Staff Pick
A must-read for any American (or history enthusiast or pirate fan). Rediker and Linebaugh's history of the revolutionary Atlantic is a portrait of resistance and history from the ground up, and their observations on the creation of American infrastructure, the colonization of the Americas, and the creation of class and racial divides has never been more relevant or applicable to our own social and political landscapes. I can't recommend it highly enough. Long live the many-headed hydra! Recommended By SitaraG, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the International Labor History Award
Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. The Many Headed-Hydra recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world.
When an unprecedented expansion of trade and colonization in the early seventeenth century launched the first global economy, a vast, diverse, and landless workforce was born. These workers crossed national, ethnic, and racial boundaries, as they circulated around the Atlantic world on trade ships and slave ships, from England to Virginia, from Africa to Barbados, and from the Americas back to Europe.
Marshaling an impressive range of original research from archives in the Americas and Europe, the authors show how ordinary working people led dozens of rebellions on both sides of the North Atlantic. The rulers of the day called the multiethnic rebels a 'hydra' and brutally suppressed their risings, yet some of their ideas fueled the age of revolution. Others, hidden from history and recovered here, have much to teach us about our common humanity.
About the Author
Peter Linebaugh, professor of history at the University of Toledo, is a contributing editor of
Albion's Fatal Tree and author of
The London Hanged.Marcus Rediker, professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, is author of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, winner of the American Studies Association's John Hope Franklin Prize and the Organization of American Historians' Merle Curti Social History Award.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
1 The Wreck of the Sea-Venture 8
2 Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water 36
3 “A Blackymore Maide Named Francis” 71
4 The Divarication of the Putney Debates 104
5 Hydrarchy: Sailors, Pirates, and the Maritime State 143
6 “The Outcasts of the Nations of the Earth” 174
7 A Motley Crew in the American Revolution 211
8 The Conspiracy of Edward and Catherine Despard 248
9 Robert Wedderburn and Atlantic Jubilee 287
Conclusion Tyger! Tyger! 327
A Map of the Atlantic 1699 354
Notes 355
Acknowledgments 413
Index 417