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Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750
The common seaman and the pirate in the age of sail are romantic historical figures who occupy a special place in the popular culture of the modern age. And yet in many ways, these daring men remain little known to us. Like most other poor working people of the past, they left few first-hand accounts of their lives. But their lives are not beyond recovery. In this book, Marcus Rediker uses a huge array of historical sources (court records, diaries, travel accounts, and many others) to reconstruct the social cultural world of the Anglo-American seamen and pirates who sailed the seas in the first half of the eighteenth century. Rediker tours the sailor's North Atlantic, following seamen and their ships along the pulsing routes of trade and into rowdy port towns. He recreates life along the waterfront, where seafaring men from around the world crowded into the sailortown and its brothels, alehouses, street brawls, and city jail. His study explores the natural terror that inevitably shaped the existence of those who plied the forbidding oceans of the globe in small, brittle wooden vessels. It also treats the man-made terror--the harsh discipline, brutal floggings, and grisly hangings--that was a central fact of life at sea. Rediker surveys the commonplaces of the maritime the monotonous rounds of daily labor, the negotiations of wage contracts, and the bawdy singing, dancing, and tale telling that were a part of every voyage. He also analyzes the dramatic moments of the sailor's existence, as Jack Tar battled wind and water during a slashing storm, as he stood by his "brother tars" in a mutiny or a stike, and as he risked his neck by joining a band of outlaws beneath the Jolly Roger, the notorious pirate flag. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea focuses upon the seaman's experience in order to illuminate larger historical issues such as the rise of capitalism, the genesis the free wage labor, and the growth of an international working class. These epic themes were intimately bound up with everyday hopes and fears of the common seamen.
340 pages, Paperback
Published February 24, 1989
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About the author
Marcus Rediker
31 books191 followersMarcus Rediker is Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh and Senior Research Fellow at the Collège d’études mondiales in Paris. He is the author of numerous prize-winning books, including The Many-Headed Hydra (with Peter Linebaugh), The Slave Ship, and The Amistad Rebellion. He produced the award-winning documentary film Ghosts of Amistad (Tony Buba, director), about how the Amistad Mutiny of 1839 lives on today in popular memory among the people of Sierra Leone.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
January 4, 2024
This book is an absolutely fantastic piece of scholarship, both in its contribution to labour history and in terms of its readability. Examining the social, cultural, and economical life of the merchant seamen of the early 18th century, Rediker uses the figure of the sailor - Jack Tar- to trace the rise of wage labourers and the making of an international working-class; a group whose bodies, labour, and lives were fundamental in shaping 17th and 18th century trade. Jack Tar is both an integral part of 18th century empire and capitalist expansion, and a figure who stands apart from it, working on his own sense of morality, ethics, and justice in his "wooden world".
Drawing from an excellent array of sources, Rediker thoroughly examines the culture of maritime life, from the ways in which primitive accumulation of pastoral land pushed English farmer labourers towards wage-based professions, like that of the merchant seaman, in the latter half of the 17th century, to the rejection of this system through mutiny and piracy by these same workers. Several chapters highlights the brutal conditions these men were expected to work in, both in terms of the harsh disciplinary hierarchies they worked within (the amount of captains who could get away with literal murder... astounding) and by the very nature that is sailing the Atlantic Ocean. The liminality of the sailor's existence also allowed them act outside of societal norms and, in doing so, gave them the means to pushback against their masters. This is emphasized in the book's final chapter on pirates, which shows the extreme ends of rebellion and how pirates acted on their own ideas of justice - specifically justice against empires and the ruling class. (As a non-scholarly aside: as a Black Sails girlie, it's truly amazing how much the show picked up on the themes Rediker discusses in his last chapter - "What does a colonial power do when the men whose toil powers it lay down their shovels, take up swords, and say 'no more'?" THIS SHOW!!!). Of course anyone with any level of intelligence would come out this book siding with the labourers and the pirates, especially as this is a history of the working-class, but also because it's impossible to miss the ways in which the brutality of the merchant class and trading system made way for the exploitation of the factory system (and thus late stage capitalism), and how these methods of control are still in place today. To repeat what I said at the start - a fantastic piece of labour and maritime history.
Drawing from an excellent array of sources, Rediker thoroughly examines the culture of maritime life, from the ways in which primitive accumulation of pastoral land pushed English farmer labourers towards wage-based professions, like that of the merchant seaman, in the latter half of the 17th century, to the rejection of this system through mutiny and piracy by these same workers. Several chapters highlights the brutal conditions these men were expected to work in, both in terms of the harsh disciplinary hierarchies they worked within (the amount of captains who could get away with literal murder... astounding) and by the very nature that is sailing the Atlantic Ocean. The liminality of the sailor's existence also allowed them act outside of societal norms and, in doing so, gave them the means to pushback against their masters. This is emphasized in the book's final chapter on pirates, which shows the extreme ends of rebellion and how pirates acted on their own ideas of justice - specifically justice against empires and the ruling class. (As a non-scholarly aside: as a Black Sails girlie, it's truly amazing how much the show picked up on the themes Rediker discusses in his last chapter - "What does a colonial power do when the men whose toil powers it lay down their shovels, take up swords, and say 'no more'?" THIS SHOW!!!). Of course anyone with any level of intelligence would come out this book siding with the labourers and the pirates, especially as this is a history of the working-class, but also because it's impossible to miss the ways in which the brutality of the merchant class and trading system made way for the exploitation of the factory system (and thus late stage capitalism), and how these methods of control are still in place today. To repeat what I said at the start - a fantastic piece of labour and maritime history.
