Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Great Polycules of History, your podcast
Speaker 1: that's usually called cool pepolted cool stuff, but this week
Speaker 1: I'm calling Great Polycules of History. I'm your host, Margaret Keljoy,
Speaker 1: and with me today is Miriam Rochack, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite guests of all time. Miriam, I'm good. I'm excited
Speaker 1: to hear what sounds like some messy history. Yeay, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of I'm mislit whatever. I'm just gonna go with it. Okay,
Speaker 1: you haven't. You still haven't told me what we're recording
Speaker 1: about it? Neither has s Okay, now you're lying. Now
Speaker 1: I'm now our audi. Do you want to start over?
Speaker 1: I tried very hard to not tell Miriam what this
Speaker 1: episode was about. Anyway, I'll just so, Miriam. Is it
Speaker 1: fun that every time I introduce you, I do so
Speaker 1: by saying Miriam and the rest of her crew once
Speaker 1: stole a tall ship and sailed off without their bosses
Speaker 1: permission because they weren't getting paid. Oh yeah, it's that's
Speaker 1: slightly inaccurate. We didn't sail off without the boss's permission.
Speaker 1: We just started operating the boat on our own terms
Speaker 1: and getting paid in cash for it without involving the
Speaker 1: owners of the boat. But yeah, okay, okay, So Miriam
Speaker 1: wants to stole a tall ship, sailed it to a
Speaker 1: different continent and interrupted the transatlantic slave trade. That sounds
Speaker 1: years ago. So and our producers Sophie, Hi, Sophie, how
Speaker 1: are you? First of all, when you don't want me
Speaker 1: to tell Miriam something? You say, hey, don't tell Miriam
Speaker 1: something because I'm gonna blab to my friend right away.
Speaker 1: And I'm terrible at lying solid of Miriam. Okay here,
Speaker 1: I'm remember a light of Beriam. So the reason that
Speaker 1: this was so hard for me to keep the secret
Speaker 1: is that Miriam is one of my main friends that
Speaker 1: I like send signal messages to throughout the week as
Speaker 1: I do research, like tittering about this or that great
Speaker 1: lesbian and history are, who are whatever? Like the stuff
Speaker 1: that I don't even necessarily include in the podcast. I
Speaker 1: just get really excited about. I did enjoy being there
Speaker 1: live for your disappointment in last week's Last Week's Hero
Speaker 1: when you discovered that he was in fact terrible to
Speaker 1: his wife. Yeah, didn't anyway, So it was particularly hard.
Speaker 1: It was a struggle to not so what did we learn?
Speaker 1: What we're talking about it. From this experience, Magpie, don't
Speaker 1: trust people. If you need me to lie to somebody,
Speaker 1: tell me to lie. I wouldn't tell you to lie.
Speaker 1: I just would have told you to note on your
Speaker 1: behalf if you asked me too, I appreciate it. If
Speaker 1: the if the cops come, Okay, so all right. What
Speaker 1: I have learned is to always assume that people want
Speaker 1: to talk to me about what you're about to tell us.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about. Yeah, okay, So Ian as
Speaker 1: our audio engineer, and our music was written for us
Speaker 1: by one woman, high Ian Miriam. Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: about pirates pi rits. It looks like it's pronounced oh yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah no, Um. It took me a while. I looked
Speaker 1: up a bunch of videos, but how to pronounce it?
Speaker 1: It's actually pirate. I like when they spell it with
Speaker 1: a y. That is actually the main source that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to talk about the golden age of piracy,
Speaker 1: which is means that this is another moral complexity week.
Speaker 1: They mostly weren't good people, no, not not particularly. They're
Speaker 1: um even the best of them could probably appear on
Speaker 1: different shows on this network, Like I gotta warn you,
Speaker 1: Um you know, as you know, I had a tall
Speaker 1: ship period of my career. During that time, the Pirates
Speaker 1: of the Caribbean movies, like the first one was out,
Speaker 1: they were more of them were coming out. The I'm
Speaker 1: on a Boat song came out. During this time. It
Speaker 1: was it was time to be I have heard of
Speaker 1: pop culture from approximately fifteen years ago. Ow cool, I
Speaker 1: know what you put in the box. Anyway, The truth
Speaker 1: is I burned out hard on pirates, but that was
Speaker 1: about a decade ago, so I'm probably ready to give
Speaker 1: pirates another try. Yeah you know, I did used to
Speaker 1: have to dress as a pirate at work, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: and then interact with the public. Festival, I attended a
Speaker 1: pirate festival and do you know what band headlined that
Speaker 1: pirate festival. It was Blue Oyster Cult. And I have
Speaker 1: no idea why, but it fucking ruled. I think somebody,
Speaker 1: I think somebody who was booking like thought that they
Speaker 1: were a seafood themed band or something, but they absolutely
Speaker 1: had lined a pirate festival. It fucking ruled. I think
Speaker 1: it's because boomers like pirates and boomers like Blue Oyster
Speaker 1: Cult could be I mean also like I also like
Speaker 1: Blue Oyster Cult. Yeah, and I could feelings about pirates
Speaker 1: songs by them, Well, mixed feelings is what we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about today. Today we are going to deconstruct
Speaker 1: the myth of the Golden Age pirates. We're going to
Speaker 1: take a part of the idea that they were good,
Speaker 1: noble rebels because they weren't. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: how these days they're romanticized for all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 1: But we're also going to talk about what's undeniably interesting
Speaker 1: about them and why they hold onto our cultural attention
Speaker 1: so much. And most importantly, we're gonna talk about the
Speaker 1: stuff that simple, well, that's not the most important. We're
Speaker 1: also gonna talk about the stff that they symbolize in
Speaker 1: certain contexts. Most importantly, we're going to talk about literally
Speaker 1: the only two Golden Age pirate women we know about,
Speaker 1: a Bonnie and Mary Reid, who are maybe in a
Speaker 1: polycuel with a snappy dresser. Oh, they absolutely were. That
Speaker 1: is that. I will take no argument on that, but
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to gossip about it with you. Great.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that this podcast will talk about the non
Speaker 1: Golden Age pirates in the future, too, many of whom
Speaker 1: were like substantially more interesting for a ton of reasons. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if for anyone who's interested in lady pirates, check out
Speaker 1: our fairly recent episodes where we talk about Grace O'Malley,
Speaker 1: the Irish pirate Queen. So, the Golden Age of piracy
Speaker 1: lasted from about sixteen ninety to seventeen twenty five, which
Speaker 1: is about thirty five years, which is not an incredibly
Speaker 1: long period of time. The extra Golden Age the age
Speaker 1: in which all of the pirates that we talk about
Speaker 1: were active, which I'm going to call the platinum age,
Speaker 1: because that's the only thing I'd come up with in
Speaker 1: D and D that's worth more than gold. I guess
Speaker 1: it could be the like diamond, I don't know, whatever,
Speaker 1: I think we can call it the Pieces of eight Age. Okay,
Speaker 1: the Pieces of eight Age is seventeen fourteen to seven
Speaker 1: twenty two, which is only eight years. All of this
Speaker 1: fucking culture is about something that lasted eight years, which
Speaker 1: seems ridiculous until you remember that's twice as long as
Speaker 1: the Confederacy. I really like that you are currently using
Speaker 1: Confederacy as like a unit of short periods of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Confederacy lasted one person going to college. Ye a,
Speaker 1: the time, yeah, longer than I went to college, but
Speaker 1: the normal the normal college length. And you know when
Speaker 1: you meet somebody who's like still incredibly stuck on those
Speaker 1: four years of their life and they suck, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: uh huh yep, I'm not gonna draw any conclusions. Yeah no, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're literally just so. The pirates were like master's degree. Wait, no,
Speaker 1: that's only two more years PhD, fast, fast PhD. They
Speaker 1: quick doctors. I wouldn't trust them to do much surgery.
Speaker 1: But there's two problems with pirate history. The first problem
Speaker 1: is that everyone has really strong opinions about pirates and
Speaker 1: wants to claim them and sort of put them into
Speaker 1: this or that camp, so all the books are biased
Speaker 1: to shit or wants to reject them. But everyone feels
Speaker 1: really strongly about pirates and therefore lies. The other problem
Speaker 1: is that everyone who talks about pirates is lying because
Speaker 1: we don't know shit about them, you know how, like
Speaker 1: most of what we know about the Norse gods, or
Speaker 1: about half of what you know about the Norse gods
Speaker 1: comes from this. Like Christian Icelandic writer who had been
Speaker 1: in a Christian country for hundreds of years, I like
Speaker 1: you that you say that as though I naturally would
Speaker 1: know the provenance of nor Smiths. But I do know
Speaker 1: that most of what we know about Pirates came from
Speaker 1: a book that was probably written by the guy who
Speaker 1: wrote Robinson Crusoe, and that he made it the fuck up. Well,
Speaker 1: it actually probably wasn't written by him. We're going to
Speaker 1: get to that. Oh really, okay, I'm learning already, okay,
Speaker 1: but it was written by explain this stuff to me.
