|
|
|
Detail Center Header Text Above Items |
(Larger Image)
|
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750 (Canto original series)
by Marcus Rediker
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (1993-06-25)
ISBN: 0521457203
EAN: 9780521457200
Dewy Decimal #: 387.50941
Paperback: 340 pages
SKU: T071104-2700
Condition: Very Good
Comments: Very good overall condition. Very tight binding. Book has some highlights. Ships same day or next in a bubble mailer. Enjoy.
|
Editorial Reviews
|
Product Description
Seamen, captains and pirates occupy a special place in our popular culture, yet until now the historical record of their lives has been remarkably neglected. This brilliant account of the maritime world of the eighteenth-century reconstructs in detail the social and cultural milieu of Anglo-American seafaring and piracy. Rediker follows sailors and their ships along the pulsing trade routes, into ports with their crowded waterfront society of brothels, alehouses, brawls and jails, and paints a compelling picture of their world at sea with its brutal labour, harsh discipline, hangings and floggings. The book's focus on maritime experience illuminates the broader historical sweep of the rise of capitalism and the growth of an international working class - epic themes which were intimately bound up with everyday lives of seafaring men.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Sailing Socialism
Rating  (5)
Date: 2003-03-23
22 out of 24 customers found this reveiw helpful
Rediker is hardly the only man to notice - though he is one of only a very few to have written on the topic at length - that the Anglo-American Maritime world of the early to mid 18th Century was a socio-political hotbed of burgeoning revolution. To criticize the author for being a Marxist is absurd - the era about which he is writing, and the sailors and specific cultural events of that era, were socialist themselves, though they wouldn't have had the insight to realize it at the time.Political scientists and economists should find this book of even more interest than historians, as many of the same events in the rise of Capitalism as Rediker writes about are now coming full circle and repeating themselves, with NAFTA and GATT creating the same social conditions that led to widespread - and often remarkably effective (in the case of piracy) - rebellion between 1700 and 1750. As Rediker points out, our very word "strike," in its labor union connotation, originated with merchant mariners striking sail on their ships and halting the movement of their cargoes. Rediker is a remarkably thorough researcher, backing his thesis with the best possible sources and representing both the Capitalist and Labor points of view from contemporaneous documents. His masterful rendering of the world of "Jack Tar," an average mariner of the age, ably demonstrates that the social upheaval witnessed during the Golden Age of Piracy was an inevitability - as was its eventual downfall. Rediker is not a Marxist apologist, as his critics claim, but a keen and competent observer of statistical trends and social events, which he elucidates with extreme precision. He is less advancing any kind of argument, than simply putting the merchant marine world of three centuries ago into clear focus, and to some degree comparing and contrasting it with our modern landscape. This is a truly fascinating book, as much for its brilliantly vivid portraiture of the age as for the validity of its social and economic arguments. It would make an excellent textbook for political science, economics, or sociology classes.
|
|
No Quarters given
Rating  (2)
Date: 2000-12-31
35 out of 63 customers found this reveiw helpful
First off, before you even think about buying this book, understand that is a socioeconomic study of the maritime profession from 1700 to 1750. The book was written by a Marxist who has succumbed to Hollywood's romantic characterization of the Pirate as a misunderstood individual who only wanted his unalienable rights which were withheld by the running dog lackeys of the capitalist pigs who ran the shipping business and the Navy. Even if he had to murder people to get it.If you want a semi-legitimate justification of piracy, you may find enough here to keep you happy. Most of the study is a legitmate presentation of maritime economics and the danger of the trade in the early part of the 18th century. Yes, most ship owners and captains were capitalist pigs who would man a ship with a minimum crew and pray they lost no crew members to the many dangers that were common to shipping at that time. Not the least of which was piracy. His arguements begin to fall down when he describes the commraderie and equalitarian brotherhood that pervailed on board a pirate ship. He intimates that slaves captured were treated as equals. (there is documentation to indicate otherwise including the sinking of a pirate ship which the crew members escaped, but the captured slaves were allowed to drown. If you are reading this for the economic history of the shipping industry or for information of the quaint Naval custom of impressing their crew (both the Americans and British were known for grabbing able bodied saling men off the docks and encouraging them to join - they'd untie them when they were far enough out to sea) then this book is excellent. If you are looking for information on a typical sailor's life, I'd suggest "Before the Mast" in conjuntion with this. But if you are looking for real information on pirates and piracy, This book does not provide much. there is is more accurate information regarding piracy in "Under the Black Flag" with a more varied discussion of the possible causes of the choice of piracy, backed by statements taken from court records of the time. I would not recommend Between the Devel and the Deep Blue Sea as a history to most people as the author is attributing many modern sociological and psychological causes to historical events about which we have only in some cases, the account books for reference.
