About this title: Villains of All Nations explores the "Golden Age" of Atlantic piracy (1716-1726) and the infamous generation whose images underlie our modern, romanticized view of pirates. Rediker introduces us to the dreaded black flag, the Jolly Roger; swashbuckling figures such as Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard; and the unnamed, unlimbed pirate who was likely Robert Louis Stevenson's model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island. This history shows from the bottom up how sailors emerged from deadly working conditions on merchant and naval ships, turned pirate, and created a starkly different ...
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Beacon Press
Date Published: 2005-04-15
ISBN-13:9780807050255ISBN:0807050253
Description: New. New book-Neat and clean inside and out. Delivery confirmation will be emailed to you upon shipment. Packaged securely and shipped promptly with care. -*Priority orders are sent within 24hrs. * read more
Description: New. 5 1/2 x 8 1/2. Explores the golden age of Atlantic piracy 1716-1726. Featuring Jolly Roger, Blackbeard, and the model for RLS's Long John Silver. 240pp. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780807050255ISBN:0807050253
Description: Good. Villains of All Nations explores the "Golden Age" of Atlantic piracy (1716-1726) and the infamous generation whose images underlie our modern, romanticized view of pirates. Rediker introduces us to the dreaded black flag, the Jolly Roger; swashbuckli... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Date Published: 2005
ISBN-13:9780807050255ISBN:0807050253
Description: Good. Villains of All Nations explores the "Golden Age" of Atlantic piracy (1716-1726) and the infamous generation whose images underlie our modern, romanticized view of pirates. Rediker introduces us to the dreaded black flag, the Jolly Roger; swashbuckli... read more
"Rediker's "Villains of All Nations," reevaluates the golden age of piracy as a proletarian struggle between a government-supported merchant class and a militant force made up of their formerly exploited labor force. This battle between the terror of state and the terror of the rebellious pirates begins in 1713. It was then that a large group of sailors, who had served as either privateers or directly in the service of imperial governments, became unemployed as a result of a general peace throughout the Atlantic world. Those who could find work, found that already dismal conditions aboard sea-going vessels had deteriorated past the dire conditions many sailors had been used to prior to the Treaty of Utrecht. As "the empires were over extended and could not easily police the seas on which they depended," Given this opportunity, many rose up against their economic oppressors and as a result, piracy flourished through what had been a formerly well-patrolled ocean. By 1726, the efforts against this threat to property were finally met with equally determined resistance. "Merchants and governmental officials" who had specifically "set about exterminating robbery by sea and the alternative way of life it represented," had used the terror of propaganda as well as mass executions and the display of corpses to bring the culture of piracy to a final bloody end. It is at point that the book opens with the execution of the pirate William Fly in Boston, on July 12, 1726. Representing the perspective of the state are the carefully orchestrated actions and sermons of Cotton Mather. In contrast, the violent and rebellious behavior of Fly as he approaches death at the hand of the colonial government, is meant to exemplify the more traditional associations the term terrorist brings to the modern imagination. The author then uses the main bulk of the book to explore and justify Fly's opposition. He systematically builds support by illustrating the lives of various pirates, their revolutionary culture, and their innovative systems of order. At the end, the reader is brought once again to face how pirates dealt with the subject of death at the hands of the state with a more understanding and ready appreciation of their outrage. As this book is obviously written for an audience sympathetic to its progressive perspective, it runs the risk of creating critiques that are too severe and not fully comprehending of its perspective. The reader can easily misinterpret the title, "Villains of all Nations," if not aware of this restraint. Any attempts to view this book beyond this particular thesis run the risk of over speculating beyond its present scope. Rediker admits that the population was overwhelmingly a British, male phenomenon. It follows, then, that the majority of his examples come from that tradition, if not that geographical area. The pirates are villains of all nations in existence. They stand opposition to any form of governance that values property over what we would today view as basic human rights and dignity. While this is an Atlantic phenomenon and largely Anglo centric in initiation, the enemies of this population range as far as the imperial powers of Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands, and their Atlantic colonies and strongholds."
""...damn ye, you are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by Laws which rich Men have made for their own Security, for the cowardly Whelps have not the Copurage otherwise to defend what they get by their knavery; but damn ye altogether: Damn them for a Pack of crafty Rascals, and you, who serve them, for a Parcel of hen-hearted Numskuls. They villify us, the Scroundrels do, when there is only this Difference, they rob the Poor under the Cover of Law, forsooth, and we plunder the Rich under the Protection of our own Courage."
Charles Bellamy, pirate captain.
That pretty much sums up the tack taken by Rediker in this history of the "Golden Age of Piracy"--roughly 1716-1726.
When the colonial countries ended their wars and the divisions of the New World were pretty much made, the colonial powers dismissed their privateers--pirates employed by the crown or state to harrow their enemies--as they realized that it didn't pay to hamper anyone's theft of New World resources or the Middle Passage supplying slaves.
Yet the wretched conditions of most sailors in service to the new merchant class and their exploitation would drive hundreds and maybe thousands to mutiny or defect and sail under the Black Flag.
Rediker divides this Golden Age into three brief eras:
1) Rebellion and establishment of near anarchic groups under the pirate flag.
2) The flourishing of piracy.
3) Brutal repression and the desperate fight for survival by pirates as the violence ratcheted up.
There's a lot to admire in this book as it lays out the cruelties of the crown and states without glossing over the acts of pirates. Despite the lefty jargon about dialectics and what-not, the read is also fun.
Anyone who has ever thought of pirates as cool because they were rebel outlaws will like this book and the rest of you will at least get a brief history lesson."
"After reading The Many-headed Hydra co-authored by Peter Linebaugh, I picked this book up. Although Rediker follows the same theme as that previous work, the tone of Villains of All Nations is more academic and less overtly political. That's not to say that Rediker does not continue the materialist theme developed in The Many-Headed Hydra, which is that piracy of the 17th & 18th Century was both encouraged by and a reaction against the political and social policies of the Great Powers.
The book develops a number of ideas. First, pirates were largely proletariat, reacting to perceived injustices committed against them by the Crown and the merchant class. Piracy represented an escape from bondage (both from poverty and impressment) as well as a means of creating a new egalitarian social order. Pirate society was participatory; their articles had codes for limiting the power of their captains, an equitable system for sharing loot, and even a form of disability insurance. In this, as well as in their decisions to plunder or pass on captured merchant ships, pirates perceived themselves as following a particular (albeit contrary to the larger society) moral code. This moral code has its origin in what pirates consider to be just relations between a merchant captain and crew, but also extends into other realms of just social relations. Rediker devotes a chapter on Anne Read and Mary Bonny to build a modest case for their feminist influence on the larger culture (although he concedes that Victorian attitudes towards femininity during the 19th Century reversed any progress made).
Far more interesting is the various interests aligned against piracy. From encouraging piracy during the Queen Anne's War (War of Spanish Succession), England devoted more of its resources to expunging pirates to the degree that it interfered with emerging trade interests (by "trade interests" I mean exploitation of natural and human resources). As sugar, slaves, and flour in turn became hot commodities, the war against pirates - who represented the greatest resistance to capital - intensified, until 1726 when piracy was effectively exterminated.
This is a great alternative to the Hollywood stereotypes about pirates. Viewed within the larger (and typically cruel) social context, this book serves to humanize those who have historically been demonized, presenting them as sympathetic figures without reducing them to the comical, like more recent films have done. Maybe someday soon the Somali "pirates" will get a similar treatment."
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