Outlaws of the Atlantic

Sailors, pirates, and motley crews in the age of sail

Marcus Rediker, Verso, 208 pages, hardback, £16.99

Outlaws explores the sea as a setting for human activity and historical change against a backdrop of the Atlantic and the global rise of capitalism.

We see the sea as a place of escape, as a place for the construction of an alternative social order.

Rediker also gives us the Atlantic sailor, the enslaved African and the interracial mob as revolutionary agents in the coming of the American Revolution — the sea as a site for the generation of radical ideas.

The book shows that important historical processes transpired on the vast, nationless commons called the sea: the rise of capitalism, the formation of race and class, and the creation, from below, of oppositional cultures that promised more just and democratic ways of life.

Reviews contributed by the Bookmarks socialist bookshop. Order online at www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk