title: Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age
author:  Marcus Rediker 
description: Rediker (<i>Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea</i>), a historian of maritime labor, opens his immensely readable study of the "golden age" of piracy (1716-1726) with the spectacle of an execution in which a notorious pirate, unrepentant and seemingly unconcerned to be facing death, reties the knot of his gallows noose with defiant ironic humor. For Rediker, pirates were bold subversives who challenged the prevailing social order and empire building of the five main trading nations. Emphasizing the hardship, injustice and brutality the average sailor faced in his career, Rediker suggests that piracy offered a more egalitarian seafaring life, as well as opportunities for revenge on the ruling class. Rediker uses captives' accounts, among other sources, to show how pirates meted out their own system of justice, torturing captains reputed for their harsh treatment of sailors, yet sparing others known for fairness. He explores pirate dialects, rituals and symbols, and shows how pirates inverted social norms, creating a carnivalesque way of life that featured fraternal solidarity, a precapitalist share system and the wanton destruction of property. A chapter on picaresque women pirates reveals links between their iconic image and Delacroix's painting <i>Liberty.</i> Using statistics to show convincingly that by the 1720s piracy posed a real threat to global trade, Rediker describes how nations launched a military-legal campaign against piracy, with cannon battles and gruesome public executions. Rediker uses this apocalyptic close of piracy's golden age to explore its suicidal side. Although Rediker's short study does not tackle later myths of piracy, it provides penetrating background to our enduring cultural fascination with the seafaring outlaws. Illus. <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  The Rebellious Red
  
  The Ravishing Rees Book #4  
  A Pirates of Britannia World Novel
  
  Rosamund Winchester
  
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  Copyright © 2019 Rosamund Winchester
  
  Kindle Edition
  
  This work was made possible by a special license through the Pirates of
  Britannia Connected
  
  World publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by DragonMedia
  Publishing, Inc. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements
  appearing in the original Pirates of Britannia connected series by Kathryn Le
  Veque and Eliza Knight remain exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked
  property of Kathryn Le Veque and/or Eliza Knight, or their affiliates or
  licensors. All characters created by the author of this novel remain the
  copyrighted property of the author.
  
  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and
  incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used
  fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to perso