GAOP Essential Reading List

[Cod Rotten Bandlesworth]

Hey all, I was wondering if we could get a book list going regarding the GAOP time period. I figured this would help people discover some great material that they may have missed, as well as help in knowing which ones to avoid. If a book contains good/bad, maybe a description on the pos/neg would be useful. Thanks much.

[William Brand]

Here are a few random threads that have discussed books...

New Pirate/Maritime Books
https://pyracy.com/index.php/topic/1670-new-piratemaritime-books/

Books...
https://pyracy.com/index.php/topic/248-books/

Pyracy history books
https://pyracy.com/index.php/topic/10346-pyracy-history-books/

[Mission]

For general info, I suggest Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly.

For a summary of pirate tactics and an interesting look at odd details, check out Benerson Little's The Sea Rover's Practice.

There are a ton of other books out there (some good, some bad, most mediocre), but those are the two I'd start with. Where you go from there sort of depends on what you're interested in. My general guiding principle is to read books with lots of text excerpted from period material and with copious amounts of foot/end notes. As a general rule, avoid anything where the author is trying to make a case for something new and/or unusual in relation to pirates. ("So and so was not really guilty of piracy," "the pirates were the first socialistic society", "many pirates were ___ (pick some hot-button current issue: gay, female, civil rights-oriented)."

[Capt. J...]

"Empire of Blue Water" is also very good in my opinion.

[Cod Rotten Bandlesworth]

Just to make it clear, I'm not someone who is just recently "getting into" pirate history and looking for a place to start. Hah, my apologies if that's how my post came off (I'm by no means an authority either) I just wanted to have a substantial list of solid books that get a thumbs up from some of the historians/researchers on this site.

[Swashbuckler 1700]

I am not really an official specialist, but I have some ideas.

I have read these two examples quite recently so they came to my mind easily.

Colin Woodard's Republic of Pirates is good for Gaop. Though the back cover and advertising text seems a bit romantic with pirate democracy the book itself is actually more critical in my opinion. The research clearly good too. (Though the maps and ship diagrams are partly inaccurate. Still, the text is really good and fun to read. Just small issues)

http://www.amazon.com/The-Republic-Pirates-Surprising-Caribbean/dp/015603462X/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_4

Also, if you note the author has not done much other research about pirates The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd by Richard Zacks is good. Thought it contains quite many assumptions it is factual, I would say. It has info of other pirates than just Kidd, mainly of Robert Culliford.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Pirate-Hunter-Story-Captain/dp/B000FVHJ6C/ref=pd_sim_b_6

Edited January 17, 2014 by Swashbuckler 1700

[William Brand]

A personal favorite of mine...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia's_Graveyard

It predates the Golden Age, but discusses elements of life at sea and economics that were still in effect well into the Golden Age. It discusses disease, shipboard conditions, social power structures, the disproportionate economics of the period, etc. It's a fascinating, sometimes harrowing and horrifying read.

[Mission]

David Fictum, who posts here as Brit.Privateer and is quite well read on the topic has posted a list of nine books he likes with descriptions of what he considers good about them. Several of the books mentioned already are on his list.

You will find his list here.

Oh, and you should really read the General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson (mis-attributed to Daniel Defoe). The best version to get (as far as content and affordability) is probably the one edited by Manuel Schornhorn. Read it with a grain of salt, though. There are several things in there that are not factual. I'm told Schornhorn's edition points these things out pretty well.

[Brit.Privateer]

David Fictum, who posts here as Brit.Privateer and is quite well read on the topic has posted a list of nine books he likes with descriptions of what he considers good about them. Several of the books mentioned already are on his list.

You will find his list here.

Oh, and you should really read the General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson (mis-attributed to Daniel Defoe). The best version to get (as far as content and affordability) is probably the one edited by Manuel Schornhorn. Read it with a grain of salt, though. There are several things in there that are not factual. I'm told Schornhorn's edition points these things out pretty well.

I would rephrase that to books I would recommend for broad topic coverage of the GAOP that have some kind of recognizable reference system (footnotes, endnotes, so on), not just "like" because a couple on there I recommend because it is a challenge to find a good alternative (some are on more on there to give context to the development of concepts in pirate history, such as the "radical pirate" theory). The list is only of secondary sources, otherwise I would have put Johnson on there (but I'm not sure if it's safer to say one shouldn't start right away with Johnson or not, because it's an important primary source on one hand but the originator of quite a few potential myths on the other - so I'm not sure if that's the best thing to put into the hands of someone just starting out). Also, Ed Fox wrote one of those reviews.

