Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea : Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750 by Marcus Rediker ISBN: 0-521-37983-0 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 24 February, 1989 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.17 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Sailing Socialism
Comment: 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.
Rating: 2
Summary: No Quarters given
Comment: 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.
Rating: 3
Summary: A Review
Comment: 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.
 |
Title: Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates by Robert C. Ritchie, Robert C. Rirchie ISBN: 0674095022 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1989 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
 |
Title: The Many-Headed Hydra : The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh, Marcus Rediker ISBN: 0807050075 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 16 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
 |
Title: The Buccaneers of America by Alexander O. Exquemelin ISBN: 048640966X Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 26 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
 |
Title: Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life among the Pirates by David Cordingly ISBN: 0156005492 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: A General History of the Pyrates by Daniel Defoe ISBN: 0486404889 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 17 March, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
