Thomas White - Gen. History

[Cod Rotten Bandlesworth]

Do we know who the French Pirates were, that were mentioned in his chapter?

I was also wondering if there is anything else that is known about William Read.

I've tried finding info on both the French and Read with little luck.

And, while we're at it, does anybody have any info on Samuel Inless? Thanks very much.

[Brit.Privateer]

Let me get out my Schonhorn Edited Edition of General History and let's see what he has to say about this.

All of these things you asked about are featured in the second volume of Johnson's work, the less reputable volume. In addition, these particular pirates you ask about are all involved with the Madagascar pirates, which Johnson takes a lot of liberties with overall (this volume did publish a completely ficitonal story relating to Captain Mission and his operations out of Madagascar). I don't think we will find out anything about those French pirates since, according to Schonhorn's research, it's hard to find anything documentation on Thomas White outside of Johnson's history for the early part of his career. Since Read is in the early part of that career as well, it is again difficult to document him too. Hopes for knowing more about Inless are about the same.

Overall, the pirates of Madagascar, and especially those who operated in the 1698-1713 period, are not that well researched. They don't get a lot of attention since people are attracted to pirates during the 1690s and 1710s-1720s. Those periods had more pirates numerically and the famous heists that took large amounts of money took place at this time. Henry Every and Captain Kidd are the more interesting stories to the general public and historians - even the pirates that operated in the Indian Ocean in the 1720s get more attention.

The reason that several of the chapters in volume 2 featured all of these chapters about pirates that aren't as noteworthy and operated in the Indian Ocean roughly around the first decade of the eighteenth century comes down to these two things: 1) Volume 2 was a rush job in comparison to Volume 1, and was being pushed to try and make a few more quick bucks from the success of Volume 1 and their 4 editions - ergo Johnson scrounged for any stories he could find 2) Madagascar pirates were popular since the stories of Henry Avery had spun out to legendary status and develops this whole idea that some huge pirate empire resided in Madagascar (Woodes Rogers found something drastically less impressive when he arrived), so he took a shot at exploiting this interest by throwing in these accounts/stories.

It would probably require some new research to increase our knowledge on these pirates. Someone would have to scrape some archives and really obscure sources to expand the stories of these pirates. If a historian did this job, it would be something drastically new and different though (rather than, say, another book on Blackbeard).

Sorry I couldn't come up with a better answer, but that's what I have. I see this is your first post, what drew you here and what drew you to wanting to find out more about these very specific pirates?

[Mission]

Not to drag this OT, but Foxe (one of our forum experts) also said that the stories of Captains Lewis and Cornelius were probably fictitious in the second General History book. Plus all the stuff about Misson in Tew's story is fictional. You can see the whole discussion in the thread The History of the Pyrates (Vol. 2 of the Gen. History. I could swear someone said a lot of the Volume 2 accounts were gathered from other sources, but Foxe says, "Corroborative records are fairly sparse for most of the pirates in the second volume, and by the time Johnson wrote about them the events he describes were 20+ years old, so it's difficult to assess how accurate they are."

[Cod Rotten Bandlesworth]

Thank you, young sirs. I appreciate any help you can give. I am aware of the dubious Mission and Lewis accounts, however, I was unaware that Johnson was supposedly rushed through the 2nd volume..

I have been reading the threads on this forum for quite some time now. I used to post on the old site (piratesinfo was it??). Anywho, I would definitely consider myself a pirate enthusiast, however, I am a very inexperienced researcher. I am not skilled in the art of digging into port/town records. Although, I do hope to learn more about how to properly do such a thing.

Obscure 'GAOP' pirates interest me very much, and I wish to learn as much info on them as I possibly can. I figured this would be the best place to ask about these fellows. Thanks again, I look forward to posting more.

[Fox]

Did someone mention my name?

First off, welcome aboard Mr Bandlesworth.

I'm afraid I can't add anything material to either of the previous answers. None of the usual sources really offer any more information on White or his career, though Jan Rogozinski's Honor Among Thieves adds a couple of details from some French sources relating the island of Reunion. If you're interested in the Indian Ocean pirates, Rogozinski's book is worth a read, but I still prefer Charles Grey's Pirates of the Eastern Seas. If you can get a copy of Grey's book, it's worth its weight in gold, but Rogozinski's book is easier to find (as a side note, don't buy anything else by Rogozinski unless you need to prop up a wobbly table).

One of the problems with pirates like White is that they come too late to get included in the official investigation into the St. Mary's pirates of the 1690s, and since they mostly died in the Indian Ocean they don't get mentioned much in the judicial records created in England and the colonies. The best starting point would probably be the East India Company records in the British Library, which is a massively neglected body of evidence as far as piracy is concerned. As BP says, if someone undertook to research the early 18th century Madagascar pirates it would potentially be something very exciting (though, in fairness, both Rogozinski and Grey have done some work on the subject).

Great first post, I look forward to hearing more from you :)

[Brit.Privateer]

I forget we had that brief discussion on volume 2 just over a year ago.

