmen, 41.
[248] On pirate fashion see “Fashion, Food, Fun, Lingo” in the next
chapter.
[249] See in particular the account of William Dampier, Dampier’s Voyages,
ed., John Masefield (London: E. Grant Richards, 1906). Original texts
published between1697 and 1729.
[250] P. K. Kemp and Christopher Lloyd, Brethren of the Coast: Buccaneers
of the South Seas (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961), 5.
[251] Cordingly and Falconer, 70.
[252] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 130.
[253] Earle, Pirate Wars, 176–177.
[254] Konstam, History of Pirates, 96.
[255] Anne Pérotin-Dumon, “The Pirate and the Emperor: Power and
Law on the Seas, 1450–1850, ” in Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader, ed. C. R.
Pennell (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 40.
[256] Khazanov, 122.
[257] Snelders, 6.
[258] Charles Grey, Pirates of the Eastern Seas (1618–1723): A Lurid Page of
History (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., n.d.), 16.
[259] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 10–11.
[260] Sahlins, Tribesmen, 36.
[261] Knight, 101.
[262] E. J. Hobsbawm, Bandits (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1969),
73–74.
[263] Clastres, 200.
[264] Ibid., 205.
[265] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 176. Compare also the definition of
piracy in The Tryal, Examination and Condemnation, of Captain Green 1705,
already quoted in “Maters of Terminology”: “A pirate is in a perpetual war
with every individual, and every state, Christian or infidel. Pirates properly
have no country, but by the nature of their guilt, separate themselves, and
renounce on this mater, the benefit of all lawful societies” (Turley, 44).
[266] Sahlins, Tribesmen, 6.
[267] Service, 5.
[268] Ibid., 2.
[269] Clastres, 13.
[270] Johnson, 36.
[271] Clastres, 200.
[272] Ibid., 213.
[273] Parallels also exist with respect to Southeast Asia’s sea nomads, at
least if we believe David E. Sopher’s claim that “the loose organization of the
sea nomads in small groups is characteristic of forest primitives” (266).
[274] Sahlins, Tribesmen, viii & 21.
[275] Ibid., 21.
[276] Ibid., 23.
[277] See “Revolutionary, Radical, and Proletarian Pirates?” in Chapter
Four for an extended discussion.
[278] Julian Granberry, The Americas that Might Have Been: Native American
Social Systems Trough Time (Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama
Press, 2005), 127–128.
[279] Irving Rouse, “The West Indies,” in Handbook of South American
Indians vol. 4, ed. Julian H. Steward (Washington: United States
Government Printing Office, 1948).
[280] See for example David Wats, “The Caribbean Environment and Early
Setlement,” in General History of the Caribbean, ed. P.C. Emmer (London
and Basingstoke: UNESCO Publishing, 1999), 2: 33–34.
[281] Knight, 14.
[282] Granberry, 137.
[283] Knight, 10.
[284] See the description of William Dampier’s time spent among the
logwood cuters in Dampier’s Voyages.
[285] Snelders, 71.
[286] See Jack Weatherford, Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas
Transformed the World (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988).
[287] David B. Stout, “The Cuna,” in Handbook of South American Indians,
ed. Julian H. Steward (Washington: United States Government Printing
Office, 1948), 4: 261.
[288] Clastres, 28.
[289] Rouse, “The West Indies,” 496.
[290] Exquemelin, 104.
[291] Irving Rouse, The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted
Columbus (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1992), 22.
[292] Rouse, “The West Indies,” 555.
[293] For a short overview of contemporaneous reports on the relations
between Mosquito Indians and buccaneers, see Baron Pineda, Shipwrecked
Identities: Navigating Race on Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast (New Brunswick:
Rutgers Universtiy Press, 2006), 35–38.
[294] See Paul Kirchhoff, “The Caribbean Lowland Tribes,” in Handbook of
South American Indians, ed. Julian H. Steward (Washington: United States
Government Printing Office, 1948) 4: 224–225.
[295] See the relevant section in Chapter Four.
[296] Knight, 100.
[297] Chris Jenks, Subculture: The Fragmentation of the Social (London: Sage,
2005), 129.
[298] Ibid.
[299] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 56.
[300] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 63.
[301] Gosse, The History of Piracy, 3.
[302] Ibid., 194.
[303] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 26.
[304] Margo DeMello, Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the
Modern Tatoo Community (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000),
44–70.
[305] Juliet Fleming, “The Renaissance Tatoo,” in Writen on the Body:
The Tatoo in European and American History, ed. Jane Caplan (London:
Reaktion, 2000), 61–81.
[306] Maarten Hesselt van Dinter, The World of Tatoos: An Illustrated
History (Amsterdam: KIT, 2005), 215–216.
[307] Dampier, 494–503.
[308] Ritchie, 114.
[309] Snelders, 194–195.
[310] Konstam, History of Pirates, 184.
[311] See Ritchie, 114–115.
[312] Angus Konstam, with Roger Michael Kean, Pirates: Predators of the
Seas (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2007), 233.
[313] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 7.
[314] Jan Rogoziński, Pirates! An A-Z Encyclopedia: Brigands, Buccaneers,
and Privateers in Fact, Fiction and Legend (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996),
302–303.
[315] Anton Gill, The Devil’s Mariner: A Life of William Dampier, Pirate
and Explorer, 1651–1715 (London: Michael Joseph, 1997), 78. The author’s
emphasis.
[316] Lucie-Smith, 207.
[317] Jenifer G. Marx, “The Golden Age of Piracy,” in Pirates: An Illustrated
History of Privateers, Buccaneers, and Pirates fom Sixteenth Century to the
Present (London: Salamander, 1996), 109.
[318] Cruz Apestegui, Pirates in the Caribbean:Buccaneers, Privateers,
Freebooters and Filibusters 1493–1720 (London: Conway Maritime Press,
2002), 169.
[319] Ibid., 169.
[320] Marx, “The Golden Age of Piracy,” 109.
[321] Gosse, The History of Piracy, 182.
[322] Johnson, 230.
[323] Neville Williams, Captains Outrageous: Seven Centuries of Piracy
(London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1961), 153.
[324] Johnson, 259.
[325] Ibid.
[326] Wilson, Pirate Utopias, 49.
[327] Gosse, The History of Piracy, 201.
[328] Sherry, 95–96.
[329] Boston News-Leter, August 22, 1720, quoted in John Franklin
Jameson, ed., Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative
Documents (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 315.
[330] Johnson, 492.
[331] Snelders, 198.
[332] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 53.
[333] See Sherry, Raiders & Rebels, 85–100.
