Pirate Communes

Description

Joris Leverink:

"In the 17th and 18th centuries there were few groups that placed themselves so explicitly outside of polite society as the pirate and buccaneer communities that could be found from the Caribbean all the way to the east African coast. Long before the French Revolution and its values of freedom, equality and brotherhood captured the collective imagination in Europe, many pirate communities—both on shore and on the ships—were already structured along radically democratic lines.

"The organization of the pirate ship in the early 18th century was an experiment in radical, anarchistic forms of democratic organizing which were explicitly opposed to the systems of authority on conventional sailing vessels." (— Chris Land)

Pirate ships have been described as “floating democracies” and were characterized by highly egalitarian forms of social organization. Pirate codes such as the one established by the Brethren of the Coast—a collective of buccaneers based in Tortuga, off the coast of Haiti—often stressed the equality of all signatories and were formulated and agreed upon through collective and egalitarian processes.

Examples

LIBERTALIA:

"Possibly the most famous pirate colony was Libertalia, reportedly founded in northern Madagascar in the late 17th century. It began when Captain Misson and the crew of his French warship were converted to a form of atheist communism by a renegade Dominican priest called Caraccioli.

The wealth of the ship was collectivized and the party embarked on a career of piracy. Slaves were freed from conquered slave ships and welcomed to the collective. In the Bay of Antongil, blessed with fertile soil, the pirates founded their independent colony, renouncing their previous nationalities and calling themselves “Liberi” instead. According to legend, Libertalia continued to exist for approximately 25 years, continuing to take in freed slaves and other pirates.

"The vast Difference betwixt Man and Man, the one wallowing in Luxury, and the other in the most pinching Necessity, was owing only to Avarice and Ambition on the one Hand, and a pusillanimous Subjection on the other." (— Caraccioli)

Some controversy remains over whether Libertalia is anything more than a popular myth—the only source is Captain Charles Johnson’s book, A General History of the Pyrates, published in 1728. Although the existence of Libertalia was never proven, individual aspects of the story were almost certainly true. In the words of historian Marcus Rediker:

“In a deeper historical and political sense Misson and Libertalia were not simply fictions … Libertalia was a fictive expression of living traditions, practices and dreams of an Atlantic working class, many of which were observed, synthesized and translated into discourse by [Johnson].” (https://roarmag.org/magazine/pirates-peasants-and-proletarians/)