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Reviews of Books
Simon P. Newman, University of Glasgow
| Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. By Marcus Rediker. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004. 256 pages. $24.00 (cloth), $ 16.00 (paper).
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Pirates have fascinated Marcus Rediker for more than a quarter century, and since the publication of "'Under the Banner of King Death,'" he has returned regularly to these "gentlemen of fortune."1Building on three decades of research, this deeply researched work focuses principally on a single decade. Rediker first sketches the longer history of the buccaneers of 1650–80, many of whom had served as agents of states at war before transforming into the pirates of the 1690s. By the early years of the eighteenth century, European and New World governments "had taken a harsh new view of pirates as the enemies of imperial designs rather than as allies who might help to accomplish them" (24). Nevertheless, the period of 1716–26 was a golden age of pirates "who attacked the ships of all nations and created a crisis in the lucrative Atlantic system of trade" (9). Rediker estimates that as many as two thousand pirates sailed at the beginning of this era, a number that would double before declining to a few hundred after a bloody war of attrition. Early-eighteenth-century governments were horrified when the "common men of the deep gained control of piracy and used it for their own purposes.... By 1720 the main purpose was no longer booty, but rather, the perpetuation of a 'life of liberty'" (36–37). |
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The causes, nature, and results of common sailors' struggle for their life of liberty are at the heart of this book. Rediker's earlier work has illustrated the brutality of life at sea and the horrific violence employed to control seafarers, but here he focuses on the decisions and actions of those whose resentment turned to rebellion. Some became pirates through mutiny against harsh and unfair captains and masters, whereas others voluntarily deserted when their ships were captured. Pirates generally sought only willing volunteers, though on occasion they impressed skilled men, especially as pirate crews dwindled in the early 1720s. Though many seafarers may have yearned to rid themselves of naval discipline and deprivation, perhaps fear, desperation, and even hunger may have triggered the desertion of sailors who had not planned to become pirates. |
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Rediker presents pirates as transcending nationality, a condition best symbolized by their "antinational" (8) skull and crossbones flags. Black flags had long signaled that no quarter would be given or that a criminal was being executed, and the skull and crossbones in captains' logs "were one of the few lasting marks of the common sailor who died at sea" (167). The flag's promise of death and terror, combined with pirates' readiness to accept their own bloody fate, are two of Rediker's themes. Most pirates were British, which raises questions about piracy as a British rather than an Atlantic phenomenon. Rediker is surely correct in presenting pirates as men and occasionally women who had chosen to renounce nationality, yet it seems likely that the size and working conditions of Britain's merchant and royal navies meant that those who served on British ships were not only more numerous but also far more likely to experience the harsh discipline of the world's largest and most efficient system for the transportation of raw materials and manufactured goods. It is more than coincidence that the most advanced mercantile capitalist nation on earth produced the majority of early-eighteenth-century pirates, and that most pirates who renounced nationality were rejecting Britain. |
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