Outlaws of the Atlantic

Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail

Marcus Rediker

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781781682517
• eBook ISBN:
  9781781686485
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Outlaws of the Atlantic turns maritime history upside down, exploring the dramatic world of seafaring adventure, not from the perspective of admirals, merchants and other builders of empire, but rather from the point-of-view of common people whose labors made that world possible-sailors, slaves, indentured servants, pirates and other outlaws, whose formative experiences at sea are brought together for the first time.

Against long-dominant national histories, this book shows that important historical processes transpired on the vast, nationless commons called the sea: the rise of capitalism, the formation of race and class, and the creation, from below, of oppositional cultures that promised more just and democratic ways of life.

Index

Page numbers followed by an f indicate a figure.

abolitionist movement: antislavery content in the Amistad rebellion, 171–72, 222n57, 222n60; and arguments for human freedom, 105–6; circulation of revolutionary ideas in port cities, 105; connection between antislavery rebels and intellectuals, 172–73, 222n62; contribution of sailors’ yarns to, 26–27; in England, 98–99, 118; impetus for a more radical movement, 173–75; legal arguments against slavery, 98–99, 165–67; Otis’s speech advocating emancipation, 103; political effects of slave resistance, 105; rally around Amistad rebels, 148–49, 165–67, 215n6; slave resistance’s relation to Afro-Christianity, 104–5; Tacky’s Revolt and, 102–3, 104; view of slavery as contrary to humanity and equality, 102–3

Abraham, Arthur, 148

Adams, John, 103, 109, 110, 112, 116

Adams, John Quincy, 167

Adams, Samuel, Jr., 94–95, 107, 111, 114, 177

Adventures of Roderick Random, The (Smollett), 25–26

Africa, 65, 118. See also African rebels; Africans

Africa (ship), 128

African Americans: Amistad rebellion and, 173, 174–75, 222n63; communities formed aboard slave ships and, 145; contribution to the revolutionary movement, 97, 106, 110–11, 115, 117–19; fight against press gangs, 107; formation of an African American identity, 91–92; impetus for a more radical abolitionism, 174–75; multiethnicity of motley crews, 91, 99, 109, 111, 151; multiethnicity of pirate crews, 151; uprisings led by, 168, 171

“African Chief Jingua” (lithograph), 164f

African rebels: collective-action planning process, 122, 123, 129–30; conflicts between cultural groups, 132–33; creation of group identity through resistance, 122–23; cruelty of the captains in the face of resistance to food, 120–21, 123, 124; dangers from jumping overboard, 126; depictions as heroes, 138–39, 149, 157; dialectic of discipline and resistance on slave ships, 121–22; divisions between slaves, 133; escaping slavery as basis of revolts, 137–38, 139; insurrections’ effect on trade, 138; joy expressed by captives who jump overboard to escape, 127, 212n16; jumping overboard as a spontaneous resistance to mistreatment, 125, 126–27, 212n16; kinship expanded to include fellow “shipmates,” 142, 143–44; knowledge needed to execute insurrection, 122, 123, 130–32, 134–36;...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Prologue
• One: The Sailor’s Yarn
• Two: Edward Barlow, “Poor Seaman”
• Three: Henry Pitman, “Fugitive Traitor”
• Four: Under the Banner of King Death: Pirates
• Five: A Motley Crew in the American Revolution
• Six: African Rebels: From Captives to Shipmates
• Seven: “Black Pirates”: The Amistad Rebellion, 1839
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index