Pirate enlightenment
March 28, 2023 8:32 PM Subscribe
When thieves retire. What the pirate kingdoms of Madagascar can tell us about the Enlightenment.
Francis Goodman reviews David Graeber's book Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, in the London Review of Books.
I believe the LRB has some kind of paywall, but I was able to access the article without logging in, so hopefully this is free to view for all.
Francis Goodman reviews David Graeber's book Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, in the London Review of Books.
I believe the LRB has some kind of paywall, but I was able to access the article without logging in, so hopefully this is free to view for all.
When I was a kid, I read about captain Misson and Libertalia in my Ladybird Book of Pirates (Which had great illustrations, but also: content warning for slavery, murder, torture, and historical inaccuracy if look through the book at that link. It's astonishing to me that I had that book when I was, like, 5, and nobody thought it odd at all.) Much later I learned that it was all bullshit, no Misson, no Madagascar pirate kingdom. (If you've ever read A General History of the Pyrates, it's clear that fact and myth are mixed pretty liberally)
Imagine my surprise upon reading Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia to learn that the claims of bullshit were themselves a kind of bullshit, and there were pirate kingdoms after all, and much more interesting than the simple description in the Ladybird book...
posted by surlyben at 11:06 PM on March 28, 2023
Imagine my surprise upon reading Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia to learn that the claims of bullshit were themselves a kind of bullshit, and there were pirate kingdoms after all, and much more interesting than the simple description in the Ladybird book...
posted by surlyben at 11:06 PM on March 28, 2023
There is also The Enemy of all Mankind by Steven Johnson that makes similar points, describing pirate Henry Every and his crew's capture of Mughal treasure ship Ganj-i-Sawai and how it helped shape the course of history.
posted by blue shadows at 12:18 AM on March 29, 2023
posted by blue shadows at 12:18 AM on March 29, 2023
My honest review: this book is 200 pages of Graeber just making up shit, because, as he admits, there's really very little in the way of sources. It's pretty entertaining speculation, though.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 1:09 AM on March 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 1:09 AM on March 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
Rediker is a scholar and author of many books about pirates.
And his book (with Peter Linebaugh) The Many-Headed Hydra is excellent and well worth your time if you're interested in this general topic.
posted by synecdoche at 3:54 AM on March 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
And his book (with Peter Linebaugh) The Many-Headed Hydra is excellent and well worth your time if you're interested in this general topic.
posted by synecdoche at 3:54 AM on March 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
Imagine my surprise upon reading Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia to learn that the claims of bullshit were themselves a kind of bullshit, and there were pirate kingdoms after all, and much more interesting than the simple description in the Ladybird book...
Back when I was in academia I was putting together a proposal to examine literary accounts of piracy in the early United States, and the role that depictions of piracy and pirates (in the political and social sense) played in the formative years of constructing a national political identity. It was fascinating stuff and I wish I'd won the funding to write it. (Long story short: I didn't and left academia soon afterwards so it never became much more than a grant proposal. Leaving academia was for the best but I do get wistful about that project in particular.)
I remember well talking to another professor about the proposal. She was quite an adventurer and had travelled in waters where the threat of pirate attacks were very real, and she was maybe not offended but extremely put out that I wanted to work on something that would treat pirates as anything other than predatory monsters. She was a brilliant scholar, but so much of this is just not a part of the official historical record that it can be difficult to imagine piracy as anything more than acts of wanton criminality in pursuit of lucre. Surely that happened, but there was so much more going on.
posted by synecdoche at 6:32 AM on March 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
Back when I was in academia I was putting together a proposal to examine literary accounts of piracy in the early United States, and the role that depictions of piracy and pirates (in the political and social sense) played in the formative years of constructing a national political identity. It was fascinating stuff and I wish I'd won the funding to write it. (Long story short: I didn't and left academia soon afterwards so it never became much more than a grant proposal. Leaving academia was for the best but I do get wistful about that project in particular.)
I remember well talking to another professor about the proposal. She was quite an adventurer and had travelled in waters where the threat of pirate attacks were very real, and she was maybe not offended but extremely put out that I wanted to work on something that would treat pirates as anything other than predatory monsters. She was a brilliant scholar, but so much of this is just not a part of the official historical record that it can be difficult to imagine piracy as anything more than acts of wanton criminality in pursuit of lucre. Surely that happened, but there was so much more going on.
posted by synecdoche at 6:32 AM on March 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
I found these parts of Rediker's review most useful in understanding what this new book is:
Unlike most reviewers of Pirate Enlightenment, I have read most of Graeber’s primary sources. We agree on fundamental issues: first, that Libertalia itself was a fiction, a literary invention. This is not controversial. Second, we agree that real, empirically proven historical social practices among pirates both inspired and informed the tale of Libertalia. The ideas embodied in Libertalia were real, living conceptions. They were not utopian, which means “no place”; they had a place and, as Graeber deftly shows, they also had a history. ...posted by Nelson at 8:07 AM on March 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
Most books on pirates have no new ideas, and some have no ideas at all, just research findings, which are useful but limited. What Graeber offers that is new is a discussion of how the process of change involving pirate culture worked among the Betsimisaraka—how the peoples of northeastern Madagascar were knowing, conscious agents of history who made choices of inclusion and transformation within the matrix of their own values and culture
Justin Smith's review is interesting. He acknowledges Graeber's 'casual attitude towards the boundary between fact and fiction' but doesn't think it matters as long as you go into the book accepting that a lot of it is speculative.
He also points out that it's not just about pirates, it's about ships and islands and the way these provided sandboxes for political experiments (or thought experiments) that weren't possible in nation-states. 'Ships were floating islands, and islands were something like immobile ships.'
The LRB link is paywalled for those of us who have already used up our allowance of free articles, but this archive link should work. Also relevant: Graeber's reading list for his 2018 course on 'Anthropology and Global History', which shows how his work on pirates relates to his other projects and preoccupations.
posted by verstegan at 9:55 AM on March 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
He also points out that it's not just about pirates, it's about ships and islands and the way these provided sandboxes for political experiments (or thought experiments) that weren't possible in nation-states. 'Ships were floating islands, and islands were something like immobile ships.'
The LRB link is paywalled for those of us who have already used up our allowance of free articles, but this archive link should work. Also relevant: Graeber's reading list for his 2018 course on 'Anthropology and Global History', which shows how his work on pirates relates to his other projects and preoccupations.
posted by verstegan at 9:55 AM on March 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
I was just reading the other day about Stephen Hopkins. He wasn't a pirate, but after getting shipwrecked on Bermuda he argued that everyone's indentured service contracts were null and void because the Virginia Company had failed to safely transport everyone to North America. He reasoned that the survivors were free to choose whether to continue on to Virginia or become part of a newly established cooperative on Bermuda.
Later on in his life, Stephen Hopkins was a passenger on the Mayflower. When the ship was unable to reach it's intended destination in the Virginia Colony, by extreme coincidence, the passengers arrived at the same conclusion and wrote the Mayflower Compact to declare themselves free as individuals to enter into their own agreed-upon government regardless of any past obligations.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:54 AM on March 29, 2023 [7 favorites]
Later on in his life, Stephen Hopkins was a passenger on the Mayflower. When the ship was unable to reach it's intended destination in the Virginia Colony, by extreme coincidence, the passengers arrived at the same conclusion and wrote the Mayflower Compact to declare themselves free as individuals to enter into their own agreed-upon government regardless of any past obligations.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 10:54 AM on March 29, 2023 [7 favorites]
I think honestly this is also an aspect of of The Dawn Of Everything (based on reviews from experts) - Graeber's MO is sometimes just making a lot out of a little. But he does something valuable, because conventional narratives about the "little" are doing the same thing! Essentially he constructs a big challenge to assumptions that project our contemporary outlook back on to the past, by making up a story that uses the same material evidence but very different assumptions. And if that is to advance his political project, well, the conventional account is also in service of a particular politics, just one that is so normalised it is rarely called out.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:59 AM on March 29, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:59 AM on March 29, 2023 [5 favorites]
I've read that expert reviewers of Dawn of Everything often quibble with the specifics but still agree with the overall conclusions, which is a funny contrast with Jared Diamond.
posted by subdee at 11:42 PM on March 31, 2023
posted by subdee at 11:42 PM on March 31, 2023
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