Rogozinski - the list of people who have written on pirate history will never end. Just last week I found another guy to add to my list - was someone with BA in history writing books concerning piracy around South Carolina and another book on Stede Bonnet (he operates out of a independent little publisher out of Charleston, SC). I don't know why I walked by Rogozinski's book before (might have to do with that when I footnote-mined the more academic and better known books on pirate history, he might have not been footnoted much), but I just might put it on my list now. Granted, I just looked up a review on his book by Kris Lane of the College of William and Mary, and I think these pull quotes give me a good idea what to expect:

"To offset the myth of the pirate as a buffoon or drooling pyschopath, Rogozinski offers only somewhat less convincing counter-myths, or at least gross generalizations. We are told that pirates were "just like other men," yet that - in Madagascar at least - they also managed to be colorblind quasi-communists and sexual libertarians."

"Rogozinski favors repetition and hyperbole over evidence and reasoned argument. Many modern students of pirate life would wish the hearty rogues of the Great Age to have been glamorous, progressive, and rebellious all at once, but in striving to ground this image in history the book comes off instead as a jumble of pedantic asides and narrative fragments."

This guy appears to share the same school of thought in pirate history that Gabriel Kuhn described as "radical pirate scholars." This group includes Christopher HIll, Marcus Rediker Peter Lamborn Wilson, Stephen Snelders, and Chris Land. (If you are wondering what other schools of thought there are, Kuhn only proposes the "non-radical scholars" and uses Robert C. Ritche, David Cordingly, Angus Konstam, and Peter Earle as examples). I think Kuhn sums up the motivation to the radical scholars' conclusions, "...the political intepretation of golden age piracy matters less than its contemporary political adaptation."

Charles Grey's work - I got his book, but that book did not include a bibliography or footnotes (probably because the standards for having such things had not been officially established yet), and at the time I was looking at his stuff, I was primarily on the hunt for primary sources. But, Grey did leave notes on his sources in the The Indian Antiquary publication from 1923-1928, called "Notes on piracy in eastern waters." In those, he actually lists sources. You're better off trying to access the journals themselves - I say this since a separate publication that reprinted all these notes did come out, but good luck getting a hold of the maybe 2 dozen copies of that reprint that exist throughout the libraries in the entire world.

Thanks Fox for the additional comments on the Indian Ocean pirates. That research you did while writing your work on Henry Every shows. I've not had a chance to work with the Indian Ocean pirates much. The ideal place to live in terms of where documents relating to pirates are kept is the U.K., not the U.S. (though we have quite a bit, but I always feel we are behind here in the U.S. so we don't have the Archives in London, not to mention what other treasures reside in the archives of other western European countries - something that is only now starting to be studied significantly).

As Fox says, Rogozinski and Grey have done work on this subject, but both have issues and Grey's stuff isn't readily accessible (probably has something to do with being published almost a centry ago). New efforts are needed. Something on the lines of what Robert Ritche did with Captain Kidd is the ideal.

Mr Bandlesworth, I'm glad to hear that you are interested in learning on how to do research into this subject. I think several people here and myself would be more than happy to answer any questions about doing research (we could discuss the subject forever). I hope to see more posts from you that might instigate more intriguing discussions such as this.

[Mission]

piratesinfo! Foxe and I met there in 2002.In fact he sent me here when I left there in 2004. It's still around, you know. (But now I'm really dragging this OT. Sorry.)

[Brit.Privateer]

piratesinfo! Foxe and I met there in 2002.In fact he sent me here when I left there in 2004. It's still around, you know. (But now I'm really dragging this OT. Sorry.)

I remember seeing that place over a decade ago as well. I never joined in though, and instead joined the forum here. I can't remember who said it, but someone here described that forum as being largely populated by school children looking to get information for papers they need to write. There were tons of websites on pirate history back then (and, surprisingly, the majority are still around today, though many of them are stagnant and looked abandoned). I always found Pyracy Pub forum to be more informative, that and the Pirate Brethren Forum and the UK Pirate Brotherhood when it was still up. After seeing mention of it here, I decided to go and see what it's up to now. I was really surprised that some of the info articles actually use MLA style references for sources in some of the text. The info presented seems to be more or less the same stuff a mainstream trade book or wiki article might offer. The oddest thing I'm seeing in their forums are a few people trying to do ancestry research (seeing if their relations are pirates I guess).

Is there any chance of you telling us about the project that these questions about relatively obscure pirates came from Mr Bandlesworth?

[Cod Rotten Bandlesworth]

Oh, its not a project, just personal interest.

Amidst the junk threads, there were a few great discussions on pirateinfo. I remember Foxe and Tony(rip) dropping significant gems. One of my favorite threads was about Captain Mission. Some guy was trying to convince everybody that he had evidence of Libertalia's existence and was trying to round up people to go on an expedition with him, lol. Good times.

If I was to do research on early 18th century pirates, where would I begin? Lets say I walk into NY Public Library, then what?? Lol. How come you knowledgeable gentlemen havent undertaken such a task?

[Brit.Privateer]

Some guy was trying to convince everybody that he had evidence of Libertalia's existence and was trying to round up people to go on an expedition with him, lol. Good times.

Must be the same guy on that forum who is trying to get people to help him find Blackbeard's buried treasure. I suspect that you would have better odds at winning the big $600 million lottery than discovering a pirate's burried treasure (that is, the kind of burried treasure people think of with Treasure Island).

Anyway, for that question on what you should do first in your research. It's kind of a broad question if you don't have a topic and/or question that your trying to answer. One thing I would do is, whatever library you have regular access to, see what online databases they have access to (that you are allowed to use via their computers) and see what their Interlibrary Loan situation is (can you requests things and is there a cost?). The ideal situation is to be college student of some kind, since most of those institutions have free student access to the historical newspaper collections you might want to use for primary sources, journal databases that could provide articles for you to read, and interlibrary loan (though, institutions vary in terms of the databases they have available, one might have access to British newspaper databases while the other might not for example).

I beleive there are threads on this subject in our forum, but if you provide some specifics to what you're looking to do, we can probably help.

[Mission]

You were there when Tony Malesic was around? He was awesome. He did all sorts of original research that I never found anywhere else and still treated the rest of us like thoughtful, fellow researchers. (Which we all hoping we were. :) ) I'm sorry I didn't get to meet him before he died. Those were great times with Ed, Daniel, Tony, dt, Mary Read, Jessie, Cire and some of the other regulars.

I think the school kids thing Brit. Privateer mentioned may come from a (very) tongue-in-cheek post I wrote when I was there that I have since edited and added to my site, the link to which I occasionally flog here. Like this: Do-It-Yourself Pirate School Report. Those were always in and out posters, though. The real core were the folks like the ones mentioned above. We had some pretty good discussions there - at least as good as the ones that were going on here in 2003 and 2004. (The posts got pretty interesting here for me around 2006 or 2007 when we started really getting more into the primary research into things other than just clothing.)

[Fox]

How come you knowledgeable gentlemen havent undertaken such a task?

Some of us have

I would say that if you want to do proper research on pirates (or indeed any other subject) the first thing you should do is figure out what exactly your question is.

Then, read everything you can get your hands on that deals with your subject, even if only peripherally.

Then look through the bibliography of those books and see what else there is that you might have missed and read as much of that as you can.

Then, if your question is still unanswered, look at the books you've just read and see what primary sources they are based on. You'll find them in the footnotes/endnotes and sometimes the bibliography.

Then use those primary sources, most of which are likely to be found in archives (and in the case of piracy, mostly the National Archives and British Library in London - though there is some worthwhile stuff in the US too). In many cases you'll find stuff in the primary sources that hasn't previously been used by other authors, and sometimes you'll find some pointer to some other source that you hadn't previously considered.

The biggest problem, IMO, with the US archives is that they're not centralised. In the UK we have local record offices, which do contain some useful material in small quantities, but the bulk of the really good stuff is housed in one of the two London archives I mention above. In the US however there are several repositories for the National Archives, so you have to know which one to go to, and theoretically at least, anything relating to the colonial era (including pirates) ought to be housed in individual State archives, so the information you seek might be scattered over half a dozen different places. It's quite frustrating!

BP. I think that review of Rogozinski's book is pretty much on-the-nose. What the reviewer failed to take into account though is that Honor Among Thieves is primarily a narrative history (albeit a sometimes erratic one). If you want academic analysis then you need to go to the likes of Rediker, Earle, Bialuschewski or one or two other people.

[Brit.Privateer]

BP. I think that review of Rogozinski's book is pretty much on-the-nose. What the reviewer failed to take into account though is that Honor Among Thieves is primarily a narrative history (albeit a sometimes erratic one). If you want academic analysis then you need to go to the likes of Rediker, Earle, Bialuschewski or one or two other people.

I thought Kris Lane of the College of William and Mary writing for The American Historical Review was pretty academic (unless I read what you meant by "if you want academic analysis..."). He does address the narrative approach with "...but in striving to ground this image in history the book comes off instead as a jumble of pedantic asides and narrative fragments. Chapters and sections begin an dend abruptly, frequently with the little regard to chronological order. There are almost no segues from one story or section to another, and there is no real introduction or conclusion."

This review was the only one available for Honor Among Thieves in JSTOR (short for "Journal Storage", it is the largest database online for academic journals and is primarily available through colleges and universities). I just wanted to quickly get a review for context to this discussion. Did Rediker, Bialuschewski, and Earle do reviews of it? Which Journals did they publish in?

[Fox]

I don't know of any better reviews of Rogozinski's book, and as I say, the one you posted was pretty much on the button.

The narrative is certainly erratic: you'll find several-page sections on the same pirate a hundred pages apart. And the analytical side of the book is both minimal and simplistic.

BUT, it does add quite a bit of new information from otherwise unused sources (especially French language sources), and is properly footnoted. I still think Grey's book is better (despite the lack of references), but Rogozinski's is the only modern book that really examines the Indian Ocean pirates. It's far from perfect, but probably the best available - and I say that as a definite non-fan of Rogozinski in general.