History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

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Capitalism and Slavery is definitely food for the brain.
Capitalism and Slavery
A wonderful thesis withstanding the tests of time
Misunderstanding of Islamic slavery
Caribbean History

Capitalism and Slavery
Eric Williams
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0807844888

Book Description

Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism worldwide.

Eric Williams advanced these powerful ideas in Capitalism and Slavery, published in 1944. Years ahead of its time, his profound critique became the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development. Binding an economic view of history with strong moral argument, Williams's study of the role of slavery in financing the Industrial Revolution refuted traditional ideas of economic and moral progress and firmly established the centrality of the African slave trade in European economic development. He also showed that mature industrial capitalism in turn helped destroy the slave system. Establishing the exploitation of commercial capitalism and its link to racial attitudes, Williams employed a historicist vision that set the tone for future studies. In a new introduction, Colin Palmer assesses the lasting impact of Williams's groundbreaking work and analyzes the heated scholarly debates it generated when it first appeared.

Customer Reviews:

Capitalism and Slavery is definitely food for the brain........2006-08-19

This is a very, very excellent piece of work. I read and studied this book when I was a teenager in high school in Trinidad. At that time I was required to study the book as part of our Caribbean History syllabus. That was over 13 years ago. So as an adult I decided to purchase the book and appreciate the information. And boy this was the best decision I ever made. I recommend people of all races and backgrounds to read this book. As the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Dr. Eric Williams has left us with a gift.

Capitalism and Slavery.......2006-05-11

The basic theory underlying Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery is that slavery in the colonies, particularly the West Indies so far as this analysis is concerned, brought about capitalism, and thereby led to its own decline.

The first five chapters of the book explain the nature of British economics prior to the American Revolution. Synthesizing information rather than expressing his own view, Williams discusses triangular trade among England, the African coast, and the slave-holding colonies. In essence, England exported goods and ships, Africa exported slaves, and the colonies exported slave-produced raw materials.

American independence destroyed the mercantilist scheme of triangular trading. The ex-colonies now had no incentive to trade with the West Indies at their monopoly prices, instead turning to French islands for their sugar, at considerably lower prices. Consequently, British businessmen were no longer interested in giving economic protection to the West Indies because doing so without mainland North America would cost them money. One basic tenet of Adam Smith's capitalism is that business should be efficient and profitable, and monopolies simply were neither. The laissez-faire approach, or Smith's "invisible hand," meant eliminating monopolies and letting economics take its course.

During this time the Industrial Revolution also occurred, generating new machinery, most notably Watt's steam engine, and simplifying the extraction of raw materials. Ironworks were now much more efficient, for example, as was the process of turning wool into useable cloth. These advantages put Great Britain in a position to economically dominate the world. During this time also Spanish colonies in South America began breaking away from Spain, opening up vast regions for British trade. Similarly, Asia became a possibility for a wide variety of goods, most notably, in the scope of Williams' book, East Indian sugar. All these opportunities and Britain's economic superiority culminated in the end of monopolistic practices.

Slavery had precipitated these developments by generating fantastic wealth through triangular trading; without slavery, that trade scheme would not have existed. Once these developments came to pass, however, slavery proved itself largely pass?. Without the monopoly on West Indian sugar, slave trading became substantially less profitable. At the same time, when the American mainland split from Great Britain, suddenly Britain was no longer dependent on slavery for economic success, but instead could be a global distributor for goods. Furthermore, abolitionists in England gave cry to the crime of slavery, since they were no longer directly dependent on it, and eventually Britain banned the slave trade.

Williams's analysis is interesting and well worth reading. That said, his assertion that slavery declined is only partly true; it was alive and well in the southern United States. Furthermore, while Williams claims slavery brought about triangular trading, which in turn brought about the Industrial Revolution, one wonders if slavery simply expedited the arrival of the Industrial Revolution. Finally, he focuses to a significant extent on British humanitarianism in ending slavery; cynically, one must consider the relevance of slavery to those humanitarians, and how many there were after the Industrial Revolution.

A wonderful thesis withstanding the tests of time.......2006-03-21

I recently read this book for graduate school and highly recommend it. This book was written in 1940 and while critics have been able to pick at a few details within the book, noone has every successfully disproven his entire thesis - that the rise of industrial capitalism would not have been possible without the existence profits derived from slavery and the slave trade. Williams does a splended job of illustrating how slavery influenced all facets of the triangular trade, which in turn shaped Britian into an economic power. It also brings put the economic reasons for the abolitionist movement (namely, that abolitionists were motivated by free-trade, no necessarily compassion in their opposition to the slave trade).This is a must-have book for anyone interested in a strictly economic look at slavery, it's rise, fall and demise.

Misunderstanding of Islamic slavery.......2005-11-13

The last two reviewers who seemed to criticize Williams for not discussing other forms of slavery miss the point. Williams was not engaged in some sort of West bashing but attempted to explain the significance of slavery in the development of the Caribbean. Insofar as Islam is concerned, the reviewers once again miss the essential point. Rather than investigate what Islam actually says about slavery they go with a knee-jerk assumption. Here is what Kecia Ali has written about slavery in Islamic society:

"The Qur'an, which Muslims believe to have been revealed by God to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century, makes numerous references to slaves and slavery (e.g., Q. 2.178; 16.75; 30.28). Like numerous passages in the Hebrew bible and the New Testament, the Qur'an assumes the permissibility of owning slaves, which was an established practice before its revelation. The Qur'an does not explicitly condemn slavery or attempt to abolish it. Nonetheless, it does provide a number of regulations designed to ameliorate the situation of slaves. It recommends freeing slaves, especially "believing" slaves (Q. 2.177). Manumission of a slave is required as expiation for certain misdeeds (Q. 4.92; 58.3) and another verse states that masters should allow slaves to purchase their own freedom (Q. 24.33).

The Qur'an also suggests certain means of integrating slaves, some of whom were enslaved after being captured in war, into the Muslim community. It allows slaves to marry (either other slaves or free persons; Q. 24.32; 2.221; 4.25) and prohibits owners from prostituting unwilling female slaves (Q. 24.33). Despite this protection against one form of sexual exploitation, female slaves do not have the right to grant or deny sexual access to themselves. Instead, the Qur'an permits men to have sexual access to "what their right hands possess," meaning female captives or slaves (Q. 23.5-6; 70.29-30). This was widely accepted and practiced among early Muslims; the Prophet Muhammad, for example, kept a slave-concubine (Mariya the Copt) who was given to him as a gift by the Roman governor of Alexandria.

Traditional Islamic law (fiqh) elaborates significantly on the Qur'anic material concerning slavery. The enslavement of war captives is regulated, along with the purchase and sale of slaves. While it is not permissible to enslave other Muslims, the jurists clarify that if a non-Muslim converts to Islam after enslavement, he or she remains a slave and may be lawfully purchased and sold like any other slave. (This rule closes a potential loophole allowing for slaves to gain their freedom by the simple fact of conversion.) The law also prescribes penalties for slave owners who maltreat or abuse their slaves; these penalties can include forced manumission of the slave without compensation to the owner.

Islamic law devotes special attention to regulating the practice of slave marriage and concubinage, in order to determine the paternity and/or ownership of children born to a female slave. A man cannot simultaneously own and be married to the same female slave. The male owner of a female slave can either marry her off to a different man, thus renouncing his own sexual access to her, or he may take her as his own concubine, using her sexually himself. Both situations have a specific effect on the status of any children she bears. When female slaves are married off, any children born from the marriage are slaves belonging to the mother's owner, though legal paternity is established for her husband. When a master takes his own female slave as a concubine, by contrast, any children she bears are free and legally the children of her owner, with the same status as any children born to him in a legal marriage to a free wife. The slave who bears her master's child becomes an umm walad (literally, mother of a child), gaining certain protections. Most importantly, she cannot be sold and she is automatically freed upon her master's death."

As for the Aztec, they had a system of slavery that also came with a bundle of rights, far different from the chattel slavery of the European variety.

Caribbean History.......2004-12-03

Although there may be complainants about Dr. Williams not addressing certain forms of slavery throughout history it has to be kept in mind that his thesis was about the hows and whys of African enslavement in the Caribbean. Williams firmly argues and details how today's culture of racism and capitalism was born.
This book is extremely well done and a great beginner for anyone interested in the topic of Caribbean history.

Sir John Hawkins: Queen Elizabeth's Slave Trader

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One of the Armada's Fab Four

Sir John Hawkins: Queen Elizabeth's Slave Trader
Harry Kelsey
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0300096631

Book Description

Although his cousin Sir Francis Drake is more famous, Sir John Hawkins (1532-1595) was a more successful seaman and played a pivotal role in the history of England and the emergence of the global slave trade. Born into a family of wealthy pirates, Hawkins became fascinated by tales of the riches of foreign lands. Early in his career he led an illegal expedition in which he captured three hundred slaves in Sierra Leone and transported them to the West Indies. There he traded them for pearls, hides, and sugar—thus giving birth to the British slave trade. His voyages were so lucrative that Queen Elizabeth herself sponsored subsequent missions.

Discouraged from his career as a pirate by a near-fatal encounter with angry Spanish troops, Hawkins spent much of his later life in England at the service of the queen. Although he committed treason, murder, and adultery at various points in his career, he was nonetheless knighted in 1588 for his role in defeating the Spanish Armada. In this riveting book, Harry Kelsey, biographer of Sir Francis Drake, tells the story of this extraordinary man.

Customer Reviews:

One of the Armada's Fab Four.......2004-09-08

Those of us raised on tales of the Armada, and the gallant defense of the English homeland, will immediately recognize Sir John Hawkins as one of the fabulous Four heroes who repelled the Spanish attacks (the other three being Howard, Drake and Frobisher). Less admirably, Hawkins is also notorious for his freebooting in the Carribean, wherein he sought to bust the Spanish monopoly on slave-trading. Like Sir Francis Drake, Hawkins was a master of staging a phony "raid" on local Spanish officials who were all too keen to buy the Englishman's wares - but needed to stage a token resistace to the interlopers in order to satisfy King Philip that the dreaded English had forced them to trade at gunpoint. Kelsey tells Hawkins's life story passably well, but the narrative is, for the most part, an unexciting one; for a character this infamous, one might have expected something more.

The Door of No Return: The History of Cape Coast Castle and the Atlantic Slave Trade

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The Business of Slavery
The Door of No Return is a welcome addition to public and college library history shelves.

The Door of No Return: The History of Cape Coast Castle and the Atlantic Slave Trade
William St Clair
Manufacturer: Bluebridge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1933346051

Book Description

The grim history of the slave trade from Africa is one that has had an impact on generations of people all over the world. While much of the initial voyage and inhumane treatment of slavery has been historically analyzed, there has been little written on the several forts and castles along the coast of Ghana that were used as slave holding facilities. This book focuses primarily on Cape Coast Castle, the African headquarters of the British slave trade from 1664 to 1807, through which countless men, women, and children were sold as slaves and carried away on slave ships, often to North America. It tells the story of the people who lived, worked, or were imprisoned within its walls, as well as the construction and upkeep of the building, the arrivals and departures of ships, the negotiations with local African leaders, and the deadly diseases inside.

Customer Reviews:

The Business of Slavery .......2007-08-19

Written with the Gold Coast of Africa as its center, this remarkable book is an amazing piece of work. The author uses records recovered from Britain's slave forts to recreate the business life of the trade. We learn how and why people were bartered for manufactured goods and the process of assembly and shipping of human cargo. The recovered douments also provide the personal side never meant to be viewed by others. I found this book to be excellent and recommend it thoroughly.

The Door of No Return is a welcome addition to public and college library history shelves........2007-06-10

Written by William St Claire (former Senior Research Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge University), The Door of No Return: The History of Cape Coast Castle and the Atlantic Slave Trade is an in-depth history of the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, Africa, and its role it served as headquarters for the horrific British slave trade, until the slave trade's abolishment in 1807. Drawing heavily from years of personal research into the Castle's vast archive of public records and ledges - from letters and correspondence to scribbled notes and even the recipes of trafficked slaves - The Door of No Return offers a unique, in-depth scrutiny of this dark place and phase of human history. Written in plain terms and illustrated with a handful of black-and-white photographs, The Door of No Return is a welcome addition to public and college library history shelves.

The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic

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Table of Contents
From the bottom up
A bottom-up theory of resistance
Empire Begins
Tremendously overrated

The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic
Peter Linebaugh , and Marcus Rediker
Manufacturer: Beacon Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0807050067

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Globalism is nothing new, argue leftist historians Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker. Centuries ago, European trade concerns, such as the Dutch East Indies Company and the Virginia Company, sought to create an overseas empire owned by corporations, not governments. Backed by governments all the same, these companies found themselves opposed only by a congeries of revolutionary sailors, artisans, farmers, and smallholders, who formed a "many-headed hydra" of resistance.

Arguing that this history of resistance to globalism has been unjustly overlooked, Linebaugh and Rediker delineate key episodes. When, for instance, a group of English sailors and common laborers were shipwrecked on the island of Bermuda en route to America, they created their own communal government, which was so pleasant to them that they refused to be "rescued" and had to be removed to the colonies by force. Their ideological descendants later banded with runaway slaves and other discontents to form multi-ethnic, multilingual pirate navies that hindered the transatlantic traffic in metals, jewels, and captive humans. Some of the men and women involved in these pirate bands, this "Atlantic proletariat," put their skills at the service of the American Revolution, which, in the author's view, "ended in reaction as the Founding Fathers used race, nation, and citizenship to discipline, divide, and exclude the very sailors and slaves who had initiated and propelled the revolutionary movement." The fire of rebellion soon spread all the same, they note, to such places as Haiti, Ireland, France, even England, helped along by these peripatetic and unsung rebels.

Linebaugh and Rediker's book is provocative and often brilliant, opening windows onto little-known episodes in world history. --Gregory McNamee

Book Description

"For most readers the tale told here will be completely new. For those already well acquainted with the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the image of that age which they have been so carefully taught and cultivated will be profoundly challenged."âDavid Montgomery, author of Citizen Worker
Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. The Many Headed-Hydra recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world.

When an unprecedented expansion of trade and colonization in the early seventeenth century launched the first global economy, a vast, diverse, and landless workforce was born. These workers crossed national, ethnic, and racial boundaries, as they circulated around the Atlantic world on trade ships and slave ships, from England to Virginia, from Africa to Barbados, and from the Americas back to Europe.

Marshaling an impressive range of original research from archives in the Americas and Europe, the authors show how ordinary working people led dozens of rebellions on both sides of the North Atlantic. The rulers of the day called the multiethnic rebels a "hydra" and brutally suppressed their risings, yet some of their ideas fueled the age of revolution. Others, hidden from history and recovered here, have much to teach us about our common humanity.

"A landmark in the development of an Atlantic perspective on early American history. Ranging from Europe to Africa to the Caribbean and North America, it makes us think in new ways about the role of working people in the making of the modern world."âEric Foner, author of The Story of American Freedom

"What would the world look like had the levelers, the diggers, the ranters, the slaves, the castaways, the Maroons, the Gypsies, the Indians, the Amazons, the Anabaptists, the pirates . . . won? Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker show us what could have been by exhuming the revolutionary dreams and rebellious actions of the first modern proletariat, whose stories~until now~were lost at sea. They have recovered a sunken treasure chest of history and historical possibility and spun these lost gems into a swashbuckling narrative full of labor, love, imagination, and startling beauty."âRobin D. G. Kelley, author of Yo' Mama's Disfunktional!

"The Many-Headed Hydra is about connections others have denied, ignored, or underemployed. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Europe, Africa, and the Americas came together to create a new economy and a new class of working people. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker tell their story with deep sympathy and profound insight. . . . A work of restoration and celebration of a world too long hidden from view."âIra Berlin, author of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

"More than just a vivid illustration of the gains involved in thinking beyond the boundaries between nation-states. Here, in incendiary form, are essential elements for a people's history of our dynamic, transcultural present."âPaul Gilroy, author of The Black Atlantic

"This is a marvelous book. Linebaugh and Rediker have done an extraordinary job of research into buried episodes and forgotten writings to recapture, with eloquence and literary flair, the lost history of resistance to capitalist conquest on both sides of the Atlantic."âHoward Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

Customer Reviews:

Table of Contents.......2006-10-22

Table of Contents
Introduction 1
1. The Wreck of the Sea-Venture 8
2. Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water 36
3. "A Blackymore Maide Named Francis" 71
4. The Divarication of the Putney Debates 104
5. Hydrarchy: Sailors, Pirates, and the Maritime State 143
6. "The Outcasts of the Nations of the Earth" 174
7. A Motley Crew in the American Revolution 211
8. The Conspiracy of Edward and Catherine Despard 248
9. Robert Wedderburn and Atlantic Jubilee 287
Conclusion: Tyger! Tyger! 327
A Map of the Atlantic 1699 354
Notes 355
Acknowledgments 413
Index 417

