Temporary Autonomous Zone

The pirates that Defoe wrote about preyed on the Atlantic trade in the 17th and 18th century. They were generally callous and brutal men who came to unpleasant ends but they were also products of a system of hideous exploitation. In their expropriation of the profits of the slave trade in the pursuit of personal freedom it could be argued that they were better than the ‘honest men’ who they preyed upon.

Pirate crews of this era generally organised around an elected Captain and Quartermaster who were granted a double share on the plunder. The Captain’s position was transitory and depended on his success as a ‘war chief’; in this manner he was similar to the leader of a war party in Pierre Clastres analysis of Native American societies*. For him to maintain control he had to maintain “actual permanent war” (Clastres p.186) this prevented any real social cohesion from taking place. Effectively the crew were in a state of continuing revolt against the general society of the sea – a permanent temporary state that was only bought to an end by the crew amassing sufficient wealth and taking advantage of one of the periodic amnesties that the maritime powers offered, or in their capture and death.

Both the tribal group and pirate band define themselves in opposition to the other. However, unlike the blood based tribal group membership of the crew was not based on birth but on voluntary acceptance of the ‘articles’ of the crew – these were signed up to by the crew members as a free alliance** – a declaration of war on other societies. The Quartermaster was the permanent ‘civil chief’ in this situation, he acted to moderate the Captain and look to the crew’s long term interests (to accrue sufficient wealth to take advantage of any pardon before a fatal conflict). The Quartermaster was effectively doomed to fail in any wider civil sense – “If any society allows the proportion of its provisions attained from the spoils of war to grow, it would thereby establish a relation of growing dependence on its providers.” (Clastres p.184)

Seeing as the crew were parasitic on the Atlantic trade they had no wider civil society to protect: However Defoe’s account of Captain’s Misson and Tew demonstrate a desire to move beyond the liberty that is found in constant revolt and form a society outside the constraints of both European and colonial rule. The period of revolutionary liberty had given them a view into how they could develop their autonomy outside of the rigid hierarchies of their previous lives.

*Pirate crews were generally more accepting of non-Europeans than the white/other social divisions of the colonial Caribbean – possibly some alternative mechanisms of organisation were carried over from these contacts?

**The extent to which the choice was truly ‘free’ is open to question, when bought to trial the majority of pirates claimed that they were forced to join the crew. However captured pirates had a vested interest in this claim as it would return a ‘not guilty’ verdict.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 21st, 2010 at 5:10 pm and is filed under General Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.