• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Democracy Chronicles

Towards better democracy everywhere.

  • AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
  • WORLD DEMOCRACY
  • POLITICAL ART
  • more
    • election technology
    • money politics
    • political dissidents
    • THIRD PARTY
      • third party central
      • green party
      • justice party
      • libertarian party
    • voting methods
  • DC INFO
    • author central
    • about
    • advertise with DC
    • contact
    • privacy policy
You are here: Home / Democracy News Headlines / International Democracy / Did Pirates Pioneer Democracy?

Did Pirates Pioneer Democracy?

April 13, 2023 by DC Editors Leave a Comment

FacebookLinkedInPinTweet


Dan Page Illustrates David Graeber’s book stretching Democracy right to the sea published by The New Republic. Here is an extract: 

Fencing booty is the most underappreciated problem of historical pirate logistics. Myths and stories about “going on the account” (as high-seas piracy was known during its late–seventeenth- and early–eighteenth-century golden age) have always played up the dramas of plunder and pursuit, the terror struck into the hearts of merchant sailors upon sighting black flags on the horizon, the unwashed roughneck crews and their ruthless captains. They are tales of swashbuckling, not bookkeeping. But what was a pirate boss to do, upon seizing a Spanish galleon and filling his ship’s hold to the brim with jewels and silks and gold doubloons? Liquidity was a challenge for pirates, too, since massive hauls of precious goods were not so easily converted into cash. Unless they were fortunate enough to know a corrupt colonial official willing to look the other way, they relied on buccaneer outposts beyond the reach of imperial states where ships could be resupplied, crew members could come and go, and rare treasures could be laundered—no questions asked.

Madagascar was such a place. Around the year 1700, it became an essential waypoint for pirates leaving the Caribbean to prey on the booming shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean. In the secluded harbors of its northeastern coast, pirates founded towns like Ambonavola and Sainte-Marie. With as many as a thousand temporary residents at any given moment, and no permanent government, these settlements were part of an informal archipelago of pirate infrastructure that stretched from the West Indies to East Asia. According to David Graeber’s puckish, posthumous book, Pirate Enlightenment, they were also hothouses of political imagination and freedom. Encounters among pirates and local Malagasy people were good for business, but they also led to radical forms of democratic rule and “the first stirrings of Enlightenment political thought,” so many leagues from Paris or Königsberg. These claims are vintage Graeber: exciting if true, probably right in spirit even if they run further than the evidence allows, deliberately irritating to specialists, and characterized by an anarchist’s delight in the world-making power of ordinary people.

Graeber, who died in 2020 at the age of 59, was an anthropologist and social theorist of the highest caliber. He was also a fierce anti-globalization activist who found in the Occupy movement a cause that suited his distaste for inequality and authority. Pirate Enlightenment is fired by the same rebellious temper. With arresting certainty, it claims that a bold democratic experiment flowered in eighteenth-century Madagascar, thus unraveling tales many times told about how Europeans reinvented democracy and built the modern world first, best, and by themselves.

Read the full article here.

Did Pirates Pioneer Democracy?

FacebookLinkedInPinTweet

Filed Under: International Democracy Tagged With: Direct Democracy and Referendums, Election History

Some highlighted Democracy Chronicles topics

Africa American Corruption American Local Elections American State Elections Asia Capitalism and Big Business Celebrity Politics China Democracy Charity Democracy Protests Democrats Dictatorships Education Election History Election Methods Election Security Election Transparency Europe Internet and Democracy Journalism and Free Speech Middle East Minority Voting Rights Money Politics New York City and State Elections Political Artwork Political Dissidents Political Lobbying Redistricting Republicans Russia Socialism and Labor Social Media and Democracy South America Spying and Privacy Supreme Court Third Party Voter Access Voter ID Voter Registration Voter Suppression Voter Turnout Voting Technology Women Voting Rights Worldwide Worldwide Corruption

About DC Editors

We are your source for news on the all important effort to establish and strengthen democracy across the globe. Our international team with dozens of independent authors are your gateway into the raging struggle for free and fair elections on every continent with a focus on election reform in the United States. See our Facebook Page and also follow us on Twitter @demchron.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

democracy chronicles newsletter

DC Authors

Heartbreak and Yearning on the Streets of East Oakland

May 19, 2023 By Joe Mathews

“Nightcrawling” by Leila Mottley is a bestselling novel that explores the hardships of life in Oakland’s struggling streets.

Podcast: Gen Z’s Fight For Democracy

May 18, 2023 By Jenna Spinelle

In his book “Fight”, John Della Volpe argues that Gen Z has not buckled under the weight of the events that shaped them.

Advertise button

Courts, Constitutions, & Democracy: A Failing System

April 29, 2023 By Andrew Straw

Equal protection on its face means that everyone is treated equally but the U.S. Supreme Court has limited equal protection.

Newsom’s ‘Campaign For Democracy’ Has A Democracy Problem

April 26, 2023 By Joe Mathews

The governor has sympathies for changes in governance; he’s deeply familiar with democratic innovation. But will he actually take on democratic reform?

Podcast: Between Democracy And Autocracy

April 19, 2023 By Jenna Spinelle

Between democracy and autocracy is an anocracy, defined by political scientists as a country that has elements of both forms of government.

Who Will Protect The Global Economy From California?

April 18, 2023 By Joe Mathews

This bank failure, the second largest in U.S. history, actually fits a very old pattern—of California and its industries putting the economies of the nation and the world at risk.

Split Level In Jersey

April 15, 2023 By Jamie Lampidis

Everyone has limits to their goodness, Like those structures in her oil paintings, Cartoonishly stretched to contain something within.

California, Keep Your Schools Open. No Matter What

April 14, 2023 By Joe Mathews

California’s school reopening revealed education disparities, highlighting the need to rebuild trust and relationships for addressing these inequalities.

More DC author posts

Democracy Culture

Using Beer As Reminder Of UK Voting Rule Change

Using Beer As Reminder Of UK Voting Rule Change

May 7, 2023

Brixton Brewery has launched a beer can campaign to encourage voters in the UK to bring their photo ID to vote.

Macron Honors Haitian Revolutionary, But Leaves Much Unsaid

Macron Honors Haitian Revolutionary, But Leaves Much Unsaid

May 2, 2023

Macron visited the prison where Toussaint Louverture died, praising him as a hero who embodied French Revolution values.

Iranian Secret Committee 'Punished Celebrities Over Dissent'

Iranian Secret Committee ‘Punished Celebrities Over Dissent’

April 28, 2023

Iran’s Secret committee sent a list of 141 to the economy ministry, including celebrities, raising more worries over freedoms.

Rewards Get People To See Truth In Politically Unfavorable Info

Rewards Get People To See Truth In Politically Unfavorable Info

March 30, 2023

People don’t carefully evaluate links for accuracy and that partisanship may be secondary to the rush of getting a lot of likes on social media.

Pussy Riot Will Receive This Year's Woody Guthrie Prize

Pussy Riot Will Receive This Year’s Woody Guthrie Prize

March 30, 2023

Russian performance collective Pussy Riot will receive this year’s Woody Guthrie prize honoring art for social change, award organizers said Thursday.

More Democracy Culture posts