A General History of the Pyrates
While Moore's assessment of the importance of this text is accurate, Defoe’s authorship of this (and dozens of other texts) has been brought into question by most recent scholars. Despite the fact that many current editions of this popular text continue to name Defoe as the author there is little to tie Defoe to the text in any meaningful way. Although the temptation is strong, given Defoe's interest in maritime affairs, criminality and the well-being of the working classes, the General History is attributed to Johnson for the purposes of this study.
The uncertainty over the author is mirrored by the uncertainty of the provenance of much of the information contained inside; the text is a fabulous mix of painstakingly transcribed records from contemporary trials, confessions, newspaper accounts and interviews...alongside passages, and even a complete chapter, of fiction. As Margarette Lincoln points out, the work and its reception reception show the "desire to pin down the shifting identities of contemporary pirates figures" in the public record; while modern readers often struggle with a text that so skillfully weaves fact and fiction together, she points out, readers in Johnson's time would have "understood 'history' to include accounts of wondrous happenings and other non-factual material" so the book "challenges the modern reader to distinguish historical event from fiction" (16).
Literary scholars often read the text as a celebration (or, at least, an investigation) of the subaltern rogue, giving insight into the working man's experience with a growing imperial and commercial national infrastructure. It inspired not only contemporary audiences, but also later readers such as Byron (who would produce The Corsair) and Stevenson (whose Treasure Island utilizes a variety of names and customs gleaned from the General History). Because there are so few extant records written by pirates themselves, this quasi-factual anthology (which does include facts from reliable journalistic sources and trials...alongside huge swathes of complete fiction) is of great importance. Some of the most famous aspects of this subaltern culture are detailed throughout the General History. Several of the accounts list the ship’s articles, for example, which provide valuable insight into the early modern pirate’s creed, also known as the Jamaica discipline: each man holds a vote, only the captain and his officers receive more than one share of a prize, there is to be no gaming and no women aboard ship, and desertion can be punished with death or marooning. Rather than existing in a cultural vacuum aboard widely dispersed ships, many of these policies were taken from vessel to vessel during the generally cooperative interactions between pirate vessels with national or religious connections.
The first edition of the General History commenced with the life of Henry Avery, included in this book. His is one of several chapters in which the pirates shift their attention to the east. The shipping lanes of the Atlantic and Caribbean had grown far more crowded and policed by the early eighteenth century, and updates to state policy (noted within the chapters and also in the "Contemporary Documents" section) made it easier for the English to prosecute and execute captured pirates. New shipping lanes were being formed to the east, however, and Avery and his crew voted to gamble on the Indian Ocean, both far larger and farther away from European state powers. Avery's subsequent raid on the Grand Mogul Aurangzeb would not only make international news for its violence, audacity and scope, but also because it would endanger the fledgeling commercial relationship between India and England.
The General History was so popular that additional chapters were added to new editions in an attempt to sustain (and increase) the public’s interest. The second edition, also published in 1724, came with two new chapters on Captains Phillips and Spriggs. The latter captain does briefly engage in cannibalism with his crew, and Phillips’s crew swears a series of dramatic oaths aboard the Revenge in the name of piracy, so it appears that the more dramatic examples of piracy sold well. Five more editions were published before any further changes of any significance were made to the initial content. Fifteen new pirates were added for the 1726 edition, including the notorious Captains Mission, Kidd, Tew, and Bellamy. Mission and Tew, also included in this project, are among the most notorious fictional creations in the history of the criminal biography.
Captain Misson's chapter is almost entirely fictional, although the character does have his origins in real pirates, likely the Captains "Plantain" and Adam Baldridge. "Plantain" is a shadowy figure, but we know more of Baldridge because of his ties to new world merchants. Bladridge's settlement on Madagascar was, as Ryan Holroyd points out, "far from being an egalitarian, proto-revolutionary statelet." It was, instead, "a slave-trading entrepôt" at which Captain Baldridge worked for the interests of "an enterprising New York merchant named Frederick Philipse, who specialised in importing goods from the Indian Ocean to British North America, especially slaves," as well as illicit treasure stolen by the pirates, and rewarding the pirates with "liquor, guns, shipping equipment, clothing and other goods" (757). In an interesting historical footnote, it was this tangle of human and illicit cargo between Madagascar and New York that eventually led to the commissioning of one of the most famous pirates of the era, William Kidd.
Captain Thomas Tew was, by contrast, a very real figure whose years living in the American colonies and Caribbean are fairly well documented. His origins in the General History touch on the historical record, as he was indeed sailing in consort with one Captain Drew (referred to as "Dew" in his chapter), and did receive a privateering commission from that island's governor. His real exploits are then merged with those of the fictional Mission, rather than those of Avery, with whom he actually joined up with in the Red Sea. It seems likely that Johnson sought credibility for his largely fictional tale of Mission by merging his account with such a well-documented pirate as Tew, given all three men (Avery, Tew and "Misson") raided the same lanes in roughly the same period.
Mission and then later Tew are credited in their chapters with creating the pirate utopia of Libertalia, a detailed imagining of the anxieties, possibilities and limits surrounding subaltern nation-building. While pirates did in fact establish small bases on the island, and at points appeal to European state powers for clemency and even status as a colony, there is no evidence that a substantial and ongoing settlement like Libertalia truly existed. However, the mere imagining of a land with democratic principles, non-aristocratic leadership and a non-denominational faith was a powerful act. It shows "how an idealized pirate lifestyle could be depicted as morally superior, or at least made to represent an ideological counterpoint to European societies. Libertalia has been described as the fictive representation of the living traditions and dreams of sailors then working in the Atlantic trades. [...] The effect of Libertalia on the imagination has arguably been more important over the centuries than its historical veracity" (Lincoln 176).
Captain Thomas Tew was, by contrast, a very real figure whose years living in the American colonies and Caribbean are fairly well documented. His origins in the General History touch on the historical record, as he was indeed sailing in consort with one Captain Drew (referred to as "Dew" in his chapter), and did receive a privateering commission from that island's governor. His real exploits are then merged with those of the fictional Mission, rather than those of Avery, with whom he actually joined up with in the Red Sea. It seems likely that Johnson sought credibility for his largely fictional tale of Mission by merging his account with such a well-documented pirate as Tew, given all three men (Avery, Tew and "Misson") raided the same lanes in roughly the same period.
Mission and then later Tew are credited in their chapters with creating the pirate utopia of Libertalia, a detailed imagining of the anxieties, possibilities and limits surrounding subaltern nation-building. While pirates did in fact establish small bases on the island, and at points appeal to European state powers for clemency and even status as a colony, there is no evidence that a substantial and ongoing settlement like Libertalia truly existed. However, the mere imagining of a land with democratic principles, non-aristocratic leadership and a non-denominational faith was a powerful act. It shows "how an idealized pirate lifestyle could be depicted as morally superior, or at least made to represent an ideological counterpoint to European societies. Libertalia has been described as the fictive representation of the living traditions and dreams of sailors then working in the Atlantic trades. [...] The effect of Libertalia on the imagination has arguably been more important over the centuries than its historical veracity" (Lincoln 176).