[334] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[335] Konstam, History of Pirates, 11.
[336] Snelders, 94.
[337] Masefield, 111.
[338] Earle, Pirate Wars, 146.
[339] A. Hyat Verrill, back cover of Philip Gosse, The History of Piracy and
The Pirates’ Who’s Who, Rio Grande Press reprints.
[340] Konstam, Buccaneers, 17.
[341] Rogoziński, Brief History of the Caribbean, 94.
[342] Knight, 102.
[343] Ibid., 103.
[344] Earle, Pirate Wars, 137.
[345] Galvin, 119.
[346] Williams, Captains Outrageous, 125–126.
[347] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[348] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 8.
[349] Ibid., 164.
[350] David Cordingly, introduction to The History of Pirates by Angus
Konstam (New York: The Lyons Press, 1999), 9.
[351] Marley, Pirates, 98.
[352] Boston News-Leter, 22nd of August 1720, quoted from Jameson,
Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period, 318.
[353] Johnson, 182.
[354] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 7.
[355] Linebaugh and Rediker, 164.
[356] Robert L. Bledsoe and Boleslaw A. Boczek, The International Law
Dictionary (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1987), 231.
[357] Williams, Captains Outrageous, 162.
[358] Mutineer, 1699, quoted in Linebaugh and Rediker, 165.
[359] Konstam, Buccaneers, 54.
[360] Turley, 35.
[361] Ibid., 35.
[362] Snelders, 11.
[363] Howard Pyle, Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates: Fiction, Fact and Fancy
Concerning the Buccaneers and Marooners of the Spanish Main: From the
Writing and Pictures of Howard Pyle, compiled by Merle Johnson (New York
and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1921), xvi.
[364] Alexander Winston, No Purchase, No Pay: Morgan Kidd and Woodes
Rogers in the Great Age of Privateers and Pirates 1665–1715 (London: Eyre &
Spotiswoode, 1970), 22.
[365] See, for example, Snelders, 138, 141; Sherry, 137; and Johnson, 289.
[366] Marx, “The Golden Age of Piracy,” 103.
[367] Turley, 35–36.
[368] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 220.
[369] See Earle, Pirate Wars, 92.
[370] See Besson, 190.
[371] See Haring, 74–75.
[372] Masefield, On the Spanish Main, 119.
[373] Ringrose, The Dangerous Voyage and Bold Assaults of Captain
Bartholomew Sharp and Others.
[374] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 312.
[375] Johnson, 184, 274, 425.
[376] Ibid., 184.
[377] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 261.
[378] Johnson, 199.
[379] Ibid., 439.
[380] Ibid., 555.
[381] Earle, Pirate Wars, 115.
[382] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 229.
[383] Ibid., 149.
[384] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 272.
[385] Ibid., 277.
[386] Johnson, 489.
[387] Ibid., 324.
[388] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 152.
[389] Johnson, 57–58.
[390] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 152.
[391] Ibid., 153.
[392] Ibid., 166.
[393] Snelders, 175.
[394] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 151–152.
[395] Johnson, 341.
[396] Besson, 12.
[397] Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness
(London & New York: Verso, 1993), 4, 16–17.
[398] Linebaugh and Rediker, 144.
[399] Ibid., 144–145.
[400] See “Pirate Organization” in Chapter 4.
[401] See for example Exquemelin, 247, and Ringrose, 438–439, 472.
[402] Exquemelin, 41.
[403] Henry Gilbert, The Book of Pirates (London: George G. Harrap & Co.,
1916), 225–226.
[404] Marley, Pirates, 21.
[405] Besson, 184.
[406] See Johnson, 500, 535, 544, 556.
[407] Ibid., 437.
[408] Ritchie, 84.
[409] Boting, 74. For a detailed description of the relationship between
Baldridge and Philipse see Ritchie, 113–116.
[410] Johnson, 526.
[411] Earle, Pirate Wars, 115.
[412] See Johnson, 100.
[413] Ibid., 196–197.
[414] Ibid., 204.
[415] Linebaugh and Rediker, 171.
[416] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 143.
[417] Linebaugh and Rediker, 172.
[418] Pérotin-Dumon, “French, English and Dutch in the Lesser Antilles:
from privateering to planting, c. 1550—c. 1650,” 120.
[419] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 50.
[420] Ibid., 58.
[421] Ibid., 76.
[422] See Exquemelin, 249–250.
[423] Dampier, 112–114.
[424] Manuel Schonhorn, Commentary and Notes to Daniel Defoe, A
General History of the Pyrates, ed. Manuel Schonhorn (London: J. M. Dent &
Sons, 1972), 681.
[425] Lionel Wafer, A New Voyage & Description of the Isthmus of America
(London: James Knapton, 1699; Oxford: The Haklyt Society, 1934).
[426] Dampier, 62.
[427] Ibid., 156.
[428] Exquemelin, 240.
[429] Ibid., 113.
[430] Ibid., 36.
[431] See, for example, the chapter “Military Leadership in the Age of the
Buccaneers, 1667–1698” in Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, The Door of the Seas and
Key to the Universe: Indian Politics and Imperial Rivalry in the Darién (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2001).
[432] See Ringrose, 277–278.
[433] Stout, 4: 263.
[434] Kirchhoff, 227.
[435] Johnson, 88.
[436] Sherry, 335.
[437] Exquemelin, 250.
[438] Dampier, 39.
[439] See Earle, 171, for a summary, and Dampier, 39–42 for more detail.
[440] Earle, Pirate Wars, 171.
[441] Linebaugh and Rediker, 165. See also the illuminative chart listing
black pirates in Kenneth Kinkor, “Black Men under the Black Flag,” in
Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader, ed. C.R. Pennell (New York: New York
University Press, 2001), 201.
[442] Johnson, 55.
[443] Earle, Pirate Wars, 198.
[444] Rediker, “Hydrarchy and Libertalia,” 34.
[445] Kinkor, 200.
[446] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 27–28.
[447] Hugh F. Rankin, The Golden Age of Piracy (New York: Holt,
Rineheart and Winston, 1969), 82. The author’s emphasis.
[448] Kinkor, 202.
[449] Ibid., 201.
[450] Sherry, 212.
[451] Ibid., 212.
[452] Linebaugh and Rediker, 167.
[453] See also the concluding chapter on “The Golden Age Pirates’ Political
Legacy.”
[454] Fuller and Leslie-Melville, 72.
[455] Ibid., 68.
[456] Ibid., 72.
[457] Klausmann, et. al, 170.
[458] Johnson, 141.
