Maritime Outlaws

For thirty-odd years, American historian Marcus Rediker (University of Pittsburgh) has been writing about the sea, deep-sea sailing ships, seafaring proletariats, and seafaring rebels, during the seventeenth through to the early nineteenth centuries. Internationally, his landmark study of sailors, mutineers, and pirates, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (1987), is widely acknowledged as a major ‘history from below’, that genre of historical writing dealing with people traditionally written out of ruling class histories which glorify and enshrine the wealthy, the propertied, and the interests of the state.