Peter Linebaugh

Marcus Rediker

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.

Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic

The Many-headed Hydra

Offers a social and cultural history of pirates and the reaction to them in the English colonies of North America, focusing on the high-seas drama during the decade from 1716 to 1726.

Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age

Villains of All Nations

Draws on three decades of research to chart the history of slave ships, their crews, and their enslaved passengers, documenting such stories as those of a young kidnapped African whose slavery is witnessed firsthand by a horrified priest from a neighboring tribe responsible for the slave's capture. 30,000 first printing.

A Human History

The Slave Ship

Early Life -- "A Man of Strife & Contention"--Philadelphia's "Men of Renown"--How Slave-Keepers became Apostates -- Books and a New Life -- Death, Memory, Impact

The Quaker Dwarf who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist

The Fearless Benjamin Lay

This brilliant account of the maritime world of the eighteenth-century reconstructs in detail the social and cultural milieu of Anglo-American seafaring and piracy. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

lucha de clases en mar abierto

Entre el deber y el motín

The Slave Ship: A Human History

A scholarly account of the nineteenth-century slave ship rebellion presented from the perspectives of the slaves discusses their fight for freedom within the context of the chain of resistance spanning the earliest slave revolts through the Civil Rights era.

An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom

The Amistad Rebellion

I ribelli dell'Atlantico. La storia perduta di un'utopia libertaria

Seamen, captains and pirates occupy a special place in our popular culture, yet until now the historical record of their lives has been remarkably neglected. This brilliant account of the maritime world of the eighteenth-century reconstructs in detail the social and cultural milieu of Anglo-American seafaring and piracy. Rediker follows sailors and their ships along the pulsing trade routes, into ports with their crowded waterfront society of brothels, alehouses, brawls and jails, and paints a compelling picture of their world at sea with its brutal labour, harsh discipline, hangings and floggings. 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.

Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750

Matthias van Rossum

Titas Chakraborty

During global capitalism's long ascent from 1600–1850, workers of all kinds—slaves, indentured servants, convicts, domestic workers, soldiers, and sailors—repeatedly ran away from their masters and bosses, with profound effects. A Global History of Runaways, edited by Marcus Rediker, Titas Chakraborty, and Matthias van Rossum, compares and connects runaways in the British, Danish, Dutch, French, Mughal, Portuguese, and American empires. Together these essays show how capitalism required vast numbers of mobile workers who would build the foundations of a new economic order. At the same time, these laborers challenged that order—from the undermining of Danish colonization in the seventeenth century to the igniting of civil war in the United States in the nineteenth.

Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism, 1600–1850

A Global History of Runaways

Recounts the experiences of common eighteenth century seamen, emphasizes the collective nature of maritime life, and looks at seamen's wages, language, culture, and discipline

This maritime history "from below" exposes the history-making power of common sailors, slaves, pirates, and other outlaws at sea in the era of the tall ship. In Outlaws of the Atlantic, award-winning historian Marcus Rediker turns maritime history upside down. He explores the dramatic world of maritime adventure, not from the perspective of admirals, merchants, and nation-states but from the viewpoint of commoners—sailors, slaves, indentured servants, pirates, and other outlaws from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. Bringing together their seafaring experiences for the first time, Outlaws of the Atlantic is an unexpected and compelling peoples’ history of the “age of sail.” With his signature bottom-up approach and insight, Rediker reveals how the “motley”—that is, multiethnic—crews were a driving force behind the American Revolution; that pirates, enslaved Africans, and other outlaws worked together to subvert capitalism; and that, in the era of the tall ship, outlaws challenged authority from below deck. By bringing these marginal seafaring characters into the limelight, Rediker shows how maritime actors have shaped history that many have long regarded as national and landed. And by casting these rebels by sea as cosmopolitan workers of the world, he reminds us that to understand the rise of capitalism, globalization, and the formation of race and class, we must look to the sea.

Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail

Outlaws of the Atlantic

This maritime history "from below" exposes the history-making power of common sailors, slaves, pirates, and other outlaws at sea in the era of the tall ship. In Outlaws of the Atlantic, award-winning historian Marcus Rediker turns maritime history upside down. He explores the dramatic world of maritime adventure, not from the perspective of admirals, merchants, and nation-states but from the viewpoint of commoners—sailors, slaves, indentured servants, pirates, and other outlaws from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. Bringing together their seafaring experiences for the first time, Outlaws of the Atlantic is an unexpected and compelling peoples’ history of the “age of sail.” With his signature bottom-up approach and insight, Rediker reveals how the “motley”—that is, multiethnic—crews were a driving force behind the American Revolution; that pirates, enslaved Africans, and other outlaws worked together to subvert capitalism; and that, in the era of the tall ship, outlaws challenged authority from below deck. By bringing these marginal seafaring characters into the limelight, Rediker shows how maritime actors have shaped history that many have long regarded as national and landed. And by casting these rebels by sea as cosmopolitan workers of the world, he reminds us that to understand the rise of capitalism, globalization, and the formation of race and class, we must look to the sea. From the Hardcover edition.

The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic

Many-Headed Hydra

Cassandra Pybus

Marcus Buford Rediker

Emma Christopher

"Extends the concept of the Middle Passage to encompass the expropriation of people across other maritime and inland routes. No previous book has highlighted the diversity and centrality of middle passages, voluntary and involuntary, to modern global history."—Kenneth Morgan, author of Slavery and the British Empire "This volume extends the now well-established project of 'Atlantic World Studies' beyond its geographic and chronological frames to a genuinely global analysis of labour migration. It is a work of major importance that sparkles with new discoveries and insights."—Rick Halpern, co-editor of Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600-1850

Marcus Rediker

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