Speaker 1: I am, I am, I am. Hey, I once went
Speaker 1: on a tall ship. You were sailing it. Yeah, So, okay,
Speaker 1: half of what we know about the Norse gods comes
Speaker 1: from this Icelandic Christian named Snorri, who is legitimately a historian.
Speaker 1: And I don't think he like totally lied, but it's
Speaker 1: why I think it's why all the like Norse Smiths
Speaker 1: sound like Christian Smith's retold you know anyway, Okay, as
Speaker 1: we mentioned, the other problem is that a professional novelist
Speaker 1: who wrote pop history wrote half of what we know
Speaker 1: about pirates. And you should never trust a novelist who
Speaker 1: tries to tell you history. That's that's my statement right
Speaker 1: out the gate. Okay. So there is this British guy.
Speaker 1: I go to lead with that as the reason not
Speaker 1: to trust him. But his pen name is Captain Charles Johnson.
Speaker 1: He was almost certainly not a captain, but throw on
Speaker 1: that title and you'll sell more books. In sevent twenty
Speaker 1: four he comes out with a bestseller with a sick title,
Speaker 1: A general history of the robberies and murders of the
Speaker 1: most notorious Pirates. Those were the fucking days when you're like,
Speaker 1: title alone had to like, would have taken up an
Speaker 1: entire tweet. Yeah, totally, Like if you need a fucking
Speaker 1: semicolon in your title, there isn't one in this, but
Speaker 1: you can imagine it, you know. And very importantly, this
Speaker 1: is pirates with a why God? Yes, yeah, And this
Speaker 1: is a companion of basically all the Pirates that people
Speaker 1: talk about now. And this was written with a incredible
Speaker 1: amount of artistic license. It sells like crazy. It's the
Speaker 1: Eat Pray Love of the seventeen twenties. It starts this
Speaker 1: wave of people publishing They're like great highwaymen, great prostitutes,
Speaker 1: like like all these other books that didn't do as well,
Speaker 1: although I would happily read either of those other books.
Speaker 1: So Eat Pray Love is doing really well in the
Speaker 1: seventeen twenties. Within two years it's on its fourth edition.
Speaker 1: So he's like, hey, why not add more stuff, including,
Speaker 1: at this point, entirely making things up whole cloth. And
Speaker 1: we know this because he made up an entire pirate
Speaker 1: whole cloth named Captain Mission, who's sort of a Republican
Speaker 1: anti pirate who flies a white flag with the word
Speaker 1: liberty on it, who's a dedicated abolitionist, and is clearly
Speaker 1: just a representation of the author's political opinions. At least
Speaker 1: that's it's kind of fun, though, I know, I mean
Speaker 1: it insert a character who, yeah, espouses all your ideals. Wait,
Speaker 1: can we go back for a second, though, Why do
Speaker 1: I think that it was okay great in nineteen thirty two.
Speaker 1: It is like two hundred years later. There's this guy
Speaker 1: who's like, you know what this writing is like Daniel Dafoe.
Speaker 1: I think Daniel Dafoe wrote it, And he did a
Speaker 1: lot of research. He like presented a lot of evidence
Speaker 1: that the writing was very much like Niel Dafoe's in
Speaker 1: some ways and then completely unlike it in other ways.
Speaker 1: And this convinced like all the libraries to start cataloging
Speaker 1: it under Daniel Dafoe, and it was like, but the
Speaker 1: thing is is, at this point it was like trendy
Speaker 1: to claim books were written by Daniel Dafoe. People he
Speaker 1: wrote a ton, right, he properly like a couple, like
Speaker 1: a couple decades after his death, like the sixteen nineties.
Speaker 1: He's been dead for like sixty years. They're like, we
Speaker 1: know of one hundred and one books this motherfucker wrote,
Speaker 1: which is a lot of fucking books. Off the top
Speaker 1: of my head, Michael Morecock is the only guy I
Speaker 1: know it was written more than that. I'm sure there's more,
Speaker 1: but that's who I know writing more one hundred books,
Speaker 1: a lot of fucking books. By nineteen seventy, people were
Speaker 1: attributing five hundred and seventy books to Daniel Dafoe just
Speaker 1: because they were like, well, this guy was around, he
Speaker 1: was prolific, he wrote everything. Basically, all anonymous texts from
Speaker 1: the early eighteenth century got attributed to Daniel Dafoe at
Speaker 1: some point because Okay, I think I literally have a
Speaker 1: copy of that book him as the author. Fuck yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: So so basically, like this guy writes like Daniel Dafoe
Speaker 1: seems to have practically meant while this guy writes like
Speaker 1: an early eighteenth century Englishman, right, Okay, so anyway, Also,
Speaker 1: I didn't do a ton of research about Daniel Dafoe,
Speaker 1: but he did add the duh to his name to
Speaker 1: sound more proper. He was originally Daniel Foe, which is
Speaker 1: a more hard name. He did an extra syllable in
Speaker 1: that name, you know, competing with all the long titles.
Speaker 1: I know, but he didn't even put his name on
Speaker 1: half the books, or maybe put other people's names for
Speaker 1: no reason. Yeah, totally, It's more likely that it was
Speaker 1: written by this this media guy, um like a guy
Speaker 1: who ran a press and then did a lot of
Speaker 1: journalism and shit, but very like biased journalism that not
Speaker 1: necessarily a bad way. It was all, well, it's all
Speaker 1: journalism now too. But this guy named Nathaniel Missed who
Speaker 1: had a sick fucking name that is such a cool name.
Speaker 1: That would be a great pirate name. It would be
Speaker 1: a great pirate name. And he was like a sailor
Speaker 1: and Indian ocean and shit. I didn't write this part
Speaker 1: into the script, so I'm riffing it. But from what
Speaker 1: I remember from Bratt reading him, and he ran a
Speaker 1: printing shop, that did a bunch of political journalism, so
Speaker 1: much to the point that he spent a couple of
Speaker 1: years in jail and eventually had to flee to France
Speaker 1: and ship because he was one of those guys who
Speaker 1: wanted the other Kings to be in charge instead of
Speaker 1: the other Kings, the fucking Brits. There is a chance
Speaker 1: that he hired Dafoe because he occasionally hired Dafoe to
Speaker 1: write anonymously for his press, But I think it's the
Speaker 1: whole thing was like crafted to be a media bestseller
Speaker 1: and was written probably by the guy who ran the press.
Speaker 1: He might have gotten some help from some people. I
Speaker 1: don't know Dafoema had something to do with it, It's
Speaker 1: not impossible, but whatever. The important thing here's the Book
Speaker 1: of Lies, or it's a book of best guesses mixed
Speaker 1: with outright lies, and it is the source for almost
Speaker 1: everything that we know about pirates. There's court records, and
Speaker 1: there's occasional eyewitness accounts of memoirs from people who are
Speaker 1: captured by pirates, but most of the mythology of pirates
Speaker 1: stems from this book, which is why rather than having
Speaker 1: this episode. Besides, when we get to the polyculem. Most
Speaker 1: of this episode is not going to be like, here's
Speaker 1: a story about individual pirates. It's going to be talking
Speaker 1: about the golden age of piracy and what it means
Speaker 1: for the world, which is going to be fun. I
Speaker 1: didn't make that sound fun. It's gonna be fun, motherfuckers,
Speaker 1: I believe you. Yeah, yeah, say things loudly, people will
Speaker 1: all right. It all starts with this piece of shit
Speaker 1: named Columbus. I hate that guy. I know, well, he's
Speaker 1: kind of famous. He's so famous. There's a city in
Speaker 1: Ohio named after him, which is weird when you think
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, yeah, they were going to rename that.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's probably pretty low on the list
Speaker 1: of priorities, but a bigger promise to deal with, right yea, Ohio? Yeah,
Speaker 1: fair enough, although I'm probably as close to that horrible
Speaker 1: train crashes as um Columbus is. But Christopher Columbus was
Speaker 1: this Italian guy who wasn't Italian because Italy didn't fucking exist,
Speaker 1: didn't speak Italian because Italian didn't fucking exist, And he
Speaker 1: sailed under the flag of Spain, except he didn't because
Speaker 1: Spain didn't fucking exist. Nothing that they tell you about
Speaker 1: any of the ship is fucking true. Like, but people
Speaker 1: didn't think the Earth was flat then either. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the one that really bothers me. Yeah that yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean okay, Spain in practical sense had existed very recently,
Speaker 1: a couple decades, I think at this point, because the
Speaker 1: two kingdoms Castile and Aragon had like gotten hitched or
Speaker 1: their monarchs had. In fourteen ninety two, Columbus sailed under
Speaker 1: the flag of Castile, the same year that Spain became
Speaker 1: more officially Spain and immediately kicked out all the Jews
Speaker 1: and Muslims. Good job, Spain. Fuck you. We're not going
Speaker 1: to talk about Columbus much. He has no redeeming qualities.
Speaker 1: He's a dick, and he's now in the bad place.
Speaker 1: I recently rewatched The Good Place. It's pretty good, so good.
Speaker 1: That's show is fucking great. You know, Columbus shows up
Speaker 1: on an island called Hispaniola, it's not what it was
Speaker 1: called before that. When he gets there, yeah, uh, Spain
Speaker 1: is like hell yeah, our Italian guy called DIBs. So
Speaker 1: this place is ours to the whole Caribbean, and this
Speaker 1: last for one hundred and thirty years. They don't respect Europe.
Speaker 1: The Spain doesn't respect European peace treaties here. If you
Speaker 1: show up, Spain is gonna fucking stomp you. They have
Speaker 1: this line there is no peace beyond the line, or
Speaker 1: it is their motto, with the line being the line
Speaker 1: on the map, where they were like, sorry, we called
Speaker 1: DIBs on all the It's it's cool when you have
Speaker 1: a motto that requires a diagram to explain it. There
Speaker 1: is no peace beyond the line. What are you talking about? Like, oh, sorry, yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: And then they pull out a globe because it would
Speaker 1: have been a globe, and then they m yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Then they're like, see we made this line. Yeah, oh
Speaker 1: finally I understand that sucks. Yeah, And so the European
Speaker 1: powers they were like, but we want to go rob
Speaker 1: enslave and colonize, but we can't because we can't set
Speaker 1: up colonies. So what we're gonna do is rob the
Speaker 1: shit out of the Spanish that I take no issue
Speaker 1: with this, No, I actually honestly don't have a major
Speaker 1: problem with this as a basic concept. Their motive is
Speaker 1: not pure, but whatever, so they invent. But if colonizers
Speaker 1: are going to rob other colonizers, that's sort of like
Speaker 1: all right, yeah, yeah, So they do a bunch of
Speaker 1: ocean robbery, which unfortunately there's no word for except privateering,
Speaker 1: because they had the king's permission of this or that
Speaker 1: king or queen or whatever, so it's technically privateering. You
Speaker 1: could argue about whether it counts as piracy. For the
Speaker 1: most part. For the show, we're going to for this episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to distinguish because I think this actually gets
Speaker 1: to what's really interesting about the Golden Age piracy, which
Speaker 1: we are not at is the difference between privateering, which
Speaker 1: is robbing people in the name of a king, and
Speaker 1: then pirating, which is robbing people in the name of
Speaker 1: yourself and your friends. So in fifteen twenty, the French
Speaker 1: are like, all right, we're gonna go rob Spanish boats,
Speaker 1: and they're the first ones to get in on it.
Speaker 1: Within ten years, French privateers are sailing all the way
Speaker 1: to the Caribbean. At first, they're just robbing the Spanish
Speaker 1: as they come home, which just seems simpler, definitely easier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's probably easier for the Spanish to like respond
Speaker 1: with more guns. The annoying thing about robbing people is
Speaker 1: that like sometimes the people have guns also so they
Speaker 1: start going to the current Caribbean and robbing people there
Speaker 1: and it's a really easy job. It's really easy life.
Speaker 1: Everyone's really happy about the not the Spanish. So in
Speaker 1: fifteen fifty the English get involved and they call their
Speaker 1: guys the Sea Dogs. Shit, that is cool. I know,
Speaker 1: I know, it's really annoying, and that's cool, but it
Speaker 1: is another guy with a fucking sick name. Francis Drake
Speaker 1: is the most famous of the Sea Dogs who because
Speaker 1: I liked taliing episodes together, but he's not an important
Speaker 1: part of this episode. He was involved in repelling the
Speaker 1: Spanish armada that caused Spanish sailors to land on Ireland
Speaker 1: as castaways, and then the Irish either killed them or
Speaker 1: secreted them to safety. And that's all on the Grace
Speaker 1: O'Malley episodes you can listen to if you want to
Speaker 1: learn more about piracy in the English aisles. They probably
Speaker 1: don't like being called the Englis shelves on the west
Speaker 1: coast of that okay, around sixteen hundred. The Dutch, a
Speaker 1: little bit late, are like, oh, robbing Spanish ships in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean is easy and good, so they start doing
Speaker 1: it and they are enough to break Spanish power and
Speaker 1: you get your first non Spanish colonies in the area.
Speaker 1: Again completely lateral move, like I don't care more colonizers. Great,
Speaker 1: But around this time you get something actually interesting. You
Speaker 1: get the buccaneers and what's now Haiti on Hispaniola. And
Speaker 1: I really like these early buccaneers, at least everything I've
Speaker 1: found about them, have you, I don't know when they're
Speaker 1: like land googles. Yeah. The version that I have been
Speaker 1: taught in my in my own uh tall ship days
Speaker 1: is that there was a community people who are basically
Speaker 1: hanging out in what is now Haiti, and they were
Speaker 1: smoking meat to preserve it and sailing and selling it
Speaker 1: to other people who were sailing around so that they
Speaker 1: would have like preserved meat that they could you know,
Speaker 1: take with them across the ocean. And they were like
Speaker 1: just chilling and doing that, and buccaneer came from like
Speaker 1: the local word for smoking meat, yep um. And then
Speaker 1: at some point Spain was like, hey, fuck you and wait, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just getting ahead of the script. I'll excuse me
Speaker 1: for knowing things about pirates. Yeah, okay, I kind of
Speaker 1: set myself up for this is literally I don't know
Speaker 1: what and who were the Buccaneers and why? Well, I'm
Speaker 1: glad you asked Land displain it to me the first
Speaker 1: bucket of years. They're not pirates. Land displain it to
Speaker 1: mean is the best thing I've heard in a really
Speaker 1: looked all right. Well, while everyone's having fun with this,
Speaker 1: no one else you could have fun with is gambling.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's the ad that ends up in
Speaker 1: all the fucking podcasts lately. Oh yeah, that sounds about right.
Speaker 1: There's it is. I just keep getting the gold one,
Speaker 1: which would actually be appropriate for a pirate episode. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, you're right. You're so right, and we are back.
Speaker 1: And I can't believe you said that about behind the Bastards.
Speaker 1: You know, I just say it like it is. Rob
Speaker 1: I thought you and Robert were friends. Oh he thinks that. Hey, hey,
Speaker 1: carry on, Okay, so the first Buccaneers. I feel bad.
Speaker 1: I have to defend him. He's my partner, He's the best.
Speaker 1: Any I really like Robert having said anything, I know it.
Speaker 1: I was like, I was like, nope, that's it. Wasn't joke.
Speaker 1: This is the whole thing about this podcast is that
Speaker 1: we're all too earnest to take the bits too far
Speaker 1: because we're like, no, wait, don't do crime unless you
Speaker 1: really want to, or like whatever. The bit is so buccaneers, right,
Speaker 1: not pirates at first. They don't live on the ocean,
Speaker 1: they don't steal shit. They've got a lot of what
Speaker 1: becomes the pirate culture. They're this like culture of rough
Speaker 1: and tumble folks who gets called like half civilized or
Speaker 1: half savage or whatever. A lot their outlaw frontiersmen who
Speaker 1: travel with no fixed home um in what's now called Haiti,
Speaker 1: and they build little sheds to hang their hammocks at
Speaker 1: night when they need to. There's this quote, I found
Speaker 1: men who could never live in the bosom of ordered society,
Speaker 1: men who live for the moment, swaggerers, love of lovers
Speaker 1: of glory. Men sometimes cruel, often generous, but cowards never
Speaker 1: un Yeah, Like, I feel like that gets to some
Speaker 1: of the core of what's that kind of interesting about
Speaker 1: some of the stuff I'm gon be talking about. They're hunters.
Speaker 1: They live off the wild boar and the wild cattle.
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell, there's definitely cattle, and
Speaker 1: I believe that they are wild from abandoned Spanish settlements
Speaker 1: basically that have now gone wild. I do like how
Speaker 1: anybody who was like not living in England, regularly attending
Speaker 1: church and like you know, saying God Save the King
Speaker 1: a lot was was considered like half civilized in all
Speaker 1: of these writings, Like that probably just meant that these
Speaker 1: guys like drank sometimes and didn't always wear shoes. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It could mean they were they were
Speaker 1: doing crazier shit. It's hard to tell with these guys
Speaker 1: because like a lot of this, Yeah, there's all this
Speaker 1: like exaggerated stuff about you know, yeah, they didn't go
Speaker 1: to church, so they're clearly wild animals or whatever. But
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of story raise about them, like
Speaker 1: continuing to wear the pants that they do the slaughtering
Speaker 1: and all the time, so they're just like walking around
Speaker 1: in blood pants. Oh these are crust punks. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: they're crust punks. And they travel with no fixed home
Speaker 1: and they just lay their hammock where they want every night,
Speaker 1: and they only gather to like they like gather where
Speaker 1: the cattle are and ship the wild cattle. Like I
Speaker 1: actually feel like these folks were a step more a
Speaker 1: step culturally away from Western civilization. And yeah, that's that'll
Speaker 1: raise some eyebrows. Yeah, but at the same time a
Speaker 1: lot of whenever it's like and they were all sturdy
Speaker 1: and filthy and stinky. That's like a classic like Western
Speaker 1: civilizations shouvinism thing to like make up as a lie
Speaker 1: about people. Also, so it's like share the blood pants
Speaker 1: thing I think is true, but I only like sixty
Speaker 1: seventy per think is true. But like, also, maybe they
Speaker 1: only had one pair of pants because I bet there
Speaker 1: wasn't a thriving textile industry at that time. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: like clothes are expensive back then, you had to hand
Speaker 1: make everything. Maybe check your pants privilege, I know European writers.
Speaker 1: I mean also, they probably could have watched them. But
Speaker 1: it is a bunch of unmarried men except for the
Speaker 1: way in which they're married. But I'm gonna get to
Speaker 1: that in a second. Is it gay? You can't the
Speaker 1: audience can't see the eyes I'm making Margaret's Margaret's eyebrows
Speaker 1: just went on a journey. It's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: podcasting things. This podcasts. Who's to forget that podcasting is
Speaker 1: just audio? And then then you're like, shit, this would
Speaker 1: be a great cue. I know. So this culture is
Speaker 1: what the word buccaneer means for the first half of
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century. And as you as you point out,
Speaker 1: buccaneer comes from the name for as best as I
Speaker 1: can tell, the small meat smoking shocks that they built
Speaker 1: to dry out the meat, a style that they learned
Speaker 1: from the carib people who are there. And the word
Speaker 1: is an Arowack word, which is a language family. Then
Speaker 1: case you had some weird belief, not you, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: assume you have this, but audience a weird belief that
Speaker 1: indigenous people of the Americas didn't get around. This language
Speaker 1: family has speakers scattered throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America,
Speaker 1: including like deep as fuck in the Amazon Rainforest, including
Speaker 1: in Akra and what's now Brazil, which is where the
Speaker 1: last episode took place. And I just again like weird connections.
Speaker 1: So you got these narrod wells. Most of them are French,
Speaker 1: there's some English, Dutch, and really lots of people arguing
Speaker 1: about this part. Indigenous and African folks who are living
Speaker 1: as buccaneers. Most started away started off as runaway bondsmen
Speaker 1: like people skipping out an indentured servitude, runaway slaves. Potentially
Speaker 1: that's like people like to argue about whether or not
Speaker 1: account as a maroon society. Mutineers, deserters, ship direct people,
Speaker 1: sex workers, political exiles, just radicals basically just like all
Speaker 1: the cool people. Yeah, that's a fucking party as well. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: And like a lot of it is like it was
Speaker 1: all men except for all of these women who were
Speaker 1: sex working, and you're like, are you just discluding them?
Speaker 1: Is this like a no true scotsman thing or you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, it was all men, Like well, why there's
Speaker 1: all these women around but they don't account. You could
Speaker 1: sum up a lot of history with it was all
Speaker 1: men except for all the women. Yeah. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: was mostly men because of some stuff that will get
Speaker 1: to at least there was a lot of men only sections.
Speaker 1: There's a lot a lot of people arguing about whether
Speaker 1: constituted marine society. The buccaneers later are notoriously also slavers,
Speaker 1: and I believe that many of these people probably also
Speaker 1: like owned people and claimed own people, But that doesn't
Speaker 1: actually preclude runaway slaves from having participated in I think
Speaker 1: it would preclude it from counting as a true maroon society.
Speaker 1: But anyway, everyone wants to prove that they're all like
Speaker 1: either super cool woke rebels or that they're all like
Speaker 1: slaving murderers. Um, so somewhere in the middle. I don't
Speaker 1: know both extremes at the same time. Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1: I don't feel the need to like figure out whether
Speaker 1: they were good or bad. No, that's not that's not
Speaker 1: a thing I feel the need to do to like
Speaker 1: people who died three hundred years ago. Well, I appreciate it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it's I don't know, it's a very weird impulse. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you're living in a way that you don't
Speaker 1: like on Haiti or at anywhere in the Caribbean, at
Speaker 1: this point, the awareness that these people exist gives you
Speaker 1: a kind of out. There's a place you can go.
Speaker 1: You can go be a buccaneer and live in a
Speaker 1: live on the coast in a hut and eat your
Speaker 1: fill and call no man master. And they had a
Speaker 1: codified system of bromance called the Materilio littage system, which
Speaker 1: I do not know how to pronounce, in which two
Speaker 1: bros would get married, live together, share their possessions and income,
Speaker 1: name each other each other's air, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Soay, no, definitely not. There's all these historians
Speaker 1: are like, no, we can prove that they're heterosexual men.
Speaker 1: And I am certain this was not always a sexual relationship.
Speaker 1: I am certain it was very often a sexual relationship.
Speaker 1: I mean, heterosexual marriage. It's not always a sexual relationship either,
Speaker 1: Oh fucking right, okay, And like the main argument that
Speaker 1: they were not homosexuals was historians being like, nah, because
Speaker 1: they fucked ladies sometimes and sometimes they shared ladies to
Speaker 1: fuck as if gay as this like immutable straighter than
Speaker 1: you and your buddy having sex with the same person
Speaker 1: at the same time, now I know. And it's just
Speaker 1: like and I think this is like one of the
Speaker 1: clearest examples of something that the historian Hugh who's come,
Speaker 1: who's been on the podcast before, talks about about how,
Speaker 1: you know, homosexuality and heterosexuality like didn't even get now
Speaker 1: I'm putting words in his mouth. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: go on my own, Rent, weren't even invented until the
Speaker 1: end of the nineteenth century. Is like concepts, right, right,
Speaker 1: And so there's these acts that people do, and some
Speaker 1: people prefer certain acts and not other acts, right, But
Speaker 1: a lot of people are like, yeah, I prefer that
Speaker 1: one act, but I'll do this other act. And we
Speaker 1: all know that's true, and you can look at any like,
Speaker 1: I mean, prison is the main example right now of
Speaker 1: like where you know the concepts of heterosexuality and homosexuality
Speaker 1: don't apply between men having sex or whatever, and it's
Speaker 1: certain contexts, and you know, it's this is shit that's
Speaker 1: been going on for fucking ever, but here they actually
Speaker 1: get fucking married. Well, and you know, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: there's there's different kinds of acts. Some of them are
Speaker 1: legal and some of them are illegal, and you are
Speaker 1: describing a context in which there is no rule of law, right,
Speaker 1: So people who are into the acts that are not
Speaker 1: legal in places where there is rule of law probably
Speaker 1: going to be doing a lot more of those acts. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: The powers that be are really upset about out this,
Speaker 1: so they like write all of these things. I know
Speaker 1: they're like, could you please send more lady sex workers.
Speaker 1: We're trying to stop the men from falling in love
Speaker 1: with each other. And I think the buccaneers during this
Speaker 1: period are the people that I'm like, no, but these
Speaker 1: people rule, I want to hang out with them. They've
Speaker 1: I mean, they've really got a good thing going on.
Speaker 1: They're like, wait, so all we need to do is
Speaker 1: keep fucking each other and you will just send more
Speaker 1: boatloads of sex workers to party with. Like that's what
Speaker 1: you're telling me? Oh, win win all around. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: let's we're gonna go get married. No homo though, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just and I don't think they were like
Speaker 1: no homo, you know, don't. I think historians are trying
Speaker 1: to stick a no homo out to some homos, just
Speaker 1: like what they'll do, which some of them might have
Speaker 1: been if they were alive now heterosexual, I don't fucking care,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah. So the Spanish they're like, we don't
Speaker 1: like all these people living free, so they decide to
Speaker 1: fuck around. The finding out part comes later, and so
Speaker 1: they start murdering the ship out of all the wild
Speaker 1: boars and cows, trying to starve out the mostly peaceful outlaws.
