In their place comes a story about the magic, sea battles, purloined princesses, manhunts, make-believe kingdoms, fraudulent ambassadors, spies, jewel thieves, poisoners and devil worship that lie at the origins of modern freedom. Pirate Enlightenment playfully dismantles the central myths of the Enlightenment. Its actors were Malagasy women, merchants and traders, philosopher kings and escaped slaves, exploring ideas that were ultimately to be put into practice by Western revolutionary regimes a century later. In this jewel of a book, he offers a way to ‘decolonize the Enlightenment’, demonstrating how this mixed community experimented with an alternative vision of human freedom, far from that being formulated in the salons and coffee houses of Europe. I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review. This was the Golden Age of Piracy, a period of violent buccaneering and rollicking legends – but it was also, argues anthropologist David Graeber, a brief window of radical democracy, as the pirate settlers attempted to apply the egalitarian principles of their ships to a new society on land.įor Graeber, Madagascar’s lost pirate utopia represents some of the first stirrings of Enlightenment political thought. Pirate Utopia by Bruce Sterling is a short book about some idealizing 'pirates' in the 1920's who take over and develop their own country. Its true origins lie thousands of miles away on the island of Madagascar, in the late seventeenth century, when it was home to several thousand pirates. The Enlightenment did not begin in Europe. Mortal enemies of communists, capitalists, and even fascists. Lovers of artful books won’t want to miss it. Utopian pirate-warriors of the tiny Regency of Carnaro, unlikely scourge of the Adriatic Sea. A rumbustious retelling of the birth of the Enlightenment, from the bestselling radical author of The Dawn of Everything Praise for Pirate Utopia 2018 Theaker’s Quarterly Award 2016 Sidewise Award, Best Short-Form Alternate History nominee An io9 16 Must-Read Science Fiction and Fantasy Books A Speculition Best of 2016 This small but exquisite volume packs a lot of power for its size.
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