Thanks for recommending my list though Mission. Would have done it myself, but I don't check this place every day.

[Cod Rotten Bandlesworth]

I guess a better question would be -what are the most academic, well written researched books on this topic? Rediker, grey, cordingly, lee, who else are regarded highly?

[Brit.Privateer]

The list mentioned by Mission has all academic to an extent (it's a requirement for that list), they all at least include some kind of note system at least (for example, Woodard and Little have note systems, but aren't traditional academics in their work, but it's still good work). Also, you forgot to add Ed Fox and Arne Bialuschewski to your list of academics (though the latter hasn't published books, he's done some crucial articles), plus Lee's one work on Blackbeard in the 70s isn't that great (especially now since scholarship on him has advanced pretty far and shown inaccuracies in his work).

[Mission]

I don't think it's quite that simple. Opinions about how good a book is vary widely based on the reader. Even authors vary as far as quality of writing goes. For example, Jan Rogozinski has written some good books on piracy and some not-so-good books.

Your best bet is to look at the purpose of the book and the bibliography, footnotes and endnotes if you can. When starting a new topic, I try to pick what seems to be a good book on a topic and read that. If it as good as I had hoped, I then start tracking down that book's sources.

[Fox]

f you want a reading list, why don't I just C+P a bibliography? Some of these are better than others, but most are worth a read (especially if you want to understand why some are better than others). Recommended titles in RED

Anderson, John L. ‘Piracy and World History, an Economic Perspective on Maritime Predation’, in Pennell, Bandits at Sea, 82-106

Anderson, Olive. ‘British Governments and Rebellion at Sea’, Historical Journal, 3 (1960), 56-84

Appleby, John C., and Paul Dalton (eds). Outlaws in Early Modern England: crime, government and society, c. 1066 - c. 1600 (Farnham, 2009)

Appleby, John C. Under the Bloody Flag. Pirates of the Tudor Age (Stroud, 2009)

Arnold-Forster, F.D. The Madagascar Pirates (New York, 1957)

Baer, Joel. Piracy Examined: A Study of Daniel Defoe’s General History of the Pirates and Its Milieu (unpublished doctoral thesis, Princeton University, 1970)

———‘“The Complicated Plot of Piracy”: Aspects of English Criminal Law and the Image of the Pirate in Defoe’, Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, 14 (1985), 3-28

———‘“Captain John Avery” and the Anatomy of a Mutiny’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 18 (1994), 1-26

——— ‘Bold Captain Avery in the Privy Council: Early Variants of a Broadside Ballad from the Pepys Collection’, Folk Music Journal, 7 (1995), 4-26

———‘William Dampier at the Crossroads: New Light on the “Missing Years,” 1691-1697’, International Journal of Maritime History, VIII (1996), 97-117

———Pirates (Stroud, 2007)

Beal, Clifford. Quelch’s Gold, piracy, greed, and betrayal in colonial New England (Westport, 2007)

Benton, Lauren. ‘Toward a New Legal History of Piracy: Maritime Legalities and the Myth of Universal Jurisdiction’, International Journal of Maritime History, XXIII (2011), 225-240

Bergstrand, Finn. ‘Då Madagaskar Skulle Bli Svenskt - och England Katolskt’, Karolinska Forbundets Arsbok (1997), 28-42

Bernhard, Virginia. ‘Bermuda and Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: A Comparative View’, Journal of Social History, 19 (1985), 57-70

Bialuschewski, Arne. ‘Between Newfoundland and the Malacca Strait: a Survey of the Golden Age of Piracy, 1695-1725’, Mariner’s Mirror, 90 (2004), 167-186

——— ‘Daniel Defoe, Nathaniel Mist, and the General History of the Pyrates’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 98 (2004), 21-38

———‘Pirates, Slavers and the Indigenous Population in Madagascar, c. 1690-1715’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 38 (2005), 401-425

——— ‘Pirate Voyages in History and Fantasy’, Global Crime, 7 (2006), 256-259

——— ‘Pirates, Markets and Imperial Authority: Economic Aspects of Maritime Depredations in the Atlantic World, 1716-1726’, Global Crime, 9 (2008), 52-65

