Pirate Enlightenment
 |
Description
Book Introduction
Created by pirates and Madagascar women
where everyone was equal and free,
The most advanced democratic experiment
The final work of anthropologist David Graeber
The New Yorker's 2023 Books of the Year
The Enlightenment did not originate in the West.
― The archetypal Enlightenment created by the outlaw pirates of the sea and the dark-skinned women.
As soon as we think of the 'Enlightenment', praising it as the great starting point of Western modernity, white male 'Western' thinkers like Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot of the Encyclopedic School naturally come to mind.
Even radical thinkers who see the Enlightenment as the foundation of scientific racism, modern imperialism, and genocide are unable to escape this Western-centrism.
David Graeber, an anthropologist and author of the book Pirate Enlightenment, points out that “whether we are defending or criticizing the Enlightenment, the debates that have continued over the years have actually distracted us from more fundamental questions.”
The real question we should be asking is, “Can Enlightenment ideals, especially Enlightenment ideals of human liberation, be called ‘Western’ in any meaningful way?”
According to Graeber, we have used the accusations of racial arrogance on the part of those we call "Western," a euphemism for "white," to exclude the influence of all those not classified as "white" on history, especially intellectual history.
Instead, history, especially radical history, has become a kind of morality game, the most important of which is to make it clear that the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of history's great men will never be forgiven.
And yet, they are completely unaware that a four hundred page book criticizing Rousseau is still a four hundred page book about Rousseau.
The very act of criticizing Rousseau only highlights Rousseau as a white Western intellectual, while excluding non-Western intellectual influences and achievements.
While the Enlightenment may have flourished in cities like Paris, Edinburgh, Königsberg, and Philadelphia, it was not the product of a few Western intellectuals, but rather the product of conversations, debates, and social experiments that swept the globe.
The maritime worlds of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans played a special role in all this, as it was on ships and in port cities that the most lively conversations took place.
The European Age of Enlightenment was, above all, an age of intellectual synthesis.
Britain and France, formerly intellectually backward, suddenly found themselves at the center of world empires, exposed to a startling array of new ideas: ideals of individualism and freedom from the Americas, the new concept of the bureaucratic nation-state inspired by China, contract theories from Africa, and the unique economic and social theories of medieval Islam, which they sought to integrate.
This book, Pirate Enlightenment, focuses on pirates and the indigenous peoples of Madagascar, one of the non-Western origins of the Enlightenment that has been concealed and ignored so far, what Graeber calls the “proto-Enlightenment.”
In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, thousands of pirates made Madagascar's northeastern coast their home, and it was here that the first experiments in Enlightenment took place.
It was a creative synthesis of the pirates' democratic governance and the egalitarian elements of Malagasy political culture.
Let's go to the site of the most radical political experiment ever created by lawless pirates and dark-skinned women of the sea.
Into a story that almost disappeared from history forever.
where everyone was equal and free,
The most advanced democratic experiment
The final work of anthropologist David Graeber
The New Yorker's 2023 Books of the Year
The Enlightenment did not originate in the West.
― The archetypal Enlightenment created by the outlaw pirates of the sea and the dark-skinned women.
As soon as we think of the 'Enlightenment', praising it as the great starting point of Western modernity, white male 'Western' thinkers like Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot of the Encyclopedic School naturally come to mind.
Even radical thinkers who see the Enlightenment as the foundation of scientific racism, modern imperialism, and genocide are unable to escape this Western-centrism.
David Graeber, an anthropologist and author of the book Pirate Enlightenment, points out that “whether we are defending or criticizing the Enlightenment, the debates that have continued over the years have actually distracted us from more fundamental questions.”
The real question we should be asking is, “Can Enlightenment ideals, especially Enlightenment ideals of human liberation, be called ‘Western’ in any meaningful way?”
According to Graeber, we have used the accusations of racial arrogance on the part of those we call "Western," a euphemism for "white," to exclude the influence of all those not classified as "white" on history, especially intellectual history.