[459] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 68. Hobsbawm makes this statement in
connection with women who lived disguised as men among the haiduks, a
bandit community of the Balkans; see also “Pirates as Social Bandits.”
[460] Rediker, “Liberty beneath the Jolly Roger: The Lives of Anne Bonny
and Mary Read,” in Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader, ed. C. R. Pennell (New
York: New York University Press, 2001), 308.
[461] Ibid.
[462] Ibid., 300.
[463] John C. Appleby, “Women and Piracy in Ireland: From Gráinne
O’Malley to Anne Bonny,” in Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader, ed. C. R.
Pennell (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 294–295.
[464] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 118.
[465] Appleby, 285.
[466] Klausmann, et al.; F.O. Steele, Women Pirates: A Brief Anthology
of Tirteen Notorious Female Pirates (Lindoln, NE: iUniverse, 2007), and
Jane Yolen, Sea Queens: Women Pirates around the World (Watertown, MA:
Charlesbridge, 2008).
[467] Acker, 267.
[468] Appleby, 285.
[469] Exquemelin, 249.
[470] Johnson, 96.
[471] Ibid., 255–256.
[472] Ibid., 330.
[473] Ibid., 504.
[474] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 113.
[475] Klausmann et al., 170.
[476] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 281–282.
[477] Acker, 272.
[478] Exquemelin, 39–40.
[479] Marx, “The Brethren of the Coast,” 39.
[480] Apestegui, 159.
[481] Konstam, Buccaneers, 15.
[482] B. R. Burg, Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the
Seventeenth-Century Caribbean, 2nd ed. (New York & London: New York
University Press, 1995), xl.
[483] Ibid., xxxix.
[484] Ibid., 41.
[485] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 123.
[486] Earle, Pirate Wars, 5.
[487] Ritchie, 270.
[488] Turley, 2.
[489] Kemp and Lloyd, 3.
[490] Charles Leslie, A New History of Jamaica, fom the Earliest Accounts, to
the Taking of Porto Bella by Vice-Admiral Vernon (London: J. Hodges, 1740),
100, quoted in Turley, 29.
[491] Apestegui, 153.
[492] Johnson, 50.
[493] Ibid., 88.
[494] Ibid., 514.
[495] Ibid., 545.
[496] Ritchie, 123.
[497] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[498] See Ritchie, 124.
[499] Ibid.
[500] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[501] Burg, xlv.
[502] Ibid., 173.
[503] Michel Foucault, The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality,
trans. Robert Hurley (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 1:43.
[504] Ibid., 1:157.
[505] Ibid., 1:126.
[506] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans.
Alan Sheridan. (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1979), 143.
Foucault describes this process in more detail in chapter two, “The Great
Confinement,” of Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of
Reason, trans. R. Howard (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965), 38–64.
[507] Foucault, History of Sexuality, 1:139.
[508] Ibid.
[509] Foucault, Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the College de France,
1975–76, ed. Mauro Bertani, trans. David Macey (London: Penguin Books,
2004), 242–243.
[510] Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 206.
[511] Ibid. This is also confirmed in Earle’s Sailors. Earle speaks of an
“increase in both strictness and the severity of punishment over time,”
on both navy and merchant ships, from 1670 to 1740; see “Discipline and
Punishment,” in Sailors, 145–163.
[512] Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 212.
[513] Ibid., 224.
[514] Giorgi Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans.
Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 120.
[515] Agamben, 123.
[516] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 113.
[517] Christopher Hill, Liberty Against the Law: Some Seventeenth-Century
Controversies (London: Penguin Press, 1996), 118.
[518] Richard Sennet, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western
Civilization (London & Boston: Fabor and Faber, 1994), 15.
[519] This, of course, is only true for certain physical disabilities, most
notably amputations. I am not able to explore the extremely complex nature
of disability in its different dimensions and discursive significances here,
but have to employ strategic generalizations. For detailed discussions see
volumes like Lennard J. Davis, ed., The Disabilities Studies Reader, 2nd ed.
(London: Routledge, 2006), or Dianne Pothier, and Richard Devlin, eds.,
Critical Disability Teory: Essays in Philosophy, Politics, Policy, and Law
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006).
[520] Johnson, 92.
[521] Trial report of William Phillips and others, quoted in Jameson, 334.
[522] Earle, Pirate Wars, 200.
[523] Ibid., 201.
[524] Tew’s crew; Johnson, 400.
[525] David Gerber, ed., Disabled Veterans in History (Ann Arbor, MI:
University of Michigan Press, 2000), 3.
[526] Ibid., 12.
[527] Johnson, 274.
[528] Konstam, History of Pirates, 187.
[529] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 73.
[530] Robert McRuer, Crip Teory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and
Disability (New York & London: New York University Press, 2006), 2.
[531] Ibid., xi.
[532] Catherine J. Kudlick, “Disability History: Why We Need Another
‘Other,’” American Historical Review 108 no. 3 (2003): 766.
[533] Rosemarie Garland Tomson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring
Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1997), 45.
[534] Ibid., 44.
[535] Ibid., 46.
[536] Knight, 90.
[537] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 117.
[538] Peter Earle, The Sack of Panama (London: Jill Norman & Hobhouse,
1981), 66.
[539] Fuller and Leslie-Melville, 73.
[540] Williams, Captains Outrageous, 150.
[541] e.g. Larry Law, A True Historie & Account of the Pyrate Captain Misson,
His Crew & Their Colony of Libertatia Founded on Peoples Rights & Liberty on
the Island of Madagascar (London: Spectacular Times, 1980), 5.
[542] Marx, “The Brethren of the Coast,” 41.
[543] Exquemelin, 59–60.
[544] Snelders, 83.
[545] Ibid., 80.
[546] Johnson, 307.
[547] Ibid., 182.
[548] Ibid., 184.
[549] Ibid., 274–275.
[550] Ibid., 307–308.
[551] Ibid., 182–184.
[552] Ritchie, 25–26.
[553] Johnson, 400.
[554] Quoted in Jameson, 342.
[555] Joel Baer, Pirates (Gloucestershire: Stroud, 2007), 208.
[556] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 69.
[557] Ibid., 164–165.
[558] Sherry, 94.
[559] Snelders, 198.
[560] Earle, Pirate Wars, 179.
[561] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 94.
[562] Sherry, 20.
[563] Grey, 19.
[564] Snelders, 172.
[565] See Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 29–30. For the estimate on the
number of ships see Earle, Pirate Wars, 162.
[566] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 80.
[567] Ibid., 81.
[568] Johnson, 409.
[569] Sherry, 94–95.
[570] Earle, Pirate Wars, 178.
[571] Johnson, 439.
[572] Fuller and Leslie-Melville, 76–77.
[573] Exquemelin, 72.
[574] Ringrose, 502.
[575] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 82.
[576] Ibid., 81.
[577] Ibid., 155.
[578] Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 287.
[579] Ibid., 243.
[580] Ritchie, 124.
[581] Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 261.
[582] Ibid., 248.
[583] Peter Lamborn Wilson, preface to Stephen Snelders, The Devil’s
Anarchy: The Sea Robberies of the Most Famous Priate Claes G. Compton &
The Very Remarkable Travels of Jan Erasmus Reyning, Buccaneer (New York:
Autonomedia, 2005), ix.
[584] Snelders, 146.
[585] Sherry, 297.
[586] Land, 180.
[587] The strong stratification and hierarchy of these groups constitutes of
course a considerable difference to the buccaneer and pirate communities.
Many of the problems associated with the value of “brotherhood,” though,
seem to remain the same.
[588] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 84.
[589] Cordingly and Falconer, 99.
[590] Rediker, “Liberty beneath the Jolly Roger,” 306.
[591] Ibid., 307.
[592] Sherry, 330.
[593] Snelders, 109.
[594] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 101.
[595] Treinen, 33–34.
[596] Ibid., 34.
[597] Johnson, 544.
[598] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[599] Marley, Pirates, 98.
[600] Ibid.
[601] Konstam, History of Pirates, 98.
[602] See, for example, Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 165–68.
[603] A useful overview can be found in Cordingly and Falconer, 78–79.
[604] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 165.
[605] Cordingly and Falconer, 78–79; Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates,
139ff; Rediker, Villains of all Nations, 164–169.
[606] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 164. Rediker’s specification of the
pirate outlaws as “proletarian” has been omited here as I want to save
the discussion on piracy and class, including Rediker’s partiality towards
perceiving the golden age pirates as proletarians, for “Revolutionary,
Radical, and Proletarian Pirates?”
[607] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 98. See also the previous chapter.
[608] Land, 179. This analysis stands in stark contrast to that of Frank
Sherry: “If the Jolly Roger was the symbol of a loose pirate confederacy, it
was also an indication of the impulse toward unity and authentic statehood
among the pirates of Madagascar. Still another indication of this impulse was
their propensity to form an atachment for the land itself and to setle there
as permanent residents” (98). This is probably the prime example of Sherry
overrating the pirate community in Madagascar, misjudging its intentions,
and projecting political ambitions into the golden age that were not there.
[609] Snelders, 94.
[610] Gill, 87.
[611] David Starkey, “Pirates and Markets,” in Bandits at Sea, ed.
C.R.Pennell (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 111.
[612] Turley, 39.
[613] Boting, 47.
[614] Wilson, Pirate Utopias, 30.
[615] Sherry, 130.
[616] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 122.
[617] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[618] Klausmann et al., Women Pirates, 169.
[619] Leeson.
[620] Land, 180–181.
[621] Foucault, ‘Society Must Be Defended,’ 23.
[622] Ibid., 50–51.
[623] Ibid., 51.
[624] Ibid., 59–60.
[625] Linebaugh and Rediker, 173.
[626] Preface to Charles Ellms, ed., The Pirates Own Book, or Authentic
Narratives of the Lives, Exploits, and Executions of the Most Celebrated Sea
Robbers (Salem, MA: Marine Research Society, 1924), iii.
[627] Gosse, The History of Piracy, 139.
[628] Johnson, 285.
[629] Sherry, 297.
[630] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 198.
[631] Deleuze and Guatari, Nomadology, 67.
[632] Ibid., 1.
[633] Ibid., 120.
[634] Ibid., 113.
[635] Ibid.
[636] Ibid., 120.
[637] Ibid., 60.
[638] See “Pirates and Violence” in this chapter.
[639] Snelders, 108.
[640] Konstam, History of Pirates, 117.
[641] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 79.
[642] Deleuze and Guatari, Nomadology, 11.
[643] Winston, 231.
[644] Tomson, 54.
[645] Johnson, 37–38.
[646] Earle, Pirate Wars, 159; Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 19.
[647] Gosse, The History of Piracy, 177.
[648] Snelders, 167.
[649] Mao Tse-Tung, “On Guerrilla Warfare,” trans. Samual B. Griffith, in
Guerrilla Warfare, ed. Mao Tse-Tung and Che Guevara (London: Cassell &
Company, 1962), 31.
[650] Carlos Marighella, “Problems and Principles of Strategy,” in Urban
Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, trans. and eds. James Kohl and John Lit
(Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press, 1974), 86.
[651] Tse-Tung, On Guerrilla Warfare, 33.
[652] Che Guevara, “What Is a Guerrilla?” in Guerrilla Warfare & Marxism,
ed. William J. Pomeroy, (New York: International Publishers, 1970), 288–289.
[653] Che Guevara, “Guerrilla Warfare,” in Guerrilla Warfare, ed. Mao Tse-
Tung and Che Guevara (London: Cassell & Company, 1962), 113.
[654] Tse-Tung, “On Guerrilla Warfare,” 55.
[655] Guevara, “Guerrilla Warfare,” 131.
[656] Marighella, “Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla,” in Urban Guerrilla
Warfare in Latin America, eds. James Kohl and John Lit (Cambridge, MA &
London: MIT Press, 1974), 101–102.
[657] Marighella, “Minimanual,” 93–94. The only thing omited in this list
was “training as a frogman,” something that was hard to do on 17th-century
Hispaniola.
[658] Marighella, “Minimanual,” 97.
[659] Marley, Pirates, 62.
[660] Snelders, 130.
[661] Marighella, “Minimanual,” 95.
[662] Tse-Tung, “On Guerrilla Warfare,” 59–60.
[663] Snelders, 67.
[664] Tse-Tung, “On Guerrilla Warfare,” 60.
[665] Guevara, “Guerrilla Warfare,” 115.
[666] Kemp and Lloyd, 5.
[667] Marighella, “Minimanual,” 100.
[668] Gosse, Pirates’ Who’s Who, 52.
[669] James Connolly, “Street Fighting,” in Guerrilla Warfare & Marxism,
ed. William J. Pomeroy (New York: International Publishers, 1970), 136.
[670] Galvin, 164.
[671] Régis Debray, “Revolution in the Revolution?” in Guerrilla Warfare
& Marxism, ed. William J. Pomeroy (New York: International Publishers,
1970), 299.
[672] Tse-Tung, “On Guerrilla Warfare,” 70–71.
[673] Cordingly and Falconer, 114.
[674] Boting, 55.
[675] Marighella, “Minimanual,” 102.
[676] Tse-Tung, ”On Guerrilla Warfare,” 70.
[677] Guevara, ”Guerrilla Warfare,” 118.
[678] Ibid., 114.
[679] Konstam, Buccaneers, 10.
[680] Boting, 55.
[681] Cordingly and Falconer, 70.
[682] Marighella, “Minimanual,” 102.
[683] Tse-Tung, “On Guerrilla Warfare,” 74.
[684] Debray, 300.
[685] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 242.
[686] Galvin, 68.
[687] Marighella, “Minimanual,” 102.
[688] Ibid., 103.
[689] Guevara, ”Guerrilla Warfare,” 113.
[690] Guevara, “What Is a Guerrilla?” 290.
[691] Earle, Pirate Wars, 184.
[692] Ibid.
[693] Marighella, “Problems and Principles of Strategy,” 85.
[694] Marighella, “Minimanual,” 97.
[695] Tse-Tung, “On Guerrilla Warfare,” 39.
[696] Guevara, “Guerrilla Warfare,” 117.
[697] Guevara, “What Is a Guerrilla?” 290.
[698] Snelders, 198.
[699] Ritchie, 19.
[700] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 110.
[701] Marighella, “Questions of Organization,” in Urban Guerrilla Warfare
in Latin America, trans. and eds. James Kohl and John Lit (Cambridge, MA
& London: MIT Press, 1974), 78.
[702] Marighella, “Minimanual,” 99.
[703] Tse-Tung, “On Guerrilla Warfare,” 65.
[704] Ibid., 66.
[705] Ibid., 66.
[706] Guevara, “Guerrilla Warfare,”130–131.
[707] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 117.
[708] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 69.
[709] Ibid., 81.
[710] Sherry, 128.
[711] Snelders, 187.
[712] Ritchie, 25–26.
[713] Marighella, “Questions of Organization,” 73.
[714] Ibid., 79.
[715] Marighella, “Minimanual,” 105.
[716] Tse-Tung, “On Guerrilla Warfare,” 70.
[717] Ibid., 75.
[718] Guevara, ”Guerrilla Warfare,” 118.
[719] Ibid., 129.
[720] Ibid., 132.
[721] V. I. Lenin, “Guerrilla Warfare,” in Guerrilla Warfare & Marxism, ed.
William J. Pomeroy (New York: International Publishers, 1970), 87.
[722] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[723] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 101.
[724] Linebaugh and Rediker, 172–173.
[725] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 101.
[726] Turley, 30.
[727] Jameson, 304.
[728] Johnson, 252.
[729] Ibid., 435.
[730] Ibid., 135–136.
[731] See “Pirate Ethics” in this chapter.
[732] Boston News-Leter, 22nd of August 1720, quoted from Jameson,
Piracy and Privateering in the Colonial Period, 315.
[733] Hill, “Radical Pirates?” 180.
[734] Ibid., 174.
[735] Ibid., 173–174.
[736] Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas
During the English Revolution (New York: The Viking Press, 1973), 339.
[737] J. C. Davis, Fear, Myth and History: The Ranters and the Historians
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 75.
[738] Hill, “Radical Pirates?” 178.
[739] See, for example, The Online Etymology Dictionary ([[http://www.etymonline.com/][htp://www.etymonline.com/]].).
[740] For example, John Pro, in Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 25–26.
[741] Gosse, The History of Piracy, 238–243.
[742] William C. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism (London:
Macmillan & Co., 1912), 402.
[743] Johnson, 179–180.
[744] Ian Gentles, The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland
1645–1653 (Oxford, UK & Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992), 118.
[745] Oliver Cromwell, “Speech at the Opening of Parliament 1656,” in
The Black Legend: Anti-Spanish Atitudes in the Old World and the New, ed.
Charles Gibson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), 54–62.
[746] Cf. Rogoziński, A Brief History, 88.
[747] J. S. Bromley’s essay “Outlaws at Sea, 1660–1720: Liberty, Equality
and Fraternity among the Caribbean Freebooters” in History fom Below:
Studies in Popular Protest and Popular Ideology in Honour of George Rudé, ed.
Frederick Krantz (Montreal: Concordia University, 1985) includes arguments similar to Hill’s, only with respect to the French buccaneers. Bromley
argues that the French engagés—basically indentured laborers—included
many deported French radicals. Since a fair number of engagés ended joining
the buccaneers, a corresponding influence would seem likely. As in Hill’s
case, however, empirical evidence is scarce and a lot seems lef to speculation.
[748] At this point, some troubling implications of Hill’s understanding
of the pirates’ freedom ought to not be overlooked either: “Pirate freedom
extended to sexual relations. Women were not unknown on board,
and wife-sharing was reported. One crew traded a vessel to a slaver in
exchange for sixty African women. The ship was renamed The Bachelor’s
Delight.…Marlene Brant points out that a favourite metaphor for harlot was
ship” (Liberty Against the Law, 120). Hill takes a lot of liberty here as far as
the origins of The Bachelor’s Delight are concerned.
[749] Hill, Liberty Against the Law, 118.
[750] Hill, “Radical Pirates?” 174.
[751] Ibid., 173.
[752] Sherry, 327.
[753] Johnson, 591.
[754] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 228.
[755] Angus Konstam, Pirates: Predators of the Sea (New York: Skyhorse
Publishing, 2007), 152–153.
[756] Marley, Pirates, 133.
[757] Earle, Pirate Wars, 123.
[758] Ibid., 170.
[759] See also Colin Woodard, The Republic of Pirates (Orlando, FL:
Harcourt, 2007), 3–4.
[760] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 8.
[761] Rediker, “Hydrarchy and Libertalia,” 29.
[762] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 176.
[763] Linebaugh and Rediker, 163.
[764] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[765] Erik Olin Wright, Classes (London: Verso, 1985), 6.
[766] See also Turley: “The pirates, outside the conventions of English
society, do not belong to any class” (85).
[767] Tomson, 48.
[768] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[769] Turley, 172.
[770] Clastres, 218.
[771] Wilson, Pirate Utopias, 22.
[772] Kinkor, 195, 204; Hill, “Radical Pirates?” 179–180; Haude, 595;
Wilson, preface to Snelders, The Devil’s Anarchy, ix; Bromley, 314.
[773] Kinkor, 204.
[774] Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 269.
[775] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 13.
[776] Lucie-Smith, 8.