August 5, 2021
Il marinaio, figura romantica che porta con se un immaginario collettivo sognante ed avventuroso.
Così ci è sempre stata dipinta questa professione da libri prima e cinema poi ma la realtà storica era effettivamente questa?
Grazie al lavoro di Marcus Rediker, professore, storico e scrittore e il suo "Storia sociale della pirateria" ci addentreremo nella vita degli uomini che hanno solcato i mari come forza lavoro.
Attraverso sei lunghi capitoli, verrà sviscera la figura di Jack Tar (così veniva comunemente chiamato il marinaio), nel XVII e XVIII secolo e dei processi e accadimenti che spesso portavano questa figura a darsi alla pirateria.
Un saggio di grande respiro che affianca un chiaro e immediato reparto nozionistico (con rimandi da parte dell’autore alle fonti da cui ha attinto) su usi, costumi, leggi, condizioni di vita, lotte, mondo civile e politico dell’epoca, a vere e proprie "fotografie" di ambienti e luoghi in cui il marinaio prima e il pirata poi, viveva e svolgeva la sua pratica.
Il lettore si troverà di fronte ad un escursus affascinante, chiaro, preciso, puntuale e con riscontri storici, di navi e porti con cui la marina inglese faceva scambi, da quelli del Mediterraneo a quelli americani, dall’India occidentale, sino a quelli africani.
Assisteremo ai primi vagiti del capitalismo moderno e alle conseguenti lotte di classe fra i marinai (proletariato) e i mercanti (capitalisti), conosceremo le figure degli arruolatori, degli adescatori (detti "spiriti"), di comandanti e mercanti, ci addentreremo nella vita terricola prima e di bordo poi per scoprire le mansioni, le gerarchie, le regole e le condizioni di vita sulle navi.
Verranno trattati i processi e i meccanismi che inducevano un marinaio a diventare pirata, figura trattata al tempo con disprezzo ma che portava invece con se idee collettiviste, livellatrici e di uguaglianza lavorativa e salariale.
Il lettore scoprirà le molte sfaccettature (il linguaggio, la disciplina, il rapporto con la religione, la superstizione, i vari membri della nave, i rituali della morte...) di una vita dura e complessa, fatta di fatiche, soprusi e lotte continue per vedere affermata la propria figura di lavoratori centrali per il buon funzionamento dell’economica capitalista appena nata.
Un saggio particolarmente affascinante e ben scritto che oltre ad essere altamente istruttivo permetterà agli amanti della "Letteratura di mare" di comprendere un po’ meglio i retroscena di queste figure che molto spesso si incontrano fra le pagine oltre che di entrare in un mondo estramente idealizzato dalle masse moderne ma che aveva in se meccanismi complessi e molto spesso poco conosciuti.
Così ci è sempre stata dipinta questa professione da libri prima e cinema poi ma la realtà storica era effettivamente questa?
Grazie al lavoro di Marcus Rediker, professore, storico e scrittore e il suo "Storia sociale della pirateria" ci addentreremo nella vita degli uomini che hanno solcato i mari come forza lavoro.
Attraverso sei lunghi capitoli, verrà sviscera la figura di Jack Tar (così veniva comunemente chiamato il marinaio), nel XVII e XVIII secolo e dei processi e accadimenti che spesso portavano questa figura a darsi alla pirateria.
Un saggio di grande respiro che affianca un chiaro e immediato reparto nozionistico (con rimandi da parte dell’autore alle fonti da cui ha attinto) su usi, costumi, leggi, condizioni di vita, lotte, mondo civile e politico dell’epoca, a vere e proprie "fotografie" di ambienti e luoghi in cui il marinaio prima e il pirata poi, viveva e svolgeva la sua pratica.
Il lettore si troverà di fronte ad un escursus affascinante, chiaro, preciso, puntuale e con riscontri storici, di navi e porti con cui la marina inglese faceva scambi, da quelli del Mediterraneo a quelli americani, dall’India occidentale, sino a quelli africani.
Assisteremo ai primi vagiti del capitalismo moderno e alle conseguenti lotte di classe fra i marinai (proletariato) e i mercanti (capitalisti), conosceremo le figure degli arruolatori, degli adescatori (detti "spiriti"), di comandanti e mercanti, ci addentreremo nella vita terricola prima e di bordo poi per scoprire le mansioni, le gerarchie, le regole e le condizioni di vita sulle navi.
