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'One That's More Torrid': The Pirates of Madagascar

Introduction Map of Madagascar

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An Introduction Madagascar was an island that loomed large in the lives of sailors and the public imagination of the time. As newspapers grew more common, accounts of the pirates and their exploits became more widely known, less controlled by the state, and inspiring to writers of both fiction and non-fiction. Benedict Anderson elucidated how, in that early modern era, the spread of news meant a new 'imagined community' was created, linking people and their goods from around the world. But as Kathleen Wilson muses, "the ascription of 'imagined community' to the world of goods and information constructed by newspapers begs a number of questions, not least, whose community? Who was imagining it, and what was it imagined to consist of?" (33-4). The history and fiction of the pirates of Madagascar is the story of a community both real and imagined, at the meeting point of two great oceans and myriad civilizations.

Madagascar is a land of nonstop interaction; settled by Austronesians from the far side of the Indian Ocean, who intermingled with visitors from the Middle East and neighbors from the kingdoms of east Africa, it was then suddenly a major stop for Europeans in the era of colonization. As Rila Mukherjee points out, "Not only do littorals connect, their connectivities transcend the coastal into the interior and this distinctive connectivity is also in symbiosis with the larger premise [that] ‘oceans connect’" (39). This Scalar book is a collection of works that investigate that hybridity; Madagascar's coasts were ongoing sites of cultural, religious and economic exchange.

This Scalar book opens with background on the land and people of Madagascar, in order to provide a richer context for the literature. The core of the project is a textually and visually annotated edition of three significant chapters from A General History of the Pyrates, based on the extended volume published in 1728, in which each crew encounters and interprets the island. Finally, a section of useful Contemporary Documents is provided, allowing readers to better navigate the interaction between fact and fiction.

Please note that all images included in this Scalar book can be investigated in more detail. Clicking on the image will open a close-up of the image in a new tab. In addition, hovering over some images will prompt an annotation to pop up. Hyperlinks are also live throughout the text, often providing an annotation or allowing readers to pursue an interesting source via the Contemporary Documents or Works Cited.