Members' Lecture: Pirate Commonwealths

Pirate Commonwealths: Empires, Politics and Piracy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

In popular imagination - in films, books, and video games - pirates are outsiders, living beyond the law. They have their own language, their own codes, and their own dress sense.

Contemporary observers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and some historians since, have even described them as forming their own republic or 'commonwealth', congregating in notorious havens from the Caribbean to Madagascar. Yet that idea of a 'pirate commonwealth' has its own fascinating history, one which reveals much about the very close relationship between piracy and imperial politics. 

In this talk Dr Richard Blakemore, author of Enemies of All: The Rise and Fall of the Pirates, returns to the National Maritime Museum to explore why this idea came into being in the so-called 'golden age' of piracy, how it has changed over time, and what it can tell us about pirates and their impact on the world.

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