Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age [Hardcover]

Marcus Rediker (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0807050245 | ISBN-13: 978-0807050248 | Publication Date: June 15, 2004 | Edition: First Edition

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 reality aboard their own ships, electing their officers, dividing their booty equitably, and maintaining a multinational social order. The real lives of this motley crew-which included cross-dressing women, people of color, and the'outcasts of all nations'-are far more compelling than contemporary myth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rediker (Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea), a historian of maritime labor, opens his immensely readable study of the "golden age" of piracy (1716-1726) with the spectacle of an execution in which a notorious pirate, unrepentant and seemingly unconcerned to be facing death, reties the knot of his gallows noose with defiant ironic humor. For Rediker, pirates were bold subversives who challenged the prevailing social order and empire building of the five main trading nations. Emphasizing the hardship, injustice and brutality the average sailor faced in his career, Rediker suggests that piracy offered a more egalitarian seafaring life, as well as opportunities for revenge on the ruling class. Rediker uses captives' accounts, among other sources, to show how pirates meted out their own system of justice, torturing captains reputed for their harsh treatment of sailors, yet sparing others known for fairness. He explores pirate dialects, rituals and symbols, and shows how pirates inverted social norms, creating a carnivalesque way of life that featured fraternal solidarity, a precapitalist share system and the wanton destruction of property. A chapter on picaresque women pirates reveals links between their iconic image and Delacroix's painting Liberty. Using statistics to show convincingly that by the 1720s piracy posed a real threat to global trade, Rediker describes how nations launched a military-legal campaign against piracy, with cannon battles and gruesome public executions. Rediker uses this apocalyptic close of piracy's golden age to explore its suicidal side. Although Rediker's short study does not tackle later myths of piracy, it provides penetrating background to our enduring cultural fascination with the seafaring outlaws. Illus.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The so-called golden age of Atlantic piracy was the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Lawless rebels, including well-known men such as William Fly and Edward Teach--as well as numerous social outcasts, debtors, escaped slaves, and various predatory personalities--used terrorist tactics to prey upon merchant ships from New England waters to the Spanish Main. Rediker's revealing and often surprising work views pirates and piracy within the context of the social, political, and economic milieu of the eighteenth century. He does much to deromanticize pirate life, for these were brutal, sometimes heartless men, and many of them were prime examples of a variety of social pathologies. Yet, as Rediker illustrates, pirates often did create a distinct subculture with its own set of values, codes of honor, and taboos. Rediker is most interesting and provocative in his comparisons between this subculture and the broader, "respectable" society that helped engender it. An informative look at a popular topic. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 248 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Press; First Edition edition (June 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807050245
• ISBN-13: 978-0807050248
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #681,478 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Merry Life and a Short One, June 17, 2006

By 

David Stapleton (California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Hardcover)

Where many books on pirates and piracy paint with a broad stroke, covering everything from the Greeks through the Elizabethan Sea Dogs to the last throes of the Golden Age, Marcus Rediker has focused in tightly on that last era or more precisely 1716-1726. Covering a variety of aspects, the author, guides us through the how and why of these last remnants of generations of piracy.

While the prose is readable and often entertaining, it is undoubtedly a scholarly work based upon extensive research (as witnessed by the numerous endnotes). I do not agree with all of Rediker's conclusions, but he has done a wonderful job of explaining how he arrived at those conclusions. The favorites are here, Blackbeard, Roberts, Bonny, Read among others. The author presents a certain admiration and sympathy for the majority of pirates while detesting the cruelties of the few.

The depth of the research will provide a few eye-openers for even the reasonably well versed hobby historian and a decent base for any budding pirate historian. The subject matter is also well indexed for future referencing. All in all a good read and resource.
P-)

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Last Throes of the Golden Age of Piracy, March 2, 2006

By 

ninjasuperstar (Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Hardcover)

Marcus Rediker wonderfully recreates the world of the late 17th- and early 18th-century pirates through a variety of historical sources and documents. He attempts to explain what a pirate was, who tended to be pirates, and why someone would go "on the account" (turn pirate) in the first place. Rediker explores the role of gender in piracy. Most pirates tended to be men, yet Rediker devotes an entire chapter to Anne Bonny and Mary Read, two of the few known women pirates. Race was likely not as important an issue to pirates as class, working conditions at sea, and respect for the labor force of professional sailors. Rediker also investigates the surprisingly advanced systems of government aboard successful pirate ships.

Rediker's style is relaxed and not at all pedantic. He has a great command of the topic and steers it expertly. Some readers may detect that the author sympathizes with the pirates too often. Yet Rediker is careful to explain that many pirates were indeed bad men while others were once state workers, and when they were no longer needed, they were dubbed pirates and villains of all nations. I recommend this book to those interested in the period and in the history of piracy. Rediker's other books are great as well, and you may want to look into Peter Linebaugh who sometimes collaborates with Rediker.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The challenge to class, race, gender and nation, September 9, 2006

By 

Malvin (Frederick, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Paperback)

"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.