[777] Gosse, The History of Piracy, 299.
[778] Earle, Pirate Wars, 212.
[779] Gosse, The History of Piracy, 213.
[780] Wilson, preface to Snelders, The Devil’s Anarchy, ix.
[781] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 13.
[782] Earle, Pirate Wars, 185.
[783] John Franklin Jameson, Privateering and Pirating in the Colonial:
Illustrative Documents (New York: Macmillan, 1923), viii.
[784] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 16.
[785] Ibid., 14.
[786] Ibid., 17.
[787] Ibid., 72.
[788] Ibid., 73.
[789] Ibid., 68.
[790] Ibid.
[791] Ibid., 24.
[792] Ibid., 71.
[793] Ibid., 27.
[794] Ibid.
[795] Ibid., 28–29. The “peasant” references have been omited in this quote
as they do not seem relevant to the argument. The question of how golden age
pirates fit into this analysis despite not being peasants will be discussed below.
[796] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 45–46.
[797] Ibid., 15.
[798] Jameson, 304.
[799] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 38, 173.
[800] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 46.
[801] Ibid., 35.
[802] Lucie-Smith, 9.
[803] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 94.
[804] Ibid., 67.
[805] Ibid., 61.
[806] Ibid., 67.
[807] Ibid., 66.
[808] Ibid.
[809] Ibid., 62. Again, the peasant atribute has been omited.
[810] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 50.
[811] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 5–6.
[812] Hill, “Radical Pirates?” 165.
[813] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 56.
[814] Ibid., 55.
[815] Ibid., 109.
[816] Ibid., 15.
[817] Ibid.
[818] Ibid., 31. Hill has also pointed at the fact that the following analysis
of the “criminal underworld” is more applicable to golden age piracy than
Hobsbawm’s concept of the peasant bandit (“Radical Pirates?” 180).
[819] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 32.
[820] E. J. Hobsbwam, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social
Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries, 3rd ed. (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1959 & 1971), 5.
[821] Ibid., 24
[822] Hobsbwam, Bandits, 62
[823] Hobsbwam, Primitive Rebels, 13.
[824] cf. Hobsbawm, Bandits, 91.
[825] Ibid., 48.
[826] Ibid., 20.
[827] Ibid., 19–20.
[828] Ibid., 21.
[829] Hobsbwam, Primitive Rebels, 24.
[830] Ibid., 22–23.
[831] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 76.
[832] Hobsbwam, Primitive Rebels, 28.
[833] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 84.
[834] Ibid., 22.
[835] Hobsbwam, Primitive Rebels, 28.
[836] Manuel Schonhorn’s “Commentary and Notes” to his 1972 edition of
A General History of the Pyrates proved crucial for this debate.
[837] Wilson, Pirate Utopias, 196–198. Hill writes similarly: “The History
of the Pyrates, sometimes atributed to Defoe, is not necessarily reliable as
evidence of what pirates actually did or said. But it is evidence of what public
opinion was prepared to believe” (Liberty Against the Law, 115).
[838] Land, 183.
[839] Turley 80.
[840] Rediker, “Hydrarchy and Libertalia,” 31.
[841] Land, 183.
[842] Rediker, “Hydrarchy and Libertalia,” 41–42.
[843] Law, 8.
[844] Snelders, 102.
[845] Johnson, 347.
[846] Ibid., 349.
[847] Ibid., 350.
[848] Ibid., 349.
[849] Ibid., 358.
[850] Ibid., 348.
[851] Ibid., 358–359.
[852] Ibid., 350. This did not keep him from accepting special gifts from his
crew (Ibid.).
[853] Ibid., 351.
[854] Ibid., 403.
[855] Ibid.
[856] Ibid., 366.
[857] Ibid., 351.
[858] Ibid., 409–410.
[859] Rediker, “Hydrarchy and Libertalia,” 36.
[860] Rediker, “Libertalia: The Pirate’s Utopia,” in Pirates: An Illustrated
History of Privateers, Buccaneers, and Pirates fom the Sixteenth Century to the
Present, ed. David Cordingly (London: Salamander, 1996), 125.
[861] Johnson, 410.
[862] Ibid., 411.
[863] Ibid.
[864] Ibid., 371.
[865] Ibid., 411.
[866] Wilson, Pirate Utopias, 197.
[867] Snelders, 190.
[868] Johnson, 411.
[869] Ibid., 412.
[870] Law, in his radical version of the Libertalia story, does not abruptly
end the account in the same manner, but offers a very abbreviated and
selective ending.
[871] Johnson, 412.
[872] Johnson, 413–414.
[873] See also Lucie-Smith, 24.
[874] Linebaugh and Rediker, 167–168. For a useful general overview, see
also the chapter “Pirate Haunts and Strongholds,” in Galvin, Paterns of
Pillage.
[875] Snelders, 151.
[876] Ibid., 172.
[877] Tomson, 46.
[878] Galvin, 109.
[879] Cordingly and Falconer, 36.
[880] Sherry, 203.
[881] Snelders, 69–70.
[882] Konstam, Buccaneers, 14.
[883] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 143.
[884] Ibid., 19.
[885] Masefield, 117.
[886] Fuller and Leslie-Melville, 80.
[887] Besson, 177.
[888] Konstam, Buccaneers, 53.
[889] Ibid.
[890] Rogoziński, Brief History, 94.
[891] Lucie-Smith, 158, 160.
[892] Cordingly and Falconer, 38.
[893] Konstam, Buccaneers, 52.
[894] Earle, Pirate Wars, 91.
[895] Burg, 94.
[896] Fuller and Leslie-Melville, 84.
[897] Ned Ward, author of The London Spy (1698), quoted in Fuller and
Leslie-Melville, 85.
[898] Williams, Captains Outrageous, 126.
[899] Dampier, 155.
[900] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 176.
[901] Linebaugh and Rediker, 268.
[902] O. Nigel Bolland, The Formation of a Colonial Society: Belize,
from Conquest to Crown Colony (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1977), 21.
[903] Fuller and Leslie-Melville, 104.
[904] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 178.
[905] Ibid., 239.
[906] Sherry, 208.
[907] Woodard, 131.
[908] Snelders, 172.
[909] Williams, Captains Outrageous, 150.
[910] Marley, Pirates, 130.
[911] Boting, 128.
[912] Marx, “The Golden Age of Piracy,” 109.
[913] Sherry, 207–208.
[914] Lucie-Smith, 214.
[915] Marx, “The Golden Age of Piracy,” 109.
[916] Williams, Captains Outrageous, 153.