Instead, history, especially radical history, has become a kind of morality game, the most important of which is to make it clear that the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of history's great men will never be forgiven.
And yet, they are completely unaware that a four hundred page book criticizing Rousseau is still a four hundred page book about Rousseau.
The very act of criticizing Rousseau only highlights Rousseau as a white Western intellectual, while excluding non-Western intellectual influences and achievements.
While the Enlightenment may have flourished in cities like Paris, Edinburgh, Königsberg, and Philadelphia, it was not the product of a few Western intellectuals, but rather the product of conversations, debates, and social experiments that swept the globe.
The maritime worlds of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans played a special role in all this, as it was on ships and in port cities that the most lively conversations took place.
The European Age of Enlightenment was, above all, an age of intellectual synthesis.
Britain and France, formerly intellectually backward, suddenly found themselves at the center of world empires, exposed to a startling array of new ideas: ideals of individualism and freedom from the Americas, the new concept of the bureaucratic nation-state inspired by China, contract theories from Africa, and the unique economic and social theories of medieval Islam, which they sought to integrate.
This book, Pirate Enlightenment, focuses on pirates and the indigenous peoples of Madagascar, one of the non-Western origins of the Enlightenment that has been concealed and ignored so far, what Graeber calls the “proto-Enlightenment.”
In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, thousands of pirates made Madagascar's northeastern coast their home, and it was here that the first experiments in Enlightenment took place.
It was a creative synthesis of the pirates' democratic governance and the egalitarian elements of Malagasy political culture.
Let's go to the site of the most radical political experiment ever created by lawless pirates and dark-skinned women of the sea.
Into a story that almost disappeared from history forever.
- You can preview some of the book's contents.
Preview
index
Translator's Note
Have a wonderful voyage to Libertalia!
introduction
Invitation to Pirate Enlightenment
Chapter 1: The Hidden History of the Pirate Community
―Pirates and false kings of northeastern Malagasy
Pirates come to Madagascar
Overly fantastic loot
Sainte-Marie, a true pirate settlement
Real Libertalia, Ambonavola
Another con king, John Plantin
The Union of Rachimilaho and Bechimisaraka
Chapter 2: Women Become Pirates' Allies
―The emergence of pirates from a Malagasy perspective
The Sexual Revolution Against the Descendants of Abraham
Adventurous young women who faced pirates
Female merchants and magic spells
Freedom won through the use of a foreign husband
The showdown between the giant Darapippi and the witch Mahao
Chapter 3: The Farthest-Going Experiment in Democracy: Pirate Enlightenment
Proto-Enlightenment political experiment
The situation in the early 1690s
First challenge
The Great Cavalry Opens
Oath-taking ceremony
Rachimila becomes king
Hector of Malagasy, the death of a great warrior
Royal Family, Kingdom and Jana-Malata
conclusion
Their conversation changed the world.
supplement
Piracy and the Enlightenment Timeline
main
References
Have a wonderful voyage to Libertalia!
introduction
Invitation to Pirate Enlightenment
Chapter 1: The Hidden History of the Pirate Community
―Pirates and false kings of northeastern Malagasy
Pirates come to Madagascar
Overly fantastic loot
Sainte-Marie, a true pirate settlement
Real Libertalia, Ambonavola
Another con king, John Plantin
The Union of Rachimilaho and Bechimisaraka
Chapter 2: Women Become Pirates' Allies
―The emergence of pirates from a Malagasy perspective
The Sexual Revolution Against the Descendants of Abraham
Adventurous young women who faced pirates
Female merchants and magic spells
Freedom won through the use of a foreign husband
The showdown between the giant Darapippi and the witch Mahao
Chapter 3: The Farthest-Going Experiment in Democracy: Pirate Enlightenment
Proto-Enlightenment political experiment
The situation in the early 1690s
First challenge
The Great Cavalry Opens
Oath-taking ceremony
Rachimila becomes king
Hector of Malagasy, the death of a great warrior
Royal Family, Kingdom and Jana-Malata
conclusion
Their conversation changed the world.
supplement
Piracy and the Enlightenment Timeline
main
References
Into the book
Why don't we consider a Native American figure like Kandiaronk a significant theorist of human freedom? He certainly was.
