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Marcus Rediker Villains Of All Nations Summary

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Rediker, Marcus. Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004). Marcus Rediker’s Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age explores the social, political, and cultural history of pirates during the Golden Age of Atlantic piracy. Rediker is a prize-winning historian and a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. The purpose of Villains of All Nations is to provide a new outlook on the history of piracy during the Golden Age of piracy while also highlighting how pirates created an egalitarian society. Rediker illustrates this purpose by providing a Marxist interpretation of piracy as well as a bottom-up history of piracy during the Golden Age. Rediker divides the Golden Age of Atlantic piracy into three phases and these phases are chronicled in Villains of All Nations. Villains of All Nations is paramount to the study of Atlantic World history as Rediker highlights how Golden Age Atlantic piracy …show more content…

Many sailors became pirates because their experience as merchant seaman was negative. Another way that men became pirates was when merchant vessels were seized by pirates and the seaman converted to piracy. Most men who became pirates were from the lowest social classes and were of British descent. Pirates, however, also derived from other nations, races and social classes. Rediker writes, “Pirate ships themselves might be considered multiracial maroon communities, in which rebels used the high seas as others used the mountains and the jungles” (56). Most pirates were unmarried and in their mid-twenties. Terrible working conditions from 1716 to 1726 caused men to become pirates and allowed piracy to flourish. Men became pirates as piracy was an escape from dreadful working conditions as well as an intriguing opportunity to create a new

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