Verranno trattati i processi e i meccanismi che inducevano un marinaio a diventare pirata, figura trattata al tempo con disprezzo ma che portava invece con se idee collettiviste, livellatrici e di uguaglianza lavorativa e salariale.
Il lettore scoprirà le molte sfaccettature (il linguaggio, la disciplina, il rapporto con la religione, la superstizione, i vari membri della nave, i rituali della morte...) di una vita dura e complessa, fatta di fatiche, soprusi e lotte continue per vedere affermata la propria figura di lavoratori centrali per il buon funzionamento dell’economica capitalista appena nata.
Un saggio particolarmente affascinante e ben scritto che oltre ad essere altamente istruttivo permetterà agli amanti della "Letteratura di mare" di comprendere un po’ meglio i retroscena di queste figure che molto spesso si incontrano fra le pagine oltre che di entrare in un mondo estramente idealizzato dalle masse moderne ma che aveva in se meccanismi complessi e molto spesso poco conosciuti.
August 28, 2024
Me ha parecido una lectura fascinante. Es verdad que el primer capítulo se me hizo un tanto tedioso (es muy académico, y útil en ese terreno, pero poco divulgativo), aunque entiendo su necesidad a la hora de ofrecer una panorámica general del mundo del comercio marítimo que va a tratar. A partir del siguiente, es de los ensayos más interesantes que haya leído en mucho tiempo.
Figuras fundamentales en el desarrollo del trabajo marinero del siglo XVIII que desconocía por completo (como los crimps), la legalidad que regía las relaciones entre marineros y patrones (y el poder cuasi absolutista de estos), la forma en que los cambios en los modelos de producción en el mar se alejaban de los gremios para preconizar un surgimiento incipiente del proletariado... Cada párrafo me descubría algo nuevo. Y todo lo que gira en torno a la piratería, que no hace más que derribar mitos establecidísimos sobre esa práctica, ha sido la guinda del pastel.
Recomendadísimo, sin dudarlo.
Figuras fundamentales en el desarrollo del trabajo marinero del siglo XVIII que desconocía por completo (como los crimps), la legalidad que regía las relaciones entre marineros y patrones (y el poder cuasi absolutista de estos), la forma en que los cambios en los modelos de producción en el mar se alejaban de los gremios para preconizar un surgimiento incipiente del proletariado... Cada párrafo me descubría algo nuevo. Y todo lo que gira en torno a la piratería, que no hace más que derribar mitos establecidísimos sobre esa práctica, ha sido la guinda del pastel.
Recomendadísimo, sin dudarlo.
February 28, 2024
Bueno, ha estat bé, però tampoc ha sigut una lectura d'aquelles de no parar de llegir. Evidentment, el capitol que més m'ha agradat (i de m'ha fet super curt) és el de pirates.
September 30, 2011
In Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, historian Marcus Rediker argues that the “wooden world” of the common 18th century merchant seamen, “Jack Tar,” more closely resembled an industrial factory than a workshop (200). As a result, seamen serve as an example of one of the earliest free wage workers whose life was fully subordinated to his labor. The harsh realities of life at sea, explains Rediker, “left little room for belief in the ‘dignity of labor’” (295). Although Rediker spends a great deal of time discussing wage structures and admiralty courts, methods of resistance and mutiny employed by seamen, and the actual labor required on a ship, the book is at its most rich when he moves to a discussion of what Jack Tar did “for [himself]” and his influence on an emerging working-class culture (7). Rediker employs a Marxist framework for his analysis and pulls methods from several disciplines, including history, anthropology, linguistics, and economics. By employing methods from a variety of fields and drawing from a rich collection of primary sources he is able to move away from a strictly “labor history” of the seaman’s life to a more nuanced “working class history” (6). Between the man-made and natural dangers that shaped Jack Tar’s life, the seaman developed a culture that foreshadowed the collective, anti-authoritarian, and oppositional working class culture in the industrial era.
Rediker spends the majority of the book examining life inside Jack Tar’s isolated “wooden world.” However, the case for seamen as leaders in an emerging, and at least somewhat organized, working class culture depends on their presence in harbors, taverns, and other public spaces where he interacted with his fellow wage-laborers. Future scholars examining the growth of an industrial working class culture ought to explore zones between the “wooden world” and the factory floor (249). Samuel Adams’ admiration for Jack Tar’s role in the Knowles Riot is a particularly intriguing example of the influence that the seaman’s culture had on emerging conceptions of “rights” and “liberty” that would have a major impact on land (252-3). A deeper investigation of just how visible Jack Tar was in 18th century working class struggles, with particular attention to how his peers perceived him, would help explain how an isolated work culture came to serve as a model for resistance on land.