———‘Black People under the Black Flag: Piracy and the Slave Trade on the West Coast of Africa, 1718-1723’, Slavery and Abolition, 29 (2008), 461-475

Black, Clinton V. Pirates of the West Indies (Cambridge 1989)

Bromley, J.S. Corsairs and Navies, 1660-1760 (London, 1987)

Burg, B.R. ‘Legitimacy and Authority: A Case Study of Pirate Commanders in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, American Neptune, 37 (1977), 40-51

———Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition (New York, 1984)

Burgess, Douglas R. The Pirates’ Pact (New York, 2008)

Burl, Aubrey. Black Barty: Bartholomew Roberts and his Pirate Crew 1718-1723 (Stroud, 2006)

Chapin, Howard M. Privateer Ships and Sailors, the First Century of American Colonial Privateering (Toulon, 1926)

Clark, J.C.D. Revolution and Rebellion. State and Society in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1986)

Cordingly, David. Life Among the Pirates, the Romance and the Reality (London, 1995)

———Heroines and Harlots, Women at Sea in the Great Age of Sail (London, 2001)

Course, Alfred George. Pirates of the Eastern Seas (London, 1966)

———Pirates of the Western Seas (London, 1969)

Craton, Michael. A History of the Bahamas (London, 1962)

Davis, Ralph. The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Newton Abbot, 1972)

Dow, George, and John Edmonds. Pirates of the New England Coast (Mineloa, 1999)

Earle, Peter. Sailors. English Merchant Seamen, 1650-1775 (London, 1998)

———The Pirate Wars (London, 2004)

Fuller, Basil, and Ronald Leslie-Melville. Pirate Harbours and Their Secrets (London, 1935)

Furbank, P.N. and W.R. Owens. ‘The Myth of Defoe as “Applebee’s Man”’, The Review of English Studies, New Series, 48 (1997), pp. 198-204

Fury, Cheryl A. Tides in the Affairs of Men: the social history of Elizabethan seamen, 1580-1603 (Westport, 2002)

Fury, Cheryl A. (ed.) The Social History of English Seamen, 1485-1649 (Woodbridge, 2012)

Gilbert, Arthur N. ‘Buggery and the British Navy, 1700-1861’, Journal of Social History, 10 (1976), 72-98

Gilje, Paul A. Liberty on the Waterfront, American maritime culture in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia, 2004)

Gilje, Paul A., and William Pencak (eds). Pirates, Jack Tar, and Memory: New Directions in American Maritime History (Mystic, 2007)

Gosse, Philip. The Pirates’ Who’s Who (New York, 1924)

Grey, Charles. Pirates of the Eastern Seas 1618-1723: a Lurid Page of History (London, 1933)

Hamilton, Christopher E. ‘The Pirate Ship Whydah’, in Skowronek and Ewen, X Marks the Spot, pp. 131-159

Hay, Douglas, Peter Linebaugh, John G. Rule, E.P. Thompson, and Cal Winslow. Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England (New York, 1975)

Hill, Christopher. ‘Radical Pirates?’, in Jacob, Anglo-American Radicalism, 17-32

———Liberty Against the Law (London, 1997)

———‘Pirates’, in Hill, Liberty Against the Law, 114-122

Holmes, Geoffrey. The Making of a Great Power. Late Stuart and Early Georgian England 1660-1722 (London, 1993)

Jacob, Margaret C. and James R. Jacob (eds), The Origins of Anglo-American Radicalism (London 1984)

Kemp, Peter, and Christopher Lloyd. Brethren of the Coast, the British and French Buccaneers in the South Seas (London 1960)

Kinkor, Kenneth J. ‘Black Men under the Black Flag’, in Pennell, Bandits at Sea, 195-210

Konstam, Angus. Blackbeard: America’s Most Notorious Pirate (Hoboken, 2006)

Kupperman, Karen Ordahl (ed.), Major Problems in American Colonial History, (Lexington, 1993)

Lee, Robert E. Blackbeard the Pirate: a Re-appraisal of his Life and Times (Winston-Salem, 1974)

Leeson, Peter T. ‘An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization’, Journal of Political Economy, 115 (2007), 1049-1094