[917] Mitchell, 1976, 84, in Galvin, 108.
[918] Galvin, 107.
[919] Marley, Pirates, 117.
[920] Cordingly and Falconer, 80.
[921] Earle, Pirate Wars, 122.
[922] Cordingly and Falconer, 80.
[923] 1704 Parliamentary Proposal, quoted in Boting, 90.
[924] Earle, Pirate Wars, 129.
[925] Ritchie, 112–113.
[926] Sherry, 122.
[927] Ibid., 96.
[928] Ibid., 94.
[929] Johnson, 543.
[930] Ibid., 32–34.
[931] Ritchie, 116.
[932] Earle, Pirate Wars, 130.
[933] Cordingly and Falconer, 83.
[934] Marley, Pirates, 140.
[935] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 95.
[936] Wilson, preface to Snelders, The Devil’s Anarchy, ix.
[937] Treinen, 32.
[938] Hill, Liberty Against the Law, 120.
[939] Williams, Captains Outrageous, x. A very useful general overview of
the relations between the state, commerce, and piracy can also be found in
Pérotin-Dumon, “The Pirate and the Emperor: Power and the Law on the
Seas, 1450–1850.”
[940] Knight, 104.
[941] Earle, Pirate Wars, xi.
[942] Land, 172.
[943] Marx, “The Brethren of the Coast,” 37.
[944] Knight, 102.
[945] Lucie-Smith, 179.
[946] Jameson, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period, viii.
[947] Tomson, 50.
[948] Konstam, History of Pirates, 138.
[949] Earle, Pirate Wars, 135.
[950] Ibid., 147.
[951] Ritchie, 19.
[952] Marley, Pirates, 148.
[953] Knight, 104.
[954] Snelders, 155.
[955] Land, 186.
[956] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 82.
[957] Galvin, 186.
[958] Marley, Pirates, 130.
[959] Johnson, 1.
[960] Boting, 194.
[961] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 15.
[962] Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 254.
[963] Marley, Pirates, 140.
[964] Johnson, 231.
[965] Boston News-Leter, 22nd of August 1720, quoted in Jameson, 314.
[966] Earle, Pirate Wars, 178–179.
[967] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 56.
[968] Linebaugh and Rediker, 172–173.
[969] Earle, Pirate Wars, 146–147.
[970] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[971] Deleuze and Guatari, Nomadology, 117.
[972] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 142.
[973] Ibid., 144.
[974] Galvin, 66–67.
[975] See “A Litle History” in Chapter 2.
[976] Hill, “Radical Pirates?” 174.
[977] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 145.
[978] Boston News-Leter Extra, June 30, 1704, quoted in Jameson, 283.
[979] Ibid., 284.
[980] Marley, Pirates, 143.
[981] Wilson, preface to Snelders, The Devil’s Anarchy, xi.
[982] Cordingly and Falconer, 96.
[983] Friedrich Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, in Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, Band 5 (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag & Berlin/
New York, Walter de Gruyter 1980), 295.
[984] Turley, 13.
[985] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 54.
[986] Johnson, 57.
[987] Ibid., 299.
[988] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 234.
[989] Masefield, 126.
[990] Burg, 162.
[991] Konstam, History of Pirates, 83.
[992] Snelders, 80.
[993] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 153.
[994] Boting, 55.
[995] Ibid.
[996] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 176.
[997] Ibid., 89.
[998] Snelders, 205.
[999] Ibid., 111.
[1000] Burg, 164.
[1001] Cordingly and Falconer, 41.
[1002] Snelders, 110.
[1003] Robert I. Burns, Muslims, Christians and Jews in the Crusader Kingdom
of Valencia: Societies in Symbiosis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1984), quoted in Tomson, Mercenaries, 45.
[1004] Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 159.
[1005] Knight, 100.
[1006] Sherry, 136.
[1007] Snelders, 205.
[1008] Rediker, 170.
[1009] Sherry, 350.
[1010] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[1011] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 58.
[1012] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 14.
[1013] Haude, 610.
[1014] Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 287.
[1015] Sherry, 135.
[1016] Land, 177.
[1017] Ritchie, 234.
[1018] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 90–91.
[1019] Marley, Pirates, 136–137.
[1020] Johnson, 304. Author’s emphasis.
[1021] Earle, Pirate Wars, 176.
[1022] Ibid., 175.
[1023] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 88.
[1024] Ibid.
[1025] Johnson, 193.
[1026] Service, 48.
[1027] Johnson, 252.
[1028] Snelders, 203.
[1029] Friedrich Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie, in Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, Band 1 (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag & Berlin/
New York: Walter de Gruyter 1980), 79.
[1030] Ibid., 128.
[1031] Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, 137.
[1032] Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, in Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, Band 5 (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag & Berlin/
New York: Walter de Gruyter 1980), 238.
[1033] Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, 13.
[1034] Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 122.
[1035] Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, 266.
[1036] Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson
(London: Athlone Press, 1983), 18.
[1037] Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie, 28.
[1038] Ibid., 105.
[1039] Deleuze, 185–186.
[1040] Ibid., 16.
[1041] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 169.
[1042] Earle, Pirate Wars, 168–169.
[1043] Johnson, 563.
[1044] Snelders, 98.
[1045] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 59.
[1046] Friedrich Nietzsche, Die föhliche Wissenschaf, in Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, Band 3 (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag & Berlin/
New York: Walter de Gruyter 1980), 574.
[1047] Ibid., 530.
[1048] Wilson, Preface to Snelders, The Devil’s Anarchy, ix-x.
[1049] Snelders, 187.
[1050] Sherry, 123.
[1051] Land, 177. It is not surprising that the perspective of non-radical
historians differs. David Cordingly writes unceremoniously: “It was the
lure of plunder and riches which was the principal atraction of piracy, just
as it has been for every bandit, brigand, and thief throughout history” (Life
Among the Pirates, 225).
[1052] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 173.
[1053] Friedrich Nietzsche, Morgenröthe, in Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Band 3
(Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag & Berlin/New York: Walter de
Gruyter 1980), 32.
[1054] Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Antichrist. in Kritische Gesamtausgabe,
Band 6 (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag & Berlin/New York: Walter
de Gruyter, 1980).
[1055] See Nietzsche’s 1889 book of the same name.
[1056] Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 286.
[1057] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 69.
[1058] Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 47–48.
[1059] Wilson, Pirate Utopias, 52.
[1060] Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 248.
[1061] Marley, Pirates, 139.
[1062] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 128.
[1063] Snelders, 48.
[1064] Ibid., 192.
[1065] Johnson, 482.