Piracy, in Rediker’s view, ought to be viewed as the ultimate form of the common seaman’s culture. Using Eric Hobsbawm’s definition of “social banditry,” Rediker positions pirates as men cooperating to seek revenge against organized capital (269). Pirates, stripped of romance and myth, emerge as collectivist, democratic, and egalitarian sailors consciously opposed to the systems of power and authority they left behind (267). This conception of piracy may swing too far away from both the storybook conception of pirates as sea-bound Robin Hoods and the admiralty courts’ view of pirates as criminals. Despite their egalitarian impulses, pirates were extremely violent (271), capable of handing down discipline on par with a merchant captain (265), and apparently absent from the political and cultural exchanges between the land and sea-based working class. As an extreme on the working-class culture continuum, pirates would have been especially threatening to the establishment. That, perhaps more than their egalitarian social system, may have contributed to their appeal as heroes of wage laborers. Scholars should investigate how land-based wage laborers discussed pirates and piracy to add nuance to Rediker’s arguments about the pirate’s influence on maritime and political culture.
Rediker spends the majority of the book examining life inside Jack Tar’s isolated “wooden world.” However, the case for seamen as leaders in an emerging, and at least somewhat organized, working class culture depends on their presence in harbors, taverns, and other public spaces where he interacted with his fellow wage-laborers. Future scholars examining the growth of an industrial working class culture ought to explore zones between the “wooden world” and the factory floor (249). Samuel Adams’ admiration for Jack Tar’s role in the Knowles Riot is a particularly intriguing example of the influence that the seaman’s culture had on emerging conceptions of “rights” and “liberty” that would have a major impact on land (252-3). A deeper investigation of just how visible Jack Tar was in 18th century working class struggles, with particular attention to how his peers perceived him, would help explain how an isolated work culture came to serve as a model for resistance on land.
Piracy, in Rediker’s view, ought to be viewed as the ultimate form of the common seaman’s culture. Using Eric Hobsbawm’s definition of “social banditry,” Rediker positions pirates as men cooperating to seek revenge against organized capital (269). Pirates, stripped of romance and myth, emerge as collectivist, democratic, and egalitarian sailors consciously opposed to the systems of power and authority they left behind (267). This conception of piracy may swing too far away from both the storybook conception of pirates as sea-bound Robin Hoods and the admiralty courts’ view of pirates as criminals. Despite their egalitarian impulses, pirates were extremely violent (271), capable of handing down discipline on par with a merchant captain (265), and apparently absent from the political and cultural exchanges between the land and sea-based working class. As an extreme on the working-class culture continuum, pirates would have been especially threatening to the establishment. That, perhaps more than their egalitarian social system, may have contributed to their appeal as heroes of wage laborers. Scholars should investigate how land-based wage laborers discussed pirates and piracy to add nuance to Rediker’s arguments about the pirate’s influence on maritime and political culture.
June 2, 2018
Fascinating to see how certain techniques and contours of class struggle emerge out of the wooden world Rediker narrates, the sometimes fatal discipline of captains, the sailor's drive toward autonomy, dignity, and, well, getting paid, fed, and not dying. The weight and granularity of the evidence Rediker employs for captains', press gangs', and courts' direct and indirect violence against sailors help him frame struggles on ships and in harbors as nothing less than class war during a period of growing wealth in the English empire (1700-1750). The term "class war" can seem like hyperbole, but here, if anywhere, it rings true with "crow-shredded corpses of seamen" lining the Thames, Captain's beating sailors to death with crude implements, or starving them to death to line their pockets. It is no wonder the term “strike” emerges from this milieu as sailors would collectively agree to stop the work of the ship by striking the sails. Related claims: 17th + 18th c British sailors are among the earliest groups of "collectivized labor" (78), the immense powers of the captain "made the ship one of the earliest totalitarian work environments" (212). Reading these accounts also reminds me of how the most often reported forms of workers suffering in American industries are often indirect--work regimes so intense people have to piss in bottles, a door locked while the plant burns (not the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, the 1991 Hamlet fire)--meaning it is harder to hold those who cause this violence responsible. Then again, squint a little, and there's plenty of direct violence in the modern workplace, some of it sexual, some of it in the gray spaces of farms that employ migrant workers--plenty of stories of supervisors beating up workers there. I digress.
It is against this violent discipline that Rediker narrates the flourishing of piracy in the first half of the 18th C. Sure, the pirates life was often short and violent, but, in his account, it was more egalitarian politically and economically and its rewards possibly far greater. Critics have labelled Rediker’s account of pirate communities as uncritical and overly romantic; Rediker w/Linebaugh double-down and nuance things a bit and take into further account gender and race and maroon spaces in The Many Headed Hydra. My skepticism in regard to the books emphasis on piracy as it concludes is that though piracy represented a major, worker-led rupture with the order merchant captains, their bankrollers, and the Royal Navy wished to impose on the seas, it overshadows other far more frequent but less dramatic forms of struggle that have actually survived or been adapted by subsequent workers and worker movements. But maybe that's the point: we can understand this period best through the extremity of the struggle between captains and crews and the exceptional nature of some sailors responses.
Some stray thoughts:
Rediker poses sailors as a trans-national vector of anti-hierarchical, class-consciousness but the evidence here seems speculative at best. Wondering if anyone has tackled this at greater length.
