Max Boot: What to Read on Pirates
Recent attacks off the Horn of Africa have revived interest in piracy. There is a rich literature on the subject focusing primarily on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Today's piracy problems share enough characteristics with their historical precursors to make an understanding of the earlier experiences useful as well as fun.
A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious
Pirates. By Captain Charles Johnson. Lyons Press, 2002.
This is the ur-text for piracy studies -- the one that started it all. As Charles Johnson's introduction notes, his work, which went through several editions, consists of profiles"of these desperadoes, who were the terror of the trading part of the world." A General History was originally published in London in 1724, just three years after the death of Bartholomew Roberts (Black Bart), one of its most notorious subjects. No one knows who the author was. It was once assumed that Captain Johnson was a pseudonym for Daniel Defoe; now there is speculation that the author was a pirate himself, or at least an experienced seaman who met a number of pirates. In any case, he was well informed, and although some of his claims are fanciful (there was no such place as Libertalia, a supposed pirate haven), most have stood the test of subsequent historical research. Some of his most famous passages concern Captain Teach, who"assumed the cognomen of Blackbeard from that large quantity of hair which, like a frightful meteor, covered his whole face and frightened America more than any comet that has appeared there a long time."
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