WEBVTT - Part One: Pirates, Libertalia, and the Betsimisaraka Confederation 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:06.680 Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People. 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:10.960 Did Cool Stuff your weekly reminder that there's sometimes two 0:00:10.960 --> 0:00:14.240 things that are, if not good, at least interesting. I'm 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:18.319 your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me today is a 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:22.880 guest who also researches deep, weird historical subjects, often the 0:00:22.920 --> 0:00:25.800 same ones that I do. Molly Krabapple, Hi. 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:27.920 Hey, please to be here. 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:29.080 How are you doing? 0:00:30.200 --> 0:00:33.280 Slightly tired but very good. I was in the research 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:34.400 minds again today. 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:38.480 Oh good. I love those minds. I left them about 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:44.760 thirty minutes before recording started. Sophie gets my scripts shortly 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:48.360 before I record and can tell how I'm doing based 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:54.200 on how shortly before we record scripts come along. But Mollie, 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:57.400 I was trying to figure out one sentence version of you, 0:00:57.560 --> 0:00:59.720 and I came up with a conflict journalist and artist 0:00:59.720 --> 0:01:02.000 and all around cool person who's researching a book about 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:04.560 the Jewish Labor Bund, which has been on the show 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:07.000 multiple times. Not you, you haven't been on the show before, 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:09.399 but the Jewish Labor Bund has. How's that for a description? 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:13.320 I like that description? And I can't even tell you 0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:15.520 how much my heart soared when I listened to all 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.119 of your episodes about like my gangster King Bernard Goldstein 0:01:19.200 --> 0:01:21.959 and other Jewish labor and stuff. So I'm so happy 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:22.440 to be here. 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:26.720 Yeah, I am excited to have you, and I'm excited 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:30.880 to have you to talk about the Betsimisarik Confederation. You 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:32.800 ever heard of the bet Semisarik Confederation? 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:34.720 Never? In my life? 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:37.600 I sure as hell hadn't either, Sophia, You ever heard 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:37.840 of it? 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:38.800 Nope? 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:41.319 I'm pretty excited to talk about them because it talks 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:42.880 about a whole bunch of stuff that we like talking 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:46.320 about on this show. Yeay, okay, So that was a 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:50.040 real thing that happened, right, that confederation. But I had 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:53.360 heard of something called Libertalia, a thing that never happened. 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:57.280 You ever heard about the pirate utopia Libertalia? 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:01.840 I feel like in my youthful days trolling anarchist bookstores, 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:05.720 I saw like cultural signifiers pointing towards this. 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:10.040 Yeah. That's uh, That's where I came up with it 0:02:10.080 --> 0:02:10.840 too originally. 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:14.200 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's like some well patched jackets involved 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:16.280 with this, perhaps a crime think pamphlet. 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:19.160 Oh yeah no. And I'm going to talk about a 0:02:19.200 --> 0:02:21.000 friend of mineho war patch pants. He told me about 0:02:21.040 --> 0:02:26.120 it real soon, because Pirate Utopia's on Madagascar is what 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:28.400 we're talking about this week, and we're talking about how 0:02:29.000 --> 0:02:33.079 most of what we know about it is lies really cool, 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:37.440 but there's a bunch of true stuff that's even more interesting, 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:40.760 which is like my favorite kind of cool people who 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:41.680 did cool stuff story. 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:44.600 Oh my god, this is fucking amazing. Go On, go on. 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:49.280 This week, we're going to talk about pirates Madagascar, synthesis 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:53.080 between indigenous and foreign criminal ideas of liberty and pirates, 0:02:53.120 --> 0:02:54.840 which I already said, but I'm going to say twice 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:58.600 because it's it's fun. We talk a lot on the 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:02.040 show about various experiments with like free horizontal societies that 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:04.200 have been tried over the years. We've talked a lot 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:07.919 about the republican and anarchist Spain. We've talked about the 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:11.400 horizontal peasants in Ukraine and Manchuria. We've talked about various 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:15.000 maroon communities of you know, indigenous folks and runaway enslave 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:17.200 people in the Americas, and we'll keep talking about all 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:20.560 of those things. We also once did a couple episodes 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:25.120 about societies that should have been free but weren't, like 0:03:25.240 --> 0:03:29.480 the Golden Age of pirates. The goal of those episodes 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:30.880 that people can go back and listen to if they 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:33.680 want to hear all about it is to explode kind 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:36.440 of a couple layers of myth making about pirates. I'm 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:38.600 kind of curious, like coming into it, because there's all 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:42.000 of these different versions of pirates. Where do you land on, like, 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:47.480 you know, Jolly Roger, European and Caribbean pirates. 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:51.560 I think the pirates that I was always most interested 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:54.600 in were the pirates that were like the guy that 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:58.760 they based Jack Sparrow on, who were essentially poor Europeans 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:03.720 whose ships were taken over by pirates from algiers and 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:05.800 who were given the choice of whether like to convert 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:09.160 to Islam and piracy or to become galley slaves, and 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:12.240 they obviously chose to convert to Islam and piracy. So 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:17.200 I always thought the Muslim pirates were the shit. And 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:21.320 in fact, the first free Muslim in New York City 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:23.599 ever was the son of a pirate. 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:26.799 Oh shit, we're going to talk about New York City 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:29.400 mostly in bad ways in this episode. 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:32.400 Actually we're very evil city, I mean, with who have 0:04:32.440 --> 0:04:34.800 done many bad things. Why we're so rich? 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:36.800 You know that New York City was the had the 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:40.599 second largest concentration of enslaved people during the colonial period. 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:41.799 I did. 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:44.719 I didn't until I researched this. It makes sense that 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:47.200 you did. You live in New York City. We always 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:49.560 think of like the North as the place where there 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:52.080 was no slavery, and to be fair, the North like 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:54.359 fought a whole war and like died a lot to 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:56.520 end slavery. I'm not trying to specifically come for the 0:04:56.560 --> 0:05:01.880 North here. But so there's all of these myths about pirates, right, 0:05:01.880 --> 0:05:03.800 and there's all these different layers to it, and there 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:06.480 is a lot of truth behind a lot of it too. 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:09.359 There's these ideas that pirates were wonderful democrats and a 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:12.800 truly a galitarian society. Then there was another set of 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:14.520 myths that they were like, no, they were all petty 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:16.680 tyrannies of this or that captain, and anyone who says 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:19.400 they were democrats is a liar, and everything was violence 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:23.240 and bad. And the truth, as best as I can 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:26.640 sort out, is that it's messier than either of those. 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:31.240 I've been arguing that Golden Age pirates, often way more 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:34.480 than I actually expected, did live free in a galitarian 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:40.400 short lives. So they were a galitarian within themselves, but 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:44.560 they also practiced conscription and slavery and physical and sexual violence, 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:48.960 and their moral world only applied internally. Externally, anything goes. 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:51.720 The really magical thing about pirates from this point of 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:54.640 view isn't that they were like somehow precursors to good 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:59.160 republican societies, although it turns out they actually did influence 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:03.479 the later literal republics. And I had no idea, But 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:09.680 they lived these brief, beautiful, strange, terrible lives outside the 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:12.200 logic of capitalism in the state, and they did a 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:15.080 strange and romantic mixture of both good and evil with 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:18.239 their short lives. They freed some slaves, they conscripted others, 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:20.960 and then they sold others further along the way. You know. 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:26.240 So the myth making around Golden Age pirates is nearly 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:30.280 as old as pirates themselves. There's one major book about 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:32.440 pirates from the Golden Age of Piracy, from which, like 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:36.640 almost everything that isn't you know, actual anthropology and stuff 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:40.840 are like main source. And this Golden Age of piracy 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:44.080 really only lasted from like seventeen fifteen to seventeen twenty six. 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:46.040 Although if you feel like being like real generous, you 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:48.799 can do sixteen fifties to seventeen thirties. 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:51.800 You know, it's like nine years. Nine years was all 0:06:51.839 --> 0:06:52.440 it lasted. 