———The Invisible Hook. The Hidden Economics of Pirates (Princeton, 2009)

———‘The Calculus of Piratical Consent: the myth of the myth of the social contract’, Public Choice, 139 (2009), 443-459

Linebaugh, Peter, and Marcus Rediker. The Many Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (London, 2000)

Lizé, Patrick. ‘Piracy in the Indian Ocean: Mauritius and the Speaker’, in Skowronek and Ewen, X Marks the Spot, pp. 81-99

Lusardi, Wayne R. ‘The Beaufort Inlet Shipwreck Artefact Assemblage’ in Skowronek and Ewen, X Marks the Spot, pp. 196-218

Lydon, James. Pirates, Privateers, and Profits (Upper Saddle River, 1970)

Mackie, Erin. ‘Welcome the Outlaw: pirates, maroons, and Caribbean countercultures’, Cultural Critique, 59 (2005), 24-62

McLynn, Frank. Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England (New York, 1989)

Morgan, Kenneth. ‘Bristol and the Atlantic Trade in the Eighteenth Century’, English Historical Review, 107 (1992), 626-650

———Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy, 1600-1800 (Cambridge, 2000)

Oberwittler, Dietrich. ‘Crime and Authority in Eighteenth Century England: Law Enforcement on the Local Level’, Historical Social Research, 15 (1990), 3-34

Pennell, C.R. (ed.). Bandits at Sea, a Pirates Reader (New York, 2001)

——— ‘Brought to Book: Reading about Pirates’, in Pennell, Bandits at Sea, pp. 3-24

Pérotin-Dumon, Anne. ‘The Pirate and the Emporer, Power and the Law on the Seas, 1450-1850’, in Pennell, Bandits at Sea, 25-54

Pringle, Patrick. Jolly Roger (Mineola, 2001)

Rediker, Marcus. ‘“Under the Banner of King Death”: The Social World of Anglo-American Pirates, 1716-1726’, The William and Mary Quarterly, Third series, 38 (1981), 203-227

———Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: merchant seamen, pirates, and the Anglo-American maritime world, 1700-1750 (Cambridge, 1987)

———Villains of all Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (London, 2004)

Ritchie, Robert C. Pirates: myths and realities (Minneapolis, 1986)

———Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates (Cambridge, Mass., 1986)

Rodger, N.A.M. The Wooden World, an Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (London, 1988)

———Command of the Ocean, a Naval history of Britain, 1649-1815 (London, 2004)

Rogozinski, Jan. Honor Among Thieves: Captain Kidd, Henry Every, and the Pirate Democracy in the Indian Ocean (Mechanicsburg, 2000)

Russell, Lord. The French Corsairs (London, 1970)

Sanders, Richard. If a Pirate I Must Be (London, 2007)

Sherry, Frank. Raiders and Rebels. The Golden Age of Piracy (New York, 1986)

Skowronek, Russell K. and Charles R. Ewen (eds). X Marks the Spot: The Archaeology of Piracy (Gainesville, 2006)

Starkey, David J. (ed.). British Privateering Enterprise in the Eighteenth Century (Exeter, 1990)

Pirates and Privateers: new perspectives on the war on trade in the eighteenth century (Exeter, 1997)

——— ‘Pirates and Markets’, in Pennell, Bandits at Sea, 107-124

———‘The Origins and Regulation of Eighteenth-Century British Privateering’, in Pennell, Bandits at Sea, 69-81

——— ‘Voluntaries and Sea Robbers: A review of the academic literature on privateering, corsairing, buccaneering and piracy’, Mariners Mirror, 97 (2011), 127-147

Stumpf, Stuart, O. ‘Edward Randolph's Attack on Proprietary Government in South Carolina’, South Carolina Historical Magazine, 79 (1978), 6-18

Thomson, Janice. Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe (Princeton, 1994)

Turley, Hans. Rum, Sodomy and the Lash (New York, 1999)

Vickers, Daniel, Lewis R. Fischer, Marilyn Porter, Sean Cadigan, Robert Lewis, Peter Narváez, Peter Pope, David J. Starkey, and Marcus Rediker, ‘Roundtable: Reviews of Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750, with a Response by Marcus Rediker’, International Journal of Maritime History, I (1989), 311-357

