Someone recommended, in voice chat, a history book on pirates from a Marxist perspective, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Markus Rediker. It looks pretty cool but I haven’t read it
https://www.marcusrediker.com/books/between-the-devil-and-the-deep-blue-sea.php#allbooks
The book's focus on maritime experience illuminates the broader historical sweep of the rise of capitalism and the growth of an international working class - epic themes which were intimately bound up with everyday lives of seafaring men.
Pirates pretty cool. I recommend Villains of All Nations by Marcus Rediker (and any of his other books) if you want to learn more about the Atlantic in the time of pirates
The Many Headed Hydra is the book of his I've read and it's great. Pirates and other Atlantic revolutionaries.
I haven’t read that one yet, but it looks good, hope to read it soon
I mean, not to get too deep into black sails discourse, but I don’t think the show ever presents what happened at the end as a good thing. But considering the historical realities and what happens in treasure island, it was basically how it had to end.
I mean, the pirates get to return to being happy little illegals, and the one Revolutionary guy gets put to jail where he can't hurt anyone but at least he's with his love interest. The show literally ends with him kissing his lover in jail, with an uplifting music. Looks pretty much like a lib happy ending to me. I'm not saying they should have gone for the complete revolutionary victory of the pirates, but at least having an ambiguous ending like "the pirates are still going strong and one day will conquer the world" would have been nice. But I guess that would be putting ideas in some people's heads. They also could have gone waaaaay further with the "freeing slaves" thing. More slaves should have been freed and more slave owners should have been killed. But maybe this would have resulted in their subreddit getting nuked lol
I mean the only successful slave rebellion in the Caribbean was the Haitian revolution a whole century later. As much as I would have loved to see them wreck the british empire, the show does tend to stick pretty closely to actual history. And pirates do end up being pretty much wiped out in a couple of decades. That sense of inevitability, that this is the end of an age, is actually one of my favourite things about the show. But yeah, they definitely could have given more screen time to the maroons (petition to replace every rogers sex scene with more julius please), but that’s really the only fault I find with show? I think in general the show does show pretty well that their anger is completely justified and never condemns their violence.
spoiler
And Flint gets Thomas back, sure. But I doubt he’s ever completely happy basically locked up in a plantation forever. The whole “ disappear and never be seen again” is literally what the admiral guy threatens to do to him, so I don’t think it’s ever portrayed as a good thing. Plus Madi’s gonna be absolutely miserable and John Silver loses everything. Not necessarily a fairy tale ending for any of them!
I think we're on the same wavelength here ; what I'm basically saying is: for us radicals it's a totally revolting ending, but I'm pretty sure libs were totally satisfied with it.
Yeah, I realized halfway through my comment that you probably meant that the what happens in the story sucks (like, in-universe) vs the show itself sucks, yeah? I guess we are on the same page haha. And I think the real lib take is that the British Empire is good, actually. Which is an actual take I've seen on Reddit (where else?)
under communism we will remake the show and have the protagonists slaughter slave owners and british colonizers
Yeah the first season is pretty rough, unfortunately. But the show only gets better as it goes on. I had to force myself a bit to stick through the first few episodes, but as soon as they actually got out to sea I was hooked.
PM Press just published a second edition of Gabriel Kuhn's Life Under The Jolly Roger , which analyzes pirates as gender/race diverse intersectional nomadic outlaws from a marxist/anarchist lens (also persistent 25% off code "stick25") (libgen link if you want also)
Also gay marriage and relationships were common among pirates, called "matelotage" (from the french word for sailor, matelot). Matelot partners shared their loot and should one of them die at sea, the ship would pay the surviving partner the deceased's fair share. Hence the origin of the term "matey".
Ayyy ima start doing this with my wife, I've already got her used to accepting aye as an affirmative reply in conversation
My partner and I can't stop talking like Billy Nighy's Davy Jones (we watched the PotC films recently), and it's bad
Thank god we're quarantined
That sounds absolutely delightful! This is the stuff that gives me hope for humanity
You can't just say "Watch Black Sails" without saying you have to give that show time to come into its own. The first season is setup, the following seasons are much better.
Great point, that was my experience too. This show titillated my bi-ass tho
Been thinking about getting it. Would be cool to have a chapo crew for a ship.
if you wanna play shoot me a dm, I'm off tomorrow so that'd be a great day for it :)
I made this it's own post. I would be totally down to organize something.
Play blackwake and push back against the "very g*mer" way of naming your ship racist slurs
When my
friendsmateys and I play, they're our first targets to send to davy jones' lockerI put hundreds of hours into that game but kinda got tired of the toxic environment.
It's definitely better when you have a dedicated crew rather than relying on randos to not be shitty
I've thought it was great since launch tbh, but yeah, we're 4 or 5 free monthly updates in and its awesome
Not that I am aware of, though one does not typically get into the Scottish pirate metal scene to stick it to the untermenschen. I was just being a jackass.
CGP Grey making pirates sound like they were running some sort of anarchist commune:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YFeE1eDlD0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0fAznO1wA8
There's a lot of Praxis you can take away from Nassau and (earlier) Tortuga about how to make a bunch of over-sexed, greedy, uneducated people traumatised by violence and oppression behave shockingly well.
Doesn't mean pirates were sweetness and light, they did kill people, and their economy was loot, not labour. But they did ok, given the hand they had.
Anyone else sailing in Sea Of Thieves? Just picked that up to join some friends and after some initial doubts I'm having a chill time sailing around. I kinda wish there was a straight co-op no pvp option or something so I can solo without worrying about assholes.
If you are in a sloop you can outrun the larger ships by sailing straight into the wind. Those are fastest into the wind so you can outrun brigs and galleons.
I suppose, I can't say for sure seeing I just jumped in now. But I haven't had any outstanding issues, besides the weird jankiness of open world games which has been pretty minimal so far.
too much words make it a galaxy brain meme or the increasingly more buff super-buff dudes on computers meme
Would you not agree that pirates, generally, probably had a higher rate of murder and rape than a sedentary, conventionally employed, land-bound population?
Of the 1700s? Yes, I'd say that the pirates of the West Indies (as opposed to say, the Corsairs) would have a lower rate of rape than that of merchant or naval sailors.
Those law codes weren't just out of the goodness of their piratical hearts, women on ships, coerced or otherwise were a potential source of conflict that couldn't be solved easily by standard spoils systems.
Pirate ships had substantially more democratic governance than other vessals, operating similarly to an anarchist militia, which meant simple top down control of things didn't work either. So the codes set down what simply was not allowed and if you didnt agree you could find another ship.
I have.
A declared code of law is not an indicator of behavior. Able-bodied men of inconsistent employ, variable discipline, rapidly shifting alliances, a lack of women, and existence of a might-makes-right society probably are more prone to rape and murder than, say, a cobbler in London or Baghdad.
If you compared pirates to, say, the general population of Britain or France, sure. But that’s not really the point. These are men used to rough, brutal lives. Of course they’d be different from an artisan in London. I think the better comparison would be to merchant sailors or members of the British/French/Spanish navy, who definitely committed atrocities of their own. And looking at it from a larger scale, pirates never brutally colonized large swathes of Africa and the Caribbean, established slavery, or committed genocide. So you know, I’d say any individual atrocities committed by pirates were less than that of the system their more civilized counterparts contributed to.
"IX. If at any time you meet with a prudent Woman, that Man that offers to meddle with her, without her Consent, shall suffer present Death."
Raping was banned by the Free Republic of Nassau and most pirates codes in the Carribean, though of course that was just one group, it's what people typically mean when saying pirate