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:54.800 Yeah, Like, I mean there's versions of it, depends on 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:56.320 where you want to draw the start in the close 0:06:56.360 --> 0:07:00.120 of it, but like, yeah, most of the like we're 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.000 gonna talk about some pirates who were like the most 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:04.880 famous pirate in history in the following reason and they 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:08.240 like did piracy for two years or got shot in 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:11.760 the belly and died on their second raid. You know, 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:14.040 it wasn't a good way to live a very long 0:07:14.080 --> 0:07:16.960 time to declare war against the entire world. Who would 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:17.240 have known? 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:19.560 Who would have known? They were here for a good time, 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:20.280 not a long time. 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:23.760 Yeah, that is that is the true pirate motto. And 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:27.200 I was like this idea that like because the Jolly Roger, 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:28.840 as much as it was like a skull and crossbones, 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:32.160 sometimes a lot of them used hourglasses, and I love 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:35.480 that the part of the point of the hourglass wasn't 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:38.080 like your time is up. It was kind of like 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:41.960 our time is running out, so you should be afraid 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:43.520 of us because we don't give a shit. 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:44.560 Wow. 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.280 Wow the other stuff too, right, when like old timey 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:50.800 pirates will like curse and blaspheme and stuff like these 0:07:50.880 --> 0:07:53.000 days someone's saying, goddamn, it is like not a real 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:55.880 big deal, right, It was a kind of a big 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:59.960 deal because you're this is like pre Enlightenment or like 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:03.440 just around the start of the Enlightenment. You know, they're 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:07.280 all like saying, we are hell bound. They like meant it. 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:12.040 They didn't care. Yeah, they were like Milton Satan or something. 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:15.480 Yeah, no I And so it's it's funny because then 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:17.360 also a lot of the myths that sprung up around 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:21.400 them were like they literally worshiped Satan. They kind of 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:25.080 might have my kids, like my God, some of them, right, 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:28.160 or like but another pirate like maybe got killed by 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:31.320 his own crew for worshiping Satan. It's like or that's 0:08:31.360 --> 0:08:34.120 all shit to sell books, and no one fucking knows, 0:08:34.240 --> 0:08:37.400 and it's so weird and cool and interesting. I'm completely 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:41.200 offscript at this point. Oh fuck, Okay, sorry, no, no, no, 0:08:41.240 --> 0:08:43.280 it's not your fault. I just I'm really interested in 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:47.480 that stuff. Okay. So the one book that most shit 0:08:47.600 --> 0:08:50.160 is based on from seventeen twenty four, and it's called 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:54.320 A General History of the Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson, 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:58.120 there is no such name this man, it's a pseudonym. 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:00.520 It is generally accepted that this book was written by 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:03.560 Daniel Dafoe, although more recent he's the guy who wrote 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:07.559 Robinson Crusoe, but more recent scholarship suggests it might have 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:11.280 been a publisher named a Nathaniel mist. Basically, it was 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:13.079 just like, ah, we need to book about pirates to 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:15.840 sell to people. Can you write about pirates? Yeah, I 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:19.800 get write about pirates. You know. This book two volumes. 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:23.080 It's a list of pirate captains and their adventures. Most 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:25.480 of the stories are more or less true, or at 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:27.839 least they describe people who actually existed, and there seems 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:30.800 to be some real scholarship. But then a second volume 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:34.520 was released and it contains three pirates who probably didn't 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:39.160 exist at all. One was William Lewis, who is openly 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:40.960 in league with the devil and so this is like 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:43.400 where you get like, you know, maybe it's a myth 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:45.400 making right, And he's the one who got killed by 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:49.840 his own crew. Then his quartermaster succeeded him. John Cornelius 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:53.200 also probably didn't exist, because this whole devilship probably didn't. 0:09:54.000 --> 0:09:56.880 But most important to our story was a pirate who 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:59.920 loomed large in my early life as an anarchist trap 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:05.880 A famous Captain James Mission, or just Captain Mission he's 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:10.480 usually called, was a good last name, although might be 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:12.160 a little on the nose if this was whole thing 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:15.720 was made up to tell a moral tale. One of 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:18.360 my best friends when I was a young wanderer was 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:22.079 this tiny Irish American man named Dark Star, who proudly 0:10:22.120 --> 0:10:25.640 announced that he weighed ninety pounds soaking wet, he had 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:29.400 snake bite piercings. He scowled all of the time, and 0:10:29.440 --> 0:10:31.600 he was utterly and fully committed to a life of 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:34.800 piracy in classic form. He did not live a very 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:38.040 long time. He wrote freight trains. He lived in a van. 