Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia

David Graeber

$35

Hardback

In stock
Ready to ship

QTY:

English

Allen Lane
21 February 2023

History; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900; Social & cultural history; Western philosophy: Enlightenment; Social & cultural anthropology; Political structures: democracy

A rumbustious retelling of the birth of the Enlightenment, from the bestselling radical author of The Dawn of Everything

The Enlightenment did not begin in Europe. Its true origins lie thousands of miles away on the island of Madagascar, in the late seventeenth century, when it was home to several thousand pirates. This was the Golden Age of Piracy, a period of violent buccaneering and rollicking legends - but it was also, argues anthropologist David Graeber, a brief window of radical democracy, as the pirate settlers attempted to apply the egalitarian principles of their ships to a new society on land.

For Graeber, Madagascar's lost pirate utopia represents some of the first stirrings of Enlightenment political thought. In this jewel of a book, he offers a way to 'decolonize the Enlightenment', demonstrating how this mixed community experimented with an alternative vision of human freedom, far from that being formulated in the salons and coffee houses of Europe. Its actors were Malagasy women, merchants and traders, philosopher kings and escaped slaves, exploring ideas that were ultimately to be put into practice by Western revolutionary regimes a century later.

Pirate Enlightenment playfully dismantles the central myths of the Enlightenment. In their place comes a story about the magic, sea battles, purloined princesses, manhunts, make-believe kingdoms, fraudulent ambassadors, spies, jewel thieves, poisoners and devil worship that lie at the origins of modern freedom.

By: David Graeber
Imprint: Allen Lane
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 218mm, Width: 144mm, Spine: 14mm
Weight: 320g
ISBN: 9780241611401
ISBN 10: 0241611407
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 21 February 2023
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

David Graeber was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of The Dawn of Everything- A New History of Humanity, Debt- The First 5,000 Years and Bullshit Jobs- A Theory, and was a contributor to Harper's Magazine, The Guardian, and The Baffler. An iconic thinker and renowned activist, his early efforts helped to make Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement. He died on 2 September 2020.

Reviews for Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia

Chatty, punky, anti-everything catnip... it is good fun. It's about pirates, after all. * Sunday Times * Open and imaginative... Graeber is writing in a hybrid genre of poetic history, in this sense, but he is also reminding us why such hybridisation is good for us. * New Statesman * A characteristically radical re-reading of history that places the social and political experiments of pirates at the heart of the European Enlightenment. A brilliant companion volume to the best-selling Dawn of Everything. -- Amitav Ghosh A genius... blazingly original, stunningly wide-ranging, impossibly well read. * The Atlantic * A thinker who revolutionises the way we see the world and helps us reimagine the things we once took for granted. * New Statesman * PRAISE FOR THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING: Iconoclastic and irreverent ... an exhilarating read. -- David Priestland * The Guardian * Pacey and potentially revolutionary ... This is more than an argument about the past, it is about the human condition in the present. -- Bryan Appleyard * Sunday Times * Blazing with iconoclastic rebuttals to conventional wisdom. Full of fresh thinking, it's a pleasure to read and offers a bracing challenge on every page. -- Simon Sebag Montefiore * BBC History * This is not a book. This is an intellectual feast. -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb