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The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic
Using a decade of original research into the 17th and 18th century, this text unearths ideas and stories about liberty, democracy and freedom that terrified the ruling classes of the time and form the foundations of modern revolutions.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
About the author
Peter Linebaugh
22 books81 followersPeter Linebaugh is an American Marxist historian who specializes in British history, Irish history, labor history, and the history of the colonial Atlantic.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 101 reviews
June 4, 2013
Somewhere between two and four stars. This is very much in the mould of those sixties Marxist British historians that nearly made me want to become a historian: stirring, sweeping, and somewhat simplifying in terms of its use of categories. The authors contend that the maritime world of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries was a place where Britain tended to sweep its proto-revolutionaries, who met with sailors and indigenous peoples and forged this sort of rebellious populace whom they term the hydra. There's a central, almost literary conceit to the book, centered around the appearance of this hydra figure in texts; certainly, it appears more than I would ever have imagined it would. But as much as I enjoyed reading this book, I didn't fully trust it: it has a really forceful thesis, and it tends to position the texts that it reads around this thesis in simplistic ways. However tempting it is to see the Atlantic world as full of proto-revolutionary proletarian Marxists avant la lettre, I remain more interested in the ways that the categories that were used at the time might also have different from the language and categorization of the proletariat that the authors slather on pretty thickly. (I will also note, as a nascent mild authority on pirates, that the texts that they cite--including the Johnson/Defoe/whoever "General History of the Pirates"--tend to be more problematic and complex, factually, than they let on; I wonder if this also happens with their use of other texts, with which I am less familiar.)
So, basically: my enjoyment of this book is hampered by the fact that I don't find what made me enjoy it, in part, so much--its sweeping, exciting, history-from-below proto-proletariat-revolutionary narrative--to hold up to the scrutiny of the part of my brain that hates joy and loves precise categorization. Your mileage, like mine, may vary.
So, basically: my enjoyment of this book is hampered by the fact that I don't find what made me enjoy it, in part, so much--its sweeping, exciting, history-from-below proto-proletariat-revolutionary narrative--to hold up to the scrutiny of the part of my brain that hates joy and loves precise categorization. Your mileage, like mine, may vary.
December 19, 2011
Just for the subject matter, I love this book. Peasants, slaves, and sailors in constant revolt? That is something I want to read about. Histories of this period always focus on the kings, on the "brave explorers", on the international treaties. I'm way more interested in what the billions of people living at the time were doing, what their lives looked like, what they thought about the course history was following. This is a history that is woefully unknown and hidden. And it is really, incredibly exciting.
This wide-ranging history really put my own views and work into perspective. Pretty much everything progressive, radical, exciting or inspirational I've ever thought, written, or read was already said by peasants in the 15th century. Reading this has made me feel cozily at home in a long tradition of resistance.
That said, this book has some definite areas where I would like to see improvement.
1) No women! Well, some women, like the wives of some revolutionaries. But their treatment of female historical figures really felt like they were stretching. "No look, we're feminist, we will mention women in the conclusion of this chapter, we know they're important!" This is pretty much a history of men's resistance. It's work like this that makes feminist work necessary - why can't we just have history that covers both grounds, instead of writing a men's history (which we just call history), and then having to recover by writing women's history specifically?
2) The writers assume a great deal of background knowledge on the part of their readers. It was written with the historical academia in mind as an audience. Readers who don't know much about transatlantic history going in are going to be very frustrated by the constant passing references to things they've only vaguely heard of.
3) The structure of the writing was not always totally clear and easy to follow. They tried to tell the story by focusing on one case study at a time, and then filling in the history around the case study to give it context. But by doing it this way (instead of a more straight-forward chronological telling), they had to jump constantly around different dates and places, and things got a little jumbled.
Still, given these complaints, this is a solid 4 stars, and incredibly important research. I highly recommend people to read it, just so this history will get out.
Oh, and I REALLY LOVE PEASANTS. And religious heretics. And, now, pirates. Bad. Ass.
This wide-ranging history really put my own views and work into perspective. Pretty much everything progressive, radical, exciting or inspirational I've ever thought, written, or read was already said by peasants in the 15th century. Reading this has made me feel cozily at home in a long tradition of resistance.
That said, this book has some definite areas where I would like to see improvement.
1) No women! Well, some women, like the wives of some revolutionaries. But their treatment of female historical figures really felt like they were stretching. "No look, we're feminist, we will mention women in the conclusion of this chapter, we know they're important!" This is pretty much a history of men's resistance. It's work like this that makes feminist work necessary - why can't we just have history that covers both grounds, instead of writing a men's history (which we just call history), and then having to recover by writing women's history specifically?
2) The writers assume a great deal of background knowledge on the part of their readers. It was written with the historical academia in mind as an audience. Readers who don't know much about transatlantic history going in are going to be very frustrated by the constant passing references to things they've only vaguely heard of.
3) The structure of the writing was not always totally clear and easy to follow. They tried to tell the story by focusing on one case study at a time, and then filling in the history around the case study to give it context. But by doing it this way (instead of a more straight-forward chronological telling), they had to jump constantly around different dates and places, and things got a little jumbled.
Still, given these complaints, this is a solid 4 stars, and incredibly important research. I highly recommend people to read it, just so this history will get out.
Oh, and I REALLY LOVE PEASANTS. And religious heretics. And, now, pirates. Bad. Ass.
July 11, 2012
Short version: go, read this book. I'd let you borrow my copy, but there's a line, and I had already started hyping it up to friends before I finished it.
Longer version: first of all, you might be worried that I'm leading you into a painful/boring/dry reading experience by having you read a history by some autonomist Marxists. And you would be totally, absolutely wrong. This is by far not only one of the most enjoyable to read history books I've ever read, it ranks up there as enjoyable and engaging for books in general. This book is, beyond all the more intellectual goodness, a seriously fun read.
So, that intellectual goodness? Well, I often find myself trying to explain what we mean by technical composition of the class, and process of political recomposition and decomposition. Now, Linebaugh and Rediker don't get into that technical jargon (though they are quite fond of referring to the "motley crew" and of course "the many-headed hydra", referencing terms their primary sources used), but they brilliantly illustrate how struggle, along with a multi-ethnic, multi-racial proletariat, circulated around the Atlantic from the 17th through early 18th centuries, and then spread further. We hear the stories of resistance of indentured servants and slaves, pressganged sailors, pirates, indigenous peoples, antinomians, Quakers, Anabaptists, and the rest of the motley crew, as they formed potent sites of resistance repeatedly, forcing merchant capitalism to respond, trying to break up the motley crew via the construction of white supremacy in stages.
Though the whole thing is an excellent working class history that debunks the whole "white dudes in factories" view of the proletariat (in fact, ships docked in European colonies in West Africa were the first things called "factories"), outside of radicals, probably the two topics that are going to appeal the most to people are the concept of the pirate hydrarchy during the Golden Age of Piracy and the take on the American Revolution. Now, my love of pirates and their multiracial crews where the highest authority was the council of the entire crew, the captain was recallable, and there were lady pirates, is well known so I'm not going to go into this in too much depth.
The take on the American Revolution I got in high school (this is kind of exceptional, but it fits the dominant radical view; we did use Zinn's People's History as our primary textbook, after all) was that it wasn't an actual revolution, because it didn't fundamentally alter social structures to the extent revolutions to, and that's that. Generally, that's how radicals see it: a spat between two factions of the bourgeois, that workers got sucked into. Linebaugh and Rediker's account is far richer: they paint a picture of a revolutionary wave in the 1760s and 70s of the motley crew, that the colonial bourgeois (the "patriots": the plantation master and merchant class) co-opted for their own purposes, their hijacking being complete in the reactionary document that is the US Constitution. So, rather than reducing it to its end result (not a revolutionary remaking of society), they show the struggle between revolution and counterrevolution, with counterrevolution coming out on top. So that's a refreshing take that doesn't erase the agency and autonomy of the motley crew (the working class) from history, as both the conventional account ("Great Men make history") and the standard "radical" account ("Great Men squabble over who gets to spread slavery and commit genocide") do.
After reading this book, one cannot help but notice that not only is the proletariat not now a homogeneous entity, it never has been: what we share is our drive to negate capital and struggle toward a new commons.
Longer version: first of all, you might be worried that I'm leading you into a painful/boring/dry reading experience by having you read a history by some autonomist Marxists. And you would be totally, absolutely wrong. This is by far not only one of the most enjoyable to read history books I've ever read, it ranks up there as enjoyable and engaging for books in general. This book is, beyond all the more intellectual goodness, a seriously fun read.
So, that intellectual goodness? Well, I often find myself trying to explain what we mean by technical composition of the class, and process of political recomposition and decomposition. Now, Linebaugh and Rediker don't get into that technical jargon (though they are quite fond of referring to the "motley crew" and of course "the many-headed hydra", referencing terms their primary sources used), but they brilliantly illustrate how struggle, along with a multi-ethnic, multi-racial proletariat, circulated around the Atlantic from the 17th through early 18th centuries, and then spread further. We hear the stories of resistance of indentured servants and slaves, pressganged sailors, pirates, indigenous peoples, antinomians, Quakers, Anabaptists, and the rest of the motley crew, as they formed potent sites of resistance repeatedly, forcing merchant capitalism to respond, trying to break up the motley crew via the construction of white supremacy in stages.
Though the whole thing is an excellent working class history that debunks the whole "white dudes in factories" view of the proletariat (in fact, ships docked in European colonies in West Africa were the first things called "factories"), outside of radicals, probably the two topics that are going to appeal the most to people are the concept of the pirate hydrarchy during the Golden Age of Piracy and the take on the American Revolution. Now, my love of pirates and their multiracial crews where the highest authority was the council of the entire crew, the captain was recallable, and there were lady pirates, is well known so I'm not going to go into this in too much depth.
The take on the American Revolution I got in high school (this is kind of exceptional, but it fits the dominant radical view; we did use Zinn's People's History as our primary textbook, after all) was that it wasn't an actual revolution, because it didn't fundamentally alter social structures to the extent revolutions to, and that's that. Generally, that's how radicals see it: a spat between two factions of the bourgeois, that workers got sucked into. Linebaugh and Rediker's account is far richer: they paint a picture of a revolutionary wave in the 1760s and 70s of the motley crew, that the colonial bourgeois (the "patriots": the plantation master and merchant class) co-opted for their own purposes, their hijacking being complete in the reactionary document that is the US Constitution. So, rather than reducing it to its end result (not a revolutionary remaking of society), they show the struggle between revolution and counterrevolution, with counterrevolution coming out on top. So that's a refreshing take that doesn't erase the agency and autonomy of the motley crew (the working class) from history, as both the conventional account ("Great Men make history") and the standard "radical" account ("Great Men squabble over who gets to spread slavery and commit genocide") do.
After reading this book, one cannot help but notice that not only is the proletariat not now a homogeneous entity, it never has been: what we share is our drive to negate capital and struggle toward a new commons.
November 17, 2015
FANTASTIC book on how sailors and slaves were central to capitalist development and were its main resistors.
June 10, 2022
Fantastic book, wish I had read this before all the histories confined to nation-states. Very sharp on the political and class-struggle forces and contingent developments shaping capitalist social relations across the Atlantic.
November 28, 2016
I really enjoyed this book! The only major caveat is that I get the impression that its take is a bit optimistic about both the power relations within the "hydra", or at least it doesn't talk about them that often, leading to a relatively rosy picture of solidarity across race/gender/class lines. Not to say that it doesn't discuss the selling out of oppressed people that came along with the creation of whiteness and the formation of modern gender relations, it just doesn't center them as much as I thought it would. Maybe they didn't want the book to be about that, idk.
On a more positive note, I thought this book did a great job on a number of fronts. It spent a lot of time talking about the development of racist rhetoric and I was struck by the similarity between the arguments used by people like Bacon and others and the positions held by the more modern right wing pundits. The continuity is remarkable, and it really drove home for me the extent to which fascism was in no way some sort of historical aberration but rather a continuation of colonialist ideology.
The other side of the same coin is that this book presents a very interesting perspective on the historical continuity of communist activism and thought. I've heard of plenty of people comparing Marxist or Anarchist communism with the ideas of people like Fourier or Rousseau but this book presents a number of people (generally within the English speaking world, one of the minor weaknesses of the book) like Thomas Spence or Robert Wedderburn and certainly convinced me that they are just as worthy (probably more tbh) of study by modern radicals.
Building on that, one of the major things I got out of this is an inkling of an understanding of the importance of things like a vanguard party and long term goals. Things like independence struggles like that in Haiti seemed to be fairly coherent but the "hydrachy" of the numerous pirate crews seemed like it was not prepared for a sustained assault. Numerous other examples were presented where radical movements weren't able to maintain ideological unity or organization. I don't think this is what the authors had in mind but I definitely came away from reading this with the impression that Marxism along with things like the idea of a vanguard party were probably importance advances in radical struggle. Otoh I'm not really an expert here so it's more that I will be thinking more about this in the future.