Speaker 1: So the buccaneers and the cows get caught in the crossfire,
Speaker 1: which just seems unfair. It really is. I really hate
Speaker 1: the idea of like, I mean, this is a really
Speaker 1: common on throat history. It's like, I want to fuck
Speaker 1: with those people. So I'm gonna kill all the animals,
Speaker 1: like fuck you, I have a war, like an honest person,
Speaker 1: I don't know, don't quote met. So the buccaneers, they're
Speaker 1: like they're already kind of fighty right, and they're like
Speaker 1: these like rough and tumble frontiersman and so they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't like being told what to do, so let's
Speaker 1: go steal shit now because we can't hunt, so let's
Speaker 1: just go rob people now. Buy boat and by sixteen
Speaker 1: fifty buccaneer I means someone who steals ships from boats
Speaker 1: by means of another boat. This isn't yet grand pirate
Speaker 1: fleets at the beginning. It's like folks and canoe is
Speaker 1: rolling up on big boats but showing up a swords
Speaker 1: and pistols, being like, you know, you don't give me
Speaker 1: your shit. That'll work a lot of the time. It
Speaker 1: works well for the most of the time. Yeah, most
Speaker 1: people don't want to deal with that. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: want to deal with that. You put a collist in
Speaker 1: my face. You can have my purse. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: honest exchange of yeah, I got nothing. Okay. This is
Speaker 1: the aforementioned finding out for the Spanish because like this
Speaker 1: actually likes it. This is why the United States of
Speaker 1: America se is like English. But the privateering culture that
Speaker 1: comes out of the Buccaneers breaks Spain, like breaks their
Speaker 1: hold on the New World. Whoa, So they really should
Speaker 1: have just left those cows the fuck alone. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: kill a cow, you lose a continent. Like I don't
Speaker 1: make the rules. I mean, you shouldn't have the continent
Speaker 1: in the first place. Fuck you. But like so, the
Speaker 1: Buccaneers they take the island of Tortuga right off the coast,
Speaker 1: and they build a pirate island or a privateering island
Speaker 1: at this point, and this is way worse for the
Speaker 1: Spanish than having cross punks who hunt wild boor and
Speaker 1: are historically close friends. And they call themselves the Brethren
Speaker 1: of the Coast at this point, which is also a
Speaker 1: sick name. They drop articles, Yeah, they drop articles. A
Speaker 1: constitution of sorts, a fairly democratic one. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: more about, like pirate democracy in a little bit. Everything
Speaker 1: is cool and fine, I mean, within a certain context
Speaker 1: is cool and fine. The buccaneers have an island. They're
Speaker 1: doing their thing. They're robbing from the rich and giving
Speaker 1: to themselves. The only reason they're not the rich themselves
Speaker 1: is because they spend it as soon as they get it. Really,
Speaker 1: they are robbing the rich and then giving it to
Speaker 1: the sex workers and bartenders. That seems good. They who
Speaker 1: actually seem like the real smartest pirates in all of it.
Speaker 1: That's my takeaway from everything I've read. Okay, so yeah, no,
Speaker 1: set up a like I mean, this is like what
Speaker 1: people did during the gold Rush, right, Like, yeah, you're
Speaker 1: going to be doing much better if instead of going
Speaker 1: out and trying to like get money the dangerous but
Speaker 1: possibly lucrative way, you just like set up a bar
Speaker 1: nearby the people who are getting all the money, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is even more effective because the pirates are actually
Speaker 1: not doing it to get rich. They're doing it to
Speaker 1: like continue their lives of hedonism and fun like buy
Speaker 1: and large, and so they will like drop fucking six
Speaker 1: months wages in a night on like someone they think
Speaker 1: is cute. You know, they weren't living that beech bum
Speaker 1: lifestyle because they wanted to get rich. Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: do go privateer at this point rather than pirates, and
Speaker 1: so they're they're like, you know, they're pirates, but they
Speaker 1: have a note from King Dad who says it's okay,
Speaker 1: that they're pirates as long as they only attack the Spanish,
Speaker 1: and that's basically what all of them do. I always
Speaker 1: privateering was like each country kind of all against all
Speaker 1: the other countries, and there's like some of that, but
Speaker 1: by and large it's France, England and the Dutch versus
Speaker 1: the Spanish basically, okay, and I mean the Spanish privateers
Speaker 1: of course are not on that page. So the part
Speaker 1: that people don't like talking about this is that they're
Speaker 1: also slavers. At this point, most of them are European
Speaker 1: and this whole brethren thing. It's like kind of the
Speaker 1: core of what philosophically is like interesting and fails about
Speaker 1: pirates is that they have this like they come up
Speaker 1: with all these ideals of liberty and stuff, but they
Speaker 1: apply to a certain in group and they don't apply
Speaker 1: it outside of that. And that's going to be a
Speaker 1: god that sucks. You know. That sounds like the thing
Speaker 1: that the people who wrote the Constitution, I know, I know,
Speaker 1: it's the different and it's like the pirates of the
Speaker 1: chaotic evil and the founding fathers of the cat lawful evil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like, oh, we have this really cool set of
Speaker 1: ideas about how you know all people and then people
Speaker 1: stress next to people but they don't know how to
Speaker 1: phrase it any other way. The asterisk at the bottom
Speaker 1: is like people, and then there's an astras ask risk. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a winky face. It's just yeah, it's just a
Speaker 1: picture of a white man working. Yeah, totally. It's the
Speaker 1: only spot color on the like Cepia document that they
Speaker 1: like use white. Um. So yeah, they keep slaves and
Speaker 1: they develop all this wild democracy shit and honor among
Speaker 1: thieves and solidarity, and their moral world only extends to
Speaker 1: certain people, to European men. Um, there's places and for
Speaker 1: different individuals that will talk about it extends beyond that.
Speaker 1: And it's actually funny. The next paragraph I have says
Speaker 1: compared to funding fathers or whatever, but well we already
Speaker 1: did that. Sorry, no, no, no, no, this is really good. Um.
Speaker 1: Much like the Founding Fathers, they're also zealously protest didn't
Speaker 1: at this point, Wow, you're gonna finally talk about some
Speaker 1: Protestants on this podcast. Yeah, I never talk about religion.
Speaker 1: They're happy to attack the Spanish because the Spanish or Catholic,
Speaker 1: and they also really went around and killed all the
Speaker 1: like Catholic priests and monks and all that shit. But
Speaker 1: here's where it gets complicated. In other stories that I
Speaker 1: tell on this show, people go around and kill all
Speaker 1: the Catholics because the Catholics are like stopping slavery. In
Speaker 1: this case, the Buccaneers are killing the Catholics because the
Speaker 1: Catholics are shitty to the indigenous people the islands, and
Speaker 1: the Buccaneers they don't quite extend their moral world to
Speaker 1: the indigenous people, right, They're not like in the in group,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of overlap and solidarity and like
Speaker 1: a lot of their rating tactics. I think this doesn't
Speaker 1: end up in the scripts, and I'm just gonna use
Speaker 1: what I remember, so don't directly quote me. A lot
Speaker 1: of their like rating tactics and stuff come from I
Speaker 1: think the carib people in that area, like the literally
Speaker 1: like put a fuck ton of people in a canoe
Speaker 1: and you can do anything you want, and so like,
Speaker 1: and the buccaneer culture of course it gets its name
Speaker 1: from a caraboard and like like it's just this, like
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's interesting, yeah, I mean, and they
Speaker 1: had been living definitely living alongside of indigenous communities back
Speaker 1: in Haiti. Yeah, other buccaneers were Catholic, mostly French crews,
Speaker 1: and they had their own priests and they kind of
Speaker 1: like stayed clear of the Protestants. I don't know how
Speaker 1: I've gotten so far in life and spent so much
Speaker 1: time on tall ships without anyone ever telling me they
Speaker 1: were pirate priests. I'm gonna need you to tell me
Speaker 1: more about that right now. Okay. I only know a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the pirate priests because so there's
Speaker 1: two different things. There's the buccaneer priests and they, as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, it's like the same way
Speaker 1: that you have a chaplain in your military. You know,
Speaker 1: you end up with a chaplain on this like because
Speaker 1: the privateers, in a weird way, they are an extension
Speaker 1: of the state, and so this is mostly inference. I
Speaker 1: only found a couple of cents is about the pirate priests,
Speaker 1: and then later I know a bunch of pirates, including
Speaker 1: Protestants in the proper Golden age, who um would like
Speaker 1: try to get priests to come on board. Fucking um
Speaker 1: Black Bart Bartholomy Roberts. He's like the biggest Protestant asshole
Speaker 1: of all the fucking He doesn't like like drinking, and
Speaker 1: no one's allowed to gamble, and like all kinds of ship.
Speaker 1: Oh so now we have straight Edge in addition to
Speaker 1: crust punk. Yeah. Yeah, so he's the straight edge one.
Speaker 1: And he like really likes Protestant priests. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they're called priests though, I think they are asking
Speaker 1: the wrong person. Yeah, I don't know, all right, and
Speaker 1: so I'm an expert. But he kept trying to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: come on, join my book, join my ship, joined my
Speaker 1: like merry crew, and all the priests are like, no,
Speaker 1: you're pirates. That's bad. Um. It's like but we don't drink. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like all of his crew are like, we actually ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally yeah. And he's like one of the most murderous
Speaker 1: of the fucking anyway. So it's sixteen fifty five. The
Speaker 1: English take Jamaica and they were sent by the veteran
Speaker 1: villain of the pod Oliver Cromwell, the guy who genocided
Speaker 1: Ireland and deserves to only be remembered for that. You
Speaker 1: can hear about him in the Diggers and Leveler's episode.
Speaker 1: I just really like when I alt I say that.
Speaker 1: Every fucking time I say that, Okay, now you've got
Speaker 1: a real like I mean, I was going to call
Speaker 1: it the cool people extended Universe, but then I realized
Speaker 1: that it's actually our universe. History. Yeah, it's just history.
Speaker 1: But that's what I like about history is it is
Speaker 1: it's the it's the extended universe. It's the like the
Speaker 1: way it all ties together. It's the grandest story ever told,
Speaker 1: and we're fucking characters in it. And so instead it
Speaker 1: is presented as this like weird, boring thing, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's nonsense. There's all of these different factions fighting. Like
Speaker 1: That's part of why I like all the like religious
Speaker 1: shit is because I mean the same way if I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the nineteenth or twentieth century, I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk abou which communies were killing, which anarchists were killing,
Speaker 1: which capitalists were you know, like the ideological battle lines
Speaker 1: are really interesting, and in Renal Sons era, those battle
Speaker 1: lines are religious. So in eighteen sixteen fifty five, the
Speaker 1: English take Jamaica and a bunch of the English buccaneers
Speaker 1: they leave Tortuga and they go over to join Jamaica,
Speaker 1: and so you kind of like lose a lot of
Speaker 1: the multiculturalism at this point, but you also get twice
Speaker 1: as many buccaneers strongholds, which are basically pirate islands, just
Speaker 1: all with the permission of the kings. It's like not
Speaker 1: quite as cool. But the romance system fades away, and
Speaker 1: what fills it instead as products and services? Oh no,
Speaker 1: I know that's the worst exchange. It's okay. They can
Speaker 1: just press skip forward fifteen years and they'll they'll get
Speaker 1: out of that right away. Here's some ads. So the
Speaker 1: bromance system is fading away in the sixteen seventies, everything's
Speaker 1: going downhill as soon as they get letters from the king.
Speaker 1: It's just like everything's fucking getting boring. But don't worry.
Speaker 1: Having a letter of mark is really like it's like
Speaker 1: being signed to a major record label, right, It's like
Speaker 1: your fucking sellout. I think it's okay to be signed
Speaker 1: a record Yeah no, I'm not. I mean, you know
Speaker 1: I'm not. Yeah no, I'm just trying to make a comparison. Actually,
Speaker 1: maybe that means the privateering. Like, I don't know, what
Speaker 1: would I think if I lived in Tortuga in the
Speaker 1: sixteen eighty I think it was really cute when all
Speaker 1: the boys were married to each other, I missed that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are the days. I know, near the end of
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, sixteen ninety or so, the government stopped
Speaker 1: endorsing privateering basically because it's too big of a nuisance
Speaker 1: they did there. It's there's a lot of fucking around
Speaker 1: finding out in this the buccaneers did. They're good, the privateers.
Speaker 1: They broke the Spanish monopoly in the area. So therefore,
Speaker 1: you know, you start getting settlements and all of this stuff,
Speaker 1: right and now though they don't want a siety full
Speaker 1: of crazy, drunk agro guys. They want an orderly slave
Speaker 1: society of plantations. So the pirates, the buccaneer, the privateers,
Speaker 1: whatever they gotta go, which is to say, at this
Speaker 1: point earlier, the state needed the nomadic war machine. You
Speaker 1: ever heard of the nomadic war machine, Miriam, Well, I
Speaker 1: know of a band. There's a really good band, Nomadic
Speaker 1: War Machine. Yeah. Yeah, because I can't talk about pirates,
Speaker 1: about talking about the nomadic war machine as a philosophical concept,
Speaker 1: which is why you're like, why did I listen to
Speaker 1: this another episode about Mary Reading and Bonnie and they're
Speaker 1: not talking about them, and said, because this is a
Speaker 1: different shit than you get on any other fucking podcast
Speaker 1: talking about them. Yeah, that's why you can listen to
Speaker 1: anybody be like and Bonnie and Mary read they were
Speaker 1: girls but they were pirates. Who Yeah, and then like
Speaker 1: credulously read that book that talks about their upbringing. That's
Speaker 1: mazed just about titillation and lies. It don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how all of the like period woodcuts of
Speaker 1: the time that show them are like, and they fought
Speaker 1: with their boobs out as one does. I know, well, okay,
Speaker 1: actually the first edition, I know that there's a yeah,
Speaker 1: I know the yeah yeah yeah, okay, well but the
Speaker 1: audience doesn't the first edition ahead of ourselves. All right, fine,
Speaker 1: all right, you know, if you want to hear about
Speaker 1: their kids us, you're gonna have to wait first. You
Speaker 1: get a philosophy lesson is what you get when I
Speaker 1: just finished watching The Good Place. The Nomadic war Machine
Speaker 1: is a philosophical construct theorized by Delusing Quatari who or
Speaker 1: two French guys. They're anti authoritarian Marxists, and an interesting
Speaker 1: thing about them, nobody has ever managed to explain a
Speaker 1: single one of their concepts to me successfully. Okay, so
Speaker 1: go for it. Well, the way that I learned this
Speaker 1: concept was reading about pirates a long time ago, and
Speaker 1: it's the only context that would have helped me understand it.
Speaker 1: There's a book called Life under the Black Flag by
Speaker 1: Gabriel Coon, which is one of the major sort for today,
Speaker 1: and it talks about essentially the philosophical ramifications of the
Speaker 1: Golden Age of piracy. And it's how I anything I
Speaker 1: understand about, like Nietzsche and like Dionysianism and the Nomadic
Speaker 1: War Machine. All that shit is because I read this
Speaker 1: book as a like young crustpunk with blood pants. I
Speaker 1: didn't have blood pants. I had patched pants. They were
Speaker 1: covered in like dumpster juice instead of I'm really not
Speaker 1: making it better. Okay. So I like this concept enough
Speaker 1: that I named a band. My dark pop band is
Speaker 1: called Nomadic War Machine. The idea is that the state
Speaker 1: wants everything to be orderly and controlled, and it wants
Speaker 1: sort of non conflict by creating like stratified society. So
Speaker 1: within this concept, which is not true right, but as
Speaker 1: a concept, you know, war, chaos and war are things
Speaker 1: that exist outside the state, but the state requires those things,
Speaker 1: so it basically hires it. It kind of it recuperates
Speaker 1: the raw chaotic energy of the non state force, which
Speaker 1: is called the war machine. And so that's like the
Speaker 1: rough fucking idea. And so you can see this is
Speaker 1: what happened the Caribbean is you have the buccaneers there
Speaker 1: this like non state chaotic force that is really useful
Speaker 1: to the state, and then as soon as they are
Speaker 1: no longer useful to the state, they've broken the Spanish control,
Speaker 1: they're discarded. The nomadic concept part of it is a
Speaker 1: way to like fight against the recuperation or Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: getting this part wrong because I also don't understand to
Speaker 1: losing Gutari. But I think that's what's cool about it,
Speaker 1: is it you use it as a starting point to
Speaker 1: make up your own bullshit. I strongly suspect nobody understands
Speaker 1: to lose it. Yeah, and that's why nobody has ever
Speaker 1: successfully explained it to me. It's not I'm not the
Speaker 1: dumb one. It's everything. Yeah, totally no. And so in
Speaker 1: this case, the nomadic part isn't necessarily actual wandering around,
Speaker 1: but sort of a chaotic embrace of non stateness. But
Speaker 1: actual wandering around is really good for this, and so
Speaker 1: the pirates actually wander around quite a bit and are
Speaker 1: essentially this nomadic war machine. That's what happens with the pirates.
Speaker 1: Privateerian licenses get harder and harder to come by. First
Speaker 1: the Spanish killed all their pigs, and now the Dutch,
Speaker 1: French and English take away their license to rob. But
Speaker 1: they didn't go to go away, So what's left for
Speaker 1: them to do but be pirates. Seems like it kind
Speaker 1: of backed them into a corner. I know, really brought
Speaker 1: that on yourself, buddy. Turns out you don't need anyone's
Speaker 1: permission to stick a gun in someone's face and say
Speaker 1: give me all your money. This is a new realization
Speaker 1: they suddenly all had by about sixteen nineties. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're a privateer, you're just a pirate according to
Speaker 1: everybody except one country. Yeah, so you're really just like
Speaker 1: subtracting one country from like the list you're you're just
Speaker 1: adding one country to the list of people who are
Speaker 1: mad at you. Yeah. But the differences ero and one
Speaker 1: as a big one, Like it took humans a long
Speaker 1: time to figure out, you know, the concept of zero,
Speaker 1: Like it's a very different thing than one. So theings
Speaker 1: get called like proper pirates or whatever. I don't know.
Speaker 1: The English legal dictum from the eighteenth century was quote,
Speaker 1: a pirate is in a perpetual war with every individual
Speaker 1: in every state, Christian or Infidel. Pirates properly have no country,
Speaker 1: but by the nature of their guilt separate themselves and
Speaker 1: renounce on this matter the benefit of all lawful societies.
