Pirates Archives - Page 2 of 2 Bristol Radical History Group

Salty Tales

Join Jess Paul and Martin Maudsley for stories about smugglers and pirates. AAAARRR! Kids (and adults) are weclome to come in fancy dress. Please can adults accompany children as this is event is not a creche facility.

Pirates, Piracy & Smuggling

The Real Pirates Of The Caribbean - Marcus Rediker Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh (USA) and the author of The Many Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea : Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age and this year The Slave Ship: A Human History. Marcus Rediker explores the 'Golden Age' of […]

Treasure Island

Disney's adaptation of Robert Louis Stephenson's classic tale. Newton, in splendid form, arguably gives the best big screen characterisation of literature's most famous unidexter. Join such legends as Ben Gunn, Israel Hands, Jim Hawkins and Blind Pew in this ripping yarn. 1950, 96 mins Starring : Robert Newton, Bobbie Driscoll Directed by : Byron Haskin

Bristol & The Revolutionary Atlantic

A Spot in Time: The Opposition between Terror and the Commons in the Perspective of the Atlantic Revolutions - Peter Linebaugh Was the coincidence on 2 April 1792 in the attempts to abolish the African slave trade and to make the English working class 'a spot of time', to paraphrase William Wordsworth, where vivifying virtue may restore our minds to the sense of right in the midst of fiercest strife, or instances of the perfidy of Albion, splitting the race of Man in twain? What role has the […]

Captain Blood

The phrase “they just don't make 'em like this any more” has never been so accurately used as when it describes Captain Blood. A roaring adventure tale from the novel by Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood is chock full of cannons and swordplay, heroism and treachery, war and romance, a beautiful heroine, and an impossibly handsome hero so lusty and full of vigour that it's difficult to catch your breath as the movie careens from one thrilling scene to the next (www.dvdverdict.com). Generally […]

The Many Headed Hydra

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

By Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh

Brilliant work charting the misunderstood and misrepresented history of the Atlantic proletariat during the rise of mercantile capitalism. Breaks out of the limits of the nation state set by previous social history and examines the struggles of slaves, sailors and commoners across the Atlantic from the old world to the new. (BRHG)

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

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

By Marcus Rediker

Rediker redefines the sailor as a worker afloat and shows how these working men resisted authority and work discipline, created their own maritime culture, language and religion and often turned to mutiny and piracy in a bid for freedom. (BRHG)

Villains of All Nations

Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age

By Marcus Rediker

Villains of All Nations explores the "Golden Age" of Atlantic piracy and the infamous generation whose images underlie our modern, romanticized view of pirates. Rediker focuses on the high seas drama of the years 1716-1726, which featured the dreaded black flag, the Jolly Roger; swashbuckling figures such as Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard; and the unnamed pegleg who was likely Robert Louis Stevenson's model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island. This novel interpretation shows how […]

The Devils Anarchy

The Other Loose Roving Way of Life & Very Remarkable Travels of Jan Erasmus Reyning, Buccaneer

By Stephen Snelders

By rebelling against hierarchical society and living under the Jolly Roger, pirates created an upside-down world of anarchist organisation and festival, with violence and death ever-present. This creation was not a purely whimsical process. In The Devil's Anarchy, Stephen Snelders examines rare 17th-century Dutch pirate histories to show the continuity of a shared pirate culture, embodied in its modes of organisation, methods of distributing booty and resolving disputes, and tendencies for high […]

Pirate Utopias

Moorish Corsairs and European Renegadoes

By Peter L Wilson

From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Moslem corsairs from the Barbary Coast ravaged European shipping and enslaved thousands of unlucky captives. During this same period, thousands more Europeans converted to Islam and joined the pirate holy war. Were these men (and women) the scum of the seas, apostates, traitors - "Renegadoes"? Or did they abandon and betray Christendom as a praxis of social resistance? (Autonomedia)