Blackbeard Economics

The surprising, and surprisingly tame, self-organization of pirates.

Katherine Mangu-Ward from the June 2009 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

But this “rougish Commonwealth” also had due process. Caprtains were elected, and they could be removed by a vote of the crew. Speeches were given for and against candidates. One of Capt. Roberts’ sailors, for example, urged his fellows to vote for a leader “who by his Counsel and Bravery seems best able to defend this Commonwealth... such a one I take Roberts to be. A Fellow! I think, in all Respects, worthy of your Esteem and Favour.” Speeches also contained warnings and reminders of the power of the people: “Should a Captain be so saucy as to exceed Prescription at any time, why down with him! it will be a Caution after he is dead to his Successors, of what fatal Consequence any sort of assuming may be.”

A ship’s captain received the same lodging and rations as ordinary sailors, and very similar pay. His one unique power was absolute command during battle; in this way, pirates got the advantage of quick decisions from a powerful commander and total obedience from his fighters when the heat of battle was upon them, while enjoying the leisurely indulgence of deliberation and voting when things were calmer. Roberts’ constitution allowed “the Captain and Quarter-Master to receive two Shares of a Prize; the Master, Boatswain, and Gunner, one Share and a half, and other Officers, one and a Quarter.” Additional payments, agreed upon in advance, went to those who lost eyes or limbs, a primitive sort of workers’ compensation.

Balancing the powers of the captain was the quartermaster, the captain’s peacetime counterpart. Sort of a den mother with a blunderbuss, he oversaw the distribution of loot and generally kept peace on the ship by enforcing the rules and arbitrating disputes. He too could be replaced at any time by a vote.

They may have been outlaws “without government,” Lesson writes, “but they weren’t without governance.” And here’s where Leeson gets to his lesson. The book is actually an argument for extralegal systems of regulation—for ordered anarchy.

When it came time for pirates to swing into action, the main goal was not to have to do battle at all. Thinking economically, intimidation, not cannons, was the buccaneer’s chief weapon. Everyone is familiar with the skull and crossbones, designed to remind prey of the death and torture facing them if they were so foolish as to fight. Less well known is that some pirates added extra flourishes to their Jolly Rogers, advertising which specific murderous madman was about to rain hell on the hapless merchants.

That’s one reason why so many accounts of piracy feature tales of torture. Cruel and unusual punishment was a kind of bloody marketing campaign, Leeson suggests. The problem is that once you’ve concocted a reputation for being crazy and tough, you have to a) keep it, b) brand it, and c) prevent other ships from stealing your brand. As the fictional Dread Pirate Roberts (not to be confused with the historical Capt. Bartholomew Roberts) put it in the cult film The Princess Bride, “Once word leaks out that a pirate has gone soft, people begin to disobey you, and then it’s nothing but work, work, work, all the time.”

The sea is big, and we’re talking about a time before there was a reliable way to calculate longitude, so encountering prey was a challenge. One of the reasons pirates used torture was to save themselves time looking for the next ship. When they boarded a merchant vessel, plunderers went first to the captain’s quarters to find records, maps, and other indications of trade routes and future voyages. These were the real booty, since they bought tomorrow’s income as well. Threats of torture made captives more eager to divulge the whereabouts of plans.

As convincing as Leeson’s account of piratus economicus might be, he’s hardly the first to use pirates to illustrate a broader point about social organization. Charles Kingsley, a 19th-century Christian socialist, wrote a poem, “The Last Buccaneer,” about pirate ships as workers’ cooperatives. In the 1987 book Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, University of Pittsburgh historian Marcus Rediker suggested that pirate ships transported 17th-century English radicalism to American revolutionaries. Eugène Delacroix’s famous painting of a bare-breasted Liberty brandishing the French revolutionary flag, Rediker noted, looked awfully similar to engravings of the notorious lady pirate Anne Bonny, who was typically depicted in similar dishabille.

The cross-dressing exploits of Anne and her fellow disguised lady pirates, coupled with the rules against bringing attractive young lads or gals aboard and a form of mutual insurance called matelotage in which two pirates pledged their support to one another, has prompted Arizona State historian B.R. Burg to create a cottage industry of books on queer pirate theory. In Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition (1984), he claims an “almost universal homosexual involvement among pirates.”

In his 1995 article “Black Men Under the Black Flag,” Kenneth J. Kinkor, a historian and piratologist at the Expedition Whydah Sea-Lab and Learning Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, compiled the available data on the racial composition of pirate crews. By Kinkor’s reckoning, 25 percent to 30 percent of the average golden-age pirate crew was black. Because of this large minority presence, some have argued that pirates were somehow more enlightened than other whites of their age, recognizing blacks as fellow victims of the system.