Speaker 1: They're doing that thing where they say a thing that
Speaker 1: they think is bad, but they make it sound cool
Speaker 1: as fat. And that's why you have to You had
Speaker 1: to go to pirate themed bullshit in the twenty first
Speaker 1: century is because ye, but I got to see blue
Speaker 1: Oyster call, so it worked out. Yeah, four hundred years earlier,
Speaker 1: the English tried to make something sound bad and made
Speaker 1: it sound real cool. They are presented as a means
Speaker 1: of all mankind and villains of all nation, villains of
Speaker 1: all nations. And this is what's interesting about them, not
Speaker 1: their actual actions, which is mostly murder, rape, torturing, cruelty.
Speaker 1: They're remembered by the left is nice, happy gay thieves
Speaker 1: who are chaotic good and presaged Western democracy. But realistically
Speaker 1: they're overall somewhere between chaotic neutral and chaotic evil. But
Speaker 1: they went to war against a lawful evil system and
Speaker 1: so the chaotic part is what's interesting. Not pretendially, I
Speaker 1: think you could make an argument for true neutral no,
Speaker 1: not a derailist. I'm fully on the page of believing
Speaker 1: that they are a representation of chaos. Okay, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I just think there's like
Speaker 1: this element of like perpetual pure self interest where it's like, well,
Speaker 1: so you know there isn't that's what's interesting, Okay, go on.
Speaker 1: It will get to this more later. But they were
Speaker 1: really fraternal amongst each other and like essentially communistic in
Speaker 1: many many regards within their own culture. Not communistic isn't
Speaker 1: really the right word, because there's still like individual all right,
Speaker 1: we'll get to it. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: makes them different from every other era of pirates and
Speaker 1: like because I was always like, as soon as I
Speaker 1: found out the golden Age of piracy was like eight years,
Speaker 1: I was like, I feel like I got ripped off.
Speaker 1: I was like, everyone talks about these motherfuckers, But there
Speaker 1: was literally about four thousand of them total, Like at
Speaker 1: any given time, there was like at the most peak,
Speaker 1: at any given moment, there'd be like two twenty five
Speaker 1: hundred of them on the ocean. I've hung out with
Speaker 1: more people than that on a regular basis. I've been
Speaker 1: to protest with way more people than that. Right, there's
Speaker 1: probably more telship sailors. Now, Yeah, then there were pirates
Speaker 1: in the Golden Era, Like, so what makes them so different?
Speaker 1: And so for a while I was like mad, because
Speaker 1: it's like, there's pirates fucking everywhere all throughout history. Why
Speaker 1: won't people shut the funk about these pirates? And a
Speaker 1: lot of it is like bullshit Western gays stuff, but
Speaker 1: not all of it. And so I want to talk
Speaker 1: about what makes the Golden Age pirates sort of different?
Speaker 1: It seems as though, and this is the premise of
Speaker 1: various you know pieces I've read. This is not like
Speaker 1: I'm so smart and I know everything, right, Most pirates
Speaker 1: in history have been part of a community, as sort
Speaker 1: of almost like a rude coast guard, right. They've been
Speaker 1: like part of a bandit culture that is attached to
Speaker 1: a community. The Somali pirates, for example, got their modern
Speaker 1: start as literally like a lot of them call themselves
Speaker 1: as a gentleman who worked the ocean, which actually sounds
Speaker 1: like the brethren of the coast to me. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: sounds exactly like some Golden Age of piracy ship, I know,
Speaker 1: and they attacked all the international fishing vessels that showed
Speaker 1: up to fucking their waters after the government stopped, you know,
Speaker 1: being able to enforce laws within the coastal waters. I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to make a statement about the ethics of
Speaker 1: the current development of the Somali pirates, right, but Golden
Speaker 1: age pirates weren't part of a specific broader community than that.
Speaker 1: There's like, there are pirates ports, but it's a really
Speaker 1: different thing. Robert see Ritchie's way of distinguishing between these
Speaker 1: two types of piracy is, and I quote, one can
Speaker 1: be desfined as organized marauding, the other as anarchistic marauding.
Speaker 1: Many men were involved in both, yet a distinction can
Speaker 1: be made. Organized pirates remained attached to a port as
Speaker 1: their base of operation. Anarchistic marauding involved leaving behind the
Speaker 1: base of operation and wandering for months, even years at
Speaker 1: a time. And I think that's how we end up
Speaker 1: with this, is this romanticization, is that they did something
Speaker 1: kind of different. So the core argument of Gabriel Coon's book,
Speaker 1: the one I learned about the Pneumatic war machine from,
Speaker 1: is really interesting. The argument is that pirates are worth
Speaker 1: thinking or cool, but not for the reasons that radicals claim.
Speaker 1: It's like this exploding head diagram, you know, my favorite
Speaker 1: meme in the world. There's like pirates are cool because
Speaker 1: they live free fuck the law at the bottom, right,
Speaker 1: and then there's like, I mean they were murders and
Speaker 1: slavers on top of that, and then you go up
Speaker 1: to like, no, they were radically democratic and developed alternative
Speaker 1: societies outside the law and broke free from society's conceptions
Speaker 1: of race, gender, sex, and nationality, and that's like above that,
Speaker 1: and then above that you're like mostly no, not really,
Speaker 1: they were mostly just murderous thieves. But then above it
Speaker 1: all is pirates are cool because he fucked the law,
Speaker 1: and it's a shame that they didn't apply their concepts
Speaker 1: of liberty outside just themselves in their bros. All right,
Speaker 1: that's my I'm listening. Yeah, okay, Well, then the golden
Speaker 1: Age of piracy actually starts in the Indian Ocean. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you knew this, Mirriams. You know, the
Speaker 1: ocean is really big and connects all of the world. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bigger than most things. Yeah. Actually, yeah, congrats serious,
Speaker 1: always take Margaret serious the Golden Thanks. Thanks, It's terrible
Speaker 1: that I'll get you in trouble one day. Um. The
Speaker 1: Golden Age pirates went everywhere that trade went, routes went,
Speaker 1: and so even though their bases were often in the Caribbean,
Speaker 1: they were fucking everywhere. Two English privateer captains Henry every
Speaker 1: and Thomas two, they wind up going to the Indian
Speaker 1: Ocean and robbing whoever they want, including Brits, even though
Speaker 1: they were British Supposedly. In sixteen ninety two, Thomas two
Speaker 1: told his crew quote that it was better to risk
Speaker 1: your life for plunder than for government. I mean that
Speaker 1: is going to be hard to argue with. No, I'm
Speaker 1: just I'm with him. Yeah, And they all captains and
Speaker 1: crew alike, and we'll talk about the how they split
Speaker 1: money more equitably than other systems. They all get richest
Speaker 1: ship for this. On its second trip, Thomas two dies.
Speaker 1: He gets shot in the belly because robbing people's a
Speaker 1: really bad idea overall and kind of dangerous. You don't
Speaker 1: pick the career pirate because you're hoping to like rv
Speaker 1: around the country after retirement looking at birds in Yellowstone.
Speaker 1: I definitely associate that I don't remember like whose phrase
Speaker 1: this was, but a short life and a merry one
Speaker 1: is like one that pops up a lot in like
Speaker 1: writings about the about pirates of that era. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes a lot of fucking sense. That is like probably
Speaker 1: a writer wrote it and not a pirate, but you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, and it's like even when I'm
Speaker 1: like Thomas two said, and I'm like, I don't fucking
Speaker 1: know Thomas who said that, Like, was it like his
Speaker 1: ship's fucking chronicler who wrote it down? Like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: knew we weren't gonna like get super far without a
Speaker 1: reference to our flag means death. But the one of
Speaker 1: the best things on that show is the fact that
Speaker 1: he has like a guy following him around writing down
Speaker 1: cool stuff that he says. I know, I know. This
Speaker 1: is what I thought about when I said, yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of pirates get their start by mutiny, and I
Speaker 1: haven't read about it, being like, um, it's not that
Speaker 1: they're like usually like, oh, we don't like following the law,
Speaker 1: let's be pirates instead their mutiny like we aren't getting paid,
Speaker 1: we aren't being fed, Like one of the pirates that
Speaker 1: I read about, like at their start because that mutiny,
Speaker 1: because the captain was like, no, I don't have any food,
Speaker 1: but you can, like drink some rum. I don't care,
Speaker 1: and the pirates like, no, we want food, and so
Speaker 1: they like fucking killed the captain and became parrots. You know,
Speaker 1: if you, if you are ever in such a situation
Speaker 1: as this captain was saying to your you know, dissatisfied underlings,
Speaker 1: no you can't have any food, drink hard liquor on
Speaker 1: an empty stomach, and make a level headed decision here.
Speaker 1: That might not be your best call. It's it's the
Speaker 1: let them eat cake. But if cake was like a
Speaker 1: thing that makes people angry historically let me eat let
Speaker 1: them eat violence juice. Yeah, totally. So they don't view
Speaker 1: the project as a way to get rich overall, but
Speaker 1: more as a way to live free. And also specifically
Speaker 1: a lot of them are very directly motivated by revenge
Speaker 1: against the system, specifically against the merchant captains who worked
Speaker 1: sailors to death for work for fucking nothing. Pirates pretty
Speaker 1: often would capture ship and then just ask the crew
Speaker 1: of the ship like, hey, was this guy good to you?
Speaker 1: And if the crews like, nah, this guy sucked, they
Speaker 1: just fucking kill the captain. And if the captain they
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, he was all right, they might like
Speaker 1: not kill the captain. You know, it's a very good
Speaker 1: incentive to be a less shitty boss exactly. That is
Speaker 1: actually one of the things I don't think has talked
Speaker 1: about is like the existence of this thing happening probably
Speaker 1: got a lot of fucking merchant captains to get their
Speaker 1: ship together. You know. Specifically, the way that they killed
Speaker 1: some of these merchant captains was to or at least
Speaker 1: one of them, wrap a rope around the captain's face
Speaker 1: and tighten it until his eyes popped out. Cool people
Speaker 1: are every episode I read at least two new torture
Speaker 1: methods that they've never occurred to me. I rarely include them,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. Because this one's about bosses, I
Speaker 1: felt like including it. I mean, and I think it's
Speaker 1: probably good to remember that, like a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff the people were going to be talking about are
Speaker 1: we're doing is like really just actually terrible. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of argument about exactly how murdery and
Speaker 1: rape and tortury the pirates were. There's absolutely a decent
Speaker 1: amount of all three. There's like proof of all three,
Speaker 1: it's possible that they were intentionally spreading gossip about how
Speaker 1: horrible and mean and evil and terrible they were, so
Speaker 1: that to anyone who resisted, so that when they roll
Speaker 1: up on you, people are like, no, I don't want
Speaker 1: to resist, then we'll all get like tortured, right, Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you don't want the rumor about you to be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a chill guy. I hear, you can negotiate with him,
Speaker 1: you know, but that's said. I actually think that they're
Speaker 1: like um later pirates kind of there's a they have
Speaker 1: this downward arc. Later get even more like violent, right,
Speaker 1: And I think they kind of like, you have to
Speaker 1: be both good cop and bad cup. You have to
Speaker 1: be able to be like, look, I don't want to
Speaker 1: torture the shit out of you. You could just give up,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to be known for some level
Speaker 1: of mercy two people who go along with you in
Speaker 1: order to get away with being a robber. Like if
Speaker 1: every mugger shot the person that they stole from, people
Speaker 1: wouldn't give up their wallets to the person with a gun.
Speaker 1: They'd fight, you know. Yeah, I wonder if also there
Speaker 1: was like kind of a self fulfilling thing of like
Speaker 1: if you hype yourselves up as sadistic, violent assholes, one
Speaker 1: hundred years later people who are like, well, I'm a sadistic,
Speaker 1: violent asshole. I wonder if there's a way to monetize
Speaker 1: that might be more likely to go into the career
Speaker 1: that you have created. Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. And different
Speaker 1: crews were absolutely known for different levels of all of
Speaker 1: this shit, And so it's it's possible that pirates lived
Speaker 1: in this like what can only be described as a
Speaker 1: horror movie world. Like it's possible that it was this
Speaker 1: fucking nightmare air, this like sadistic, strange horror thing with
Speaker 1: and some of them were absolutely bloodthirsty. One guy was
Speaker 1: literally bloodthirsty. He was famous for hacking someone up with
Speaker 1: the cutlass and then licking the blood off of the cutlasts.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were cannibals, or at least presented
Speaker 1: themselves as cannibals through like grotesque acts in order to
Speaker 1: scare the shit out of everyone. But it's possible, and
Speaker 1: I think probable that overall they were exerting a lot
Speaker 1: less violence than the system that they were fighting against.
Speaker 1: And I don't know they're pirates they're not a peaceful bunch.
Speaker 1: By sixteen ninety seven, do you have an I means
Speaker 1: sorry just I mean, oh no, when when you're talking
Speaker 1: about like all of these ships that they're attacking and robbing,
Speaker 1: these are ships carrying the wealth created by colonialists, like projects,
Speaker 1: like colonial projects, and all of these countries where it's
Speaker 1: slave labor right being exploited to extract resources from other
Speaker 1: people's countries. Like there is a whole mess of violence
Speaker 1: happening before the pirates get their hands on this money. Yeah, no, exactly,
Speaker 1: and like and not just in a like these are
Speaker 1: the crazy violent ones in the state is like calmly violent,
Speaker 1: Like the state is also like torturing the shit out
Speaker 1: of everyone's like sadistic as fuck. Like this is not
Speaker 1: a fucking pretty time, none of which makes me want
Speaker 1: to hang out with seventeenth century pirates anymore then I
Speaker 1: previously did. I'm just sort of saying, like, yeah, in
Speaker 1: the context is one of extreme violence, Yeah, totally. By
Speaker 1: sixteen ninety seven, you have an explosion of piracy. By
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred, pirates have a symbol for themselves, the fucking
Speaker 1: Jolly Roger, which is a black flag with various allegories
Speaker 1: for death on it, a skull and bones, hourglasses, bleeding hearts.
Speaker 1: When they were privateers, they all wanted to be upstanding
Speaker 1: and not seen as pirates like that was like they
Speaker 1: were always like, yeah, we're not pirates. This is a
Speaker 1: big change. Now they're fucking proud, which leads to my
Speaker 1: argument that the first Pride flag was black and had
Speaker 1: a skeleton holding a spear and an hourglass. That's all
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Sometimes those flags could get absurdly intricate too.
Speaker 1: There was one I don't remember whose this was. I
Speaker 1: used to definitely know this, but there's like a skeleton
Speaker 1: or maybe it's a guy but like holding a spear
Speaker 1: that is dripping blood, and he's standing over two skulls
Speaker 1: and the skulls are labeled like it's the country that
Speaker 1: they are, and it's like, yeah, my guy, you do
Speaker 1: not want to be a pirate. You want to draw
Speaker 1: political cartoons like yeah, And that guy changed. I think
Speaker 1: it was Black Bart, who's not black, to be clear,
Speaker 1: None of the Goldench pirate captains or black some other
Speaker 1: crew are. We'll talk about that more, but yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that guy changes fucking flag like every fucking week too,
Speaker 1: like because he's he's basically fucking Ben Garrison. I can't
Speaker 1: think of and Garson's way, I'm now maybe now I'm
Speaker 1: worried I got the name wrongs that that conservative weird
Speaker 1: like weird cartoonist who makes all of these like incredibly
Speaker 1: intricate political cartoons. Everything is labeled like the Downfall of
Speaker 1: the West or AOC you know. Yeah, No, and me
Speaker 1: not knowing the name of anything or anyone is not
Speaker 1: a symbol of it being obscure or wrong. It's a
Speaker 1: symbol of the if it's not literally written in front
Speaker 1: of me. I don't know anyone's names, gotcha, but I
Speaker 1: think it was Bartholomi Robert who had that flag. But
Speaker 1: I remember reading about it being like this guy's a
Speaker 1: little much. And that's where we're gonna leave it today.
Speaker 1: When we come back on Wednesday, we'll talk about pirates
Speaker 1: and that polycuele I'm like dangling in front of people,
Speaker 1: much like the seventeen twenty sixth edition of You were like, oh,
Speaker 1: when we get to Annibondi and Mary Read, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about how they did or did not have their boobs
Speaker 1: out all the time, Like we're gonna to tune in
Speaker 1: in episode two. Yeah, the podcast that makes fun of
Speaker 1: how other people use things for titillating purposes and therefore
Speaker 1: basically plays into the same system that it's fighting against.
Speaker 1: I see what you're doing. See what you're doing, Margaret. Thanks,
Speaker 1: But but Miriam, what are you doing with your life
Speaker 1: or plugs or things that you want to tell people about.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna plug moderate amounts of vitamin C. Okay, you
Speaker 1: don't need to go you know, overboard. Uh, you don't
Speaker 1: need to keel all yourself with vitamin C. Well, like,
Speaker 1: don't get scurvy, you know, eat an apple? All right,
Speaker 1: Sophie guiding the plug. No, not today. I'm gonna plug
Speaker 1: because I never plug my bands for some reason in
Speaker 1: this podcast. I have a band called Nomadic war Machine.
Speaker 1: Nomadic Warmachine dot bandcamp dot com has a bunch of albums.
Speaker 1: It's dark beep boops that go beep boop boop. And
Speaker 1: then I have a metal band called Feminasgal that does
Speaker 1: not go whoop. Although you'll pretty quickly be able to
Speaker 1: tell that I'm a person who writes the drums for both.
Speaker 1: And that's what I have to plug. I'll talk to
Speaker 1: everyone on Wednesday when we're going to talk about pirate tits.
Speaker 1: Cool Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
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