Bandits at Sea : A Pirates Reader

by Pennell, C. R.

• ISBN13: 9780814766781
• ISBN10: 0814766781
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-06-01
• Publisher: Ingram Publisher Services, Inc.

Summary

The romantic fiction of pirates as swashbuckling marauders terrorizing the high seas has long eclipsed historical fact. Bandits at Sea offers a long-overdue corrective to the mythology and the mystique which has plagued the study of pirates and served to deny them their rightful legitimacy as subjects of investigation.With essays by the foremost scholars on these countercultural "social bandits" as Lingua Franca recently dubbed them this collection examines various aspects of the phenomenon in the three main areas where it occurred: the Caribbean/Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and East Asia. We come to understand who pirates were, as well as the socio-economic contexts under which they developed and flourished.Comparisons between various types of piracy illustrate differences in practice and purpose between pirates of different areas; social histories, including examinations of women pirates and their historical significance and circumstances, offer similar insight into the personal lives of pirates from diverse regions. Far from serving as dens of thieves, pirate ships were often highly regulated microcosms of democracy. The crews of pirate vessels knew that majority rule, racial equality and equitable division of spoils were crucial for their survival, marking them as significantly more liberal than national governments.Scholars, students and a general audience ever intrigued by tales and now truths of piracy on the high seas will welcome Bandits at Sea .

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
PART I: Situating Piracy
Introduction: Brought to Book: Reading about Pirates	3	(22)
C. R. Pennell
The Pirate and the Emperor: Power and the Law on the Seas, 1450-1850	25	(30)
Anne Perotin-Dumon
The Geography of Piracy: Northern Morocco in the Mid-Nineteenth Century	55	(14)
C. R. Pennell
The Origins and Regulation of Eighteenth-Century British Privateering	69	(13)
David J. Starkey
Piracy and World History: An Economic Perspective on Maritime Predation	82	(25)
John L. Anderson
Pirates and Markets	107	(18)
David J. Starkey
Corsairing as a Commercial System: The Edges of Legitimate Trade	125	(14)
Goncal Lopez Nadal
PART II: Pirates in Action
The Seaman as Pirate: Plunder and Social Banditry at Sea	139	(30)
Marcus Rediker
Outlaws at Sea, 1660-1720: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity among the Caribbean Freebooters	169	(26)
J. S. Bromley
Black Men under the Black Flag	195	(16)
Kenneth J. Kinkor
The Buccaneer Community	211	(33)
B. R. Burg
The Practice of Homosexuality among the Pirates of Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century China	244	(9)
Dian Murray
Cheng I Sao in Fact and Fiction	253	(30)
Dian Murray
Women and Piracy in Ireland: From Grainne O'Malley to Anne Bonny	283	(16)
John C. Appleby
Liberty beneath the Jolly Roger: The Lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, Pirates	299	(22)
Marcus Rediker
Women among the Uskoks of Senj: Literary Images and Reality	321	(14)
Wendy Bracewell
Contributors	335	(4)
Permissions	339	(2)
Index	341