12/01/2022
While conducting field research in Madagascar, Graeber (The Dawn of Everything) learned that Caribbean pirates settled on the island in the early 18th century and that their descendants were Zana-Malata people. Intrigued, he began to collect information about pirate societies in Madagascar, which eventually led to this thought-provoking work. Graeber acknowledges that the sources are scarce and often sensationalistic, but some general facts are accepted. For example, despite their fearsome reputation, pirates were egalitarian aboard their ships: crew members elected their captains, and they settled their problems via conversation, deliberation, and debate. Moreover, Caribbean pirates were drawn to the great riches of the Indian Ocean, and Madagascar made an excellent base from which to conduct raids. Pirates were influenced by the locals in Madagascar, particularly the women, known for their mercantile success and conversational skills. Many married pirates, and they formed communities that combined pirate governance and the egalitarian aspects of Malagasy society. Graeber speculates that these pirate communities influenced the Enlightenment and notes that European intellectuals found inspiration from the proto-Enlightenment ideas of these pirate communities. VERDICT This work will appeal to those interested in pirates or unorthodox views of the Enlightenment.—Dave Pugl
2022-10-06
The final book from the longtime activist anthropologist.
In a lively display of up-to-date anthropology, Graeber (1961-2020) offers a behind-the-scenes view of how a skilled researcher extracts knowledge from the slimmest evidence about a long-ago multiethnic society composed of pirates and settled members of existing communities. In this posthumous book, the author turns to 17th- and 18th-century Madagascar and examines hard-to-credit sources to tease out some plausible facts about the creation and early life of a distinctive Indian Ocean society, some of whose Malagasy descendants (“the Zana-Malata”) are alive today. Exhibiting his characteristic politically tinged sympathies, Graeber describes the pirates who plied the seas and settled on Madagascar as an ethno-racially integrated proletariat “spearheading the development of new forms of democratic governance.” He also argues that many of the pirates and others displayed European Enlightenment ideas even though they inhabited “a very unlikely home for Enlightenment political experiments.” Malagasies were “Madagascar’s most stubbornly egalitarian peoples,” and, as the author shows, women played significant roles in the society, which reflected Jewish, Muslin, Ismaili, and Gnostic origins as well as native Malagasy and Christian ones. All of this information gives Graeber the chance to wonder, in his most provocative conjecture, whether Enlightenment ideals might have emerged as much beyond Western lands as within them. His argument that pirates, women traders, and community leaders in early 18th-century Madagascar were “global political actors in the fullest sense of the term” is overstated, but even with such excesses taken into account, the text is a tour de force of anthropological scholarship and an important addition to Malagasy history. It’s also a work written with a pleasingly light touch. The principal audience will be anthropologists, but those who love pirate lore or who seek evidence that mixed populations were long capable of establishing proto-democratic societies will also find enlightenment in these pages.
Certain to be controversial, but all the more important for that.
"The real story of antiauthoritarianism, gendered economics and direct democracy behind a legendary 18th-century pirate province . . . [Pirate Enlightenment] advances Graeber’s mission: to destabilize our idea of what’s possible and show that humans can, and often do, create egalitarian worlds built on points of consensus instead of the sharp end of a cutlass."
—Sam Dean, Los Angeles Times
"David Graeber was a highly original thinker and a wonderful writer. Most of all he was someone who sought out challenging problems and set about trying to solve them."
—Peter Frankopan, New York Times Book Review
"Pirate Enlightenment pluralizes and globalizes our understanding of whose ideas and actions are considered impactful and whose vision shapes the world, a framing that still resonates in contemporary times . . . In his academic writing and political commitments, David Graeber exemplified an ethos of action and conversation . . . As anthropologists have noted, gifts are inalienable—they contain within them something of the giver. Graeber's final book is certainly such a gift." —Jatin Dua, Science
"One of the most creative books ever published on the history of piracy . . . [Graeber] successfully pairs two kinds of history from below: maritime and Indigenous. This is a highly unusual combination and a winning one. He treats ordinary people, especially women, as thinkers, creators, and makers of history. His theory and methods are as democratic and egalitarian as the culture he seeks to illuminate." —Marcus Rediker, The Nation
"A tour de force of anthropological scholarship and an important addition to Malagasy history . . . Certain to be controversial, but all the more important for that."
—Kirkus
“Pirates captured the imagination of writers and readers centuries ago, and David Graeber reveals why. He has produced one of the most fascinating, original, and altogether brilliant books ever written about these unruly outlaws.”
—Marcus Rediker, author of Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age
“A characteristically radical re-reading of history that places the social and political experiments of pirates at the heart of the European Enlightenment. A brilliant companion volume to the best-selling Dawn of Everything.”
—Amitav Ghosh
“Daring, carefully speculative, and intellectually ambitious: all qualities that we had come to expect of the late David Graeber. Pirate Enlightenment is a splendid example of Graeber’s transformative and convincing case that the Enlightenment was a cosmopolitan and plebian concoction, fabricated far from the European centers of Enlightenment thought.”
—James C. Scott
“Radical, magical and enchanting: a true history of a people’s Enlightenment, led by Malagasy women and egalitarian pirates at a crossroads of the world, a land of battle, foment, booty, whose inhabitants liked nothing better than pranking outsiders to spread outlandish tales of their lives.”
—Cory Doctorow, author of Chokepoint Capitalism and Walkaway
“In The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber urged historically minded scholars to consider the ways that human beings have continually pursued three basic freedoms, including the freedom to create new forms of social relations. In this book, he provides a fascinating example of the transformative potential of this proposition. Showing how rumored 18th century ‘pirate kingdoms’ established in Madagascar can be understood from the perspective of the local Malagasy population, Graeber gives us a glimpse of people, men and women, taking control of the society in which they lived, making new forms of sociality. He links this historical exploration to a second theme of the previous work, the fact that European political philosophers in the 17th and 18th century were responding to ideas coming from outside Europe, providing them inspiration to image freedoms they had not previously experienced. Pirate Enlightenment is, as the author writes, a provocation—but also an inspiration; and a great piece of story-telling.” —Rosemary A. Joyce, Interim Director of Global, International, and Area Studies, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley
