Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (Canto original series)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521457203 ISBN 13: 9780521457200

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1993

Seamen, captains and pirates occupy a special place in our popular culture, yet until now the historical record of their lives has been remarkably neglected. This brilliant account of the maritime world of the eighteenth-century reconstructs in detail the social and cultural milieu of Anglo-American seafaring and piracy. Rediker follows sailors and their ships along the pulsing trade routes, into ports with their crowded waterfront society of brothels, alehouses, brawls and jails, and paints a compelling picture of their world at sea with its brutal labour, harsh discipline, hangings and floggings. The book's focus on maritime experience illuminates the broader historical sweep of the rise of capitalism and the growth of an international working class - epic themes which were intimately bound up with everyday lives of seafaring men.

Book Description:

Seamen, captains and pirates occupy a special place in our popular culture, yet until now the historical record of their lives has been remarkably neglected. This brilliant account of the maritime world of the eighteenth-century reconstructs in detail the social and cultural milieu of Anglo-American seafaring and piracy.

Review:

This book is...full of meat...graphically described" Socialist Review

'Triumphant ... What distinguishes Rediker's work is his unwavering and unsentimental focus on the seaman's labour and experience in his cramped wooden world.' E. P. Thompson, The Guardian