Did you know that they were early incubators of democracy?
Yes, those stereotypically lawless rum-chuggers turned out to be ardent democrats. And in their strange enlightenment, Leeson sees the answer to a riddle about human nature, worthy of “Lord of the Flies” or an early episode of “Lost.” In the absence of government and law enforcement, what becomes of a band of men with a noted criminal streak? Do they descend into violence and chaos?
The pirates who roamed the seas in the late 17th and early 18th centuries developed a floating civilization that, in terms of political philosophy, was well ahead of its time. The notion of checks and balances, in which each branch of government limits the other’s power, emerged in England in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. But by the 1670s, and likely before, pirates were developing democratic charters, establishing balance of power on their ships, and developing a nascent form of worker’s compensation: A lost limb entitled one to payment from the booty, more or less depending on whether it was a right arm, a left arm, or a leg.
The idea of enlightened piracy is strange swill to swallow for those steeped in a pop culture version of the pirate – chaos on the high seas, drinking and pillaging, damsels forced onto the plank. Sure, there’s something about the independence of piracy that still speaks to people today. (Even the founders of International Talk Like a Pirate Day acknowledge that there is, in people who love to say “Aargh,” a yearning for a certain kind of freedom.) But it turns out that pirate life was more than just greedy rebellion. It offers insights into the nature of democracy and the reasons it might emerge – as a natural state of being, or a rational response to a much less pleasant way of life.
Of course, those were largely pirates of the Anglosphere. Somehow, I suspect that Somali Muslims might generate a different kind of pirate society.