But what scant evidence there is suggests that Caucasian pirates felt the same way about blacks as did most whites of the time. It seems likely that they simply worked with black pirates if that was the best way to get treasure. Many blacks were worth more as free colleagues than as slaves. “Sometimes,” writes Leeson, “the invisible hook led pirates to display a racial progressivism in practice that didn’t accord with the racial views in their minds.”

Unfortunately, there isn’t much data to support the notion of pirate ships as Enlightenment-born societies of revolutionary republicans and tolerant liberals. For every apparently compassionate act, there is an act of enslavement or murder. For every cooperative effort, there is a brutal maiming or marooning. Everyone wants a piece of the pirates, but most accounts struggle to explain the ways pirates stubbornly deviate from the progressive ideal. Leeson convincingly argues that “without economics, pirates...are a veritable ball of contradictions. They’re sadistic pacifists; womanizing homosexuals; treasure-lusting socialists...and lawless anarchists who lived by a strict code of rules.” With economics, they’re a bunch of gossipy racists who go to bed early, ban women from the premises, and bluster to avoid fighting. These fastidious, calculating pirates may have been a far cry from the romantic, mad buccaneers of legend. But Peter Leeson’s economical actors have an appeal all their own.

Katherine Mangu-Ward ([e-mail]) is an associate editor at reason.

Bonus Video: Watch Peter T. Leeson discuss The Invisible Hook with Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie below.

script src="http://reason.tv/embed/video.php?id=752" type= "text/javascript"> /script>

Comments

|5.21.09 @ 10:35AM|#

What? No Yellowbeard photos?

spambot|5.21.09 @ 10:40AM|#

There are no Austrian pirates!

Face the Muzak|5.21.09 @ 10:57AM|#

Why does reason have such a hard-on for pirates? I mean, who really gives a fuck?

proud libitard|5.21.09 @ 11:06AM|#

yeah, we know Ninjas are WAAAAAAAAY cooler...There whole purpose is to flip out and kill people!

proud libitard|5.21.09 @ 11:07AM|#

um, their even....

Alan Vanneman|5.21.09 @ 11:27AM|#

"In peaceful years, annual pay for legit sailors was £25, equivalent to around $4,000 today. A big haul for a pirate crew, on the other hand, might bring in between £300 and £1,000 per man for a few months' work. If legally sanctioned sailor pay was bad, the working conditions were worse. Captains on merchant ships held absolute power over their crews, and they regularly ordered floggings, revoked pay or rations, or tied men to the mast. Sailors could sue when they got home, and they occasionally won, but that's cold comfort when you're six months at sea, stripes from the lash stinging your back, and ordered to forfeit your rum ration."

Well, that's capitalism, right? The free market system. You gotta problem wid dat?

|5.21.09 @ 12:44PM|#

People willing to kill and rob have always been able to make above-market compensation.

This is news?

|5.21.09 @ 1:26PM|#

The point is not that pirate society is a free society. That's just silly. The point is that even group of violent anarchistic thugs will spontaneous develop a society that operates on the same economic laws that we do. As such, pirates are a useful area of economic inquiry that can provide lessons for today.

Jeff P|5.21.09 @ 1:31PM|#

I am more concerned with the sanctioned emergency medical procedures of pirates than with their economics. CPR usually consists of 15 men on a dead man's chest...

Gunter|5.21.09 @ 1:48PM|#

"As such, pirates are a useful area of economic inquiry that can provide lessons for today."

But at Reason, it's EVERY DAY!

|5.21.09 @ 1:55PM|#

The point is that even group of violent anarchistic thugs will spontaneous develop a society that operates on the same economic laws that we do.

Well, except the laws against killing people and stealing their stuff as an allowable form of economic activity, of course.

|5.21.09 @ 2:18PM|#

I said *economic* laws. It's so sad no one can read anymore.

Gunter|5.21.09 @ 2:35PM|#

"The point is that even group of violent anarchistic thugs will spontaneous develop a society that operates on the same economic laws that we do."

So what you're saying is that our economic laws are tantamount to piracy?

proud libitard|5.21.09 @ 3:30PM|#

Good one Jeff P

but I'd also be worried about my domecile because they would come and...wait for it...Shiver me timbers!

What would I do then?

|5.21.09 @ 6:19PM|#

My government(US Federal and State) kills people on a daily basis and takes my stuff(taxes). Why is it OK for them but not for pirates.

jg6|5.21.09 @ 9:38PM|#

"I am more concerned with the sanctioned emergency medical procedures of pirates than with their economics. CPR usually consists of 15 men on a dead man's chest..."

. . .and, if the condemned ate a hearty meal, he would give them the old heave-ho . . ?

|5.22.09 @ 11:04PM|#

It is my understanding that these "pirate Codes" were not hard and fast rules. They were more like guidelines.