Pirate Societies in the Atlantic World

Reflection

In selecting my research question for Pirates of the Atlantic World, I reflected on some of the themes that we examined throughout the course and determined that I wanted to explore how the romanization of piracy in recent years might be a hyperbolic extension of pirate societies’ reputation for being more egalitarian than their political mainland counterparts.  In the initial stages, I chose the “free and egalitarian societies” in the freebooter era of piracy, and, in the course of my research, I examined current research from the notable historians on the subject, the “important” and “authoritative” ones were there… the ones "Clio’s Current" refers to in What is Historiography (notably multiple works from Marcus Rediker, Peter Linebaugh, and Mark Hanna) and original ones that challenged some of their points (mostly from two works from Arne Bialuschewski).  I also selected some that explored the topic from a different lens, notably from Peter Leeson’s Invisible Hook that took an economic-historical approach.  In this exercise, I was able to grasp a larger picture into the nature of pirate societies.  Hardly myopic, this wide range of secondary sources saw history as a large picture, by assembling and interpreting events through primary research and other secondary texts.  My task was to sort through these texts to analyze their merits and to synthesize these into a historical argument.  The challenge was to sift through these narratives to examine and apply their merits and weaknesses.  In the end, I found that the current authorities on the piracy were most compelling while Bialuschewski’s argument, while interesting, seemed thin in comparison.  My paper, then compiled all of these, sometimes conflicting, claims to address my research question: How democratic and egalitarian were the “freebooters”.