[1066] Ritchie, 85.
[1067] Snelders, 155.
[1068] Besson, 11.
[1069] See Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra, in Kritische
Gesamtausgabe. Band 4 (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag & Berlin/
New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), or Zur Genealogie der Moral.
[1070] Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie, 80.
[1071] Ibid., 36.
[1072] Ibid., 128.
[1073] Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, 176.
[1074] Snelders, 190.
[1075] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[1076] Rediker, Villains of all Nations, 72.
[1077] Ibid., 71.
[1078] Sherry, 129–130. About music on pirate ships, see also Cordingly,
Life Among the Pirates, 115–116.
[1079] Snelders, 180.
[1080] Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 133.
[1081] Nietzsche, Morgenröthe, 629.
[1082] See Jean-François Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, trans. Iain Hamilton
Grant (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).
[1083] Snelders, 108.
[1084] Ibid.
[1085] Friedrich Nietzsche, Nachgelassene Fragmente, in Kritische
Gesamtausgabe, Band 10 (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag & Berlin/
New York: Walter de Gruyter 1980), 568.
[1086] Besson, 22. The obsession with gambling is also confirmed by other
sources: see, for example, Cordingly, Life Among the Pirates, 114–115;
Besson, 14; Wafer, 127.
[1087] Boting, 29.
[1088] Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 266.
[1089] Besson, x.
[1090] Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie, 99.
[1091] Nietzsche, Die föhliche Wissenschaf, 519.
[1092] Deleuze, 16.
[1093] Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, 277.
[1094] Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra, 93.
[1095] Rediker, Villains of all Nations, 163.
[1096] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 157.
[1097] David Cordingly, introduction to Konstam, The History of Pirates, 9.
[1098] Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 230.
[1099] Rediker, Villains of all Nations, 147.
[1100] Johnson, 212.
[1101] Konstam, History of Pirates, 101.
[1102] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 169.
[1103] Johnson, 135f
[1104] Boston News-Leter, August 22, 1720, quoted from Jameson, 315.
[1105] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 149.
[1106] William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the
Slave Trade 2nd ed. (London: C. Ward and A. Chandler, 1735; London:
Frank Cass, 1970), 167.
[1107] Johnson, 214.
[1108] Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 205–206.
[1109] Deleuze, 174–175.
[1110] Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, 311.
[1111] Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 125.
[1112] Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie, 26.
[1113] Snelders, 197.
[1114] Rediker, Villains of all Nations, 71.
[1115] Sherry, 132.
[1116] Exquemelin, 40.
[1117] Johnson, 192–193.
[1118] Ibid., 542.
[1119] Nietzsche, Morgenröthe, 54–55.
[1120] Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie, 24. Of course the drinking of
the pirates must not be romanticized. Marx notes that “alcoholism was an
occupational hazard and led to many untimely deaths” (“The Golden Age
of Piracy,” 109), which is confirmed by Konstam who writes that “many
[pirates] died from alcohol abuse” (History of Pirates, 184). Johnson’s
General History includes at least one episode in which two pirates who have
been sentenced to death blame their pirating ways on their drinking (315-
316). For a summary of pirate crews’ problems with alcohol see also Burg,
155–156. In this light it also seems not random that the most successful of
the golden age pirate captains, Bartholomew Roberts, has been described
as a teetotaler. Every reputedly did not drink either (Sherry, 69), and the
famous, yet most probably fictional, pirate captain Misson explicitly speaks
out against alcohol (Johnson, 359–360).
[1121] Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, 117.
[1122] Anonymous, “Pirate Utopias: Under the Banner of King Death.”
[1123] See Ramor Ryan, Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile
(Oakland & Edinburgh: AK Press, 2006).
[1124] See htp: //[[http://www.crimethinc.com./][www.crimethinc.com.]]
[1125] See Capt’n Mayhem, Long Live Mutiny! A Pirate Handbook (Baltimore:
Firestarter Press, n.d.)
[1126] A simple Google Image search will bring up relevant results.
[1127] See [[http://www.piratesforpeace.com/][htp://www.piratesforpeace.com/]].
[1128] See [[http://www.constituentimagination.net/][http://www.constituentimagination.net/]].
[1129] Introduction to No Quarter: An Anarchist Zine About Pirates (n.p.,
n.d.), 2.
[1130] Williams, Captains Outrageous, 153.
[1131] Land, 190.
[1132] Kinkor, 204–205.
[1133] Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 285.
[1134] Guevara, “What is a Guerrilla?” 288–289.
[1135] Mao, On Guerrilla Warfare, 77. The specification of “peasant” revolt
has been omited as the argument seems to extend systematically to the
situation of the golden age pirates.
[1136] Lucie-Smith, 210–211.
[1137] Johnson, 535.
[1138] Ibid., 514.
[1139] Rediker, “Liberty beneath the Jolly Roger: The Lives of Anne Bonny
and Mary Read,” 316.
[1140] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 67.
[1141] Land, 190.
[1142] Ibid.
[1143] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 93.
[1144] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 175.
[1145] Sherry, 365.
[1146] Gill, 42.
[1147] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 21.
[1148] Ibid.
[1149] Ibid., 22.
[1150] Snelders, 204–205.
[1151] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 76.
[1152] Snelders, 80.
[1153] Linebaugh and Rediker, 162.
[1154] Hobsbawm, Bandits, 77.
[1155] Tomson, 46.
[1156] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 176.
[1157] Snelders, 3.
[1158] Land, 171.
[1159] Ibid.
[1160] Linebaugh and Rediker, 173.
[1161] Land, 190.
[1162] Hakim Bey, T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological
Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism (New York: Autonomedia, 1991).
[1163] Rediker, Villains of All Nations, 175.
[1164] Ibid.
[1165] Land, 188.
[1166] Gosse, The Pirates’ Who’s Who, 19.
[1167] Land, 185.
[1168] See [[http://www.piratbyran.org/][htp://www.piratbyran.org]] and [[http://www.thepiratebay.org./][htp://www.thepiratebay.org.]]
[1169] See htp://[[http://www.freegan.info./][www.freegan.info.]]
[1170] See htp://[[http://www.crimethinc.com./][www.crimethinc.com.]]
[1171] Ron Sakolsky, “Rhizomatic Radio and the Great Stampede,” in
Seizing the Airwaves: A Free Radio Handbook, eds. Stephen Dunifer and Ron
Sakolzy (Edinburgh & San Francisco: AK Press, 1998), 9.
[1172] Land, 190.
[1173] Linebaugh and Rediker, 173.
[1174] Burg, 196–197.