Though Ned Ward delivers up spicy lines like “For everyday [the] sailor shits upon his own grave,” I sometimes looked askance at Rediker’s reliance upon this satire writer as a source. Am wondering if it is treatments such as this that move writers like Hester Blum to more strictly use the writings of sailors themselves as evidence.
It is against this violent discipline that Rediker narrates the flourishing of piracy in the first half of the 18th C. Sure, the pirates life was often short and violent, but, in his account, it was more egalitarian politically and economically and its rewards possibly far greater. Critics have labelled Rediker’s account of pirate communities as uncritical and overly romantic; Rediker w/Linebaugh double-down and nuance things a bit and take into further account gender and race and maroon spaces in The Many Headed Hydra. My skepticism in regard to the books emphasis on piracy as it concludes is that though piracy represented a major, worker-led rupture with the order merchant captains, their bankrollers, and the Royal Navy wished to impose on the seas, it overshadows other far more frequent but less dramatic forms of struggle that have actually survived or been adapted by subsequent workers and worker movements. But maybe that's the point: we can understand this period best through the extremity of the struggle between captains and crews and the exceptional nature of some sailors responses.
Some stray thoughts:
Rediker poses sailors as a trans-national vector of anti-hierarchical, class-consciousness but the evidence here seems speculative at best. Wondering if anyone has tackled this at greater length.
Though Ned Ward delivers up spicy lines like “For everyday [the] sailor shits upon his own grave,” I sometimes looked askance at Rediker’s reliance upon this satire writer as a source. Am wondering if it is treatments such as this that move writers like Hester Blum to more strictly use the writings of sailors themselves as evidence.
September 16, 2019
I read this book closely followed by author Marcus Rediker's later and more specific work, "Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age." This is such wonderful labor and maritime history. The two books taken together (but especially "Between the Devil..") are like the "Caliban and the Witch" of Atlantic anglo-american seafaring and piracy from 1700-1750. The earlier of these came out in 1987 or something, so I am almost certain that it influenced Silvia Federici in her own offering of insurrectionary history penned by a rather UN-orthodox marxist (one of my favorite sub-genres of history).
No big summary today but just a comment or two. Rediker thoroughly illuminates the origins and conditions of "early modern" seafaring in the age of European empires and their "explorations." He explains the merchant ship as a proto-typical "factory" where hired hands were among the first in all the world to sell their labor for a wage in the novel relation of mercantile capital to dispossessed proletarians (rather than for a share or as part of a paternalistic or reciprocal relationship of production with a feudal lord or master). Like Federici's "Caliban..," Zerzan's early labor history essays in "Elements of Refusal," this work provides crucial insights into the nature and dynamics of the emergent world capitalist system and, ultimately, the civilization from which it springs. He shows how rough-hewn and spontaneous notions of anti-authoritarianism and egalitarianism were essentially built in to the experience and hence the culture of lowly and super-exploited seamen, and that this experience and culture informed and conditioned in ways both direct and highly developed the alternative life put into practice aboard pirate ships, which, aside from the urge to romanticize, were actually involved with a striking degree of unanimity and solidarity in unmediated, violent class warfare and anti-capitalist alternative-building to a much greater extent than they are popularly thought. Pretty fucking cool!
For the bookworms: Rediker also co-authored (with Peter Linebaugh) something of a new classic in insurrectionary and anarchist historiography, called "The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic," a book that i consider a kind of sequel to "Caliban and the Witch" (p.s. the third in an insurrectionary "trilogy" with these two could be said to be manifest in the collection called "Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture" edited by James Koehnline and Ron Sakolsky.) "The Many-Headed Hydra" continues to develop many of the themes present in these earlier Rediker books but specifically regarding mariner involvement in various radical, riotous, and insurrectionary struggles around the Atlantic in the lead-up to the American Revolution, and the period it covers picks up about where Caliban leaves off.
No big summary today but just a comment or two. Rediker thoroughly illuminates the origins and conditions of "early modern" seafaring in the age of European empires and their "explorations." He explains the merchant ship as a proto-typical "factory" where hired hands were among the first in all the world to sell their labor for a wage in the novel relation of mercantile capital to dispossessed proletarians (rather than for a share or as part of a paternalistic or reciprocal relationship of production with a feudal lord or master). Like Federici's "Caliban..," Zerzan's early labor history essays in "Elements of Refusal," this work provides crucial insights into the nature and dynamics of the emergent world capitalist system and, ultimately, the civilization from which it springs. He shows how rough-hewn and spontaneous notions of anti-authoritarianism and egalitarianism were essentially built in to the experience and hence the culture of lowly and super-exploited seamen, and that this experience and culture informed and conditioned in ways both direct and highly developed the alternative life put into practice aboard pirate ships, which, aside from the urge to romanticize, were actually involved with a striking degree of unanimity and solidarity in unmediated, violent class warfare and anti-capitalist alternative-building to a much greater extent than they are popularly thought. Pretty fucking cool!
For the bookworms: Rediker also co-authored (with Peter Linebaugh) something of a new classic in insurrectionary and anarchist historiography, called "The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic," a book that i consider a kind of sequel to "Caliban and the Witch" (p.s. the third in an insurrectionary "trilogy" with these two could be said to be manifest in the collection called "Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture" edited by James Koehnline and Ron Sakolsky.) "The Many-Headed Hydra" continues to develop many of the themes present in these earlier Rediker books but specifically regarding mariner involvement in various radical, riotous, and insurrectionary struggles around the Atlantic in the lead-up to the American Revolution, and the period it covers picks up about where Caliban leaves off.
January 17, 2022
Great book, provides very useful statistics about the period, and fully covers the dates with a wealth of primary sources. From the pirate angle, Rediker's chapter on seamen and pirates is an almost exact draft for his follow up in "Villains of All Nations."
January 17, 2021
Non ten unha coma mal colocada.
April 13, 2024
“Whosoever putteth his child to get a living at sea had better a great deal bind him prentice to a hangman.” (Pg. 13, quoting The Life and Adventures of Matthew Bishop, London, 1744).
Marcus Rediker has carved out quite a niche for himself with his studies of the Anglo-American maritime world. Such is his vast expertise that I marvel over his attention to detail concerning daily shipboard life—it is almost as if he were a common deckhand with an education in a past life*--as well as overarching themes of capitalism and wage labor, presented with a firm understanding of economic history and labor activism; the concept and word “Strike” emanated from the maritime world. Rediker has taught these subjects at Georgetown University and the University of Pittsburgh. From what I have read of Rediker, he is the pre-eminent historian describing labor and the maritime world alive today, replacing the crusty Old Guard like Samuel Eliot Morison.
Rediker’s best known book The Slave Ship: A Human History (2007) was so engrossing that I delved into his back catalogue and picked up Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World (1987). Although not as utterly horrifying as the former and a bit drier due to Rediker not yet fully developing a narrative style that coalesces voices, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea reads like strong fiction and presents personal biographies in an overarching theme. This work is an absolute must read for any educated mariner, labor historian, or person with a passing interest in pirates. Rediker is the first historian—to my knowledge—to write about pirates while not emphasizing personal histories (which usually ended on gallows), but by tying the brotherhood of pirates to labor activism, anti-capitalist sentiment, antiauthoritarianism, and protests against the outright abuse of maritime owners and officers. For that chapter alone the book should be required reading.
Even in this early work, Rediker has a knack for bringing the past to life. He seems to scour every personal account of Anglo-American sea narratives from the 1700’s, often quoting passages that read like unbelievable fiction in terms of the harshness of the environment and the cruelty of those in charge. The descriptions leave a modern mariner—whether a licensed officer or a common deckhand—thanking his lucky stars for unions and some government oversight into the worst abuses of capitalism (Rediker is a Far Left historian who knows not to preach, but to simply present facts and let them speak for themselves). The dialogue of the mariner has not changed all that much: “Damn you, you Doggs, I’ll hang you when you are dead.” (Pg. 232, Examinations of John Peterson, Peter Rollson, James Williams, and Robert Read).
Scrupulously researched and flawlessly presented (with photographic plates of art of the era in the Cambridge University Press edition), Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World is a must read for educated mariners. We will forever be thankful for a fair workday and some sort of representation assuaging the bite of being wage slaves.
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*According to Rediker's Wikipedia page, he worked in a Dupont cellophane factory as a common laborer during an era of racial unrest while at Vanderbilt University. He walks the walk.
Marcus Rediker has carved out quite a niche for himself with his studies of the Anglo-American maritime world. Such is his vast expertise that I marvel over his attention to detail concerning daily shipboard life—it is almost as if he were a common deckhand with an education in a past life*--as well as overarching themes of capitalism and wage labor, presented with a firm understanding of economic history and labor activism; the concept and word “Strike” emanated from the maritime world. Rediker has taught these subjects at Georgetown University and the University of Pittsburgh. From what I have read of Rediker, he is the pre-eminent historian describing labor and the maritime world alive today, replacing the crusty Old Guard like Samuel Eliot Morison.
Rediker’s best known book The Slave Ship: A Human History (2007) was so engrossing that I delved into his back catalogue and picked up Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World (1987). Although not as utterly horrifying as the former and a bit drier due to Rediker not yet fully developing a narrative style that coalesces voices, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea reads like strong fiction and presents personal biographies in an overarching theme. This work is an absolute must read for any educated mariner, labor historian, or person with a passing interest in pirates. Rediker is the first historian—to my knowledge—to write about pirates while not emphasizing personal histories (which usually ended on gallows), but by tying the brotherhood of pirates to labor activism, anti-capitalist sentiment, antiauthoritarianism, and protests against the outright abuse of maritime owners and officers. For that chapter alone the book should be required reading.
Even in this early work, Rediker has a knack for bringing the past to life. He seems to scour every personal account of Anglo-American sea narratives from the 1700’s, often quoting passages that read like unbelievable fiction in terms of the harshness of the environment and the cruelty of those in charge. The descriptions leave a modern mariner—whether a licensed officer or a common deckhand—thanking his lucky stars for unions and some government oversight into the worst abuses of capitalism (Rediker is a Far Left historian who knows not to preach, but to simply present facts and let them speak for themselves). The dialogue of the mariner has not changed all that much: “Damn you, you Doggs, I’ll hang you when you are dead.” (Pg. 232, Examinations of John Peterson, Peter Rollson, James Williams, and Robert Read).
Scrupulously researched and flawlessly presented (with photographic plates of art of the era in the Cambridge University Press edition), Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World is a must read for educated mariners. We will forever be thankful for a fair workday and some sort of representation assuaging the bite of being wage slaves.
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*According to Rediker's Wikipedia page, he worked in a Dupont cellophane factory as a common laborer during an era of racial unrest while at Vanderbilt University. He walks the walk.
August 9, 2024
Marcus Rediker lays out a very interesting thesis in this book on Anglo-American maritime life in the first half of the 18th century: common sailers, referred to as “jolly tars”, were some of the first revolutionary proletariats, and the merchant ship, with its enclosed spaces, constant tasks under close supervision, and wage labor system, was one of the earliest factories. Rediker goes on to explore what life was like for the common seaman on board one of these vessels, showing the perils he faced and the ways he negotiated and resisted those dangers.
The arguments in this book are made through a Marxist lens, and Rediker convincingly shows that the seaman’s lived experience and collectivism was a result of the material conditions created by primitive accumulation, wage labor and strict hierarchical authority. Jack Tar resisted in a variety of different ways, the most extreme being a mutiny and turn to piracy. These pirates set up a surprisingly egalitarian and class conscious society, further supporting Rediker’s thesis.
This book is billed as being for both lay readers and specialists, but there is an abundance of terminology and references that a lay reader would be hard pressed to understand. For example, what is a crimp? This term is used several times throughout the boom and it’s only halfway through where we start to understand that this is some kind of loan shark. Also, while Rediker is speaking about the experience of the Anglo-American world, he focuses mostly on the English experience- perhaps we could have seen more of the American side, which is undoubtedly of great significance given that the purview of the book ends just before the American revolutionary period begins. Along that same line, Rediker spends lots of time discussing the merchant service, and very little on the experience of common sailors in the Royal Navy. All we have to go on is his generalizations that it was similar.
All that aside, this book is an excellent read and most of my criticisms are from things he may have left out. I understand that he has written a whole constellation of works on this period and subject, perhaps what I’m looking for can be found in another work. Everything in this book is well sourced, beautifully written and engaging. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in not only the plight of the common seaman, but also the (often brutal) development of early capitalism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the making of the modern world. If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, chapter 5 (The Seaman as the “Spirit of Rebellion”) and chapter 6 (The Seaman as Pirate) were my favorites. Easy five stars and excited to read more from this author.
The arguments in this book are made through a Marxist lens, and Rediker convincingly shows that the seaman’s lived experience and collectivism was a result of the material conditions created by primitive accumulation, wage labor and strict hierarchical authority. Jack Tar resisted in a variety of different ways, the most extreme being a mutiny and turn to piracy. These pirates set up a surprisingly egalitarian and class conscious society, further supporting Rediker’s thesis.
This book is billed as being for both lay readers and specialists, but there is an abundance of terminology and references that a lay reader would be hard pressed to understand. For example, what is a crimp? This term is used several times throughout the boom and it’s only halfway through where we start to understand that this is some kind of loan shark. Also, while Rediker is speaking about the experience of the Anglo-American world, he focuses mostly on the English experience- perhaps we could have seen more of the American side, which is undoubtedly of great significance given that the purview of the book ends just before the American revolutionary period begins. Along that same line, Rediker spends lots of time discussing the merchant service, and very little on the experience of common sailors in the Royal Navy. All we have to go on is his generalizations that it was similar.
All that aside, this book is an excellent read and most of my criticisms are from things he may have left out. I understand that he has written a whole constellation of works on this period and subject, perhaps what I’m looking for can be found in another work. Everything in this book is well sourced, beautifully written and engaging. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in not only the plight of the common seaman, but also the (often brutal) development of early capitalism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the making of the modern world. If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, chapter 5 (The Seaman as the “Spirit of Rebellion”) and chapter 6 (The Seaman as Pirate) were my favorites. Easy five stars and excited to read more from this author.
December 12, 2023
A thoroughly-documented work on labour relations in the sea in the first half of the XVIII century, mainly in Great Britain and North America (the latter, then still a British colony). Although the book states that the waged labour emerged with the sailors and other sea workers, it is clear that those people were among the first ones to suffer under the heavy burden of capitalism.
Specially interesting are the trials of the Vice-Admiralty Courts, were the seamen brought their bosses and foremen when their rights were not respected, mostly in terms of pay or food (and drink!). Apparently, the captains beating members of their crew was not uncommon, and it's totally understandable why most people joined the ranks of the pirates. Also, the British Crown poured a good amount of resources in its attempt to erradicate the piracy.
A worth-reading book from an author who has other books on the issue, most notably about slavery.
Specially interesting are the trials of the Vice-Admiralty Courts, were the seamen brought their bosses and foremen when their rights were not respected, mostly in terms of pay or food (and drink!). Apparently, the captains beating members of their crew was not uncommon, and it's totally understandable why most people joined the ranks of the pirates. Also, the British Crown poured a good amount of resources in its attempt to erradicate the piracy.
A worth-reading book from an author who has other books on the issue, most notably about slavery.
October 16, 2019
Informative, but the author was certainly grinding his political axe when he wrote this book. I do see the parallels between pirates and today's labor unions, for sure, but I got the feeling the author is on the side of the pirates...and the unions. I'm sure that was his intenti0n...I just happen to see things pretty much the opposite way and was feeling that tension the whole reading.
One would think any intelligent person would feel the way I did in reading it, but maybe the author was writing from the 1750 point of view, when we didn't know how Socialism was going to turn out yet.
One would think any intelligent person would feel the way I did in reading it, but maybe the author was writing from the 1750 point of view, when we didn't know how Socialism was going to turn out yet.
August 10, 2022
Qué buena y qué necesaria es una historia desde abajo para redimensionar todos los conflictos que aprendimos a base de tratados, intrigas de palacio y modelos macroeconómicos en las clases de historia. La resistencia, la organización y la ofensiva de los subordinados debe tener sus historiadores, su legado nos interpela.
December 21, 2024
Libro snello ed estremamente interessante. Unico appunto sulla traduzione italiana: veramente troppi refusi e un titolo (Storia sociale della pirateria) decisamente fuorviante, visto che di pirateria si tratta soltanto nell'ultimo, breve capitolo.
January 13, 2021
Precedente de "La hidra de la revolución", pero de traducción posterior al castellano. Una lectura apasionante a la vez que un ensayo riguroso
September 25, 2022
Decent, but reads like first wave revisionism.
August 22, 2024
The subject of the book could be summed up in the words: The history of maritime labour before the Industrial Revolution. Thus, the book deals with shipping in the first half of the 18th century from the crew point of view.
It is fine book about merchant shipping and the history of labour policy, as a reading experience it is rather heavy, even exhausting at some points.
When it comes to pirates, I think that Rediker's greatest merit is the formation of a kind of diagram in which he describes the contacts between the different pirate captains of the era. The criteria include sailing in the same group of ships or participating in a pirate meeting organized by Captain Hornigold in the Bahamas. In addition, the graph shows the distribution of crews and the "birth" of new pirate captains when booty ships were handed over to the command of distinguished mates, which then became captains.
It is fine book about merchant shipping and the history of labour policy, as a reading experience it is rather heavy, even exhausting at some points.
When it comes to pirates, I think that Rediker's greatest merit is the formation of a kind of diagram in which he describes the contacts between the different pirate captains of the era. The criteria include sailing in the same group of ships or participating in a pirate meeting organized by Captain Hornigold in the Bahamas. In addition, the graph shows the distribution of crews and the "birth" of new pirate captains when booty ships were handed over to the command of distinguished mates, which then became captains.
November 27, 2016
Predating The Slave Ship by two decades, Between the Devil is a useful source for charting the historiographical themes of Rediker’s critique of capitalism in the Atlantic trade with the strong and consistent emphasis on class struggle and power. The basis for many of Rediker’s overarching ideas in The Slave Ship are stated plainly here, years before, such as when Rediker stated,
July 16, 2008
I had to read this for school. I love History, I wanted to be Marcus Rediker when I grew up (when I was in school). *sigh* Back when I was going to do History for a job... Very readable, wasn't torture like so many other required readings.
January 11, 2009
Marxist claptrap beyond the usual liberal academic extreme. Rediker's Pirates of the Caribbean as a working class prototypical labor union is a caricature almost as amusing and ridiculous as Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean.
April 18, 2024
PFFFFFFF
Solo quiero ser un pirata.
No se si fue el contenido, la manera de la que esta escrita o las expectativas que tenia del libro pero de los libros de historia que mas ameno y entretenido se me ha hecho leer en muchísimo tiempo
Solo quiero ser un pirata.
No se si fue el contenido, la manera de la que esta escrita o las expectativas que tenia del libro pero de los libros de historia que mas ameno y entretenido se me ha hecho leer en muchísimo tiempo
September 28, 2012
Very academic, but very cool. Worth looking at, for sure.
January 10, 2008
A very interesting history of the maritime world of the period. Rediker gives great attention to even the seemingly-mundane details. A fascinating read.
August 14, 2010
There's a lot of good information in this, but, man, Rediker's socialism is really showing in this one. Much less readable than Villians of All Nations.
September 11, 2012
Etude très dense et intelligible,les marins et pirates, proto-anarchistes?
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