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:40.160 He fucked dudes for money to get gas, or he 0:10:40.200 --> 0:10:43.920 would just steal money or gas as needed. He burned 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:46.520 every American flag he could find. His so many stories 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:48.280 about being like and then we stole all these American 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:49.760 flags and I had to hide in a dumpster from 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:52.920 the cops for six hours. And this kind of man. 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:57.520 He also wrote short stories about animals living in happy 0:10:57.520 --> 0:11:01.040 anarchist societies, and he wrote a zene call Irish for Punks, 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:04.560 which was full of ideas about how to cuss in Irish. 0:11:04.840 --> 0:11:06.960 When I was twenty and he was twenty one, he 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:11.760 died drinking and driving stolen photocopies of anarchizines splayed out 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:15.880 across the freeway. Don't drink and dive or drink and die. 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:20.040 Don't drink and drive or you will die. It's bad. 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:24.800 Don't do it. Before he died, he told me a 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:28.480 lot about pirates. He was obsessed with pirates. He used 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:31.240 to draw lox's over his eyes when he would write 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:35.360 letters to me, And he told me about Captain Mission. 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:40.680 As Darkstar had it, Captain Mission was like the original anarchist. 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:43.720 He and his crew attacked slave ships, freeing the slaves 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:47.040 and killing the slavers before establishing an anti racist colony 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:51.559 on Madagascar called Libertalia, which was ruled by direct democracy, 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:54.520 and they lived in a socialist economy nearly a century 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:59.520 before anyone was calling anything socialism. This story is too 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:04.200 good to be true, and it's not true. Captain Mission 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:07.199 was invented by the author of the Pirate Book. Almost certainly. 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:10.720 I'd always assumed he'd been invented whole cloth, either to 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:14.400 sell more books, because like, uh, throw this little interesting 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:17.760 guy in there, right, or to get across some political ideas, 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:22.000 a mission as it were, right, Captain Mission is clearly 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:25.560 an important part of the book. Captain Mission's chapter is 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:29.000 more than fourteen thousand words long, which is real long 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:31.080 for people who are listening and they don't think in 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:34.959 terms of words like my weird writer brain is poisoned 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:39.480 to do. That's twice as long as this week's script. 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:44.440 So a bunch of words. It's also clearly important to 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:47.080 the author. It is the first chapter of the second volume. 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:50.640 And it turns out he did base it on fact. 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:54.320 He just based it on the less interesting part of 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:57.600 the story. And this sounds like an ad transition, but 0:12:57.640 --> 0:12:59.560 it Isn't you know what else was both real and 0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:01.120 imagine somehow both at once. 0:13:02.280 --> 0:13:04.760 The monetary system that we use. 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:12.000 Oh that's true. Also the libertarian socialist pirate communities on Madagascar, 0:13:13.040 --> 0:13:16.960 which inasmuch as they existed, were less colonies of like 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:22.280 white and black pirates from elsewhere and more complicated societies 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:26.480 built from indigenous Malagassi political traditions interacting with pirates. 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:30.440 So the pirates were showing up running away from the 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:33.280 crown and all the people they stole from landing in 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:36.680 this place where well, I've read my David Graber where 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:40.240 there was a super developed form of democracy and like 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:42.480 learning it from the Malagasy and that sounds like a 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:44.880 very nice fairy tale too, So there must be something 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:45.839 more complicated than that. 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:49.959 Okay, so interesting one. David Graber is the main source 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:55.320 for this episode. Fuck yes, two No, Actually, oh, the 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:57.200 ways in which it's different from that are so interesting 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:00.599 because egalitarian traditions were coming from a lot of the 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:03.480 Malagasy methods of how people were living there, but they 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:06.559 were not any way democratic. The pirates actually brought the democracy. 