Pirates

[chickenfeet]

chickenfeet2003 reading a book on pirates? Has frivolity overwhelmed the dry and scholarly environs of Scadding Avenue? Not quite. I've been reading Marcus Rediker's Villains of the Nations - Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. It's quite good, though, being Rediker, one has to scrape the Marxist theory off with a trowel to get at the stuff about pirates. Anyone who has read his previous books or anything by Peter Linebaugh will know what to expect. American academics do not wear their theory lightly however much they emphasise their debt to Edward Thompson!

I did learn quite a lot about the quantifiable economic impact of piracy in the period in question (1713-26) and there is a good section on the notorious women pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. It only cost me $6.99 in the remainder bin which seems fair enough. If I'd paid the cover price of ₤18.99 I might have been less pleased!

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

one has to scrape the Marxist theory off with a trowel to get at the stuff about pirates.

I wonder if this would annoy me even more than pages on quantifiable economic impact...

*goes back to reading simultaneously NAM Roger, Duff Cooper's surprisingly good "Talleyrand", and Fouad Ajami's exquisitely well-written "The Foreigner's Gift".*

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I wonder if this would annoy me even more than pages on quantifiable economic impact...

Well heavy handed as it is, it's Marxism in the Thompson, Hill, Hobsbawm tradition. I find that preferably to half digested Foucault or, far far worse, anything from Althusser and his imps.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Fair point; even completely digested Foucault, or the real thing, is unbearable. As for Althusser-trop-fort...

I sort of like Hobsbawm. I never could understand how such an obviously human character like him wanted to crawl back into the straightjacket at regular inbtervals.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I sort of like Hobsbawm. I never could understand how such an obviously human character like him wanted to crawl back into the straightjacket at regular inbtervals.

I don't think it is a straightjacket. The English Marxist tradition of which Hobsbawm is part is far too eclectic to be a straightjacket. Thompson wrote extensively on Blake for example. Hill's analysis of dissent in the 17th century and particularly in the aftermath of the Restoration would make an orthodox Marxist blench. If you want to explore the difference between that brand of Marxism and the more rigid kind favoured by the marxistentialists I'd recommend Thompson's essay "The Peculiarities of the English", itself a reply to Perry Anderson's "The Origins of the Present Crisis". Worth it just for the huge dose of EPT snark.