A General History of the Pirates - Captain Charles Johnson

A General History of the Pirates

By Captain Charles Johnson

  • Release Date: 2023-03-30
  • Genre: Biographies & Memoirs

During the Golden Age of Piracy, a writer calling himself “Captain” Charles Johnson introduced London readers to the denizens of a savage world just beyond their shores. These pirates took up residence in readers’ imaginations, where they’ve been a mainstay of popular culture ever since.

Pirate history especially resonates for American readers, as what would become the wild frontier of the American west began in the piratical eastern seaboard of Colonial times. When revolutionaries gathered in Philadelphia to found a continental republic, it was with a memory of the Pirate Republic founded eighty years earlier in Nassau and its attempt at self-government, ship-board democracy, and defiance of empire. When Grant arrived in Virginia to restore thirteen breakaway states to that republic, he came with a memory of Woodes Rogers’ arrival in the Bahamas to reclaim those islands for the Empire. The legacy of triangular trade, on which these pirates preyed and depended, has continued to play out across the nation’s history.

For its contemporary readers piracy was serious business, and this book describes their exploits with a journalistic spirit. Johnson writes history, but history in the present tense. He editorializes, shares his personal knowledge of seamanship, and offers practical advice both to maritime merchants and to powerful policymakers. He draws stories from interviews with living pirates, draws from public and legal records, and develops historical context, bringing his own social analysis to bear. In some parts, he presents human interest stories as tabloid journalism with “a little the air of a novel,” recounted mostly because they’re interesting.

And they are interesting: the bored gentleman and inept pirate Stede Bonnet as he arrives unarmed to a battle of wits with the experienced, savage, and polygamous Edward Teach; Teach, who said of this crew that “if he did not now and then kill one of them, they would forget who he was”; the scandalous pirate-thruple of Mary Read, Anne Bonny, and “Calico” Jack Rackham. To the present day, in countless works, across media, Johnson’s pirates and the world they inhabit live on.

Comments:

12 Comments
Taylor Mackenzie
Amazing! I love this site
Aston Ayers
Only Signup is easy and free, finally I can read this book A General History of the Pirates with good quality. Thank you!
Ashley Ann
Been waiting to download this book for months. and finally came out too
Cheryl Lynn
This book A General History of the Pirates is very nice, with quick read and download
Erin Cochran Cole
Great selection and quality is better than many Book Store, no kidding.
Kyle Magner
yes, i am also through this to download books
Eric Mn
Yes this really works! Just got my free account
Terry Barnes
One of the best book I've seen this year!
Pastor Shahuano
Excited, Happy Reading guys !!!
Laura Velez Garcia
Thanks, I'm so glad to be reading this book
Wouter van der Giessen
Laura Velez Garcia yes same me too
Janet McCann
Sign up was really easy. Less than 1 minute I was hooked up