Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia

Fascinating book and subkect

this book is a bit of a romp - a light, even breezy relating of a fascinating moment of cultural hybridity.Easy to read and quite fascinating.

Got used, and came in great condition! To be honest, style of writing wasn't for me, but had a friend interested in the subject as well and gave the book to them and they were happy.

This is book of the year! Thanks for elaborating the possibilities among the spaces in between.

Everything David Graeber wrote is brilliant. This is really an odd topic for him but I still learned some interesting things.

What a fun romp through a little known history! The late David Graeber is the master of taking a thin empirical record and spinning a hopeful hypothesis about how the world could work differently. Highly recommended!

Superb scholarship, excellent analysis, a deconstruction of pirates paradise and the construction of an alternate reality which reflects the complex interplay of pirates, native society and Europeans in our academic mythology. READ THIS BOOK!

More of a text book. Very little about any pirates. Ended up skipping whole pages toward the end.

A great read. Excellent food for thought. Not an encyclopedia, which it doesn't claim to be, mind you. But a very interesting essay on a thought provoking subject. A bit of a big essay, but worth the read nonetheless. A pocket edition would suffice tho.

In the late 17th and early 18th century, many of the Caribbean pirates "retired" to northeast Madagascar. There, they continued their piracy in the Indian Ocean and established communities there. This posthumously published book from David Graeber discusses these piratical communities and how they fit into the societies of Madagascar. More provocatively, Graeber claims that the political organization of these pirate communities actually influenced Enlightenment thinking because of their relative democratic structures.The topic of the book is fascinating. The book itself, however, is less than exciting. Some of the most interesting aspects include:a) The democratic practices of pirate ships where the captain was elected and decisions were made democratically except during battles in a form of piratical political science.b) The challenges that pirates had in disposing of their booty and the type of value they could receive for their goods in a form of piratical economic analysis.c) The role of local woman in Madagascar society and how they chose to become involved with pirates in order to offer them more independence and gave them the ability to run businessesd) The books and stage works about the pirates of Madagascar and how they had become a topic of conversation during the Enlightenment period..The difficulties of the book include:a) The lack of reliable sources discussing Madagascar in this period. The earliest part of the book discusses the sources available and assesses how reliable or unreliable they were. Particularly interesting was the role of the writings of Daniel Defoe who wrote a number of popular works about pirates.b) The anthropological details are, in small doses interesting, but quickly become boring.c) The overall amount of speculation throughout the book.The book is fortunately short but would have been even more enjoyable as an extended essay instead.

Das Buch beschäftigt sich nur zum Teil mit dem was der Titel verspricht. Der Titel nimmt Bezug auf die Frage der "politischen Strukturen" (enlightenment and libertaria) und somit ihr möglicher Einfluß auf die allgemeine weitere politische Entwicklung. Der Rest (um die 80 %) ist eine lange Geschichte zu den Piraten an den Inseln........ (wer, wann, wo und mit wem).Das letztere hat mich eigentlich nicht interessiert. Die Erklärung könnte sein, daß der Verfasser bereits länger tot war als das Buch veröffentlicht wurde. Möglicherweise (meine Spekulation) ist das Manuskript daher veröffentlicht wurde mit einem attraktiven Titel, ohne den wirklichen Bezug zum Inhalt, ohne Fokussierung des Manuskripts auf dem was der Titel verspricht.