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:10.400 But oh, you're gonna like it. This is gonna be 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:10.880 a good Okay. 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:12.680 I cannot wait. I cannot wait, I cannot wait. 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:20.480 So Madagascar, Madagascar is a big fucking island off the 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:23.800 coast of Southeast Africa. It is almost as big as Texas. 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:27.360 Even if you're bad at geography, especially African geography, like 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:29.800 the average American, I think there's a good chance that 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:32.000 people know where Madagascar. 0:14:31.440 --> 0:14:34.160 Is, the giant island off of the coast. 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:37.440 Yeah. I feel like if you handed the average non 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:41.720 Africa geography know where, they'd probably figure out. Egypt, South 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:43.040 Africa and Madagascar. 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:46.400 Maybe I'm wrong, and yeah, I think you might be overestimating. 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:49.360 I think probably only Madagascar fair enough. 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:53.840 There's a lot of things that know anyway, I'm not 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:55.800 great at geography, but I know way more than that. 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:58.120 I'm proud to say because I worked at it. This 0:14:58.240 --> 0:14:59.760 is not what anyone is here to hear about it. 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:05.600 Geography Understanding Madagascar is fascinating for a thousand reasons. There's 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:09.000 a ton of biodiversity there, especially endemic plants and animals, 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:12.760 like stuff that doesn't appear anywhere else. There are a 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:15.600 fuck ton of endemic species of lemurs. I spent way 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:17.120 too long in the time I had to write this 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:19.920 script just looking at pictures of different kinds of lemurs. 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:22.600 Was there a lemur pirate intersection? 0:15:23.240 --> 0:15:25.960 No, I just was reading about Madagascar and I got 0:15:25.960 --> 0:15:28.640 distracted by pictures of lemurs. This is the way my 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:32.920 brain works. Also, there's an animal called a fossa, which 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:35.440 is like a giant mongoose that looks like a puma 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:37.720 and eats lemurs. They're pretty cool. 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:40.840 Right now, I'm in my head, I'm drawing pirate lemurs. 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:42.360 I'm sorry. This is what happens when you get an 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:43.160 artist on the show. 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:46.320 No, yeah, no, you know what, you can just to 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:49.720 draw pirate lemurs and it'll be great. There's also huge 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:54.480 bats there, and there's an animal called the satanic leaf 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:55.160 tailed gecko. 0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:56.720 What the fuck? 0:15:57.080 --> 0:15:57.720 I want one. 0:15:58.360 --> 0:15:59.160 They're so cute. 0:15:59.320 --> 0:15:59.920 I want one. 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:02.320 They really are little satanic leaf tail gekos. 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:04.680 Is it big or little? Is it a tiny thing 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:05.280 or a large? 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:05.520 Oh? 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:05.840 I don't know. 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:08.000 I didn't get a good picture for scale, but has 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:12.280 a leaf tail and it's like dragon demon looking. They're 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:12.640 so good. 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:15.000 This is of course, this became pirate Island, and look 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:16.080 at the visuals that you have. 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:20.280 No, I know right, folks have lived on Madagascar for 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:22.120 around two thousand years. It actually is one of the 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:24.560 like more recently populated large land masses. 0:16:24.600 --> 0:16:26.960 I'm sorry, I have to pause for a second so 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:29.120 I can show you guys this gecko. 0:16:29.440 --> 0:16:33.800 Because it's actually really terrifying. Look at this guy. 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:38.400 What the fuck man? That was what the Satan pirate 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:40.480 was worshiping that the crew killed him for They It 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:42.960 was definitely yeah yeah, because look at those eyes. 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:45.520 One of those was hanging out on his shoulder just 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:46.240 talking to him. 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:50.080 And I don't change my statement. I want one. I 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.920 want this guy with this crazy giant red eyeballs. 0:16:54.240 --> 0:16:56.400 Yeah. Oh oh they're tiny. 0:16:56.760 --> 0:16:59.160 They're tiny. Well they're geckos, their finger ge goos. 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:01.440 That one's like finger nail. That might be a baby. 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:03.160 That might be a baby. But yeah, anyways, I just 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:05.439 thought everybody should know that. And if you're listening, please 0:17:05.560 --> 0:17:09.320 please google Satanic leaf tailed gecko. You will enjoy it. Yeah, 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:11.240 oh my god, what a delightful creature. 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:14.160 I know. No, you're right, this is what the guy 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:16.320 was worshiping. Like one of them was hanging out on 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:18.640 his shoulder, and people were like, I just can't handle it. 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:19.639 It's too much for me. 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:22.040 He had a pinky gecko and it was hanging out 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:23.920 on his pinky. He was talking to it. He was 0:17:23.960 --> 0:17:25.639 asking whether or not they should do missions, and the 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:28.280 crew tore him into pieces over it. 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:33.640 Thunder Yeah, that tracks, and I would read the your 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:37.000 graphic novel about it. So folks have lived there for 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:39.960 about two thousand years, coming from all over the place, 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:42.120 coming from the east, the north, and the west, from 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:47.080 Indonesia and Swanna and East Africa, including most likely many Jews. 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:49.840 Were actually an important part of the sort of cultural 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:54.600 makeup of Madagascar for a long time. These groups actually 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:56.960 just lived in different places, and then around the turn 0:17:57.000 --> 0:17:59.679 of the first millennia you start getting a synthesis culture 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:04.160 that what's now the Malagassy culture. The island was under 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:07.320 Arab influence and slavers from the Ottoman Empire lived on 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:09.200 the west coast of it for a long ass time, 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:12.320 doing a fair amount of integrating into the local population 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:15.280 or at least making all alliances and such with them. 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:19.040 They stayed apart, but they weren't like, they weren't what 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:21.520 the Europeans are about to do basically. 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:24.560 And so were they they enslaving Malagasy people or were 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:26.400 they using it as a base to take slaves from 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:28.280 other parts of the continent. 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:32.960 So they were buying, So slavery and in Madagascar was 0:18:33.000 --> 0:18:34.639 actually kind of interesting when we talk about it a 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:38.040 little bit. Basically, whenever different groups would fight, they would 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:40.119 take captives from each other, and then those would they 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:43.439 would turn around and sell them to the Ottomans, who 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:45.640 would then sell them off the island. So they weren't 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:49.200 necessarily like raiding for slaves, but they were instead buying 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:53.840 them from people there. And yeah, they absolutely were enslaving 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:57.439 people on the island and shipping them away. Portugal and 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:00.960 France tried to set up settlements too, starting the fifteen hundreds, 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:03.959 but they were messy assholes about it, and they all 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:06.359 got run off by the locals and or like just killed. 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:08.160 Were what were they doing? 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:13.520 So basically Europeans were just seen as violent savages. 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:14.639 Like I mean, for good reason. 0:19:14.840 --> 0:19:18.560 Absolutely they were accurately seen as what they were. And 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:23.639 they would show up and basically just like take whatever 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:25.800 they wanted and rob people and just like try to 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:28.000 like crush entire villages and just be like whatever, it's 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:30.399 ours now. And they would be like incredibly racist about stuff, 0:19:30.400 --> 0:19:34.080 and they would like it was just like the Ottoman 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:36.480 Empire showed up as slavers and stead up like slave 0:19:36.600 --> 0:19:39.800 trade places, and they were by far the lesser evil. 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:46.000 That's how bad the Europeans were. Basically the tracks the tracks. Yeah, 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:50.359 And so you know, these legal settlements would just go around, 0:19:50.400 --> 0:19:52.120 and I'm comparing that to the pirates who were gonna 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:55.400 come later, who actually were much more polite. The legal 0:19:55.440 --> 0:19:58.159 settlements would run around and rob locals and capture slaves 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:00.040 and shit, and were far too racist to consider that 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:04.600 are integrating with the locals at all. Later European settlements 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:09.879 did start sticking around pirate settlements. Not everyone, not all 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:12.560 the pirates were European, right, but they were kind of 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:18.159 more in the European sphere of influence. Basically, the pirates 0:20:18.200 --> 0:20:20.440 ironically were a lot less likely to steal ship from 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:25.000 their neighbors and or steal their neighbors themselves because. 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:26.960 They didn't have like a base that they could run 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:29.280 to and you know, take all of their loot off to, 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:32.439 because they actually had to make themselves not hated in 0:20:32.520 --> 0:20:34.200 order to use the island as a base. 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:36.159 I think. So, I mean, they kind of just like 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:38.920