From the bottom up.......2004-11-03

I recently had the opportunity to see Marcus Rediker speak about his latest book, "Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age." The room he spoke in was absolutely packed, and not just with students seeking to curry favor with their professors. Little kids turned up, as did local high school students. People who went to college when Eisenhower was president turned up as well. Why all the hoopla to see an academic speaking on a weekday evening? One word: pirates. People of all stripes love pirates. They simply can't get enough of these ruffians even though they have been gone from the scene for a couple of hundred years. Something about these rogues appeals to the American spirit, a spirit that also embraces the gunslinger of the Old West. We love the idea of rugged individuals living outside the norms of society, even if that life often led to a violent death at a young age. Look at all the films dealing with pirates and gunslingers, the most recent of which is "Pirates of the Caribbean" starring Johnny Depp. But the book I think Rediker's reputation will ultimately rest upon is this one, "The Many-Headed Hydra," written with fellow historian Peter Linebaugh.

Pirates ultimately play only a small role in this book. What we have here is an attempt to rewrite the entire history of the transatlantic region from a bottom up perspective. In other words, this book isn't a history of the monarchs of England, or the American Founding Fathers, or the merchants who owned the trading companies. It is a history of those too often ignored over the ages, those who toiled on the plantation, those who acted as foot soldiers in the armies of conquest, those who sailed the ships that brought slaves to the New World, and those held in bondage. It is a book about the men, women, and children who built the very tools necessary for the development and expansion of capitalism and colonization. It is a book about the nefarious "hydra," that mythic beast slain by Hercules and whose name the elites applied to anyone who dared challenge their authority. Francis Bacon wrote a treatise about this "hydra," arguing that they were subhuman "monsters" that the authorities should eradicate at the earliest opportunity. These wretches became the "hewers of wood and drawers of water," or peons good only for the basest labors.

The authors argue that several key factors played a part in the creation of this hydra. The most important was expropriation, that disastrous English policy that displaced thousands upon thousands of small farmers so that large landowners could fence in land, which led to such massive social unrest that the authorities had to do something about it. They chose to terrorize, to incarcerate, and execute those opposed to the new order. They also chose to ship many of these people overseas to use them as cheap labor to develop properties in the new world. The authors define subsequent events, everything from slave rebellions in Jamaica to a 1741 insurrection in New York, as class warfare between the poor and the wealthy. Members of the hydra (I should say heads of the hydra), according to the authors, always sought to unify their class interests in order to throw off the yoke of the oppressors. And the oppressors always managed to negate these attempts.

"The Many-Headed Hydra" is an enormous effort of scholarship, covering so many obscure events in British, Caribbean, and American history that the casual reader's mind will certainly founder under the onslaught of information. I'm a graduate student in history and I occasionally found myself looking up some of the events and people cited by the authors. Moreover, there are a couple of extraordinarily dense chapters examining how the hewers of wood and the drawers of water expropriated religion to their own class ends that will further boggle the mind. Not to worry, however, as the general themes of the book crystallize quite clearly through example after example of the attempted rise of the underclass and the subsequent crackdown by those in power. There are so many examples that follow this template that by the time the reader gets to the end of the book he or she is tempted to yell, "Enough already! I get the idea!" Eventual irritation aside, Rediker's and Linebaugh's book is an impressive reinterpretation of transatlantic history. It is also, unfortunately, rabidly left wing and biased. The following example will show the book's emphasis on underclass agency as well as its tendency to overstate its case.

Rediker and Linebaugh claim that impressment, that scurrilous activity effort by naval officers and ships' captains to forcibly coerce sailors into foreign service, was the key factor in starting the American Revolution. While it is no doubt true that the underclass in the American colonies had different beefs with their English masters than the colonial elites did, this book goes way too far in trying to show that the ENTIRE impetus for the revolution started with the underclass. According to the authors, colonial elites witnessing the riots started by disgruntled sailors and other "riffraff" were inspired to internalize this revolutionary fervor. Hogwash. All you need to do is go look for T.H. Breen's "Tobacco Culture," which successfully proved that wealthy colonial planters agitated for war because they owed so much money to English merchants that to stay within the British orbit would have ruined them. At best, we can say that BOTH the underclass and the upperclass had reasons to oust the British, and then went separate ways later. "The Many-Headed Hydra" is useful because it gives us another way to think about transatlantic history, but its one-sided arguments omit much.