Vickers, Daniel, and Vince Walsh. ‘Young Men and the Sea: the sociology of seafaring in eighteenth century Salem, Massachusetts’, Social History, 24 (1999), 17-38

———Young Men and the Sea: Yankee seafarers in the age of sail (New Haven, 2005)

Wilkinson, Henry. Bermuda in the Old Empire: A History of the Island from the Dissolution of the Somers Island Company until the end of the American Revolutionary War, 1684-1784 (Oxford, 1950)

Williams, Crystal. ‘Nascent Socialists or Resourceful Criminals? A Reconsideration of Transatlantic Piracy’, in Gilje and Pencak, Pirates, Jack Tar and Memory, 31-50

Williams, Daniel E. ‘Puritans and Pirates: A Confrontation between Cotton Mather and William Fly in 1726’ Early American literature, 22 (1987), 233-251

Witt, Jann M. ‘Mutiny and Piracy in Northern Europe Merchant Shipping: Forms of Insurrection on board British and German Merchant Ships in the Late 17th and 18th Centuries’, Northern Mariner, 18 (2008), 1-27

Woodard, Colin. The Republic of Pirates (Orlando, 2007)

[Cod Rotten Bandlesworth]

Yes!!!! A list like this is exactly what I was looking for! Many many thanks.

[Mission]

What is that, Foxe? The Bib from you doctoral thesis?

[Fox]

It's about a third of the bibliography from my thesis. I took out all of the stuff not directly related to pirates, like several very good articles on early-modern literacy for example.

[Cod Rotten Bandlesworth]

How are Cordingly's "terror on theHigh Seas" and "Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean"?? Also, is Kuhn a reliable author, specifically "life Under the Jolly Roger"??

One other thing, how do I get to read Arne B's work? Most of it seems to be in German..

[GregF]

I personally like Cordingly's Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean a lot. Cordingly, who has written several other books on piracy and maritime history, including Under the Black Flag, wrote this book about Captain Woodes Rogers (~1679 - 1732). Rogers was once a privateer but later was appointed governor of the Bahamas and fought against Atlantic piracy. Cordingly's book recounts Rogers' many travels and experiences, but also touches on other noteworthy maritime events during this period, including the rescue of Alexander Selkirk, on whose experiences Defoe is believed to have based Robinson Crusoe.

[Fox]

Also, is Kuhn a reliable author

In absolutely no way whatsoever. I haven't read that particular book, but I have read other works by Kuhn and they are among the worst things ever written about pirates while masquerading as "history". Even if you have a barge-pole available, I still caution avoiding

[Swashbuckler 1700]

By the way.

Has Philip Gosse's studies got terribly outdated or are they bad?

Just wondering...

Edited January 29, 2014 by Swashbuckler 1700

[Cod Rotten Bandlesworth]

Thanks for all the info so far!!

I didn't want to make an entirely new thread on this, so I figured I'd ask here: Are there any plans to release the three volume project (trial records) that Tony Malesic was working on before he passed? I know he mentioned he was working on it with a couple others. A collection of that sort would be incredibly useful. Hopefully it sees the light of day..

[Fox]

Not as far as I know. Tony was the prime mover, with the late Ken Kinkor also playing an important part. Sadly, their deaths have probably taken the wind out of the project's sails. Also, several of the trials that were going to be in the work have already been printed in Joel Baer's British Piracy in the Golden Age. Three more of the trials will also be published in the near future in the forthcoming Pirates, in Their Own Words.

Tony and Ken were not working alone, so perhaps some of the others will pick the project up, but I haven't heard anything for some years.

[GregF]

Foxe,

Who is doing Pirates, in Their Own Words and when is it coming out?

[Brit.Privateer]

Are there any plans to release the three volume project (trial records) that Tony Malesic was working on before he passed? I know he mentioned he was working on it with a couple others. A collection of that sort would be incredibly useful. Hopefully it sees the light of day..

When and where did this get announced? Plus having Kenneth Kinkor involved also advances my interest. Were they only trial transcripts? The only think I know of that might be remotely related to this is Kinkor's Whydah Sourcebook that never got published before he died.

[Cod Rotten Bandlesworth]

Tony spoke about it numerous times on piratesinfo. He mentioned that he had been working on it for years and put a lot of money into it. Joel Baer's collection is very intriguing to me but, wowwww at the price tag!