|
|
A Review
Rating  (3)
Date: 2000-11-02
8 out of 29 customers found this reveiw helpful
This text is interesting and engaging, but Rediker's bias ruins the credibility of his arguments. Rediker is a Marxist historian and therefore provides an extremely slanted view of seafaring men. His thesis is centered on the seaman as a member of the working class, and his struggle to rise in a capitalist system. One example of how his bias has clouded his analysis is in his discussion of alcoholism. Rediker assumes that the resort to alcohol is caused by alienation- this draws obvious parallels to Marx's own work focussed on the alienation of the workers (200). A particularly appalling example of his bias is when Rediker discusses the cruel treatment of seaman by their masters. Rediker then asserts that "when Karl Marx noted that the modern wage labor system could not have emerged without the bloody assistance of the lash, he may well have had the early modern shipping industry in mind" (213 n19). Clearly there is no basis for this statement save his personal beliefs.
|
|
A remarkable investigation on an original topic.
Rating (5)
Date: 2000-05-28
25 out of 27 customers found this reveiw helpful
"Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" constitutes a very serious study on a topic often covered just superficially by historians: the life, ways , customs and culture at sea in the Anglo - American Maritime World in the Eighteenth Century. The title itself suggests the wooden world of the ship, sailing through the ocean with its sailors trapped in the middle of the Devil, or the harsh conditions on board, and the Deep Blue Sea. The first part of the book provides the reader with a wide view of the port cities and trade routes where this maritime culture evolved. And starting from this geographical tour, the topic is narrowed down to the specific aspects and details regarding "Jack Tar", or the personification of an average sailor of those times. It is amazing to think of such a harsh world, very well portrayed by the autor, that was the heart of the English Commerce, and the cornerstone of the future British Empire. The conditions on board were so insane that only the stongest could survive. This reality, very accurately described by the autor, led to multiple mutinies that often ended up in piracy. The fact that English sailors died in similar proportion as slaves in the African Coast, is a true revelation for the reader. A remarkable fact dealing with piracy, that makes this book different from others, is that this investigation prooves that the pirates are the good guys of the story. These men of free spirit that broke away from the strict discipline on board, constituted a democratic but ruthless society, aside of the law, in their pirate ships and communities. Such form of democracy, based on principles of solidarity between the English poor, was one of the first examples of the fight for equality among men, before the French and American Revolutions.
|
|
A remarkable, true account of the lives of ancient seamen.
Rating (5)
Date: 2000-02-02
6 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
Markus Rediker explores the amazing way in which the harsh conditions surrounding seafaring in the Eighteenth Century built up a unique environment. The wooden world that constituted the deep sea sailor's reality is carefully detailed and well documented, which makes it very interesting and entertaining to read. Rediker reveals the reader what the real world was like, much different from the romantic idea of the sailor, built up by popular culture. He shows how seamen fought their lives caught "between the devil...", or the harsh conditions on board, and "the deep blue sea", that surrounded everything. He takes the reader in a fascinating trip to the most important port cities of the old Anglo-American Maritime World to experience how and where the personality, ideology, psychological and social characteristics of the deep sea sailor evolved. And, the most interestig feature of all, is how a group of brave and daring men decided to break away and declare a war where "no quarter wold be given" to that unfair reality to which they once belonged. Those rebels became the notorious pirates of the Golden Age of Piracy, who are undoubtedly the most fascinating seamen of the period. Rediker's comparison of the tyrannical conditions of the merchant service and the navy, on one hand, and the democratic principals that guided the Pirate Brotherhood, on the other, is a true revelation of this outstanding book.
|
|
|
|
Detail Center Footer Text Below Items |
|
|