A bottom-up theory of resistance.......2004-08-28

"The Many Headed Hydra" by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker is an exceptionally well-written and enlightening history of early capitalism. The authors offer a bottom-up theory of resistance and describe the conditions by which the modern nation state was founded as a solution to the problem of proletariat self-rule. Short narratives, biographies and illustrations of key events and individuals are framed within a discussion of the historical forces of the era, making the book an interesting, thought provoking and entertaining read.

Linebaugh and Rediker describe the brutal process of primitive accumulation where the poor were forced off the land to create the proletariat class. The newly-dispossessed were disciplined harshly and made to labor for the benefit of the investor class. However, the pervasive "culture of fear" that was "indispensible to the creation of labor-power as a commodity" eventually led to revolt, first with the English Civil War in the 1640s and later throughout the colonial system.

The authors spotlight individuals who made the case for the rights of all people, including Edward Despard, James Naylor, Tom Paine, Thomas Spence and Robert Wedderburn. These voices articulated the desires of the masses to achieve equality and social justice. As these rights were consistently denied, the seeds of discontent and rebellion were planted. When not organizing resistance against empire, many chose piracy, formed their own renegade communities, or chose to live among the Native Americans.

In this light, the authors present the American Revolution as a cooptation of the democratic movement. Capitalist property and wage relations were legislated in a manner that secured elitist privilege. Race, sex and class effectively served to split the proletariat into factions that could be politically controlled. The nation state thus was born as an instrument to empower the bourgeoisie and channel the energies of the masses towards capitalist accumulation.

The unique value of this book is its convincing argument that the world we know may have turned out very differently. This tantalizing possibility is just one reason why "The Many-Headed Hydra" is an intriguing read. I highly recommend it to all.

Empire Begins.......2003-10-12

In 1741 at Hughson's, a waterfront tavern in New York City, a motley crew of men and women, members of what Linebaugh and Rediker call the Atlantic proletariat planned a rebellion against the New York ruling class. They included among others radical Irishmen and women, Africans slaves, the wretched refuse created by the enclosure of the commons, the plantation system and the slave trade. The rebellion was uncovered by the authorities, its leaders were tried convicted, lynched or broken on the wheel, or sent off to slave in plantations in the West Indies. Newspaper accounts of the time described vast crowds gathering from all over New York and elsewhere to view a peculiar, emblematic and perhaps even prophetic phenomenon. The lynched bodies of two leaders of the rebellion, Hughson, an Irishman, and John Gwin, an African, were left to rot as a warning. In death, the white's body turned black, and the black's turned white

According to the authors, this resistance in New York was not unusual. It was just one of many, many rebellions and uprisings in the Atlantic colonies by what the authors call the "hydrarchy," appropriating Francis Bacon's scurrilous metaphor of the many-headed hydra which he borrowed from the myth of Hercules and used to characterize dispossessed and extirpated peasantry of the Atlantic, a characterization used thereafter by the ruling class to describe those whom they enslaved to the exigencies of capitalism. As the authors say in their conclusion on pages 327-328: "In the preceding pages, we have examined the Herculean process of globalization and the challenges posed to it by the many headed hydra. We can periodize the almost two and a half centuries covered here by naming the successive and characteristic sites of struggle: the commons, the plantation, the ship and the factory. In the years 1600-1640, when capitalism began in England and spread through trade and colonization around the Atlantic, systems of terror and sailing ships helped to expropriated the commoners of Africa, Ireland, England, Barbados and Virginia and set them to work as hewers of wood and drawers of water."

The authors go on to say that in the second phase, 1640-1680, "the hydra reared against English capitalism, first by revolution in the metropolis, then by servile war in the colonies. Antinomians organized themselves to raise of a New Jerusalem against the wicked Babylon in order to put into practice the biblical precept that God is no respecter of persons. Their defeat deepened the subjection of women and opened the way to transoceanic slavery in Ireland, Jamaica, and West Africa. Dispersed to American plantations, the radicals were defeated a second time in Barbados and Virginia, enabling the ruling class to secure the plantation as a foundation of the new economic order."

They describe the third phase in 1680-1760 as the "consolidation and stabilization of Atlantic capitalism through the maritime state, a financial and nautical system designed to acquire and operate Atlantic markets." They note it was "the sailing ship -- the characteristic machine of this period of globalization -- combined features of the factory and the prison." Consider in this regard the famous 'tryworks" chapter in Moby Dick. They go on to say "ýIn opposition, pirates built an autonomous, democratic, multiracial social order at sea, but this alternative way of life endangered the slave trade and was exterminated." They note that connected with this counterrevolution from above, "a wave of rebellion ripped through the slave societies of the Americas in the 1730s, culminating in a multiethnic insurrectionary plot by workers in New York in 1741."