Why don't we consider someone like Tom Chimillaho, the son of a pirate and a Malagasy woman, one of the pioneers of democracy? Why are the contributions of women we know to have played crucial roles in Huron and Bechimisaraka societies, many of whom have even been forgotten, left out even when we talk about these men? Just as the stories of the women who organized the salons [which were the cradle of the Enlightenment] have been largely excluded from the narrative surrounding the Enlightenment.
--- p.28
What we now call the 'Golden Age of Piracy' actually lasted only about 40 or 50 years.
Besides, it was a long time ago.
And yet, people all over the world still talk about pirates and pirate utopias.
As we will see later, people often elaborate these stories with a kind of kaleidoscopic fantasy about magic, sex, death, and so on, which have always been present there.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that these stories persist because they embody a particular vision of human freedom.
The vision was adopted in European salons throughout the eighteenth century and remains relevant to dominant visions of freedom today, while simultaneously offering an alternative to them.
--- p.34~35
It is clear that the pirates had some practical advantages over their compatriots.
First, they had actual access to oriental luxuries, often in considerable quantities, with which to entertain local allies.
Second, having completely rejected the social and political order of their homeland, they had no reason not to fully integrate into Malagasy.
Soon after, foreign observers began reporting from the port of Sainte-Marie of Malagasy women “wearing dresses of the most beautiful Indian materials, embroidered with gold and silver, gold necklaces and bracelets, and even diamonds of considerable value.”
Baldrige himself appears to have married locally and had several children.
Many pirates settled there and became truly Malagasy.
More precisely, they took on the traditional role of mixed-race Malagasy foreigners, so-called 'internal outsiders'.
They were able to mediate between foreign merchants and locals and were familiar with the coastal areas there.
--- p.76~77
Earlier I said that when the pirates arrived, they had a lot of economic capital, but no social or cultural capital.
But from the perspective of a potential partner, even this fact was a clear advantage.
First, unlike other foreigners, pirates did not come with mothers or other family members who could interfere with their wives' decisions.
Second, they had no social knowledge of the area and often did not even have the ability to speak a language that the people around them could understand.
This situation makes female partners their mentors rather than mere mediators.
Even though it is a classically gendered way.
Unless the female partners were teenagers living in their father's house (or had moved out of it), this also presented them with an opportunity to effectively recreate their community.
The construction of port cities, the transformation of sexual mores, and ultimately the elevation of children born to pirates into a new nobility—these were the things they were able to accomplish.
--- p.155~156
This is not to deny that the creation of the Federation was in some sense a proto-Enlightenment experiment.
But the idea that everything could be attributed to a single, charismatic founder and absolute monarch was essentially a kind of deception.
Just as it was convenient to cultivate the reputation of all-powerful and bloodthirsty captains to intimidate outsiders, even though most decisions on pirate ships were made by majority vote, the founders of the Confederacy found it useful, especially when dealing with outsiders, to maintain the pretense of an all-powerful king.
The wealth of luxurious booty made it easy to create something resembling royalty without requiring a major reorganization of the internal labor system.
Therefore, the Union was neither the creation of one man nor the collective creation of Malata.
It is not at all surprising that the young men who seem to have played a leading role in conceiving and forming the Union took the pirate ship and the organizational structure of the pirates as one of their models.
After all, this was the foreign organizational form they were most likely to have experienced firsthand.
As Johnson's account clearly shows, when they elected Nathaniel North as 'captain' of the Ambonabola pirates, the pirates actually consciously moved their ship's organization to land.
--- p.187~188
The very process of the pirates settling, forming alliances with ambitious Malagasy women, and starting families drew them into a completely different interactive world.
This is the true meaning of the story, I claim, that the Malagasy princesses used the magic of love (Odi Pythia) to lure pirates to land.
Being drawn into the life of the Malagasy community meant inevitable entanglement in a world of endless discussion, speculation, and debate about hidden powers and intentions, and in this new discursive universe, local women clearly had the upper hand (and, of course, as Mervyn Brown pointed out, if a pirate had tried to break away from the world of conversation and resort to simple violence, it would have been all too easy to kill him).
--- p.248~249
One thing is certain: most of them spent long hours conversing with active and retired pirates, speculating on each other's motivations, and exchanging views on money, law, love, war, politics, and organized religion.
They also had ample opportunity to observe the pirates' methods and practices and compare them with other methods more familiar to them.
The structure of the Coalition, with its pirate oath and democratic decision-making, centered around a figurehead dictator who could only issue orders during battle, emerged from such conversations above all else.
Why don't we consider someone like Tom Chimillaho, the son of a pirate and a Malagasy woman, one of the pioneers of democracy? Why are the contributions of women we know to have played crucial roles in Huron and Bechimisaraka societies, many of whom have even been forgotten, left out even when we talk about these men? Just as the stories of the women who organized the salons [which were the cradle of the Enlightenment] have been largely excluded from the narrative surrounding the Enlightenment.
--- p.28
What we now call the 'Golden Age of Piracy' actually lasted only about 40 or 50 years.
Besides, it was a long time ago.
And yet, people all over the world still talk about pirates and pirate utopias.
As we will see later, people often elaborate these stories with a kind of kaleidoscopic fantasy about magic, sex, death, and so on, which have always been present there.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that these stories persist because they embody a particular vision of human freedom.
The vision was adopted in European salons throughout the eighteenth century and remains relevant to dominant visions of freedom today, while simultaneously offering an alternative to them.
--- p.34~35
It is clear that the pirates had some practical advantages over their compatriots.
First, they had actual access to oriental luxuries, often in considerable quantities, with which to entertain local allies.
Second, having completely rejected the social and political order of their homeland, they had no reason not to fully integrate into Malagasy.
Soon after, foreign observers began reporting from the port of Sainte-Marie of Malagasy women “wearing dresses of the most beautiful Indian materials, embroidered with gold and silver, gold necklaces and bracelets, and even diamonds of considerable value.”
Baldrige himself appears to have married locally and had several children.
Many pirates settled there and became truly Malagasy.
More precisely, they took on the traditional role of mixed-race Malagasy foreigners, so-called 'internal outsiders'.
They were able to mediate between foreign merchants and locals and were familiar with the coastal areas there.
--- p.76~77
Earlier I said that when the pirates arrived, they had a lot of economic capital, but no social or cultural capital.
But from the perspective of a potential partner, even this fact was a clear advantage.
First, unlike other foreigners, pirates did not come with mothers or other family members who could interfere with their wives' decisions.
Second, they had no social knowledge of the area and often did not even have the ability to speak a language that the people around them could understand.
This situation makes female partners their mentors rather than mere mediators.
Even though it is a classically gendered way.
Unless the female partners were teenagers living in their father's house (or had moved out of it), this also presented them with an opportunity to effectively recreate their community.
The construction of port cities, the transformation of sexual mores, and ultimately the elevation of children born to pirates into a new nobility—these were the things they were able to accomplish.
--- p.155~156
This is not to deny that the creation of the Federation was in some sense a proto-Enlightenment experiment.
But the idea that everything could be attributed to a single, charismatic founder and absolute monarch was essentially a kind of deception.
Just as it was convenient to cultivate the reputation of all-powerful and bloodthirsty captains to intimidate outsiders, even though most decisions on pirate ships were made by majority vote, the founders of the Confederacy found it useful, especially when dealing with outsiders, to maintain the pretense of an all-powerful king.
The wealth of luxurious booty made it easy to create something resembling royalty without requiring a major reorganization of the internal labor system.
Therefore, the Union was neither the creation of one man nor the collective creation of Malata.
It is not at all surprising that the young men who seem to have played a leading role in conceiving and forming the Union took the pirate ship and the organizational structure of the pirates as one of their models.
After all, this was the foreign organizational form they were most likely to have experienced firsthand.
As Johnson's account clearly shows, when they elected Nathaniel North as 'captain' of the Ambonabola pirates, the pirates actually consciously moved their ship's organization to land.
--- p.187~188
The very process of the pirates settling, forming alliances with ambitious Malagasy women, and starting families drew them into a completely different interactive world.
This is the true meaning of the story, I claim, that the Malagasy princesses used the magic of love (Odi Pythia) to lure pirates to land.
Being drawn into the life of the Malagasy community meant inevitable entanglement in a world of endless discussion, speculation, and debate about hidden powers and intentions, and in this new discursive universe, local women clearly had the upper hand (and, of course, as Mervyn Brown pointed out, if a pirate had tried to break away from the world of conversation and resort to simple violence, it would have been all too easy to kill him).
--- p.248~249
One thing is certain: most of them spent long hours conversing with active and retired pirates, speculating on each other's motivations, and exchanging views on money, law, love, war, politics, and organized religion.
They also had ample opportunity to observe the pirates' methods and practices and compare them with other methods more familiar to them.
The structure of the Coalition, with its pirate oath and democratic decision-making, centered around a figurehead dictator who could only issue orders during battle, emerged from such conversations above all else.
--- p.249~250
Publisher's Review
Madagascar women ally with pirates to win freedom.
― A subversion of Western anthropology, which has treated non-Western women as mere pawns in men's power games.
In Western anthropology, non-Western indigenous women have been portrayed only as commodities or accumulative wealth used to bond and solidarity between tribes.
The same was true for the indigenous women of Madagascar.
In European records, they have been described as sexual 'gifts' offered by men to other men.
Women were kidnapped, recaptured, and incorporated into the ruling lineage, but they rarely emerged as independent agents themselves.
Pirate Enlightenment overturns the conventional narratives that Western anthropology has imposed on non-Western women.
It was the women of Madagascar who took the initiative to meet the pirates.
The intermarriage between Malagasy pirates and Malagasy women did not occur because foreign pirates settled on the coast and took local wives, but because Malagasy women sought out outside men to marry.
In fact, women were not afraid to use powerful fanafody, or drugs, to attract men.
The primary motivation of Malagasy women was not romantic.
They were not troubled by love, but actively sought ways for women without husbands to be respected in a society where they were 'treated as nothing' and to engage in commerce.
The reason they went down to the beach every day to look for sailors was, firstly, because exotic outsiders, especially those from distant lands like Europe or Arabia, were considered to have high status, and secondly, because sailors, especially pirates, would bring with them vast quantities of tradable goods.
These women were not simply pawns in men's games, but were seeking a means to become social actors with their own rights.
These women were also successful merchants on their own.
At that time, the coastal cities of Madagascar's Bechimisaraka territory were called 'cities of women.'
These cities had 'big houses' of about 20 to 50 houses each, housed within a fenced area.
The largest of these houses housed the Vadimbajaha ('foreigners' wives') and their often-absent husbands, along with various relatives and servants.
These women were truly the backbone of this community, and no important decision could be made without them.
Pirates found solutions to their basic problems in the enterprising Madagascar wives.
The issue is how to dispose of the vast amounts of wealth acquired illegally in a way that ensures a safe and comfortable life.
All that was needed was to hand over control of the wealth to ambitious female merchants.
Unlike other foreigners, the pirates did not come with their mothers or other family members to interfere with their wives' decisions.
And they had no social knowledge of the area and often no ability to speak a language that the people around them could understand.
This situation made female partners not just mediators but mentors for them.
This also provided them with an opportunity to effectively recreate their community.
Building port cities, transforming sexual mores, and ultimately elevating children born to pirates into new nobility—these are the things that Malagasy women were able to accomplish.
Democracy, which began on a pirate ship, is being revived on land.
― A relationship of equality without rulers, and the pleasure of elegant rhetoric and conversation.
Contrary to their brutal image, pirates actually pioneered the development of a new form of democratic governance.
The pirate crew was made up of all kinds of people and had knowledge of a wide variety of social arrangements.
For example, on the same ship there were British, Swedes, runaway African slaves, Caribbean Creoles, Native Americans, and Arabs.
They were committed to makeshift egalitarianism and, thrown into a situation where they had to quickly create new institutional structures, were in a sense in the perfect position to experiment with democracy.
Some historians have argued that some of the forms of democracy later developed by Enlightenment politicians in the North Atlantic world may have been first tried out on pirate ships in the 1680s and 1690s.
Pirate captains often sought to cultivate a reputation as fearsome and authoritarian villains to outsiders, but on board their ships they were elected by majority vote and could be dismissed in the same manner at any time.
They had the authority to issue orders only during pursuit or battle with the enemy, and otherwise had to participate in meetings as equals like everyone else.
Apart from the captain and the mate (who presided over the meetings), there was no hierarchy on a pirate ship, and their power was partial, temporary, and easily revoked.
What the pirates who settled in Madagascar were keen to do was to translate the democratic institutions they had first developed on board their ships into a form that could be practiced on land.
The Malagasy indigenous people who socialized and interacted with them were also actually influenced by the example set by the pirates.
For example, in Madagascar at the time, decisions on community matters, except for direct warfare, were made through an elaborate process of consensus-building in assemblies called kabary, usually at the village or clan level, or on more serious matters, such as the possibility of foreign invasion or the sighting of European ships on the coast, at the local level.
The deliberations could take several days.
Sometimes temporary huts were built for meetings.
Historically, humans have spent most of their time working, playing, resting, and talking to each other, but in Madagascar, the art of conversation was particularly highly valued.
One historical source even recorded that “for these interesting people, who love gossip and are not bound by time, everything becomes a subject for cabalistic discourse.”
In Madagascar, the pleasures of debate and argument, wit, storytelling, and elegant rhetoric are indeed considered attractive and worthy of appreciation in their culture.
As Graeber argues in Pirate Enlightenment, the pirate ships, pirate towns like Ambonabola, and the Bechimisaraka Confederation, founded by Malagasy indigenous people who worked closely with the pirates, were in many ways conscious attempts to experiment with radical democracy.
They explored ideas and principles that would later be developed by political philosophers and implemented by revolutionary regimes a century later.
Both the pirate ships at sea and the Bechimisaraka Union on land stubbornly pursued egalitarianism and refused to accept the authority of any ruler.
Leviathan's empty space was filled with the joys of elegant rhetoric and conversation.
― A subversion of Western anthropology, which has treated non-Western women as mere pawns in men's power games.
In Western anthropology, non-Western indigenous women have been portrayed only as commodities or accumulative wealth used to bond and solidarity between tribes.
The same was true for the indigenous women of Madagascar.
In European records, they have been described as sexual 'gifts' offered by men to other men.
Women were kidnapped, recaptured, and incorporated into the ruling lineage, but they rarely emerged as independent agents themselves.
Pirate Enlightenment overturns the conventional narratives that Western anthropology has imposed on non-Western women.
It was the women of Madagascar who took the initiative to meet the pirates.
The intermarriage between Malagasy pirates and Malagasy women did not occur because foreign pirates settled on the coast and took local wives, but because Malagasy women sought out outside men to marry.
In fact, women were not afraid to use powerful fanafody, or drugs, to attract men.
The primary motivation of Malagasy women was not romantic.
They were not troubled by love, but actively sought ways for women without husbands to be respected in a society where they were 'treated as nothing' and to engage in commerce.
The reason they went down to the beach every day to look for sailors was, firstly, because exotic outsiders, especially those from distant lands like Europe or Arabia, were considered to have high status, and secondly, because sailors, especially pirates, would bring with them vast quantities of tradable goods.
These women were not simply pawns in men's games, but were seeking a means to become social actors with their own rights.
These women were also successful merchants on their own.
At that time, the coastal cities of Madagascar's Bechimisaraka territory were called 'cities of women.'
These cities had 'big houses' of about 20 to 50 houses each, housed within a fenced area.
The largest of these houses housed the Vadimbajaha ('foreigners' wives') and their often-absent husbands, along with various relatives and servants.
These women were truly the backbone of this community, and no important decision could be made without them.
Pirates found solutions to their basic problems in the enterprising Madagascar wives.
The issue is how to dispose of the vast amounts of wealth acquired illegally in a way that ensures a safe and comfortable life.
All that was needed was to hand over control of the wealth to ambitious female merchants.
Unlike other foreigners, the pirates did not come with their mothers or other family members to interfere with their wives' decisions.
And they had no social knowledge of the area and often no ability to speak a language that the people around them could understand.
This situation made female partners not just mediators but mentors for them.
This also provided them with an opportunity to effectively recreate their community.
Building port cities, transforming sexual mores, and ultimately elevating children born to pirates into new nobility—these are the things that Malagasy women were able to accomplish.
Democracy, which began on a pirate ship, is being revived on land.
― A relationship of equality without rulers, and the pleasure of elegant rhetoric and conversation.
Contrary to their brutal image, pirates actually pioneered the development of a new form of democratic governance.
The pirate crew was made up of all kinds of people and had knowledge of a wide variety of social arrangements.
For example, on the same ship there were British, Swedes, runaway African slaves, Caribbean Creoles, Native Americans, and Arabs.
They were committed to makeshift egalitarianism and, thrown into a situation where they had to quickly create new institutional structures, were in a sense in the perfect position to experiment with democracy.
Some historians have argued that some of the forms of democracy later developed by Enlightenment politicians in the North Atlantic world may have been first tried out on pirate ships in the 1680s and 1690s.
Pirate captains often sought to cultivate a reputation as fearsome and authoritarian villains to outsiders, but on board their ships they were elected by majority vote and could be dismissed in the same manner at any time.
They had the authority to issue orders only during pursuit or battle with the enemy, and otherwise had to participate in meetings as equals like everyone else.
Apart from the captain and the mate (who presided over the meetings), there was no hierarchy on a pirate ship, and their power was partial, temporary, and easily revoked.
What the pirates who settled in Madagascar were keen to do was to translate the democratic institutions they had first developed on board their ships into a form that could be practiced on land.
The Malagasy indigenous people who socialized and interacted with them were also actually influenced by the example set by the pirates.
For example, in Madagascar at the time, decisions on community matters, except for direct warfare, were made through an elaborate process of consensus-building in assemblies called kabary, usually at the village or clan level, or on more serious matters, such as the possibility of foreign invasion or the sighting of European ships on the coast, at the local level.
The deliberations could take several days.
Sometimes temporary huts were built for meetings.
Historically, humans have spent most of their time working, playing, resting, and talking to each other, but in Madagascar, the art of conversation was particularly highly valued.
One historical source even recorded that “for these interesting people, who love gossip and are not bound by time, everything becomes a subject for cabalistic discourse.”
In Madagascar, the pleasures of debate and argument, wit, storytelling, and elegant rhetoric are indeed considered attractive and worthy of appreciation in their culture.
As Graeber argues in Pirate Enlightenment, the pirate ships, pirate towns like Ambonabola, and the Bechimisaraka Confederation, founded by Malagasy indigenous people who worked closely with the pirates, were in many ways conscious attempts to experiment with radical democracy.
They explored ideas and principles that would later be developed by political philosophers and implemented by revolutionary regimes a century later.
Both the pirate ships at sea and the Bechimisaraka Union on land stubbornly pursued egalitarianism and refused to accept the authority of any ruler.
Leviathan's empty space was filled with the joys of elegant rhetoric and conversation.
GOODS SPECIFICS
- Date of issue: June 2, 2025
- Page count, weight, size: 280 pages | 332g | 128*200*18mm
- ISBN13: 9791190413923
- ISBN10: 1190413922
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