Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Beacon Classics)

"Villains of All Nations" by Marcus Rediker is an outstanding historical analysis of the Golden Age of piracy (1716 to 1726). Mr. Rediker presents his well-researched narrative in an accessible writing style that should appeal to a wide audience. The reader gains insight into the turbulent economic and social conditions of the 18th century Atlantic that gave rise to popular resistance and to the state-sponsored violent repression that all but eliminated piracy as a threat to continued capitalist accumulation. The author's vivid and intelligent text succeeds in helping us recognize that piracy was a far more complex and interesting phenomenon when one compares the reality with the simplistic and manufactured images that are often presented by the purveyors of popular culture.Mr. Rediker does an excellent job of engaging the reader by using individual case studies to illustrate key points. For example, the author introduces us to Walter Kennedy who was one of thousands of poor, young and unmarried men who fled the brutal labor conditions onboard navy and merchant ships. As a pirate, Kennedy embraced a culture that was antithetical to the extreme privilege, hierarchy and discipline of the nation state; rather, Kennedy reveled in a multinational and egalitarian social order that sought unrestrained gratification as compensation for a lifetime of privation and misery. And like most, his taste of freedom as a pirate was short-lived but not regretted.Mr. Rediker discusses the famous women pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who became legendary for their courageous displays of independence, sexual freedom and class consciousness. Interestingly, the author compares a woodcut from 1725 depicting a female pirate inspired by the adventures of Bonny and Read with Eugene Delacroix's iconic 'Liberty Leading the People' of 1830. Building a credible circumstantial case that Delacroix's painting was almost certainly influenced by the woodcut, Mr. Rediker helps us see how the pirates' quest for freedom can be seen as part of a larger liberation movement that would eventually lead to revolutionary struggle.We learn that the pirates' success in disrupting the slave trade all but assured a decisive response from the capitalist state. But while the spectacle of the gallows may have served as a public deterrant, Mr. Rediker reports that many pirates who reveled in their status as social outcasts remained unrepentant to the end. Mocking their unfair treatment at the hands of a social and legal system that was controlled by a wealthy elite, it was not uncommon for pirates to defy church and state at public hangings. Indeed, by bringing such remarkable and dramatic stories of pirate culture to life, Mr. Rediker's book succeeds in showing us how these rebels who challenged class, race, gender and nation remain relevant to us today.I highly recommend this engaging and informative book to everyone.

Marcus Rediker has written what is easily the most fascinating account of piracy to date. Approaching piracy from the perspective of what can only be described as an ethnographer-historian, Dr. Rediker presents us with several mind-blowing proposals:- Pirates had set up egalitarian societies, racially and sexually- Pirates were, for all the bad rap they get, rather reluctant killers- Pirates challenged a status quo that was fundamentally unjustAt first glance, it would appear that Rediker had a difficult job ahead of him. However, through careful research, he begins unraveling the mythology of piracy we receive through  popular culture , and challenges our beliefs on each of those points in turn.I literally cannot recommend this book enough. If you are interested in pirates in any academic sense, I refer you to this book.Put down Defoe, before it's too late, and pick this one up. You'll thank me later.

Marcus Rediker, in Villains of all Nations, has attempted to paint a picture of the unpleasantness of life as a sailor in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Atlantic World. Rediker shows rather convincingly that the wider public regarded sailors as inept, immature, and childlike, needing to be constantly looked after and controlled. Rediker likens the treatment of sailors to enslavement, giving ample examples of laws created in the Atlantic colonies to control sailors by limiting their rights and their mobility. In Rediker’s argument, the sailor’s natural inclination was to take up piracy, as it provided the only means of rebellion against the very world that had seemingly arrayed itself against him. Rediker attempts to unite these disparate groups of outlaws together by means of a common ideology opposed to inherited authority, founded upon meritocracy. Rediker argues that pirates were thus organized in an egalitarian fashion, with plunder being divided in a much more equitable way, important decisions being put to a vote in which all men had equal voting power, and plenty of food and liquor to be had. Standing in stark contrast to the rigid discipline of the merchant world and navy, pirates set out to define their own world by making war against the existing one.Rediker does a great thing in his works by pointing out the horrid working conditions that many seamen faced in the eighteenth century. Rediker’s emphasis upon this is effective to his argument, and one is inevitably led to the conclusion that piracy was the natural reaction to a life of oppressed service onboard a merchant or naval vessel. However, Rediker’s strong emphasis upon the divide between authority figures and the proletariat smacks of a Marxist apologetic superimposition. Not that Marxism is anathema to historical interpretations, but to impose a thoroughly modern framework upon the past is difficult to do accurately. Were all pirates everywhere aware of the reasons why every other pirate chose to desert or mutiny and take up arms against innocent merchants? To thus unite all pirates together under one cause is painting much too broad of a stroke. While conditions by and large were not favorable to seamen, a far larger number of men continued to work in that environment than took up arms against it, making pirates somewhat of an anomaly.Rediker, while giving ample examples of the executions of pirates and their ilk, includes very little examples of pirate atrocities committed against innocent people. Rediker seems to have much too approving of a posture towards pirates, instead pointing out the “terror” that the state wielded as being a cause for their rebellion. After finishing Rediker’s works, one must be grateful for the deep research that is apparent in them. However, one is also left desiring a more balanced analysis to the activity of Atlantic pirates.

A reexamination of pirates not as marauders, but as freedom seeking plunderers, people who used the ocean to check out of society and follow their own mores.I certainly know more about pirates now than when I first began. I enjoyed reading this book. It was very informative and well-written. I look forward to learning more about the subject.

Very nice book, used it for my honors class and I absolutely loved it

Interesting reading and bought as a present.

Super interesting to think of pirates as the first labor movement.

Loved it!!

This is an academic (I.e. persuasive) text, not a narrative history. It means it is not as quick and engrossing a read as say Woodard's Republic of Pirates, but not being bound to a narrative, either, it is far more broadly informative (serving as the source document for many of Woodard's reference, for instance). And, despite the academic approach, it lacks the dull tone of the standard such tome and reads quite well all the same.

Books are subjective