The final phase of their history tells the story of how the "motley crew" with Tacky's Revolt in Jamaica and a series of uprisings throughout the hemisphere created "breakthroughs in human praxis--the Rights of Mankind, the strike, the higher-law doctrine--that would eventually help to abolish impressment and plantation slavery." He suggests these rebellions also helped to produce the American Revolution, which, they claim, "ended in reaction as the Founding Fathers used race, nation and citizenship to discipline, divide and exclude the very sailors and slaves who had initiated and propelled the revolutionary movement."

After reading this eye-opening leftist history, the polyglot streets of New York, indeed of any port city on the Atlantic, suddenly make a lot more sense. Caught up in the brutal, enslaving machine of capitalism starting in the 1600s, the Atlantic and (and eventually) Pacific proletariat fought back against this deadly system of terror, enslavement and extirpation. And it clearly appears, with the assistance of this people's history of the American colonies, that the sons and daugthers of the hydrarchy are caught up now in just the latest model of Blake's dark, satanic mills, trapped and impressed into the vast, destructive combine of the corporate hegemon.

Too programmatically left wing in its somewhat idealizing potrayal of the rabble as a motley crowd who sought freedom from their enconomic enslavement, who practiced democracy and rebellion in reaction to the vicious disciplinary system of the ruling class? Perhaps, but not as tidy as those histories told from the top down which use the fumigated version of the historical record to tell those grand and increasingly obtuse stories of the birth of freedom, equality and opportunity for all.

Tremendously overrated.......2003-04-02

This is a deeply flawed book. It seeks to construct a radical reinterpretation of the early modern Atlantic world, one which privileges class conflict. To this end, it adopts a romantic, almost pre-Raphaelite vision of medieval European and Indian societies, and then recounts the destruction of those societies by the growth of capitalism. The authors' methodology is to comb through selected primary documents and secondary literature, picking out only those bits that fit the book's thesis. For example, they adopt the class elements of Edmund Morgan's analysis of Bacon's Rebellion (the part that has least survived subsequent scholarship) while doing their best to avoid branding the rebels with genocidal racism towards Indians, which Morgan (and every subsequent scholar) has argued drove the rebellion. Of course, presenting reinterpretations is the purpose of new scholarship, but the authors never actually make an argument or present evidence to justify their dismissal of these previous interpretations. The useful is recited, and the inconvenient is simply ignored.
The book is also awash in errors of fact, all of them conveniently aiding their argument. In fact there is often an interesting correlation between badly used evidence and a poorly referenced footnote. To take a few examples: the authors define antinomianism as the belief that God saves through a free gift of grace (perfectly orthodox Calvinism) and later as the doctrine that salvation occurs through faith alone (perfectly orthodox Protestantism). Their discussion of the Putney debates at one point quotes Thomas Rainborough so out of context as to reverse his intent, and the authors make a completely unsupported connection between the debates and opposition to African slavery. Their interpretation of the Antinomian crisis in Boston involves serious manipulations and omissions of evidence (ex. it is never mentioned that Captain Underhill, a commander in the Pequot War, was also one of Anne Hutchinson's followers; there is also no evidence for the authors' suggestion that the Hutchinsonians ever opposed the institution of slavery; and finally most of her followers were in fact merchants, not "proletarians"). While very much in the same school, the book lacks the subtlety and intelligence that E.P. Thompson and Christopher Hill managed to give their finer works. In the end, the popularity of this book lies in its very polemical blindness. Like Wiccans reading Margaret Murray and feeling "it just has to be true," Marxists and anti-globalization protesters devour this book as a confirmation of all their own presuppositions. Evidence was never really necessary.

Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History

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Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History
Ian Baucom
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0822335964

Book Description

In September 1781, the captain of the British slave ship Zong ordered 133 slaves thrown overboard, enabling the ship’s owners to file an insurance claim for their lost âcargo.â Accounts of this horrific event quickly became a staple of abolitionist discourse on both sides of the Atlantic. Ian Baucom revisits, in unprecedented detail, the Zong atrocity, the ensuing court cases, reactions to the event and trials, and the business and social dealings of the Liverpool merchants who owned the ship. Drawing on the work of an astonishing array of literary and social theorists, including Walter Benjamin, Giovanni Arrighi, Jacques Derrida, and many others, he argues that the tragedy is central not only to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the political and cultural archives of the black Atlantic but also to the history of modern capital and ethics. To apprehend the Zong tragedy, Baucom suggests, is not to come to terms with an isolated atrocity but to encounter a logic of violence key to the unfolding history of Atlantic modernity.

Baucom contends that the massacre and the trials that followed it bring to light an Atlantic cycle of capital accumulation based on speculative finance, an economic cycle that has not yet run its course. The extraordinarily abstract nature of today’s finance capital is the late-eighteenth-century system intensified. Yet, as Baucom highlights, since the late 1700s, this rapacious speculative culture has had detractors. He traces the emergence and development of a counter-discourse he calls melancholy realism through abolitionist and human-rights texts, British romantic poetry, Scottish moral philosophy, and the work of late-twentieth-century literary theorists. In revealing how the Zong tragedy resonates within contemporary financial systems and human-rights discourses, Baucom puts forth a deeply compelling, utterly original theory of history: one that insists that an eighteenth-century atrocity is not past but present within the future we now inhabit.

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Troping Oroonoko from Behn to Bandele

Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0754634590

Slavery, Atlantic Trade And The British Economy, 1660-1800 (New Studies in Economic and Social History)

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Slavery, Atlantic Trade And The British Economy, 1660-1800 (New Studies in Economic and Social History)
Kenneth Morgan
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0521588146

Book Description

This book considers the impact of slavery and Atlantic trade on British economic development during the beginning of British industrialization. Kenneth Morgan investigates five key areas within the topic that have been subject to historical debate: the profits of the slave trade; slavery, capital accumulation and British economic development; exports and transatlantic markets; the role of business institutions; and the contribution of Atlantic trade to the growth of British ports. This stimulating and accessible book provides essential reading for students of slavery and the slave trade, and British economic history.

After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807 (Library of International Relations)

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J. Robinson

After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807 (Library of International Relations)
Marika Sherwood
Manufacturer: I. B. Tauris
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1845113659
Release Date: 2007-04-03

Book Description

With the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the emancipation of all slaves throughout the British Empire in 1833, Britain washed its hands of slavery. Not so, according to Marika Sherwood, who sets the record straight in this provocative new book.
In fact, Sherwood demonstrates Britain continued to contribute to and profit from the slave trade well after 1807, even into the twentieth century. Drawing on unpublished sources in areas of British history which have been previously overlooked, she describes how slavery remained very much a part of British commerce and empire, especially in the use of slave labour in Britain’s African colonies. She also examines some of the causes and repercussions of continued British involvement in slavery and describes many of the shady characters, as well as the heroes, connected with the trade – at all levels of society. After Abolition contains important revelations about a darker side of British history which will provoke real questions about Britain's perceptions of its past.

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J. Robinson.......2007-05-13

This book provides details on what followed the Parliamentary Act on Abolition of the Slave Trade signed by the King of England on 25 March 1807. It is good summary of events with good background material.

Black Ivory: Slavery in the British Empire

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Great for reading and for school.

Black Ivory: Slavery in the British Empire
James Walvin
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0631229604

Book Description

The brutal story of African slavery in the British colonies of the West Indies and North America is told with clarity and compassion in this classic history. James Walvin explores the experiences which bound together slaves from diverse African backgrounds and explains how slavery transformed the tastes and economy of the Western world.Although written for readers with no prior knowledge of the subject, Walvins's account is based on detailed scholarship, drawing on a body of work from the USA, the West Indies and Britain. All aspects of African slavery up to 1776 are covered; the situation of women, flight and rebellion, disease and death, the conditions on the slave ships, the abolition campaign and much more. The narrative is enlivened and personalised by frequent reference to individual lives.For this revised edition, the author has incorporated recent scholarly findings and updated the notes and bibliography in order to keep the book current.

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Great for reading and for school. .......2006-11-22

When taking my college class (Rise and fall of the British Empire), it did not talk enough about Slavery, only a few pages about it. This book gives a clear account of slavery during those times, from an overall view to the day to day lives of the slaves and their owners. It is a must read for anyone that does not know much about this issue.

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