On a more positive note, I thought this book did a great job on a number of fronts. It spent a lot of time talking about the development of racist rhetoric and I was struck by the similarity between the arguments used by people like Bacon and others and the positions held by the more modern right wing pundits. The continuity is remarkable, and it really drove home for me the extent to which fascism was in no way some sort of historical aberration but rather a continuation of colonialist ideology.
The other side of the same coin is that this book presents a very interesting perspective on the historical continuity of communist activism and thought. I've heard of plenty of people comparing Marxist or Anarchist communism with the ideas of people like Fourier or Rousseau but this book presents a number of people (generally within the English speaking world, one of the minor weaknesses of the book) like Thomas Spence or Robert Wedderburn and certainly convinced me that they are just as worthy (probably more tbh) of study by modern radicals.
Building on that, one of the major things I got out of this is an inkling of an understanding of the importance of things like a vanguard party and long term goals. Things like independence struggles like that in Haiti seemed to be fairly coherent but the "hydrachy" of the numerous pirate crews seemed like it was not prepared for a sustained assault. Numerous other examples were presented where radical movements weren't able to maintain ideological unity or organization. I don't think this is what the authors had in mind but I definitely came away from reading this with the impression that Marxism along with things like the idea of a vanguard party were probably importance advances in radical struggle. Otoh I'm not really an expert here so it's more that I will be thinking more about this in the future.
November 2, 2014
I had a much easier time with this book on a second read several years later. I think one of the challenges I had is that this book is so historically dense, with characters and events that have little explanation and are sometimes assumed to be known (by historians).
Anyhow, this book chronicles uprisings and insurrections from the 16th to 18th transatlantic revolutionary period. In a similar vein to Federici's Caliban and the Witch, a history is uncovered where it was previously obscured. And, comparable to Federici as well (and a criticism of Linebaugh and Rediker), certain classes are treated as trans-historical, whether it be "proletariat", "women", "Blacks", etc.
The "motley crew" is a pretty worthwhile concept, and I want to ponder it more in relation to the intermingling of race/gender/etc. within the context of insurrection.
Anyhow, this book chronicles uprisings and insurrections from the 16th to 18th transatlantic revolutionary period. In a similar vein to Federici's Caliban and the Witch, a history is uncovered where it was previously obscured. And, comparable to Federici as well (and a criticism of Linebaugh and Rediker), certain classes are treated as trans-historical, whether it be "proletariat", "women", "Blacks", etc.
The "motley crew" is a pretty worthwhile concept, and I want to ponder it more in relation to the intermingling of race/gender/etc. within the context of insurrection.
January 12, 2024
أقتبس من مقدمة المترجم "من الصفحات الاولى سيدرك القارئ تميز هذا الكتاب الذي يفتح أفاقا جديدة لدراسة التاريخ اذ ينسف جدران التواريخ القومية ليفتح مسارات تاريخ كوكبي … والاهم أنه يحول بؤرته من الشخصيات والأحداث العظام ليصبح تاريخاً من أسفل…"
وأقتبس "إما أن الفقر لابد أن يستخدم الديمقراطية ليدمر سلطة الملكية ، أو أن الملكية خوفا من الفقر ستدمر الديمقراطية"
وأقتبس "لقد علموك أن السياسة موضوع لا يجب أن تفكر فيه أبدا أنك يجب أن تتنازل لأثرياء وعظماء البلد عن تقديرك في مسألة الحكم … ماذا سيستفيدون من جهلك …"
وأقتبس"حوار بين الشعب والطبقة المتميزة
الشعب: وما العمل الذي تؤدونه في مجتمعنا؟
ط.م.: لا شئ لم نخلق لنعمل
��لشعب: كيف إذا استحوذتم على هذه الثروات؟
ط. م.: ببذل عناء أن نحكمكم…"
كتاب مهم سياسيا وتاريخيا لمحاولة فهم الطريقة التي تتعامل ماما أمريكا ودول أوربا مع باقي الأمم الأخرى وهي ذات الطريقة التي يستخدمها بعض حكام العالم الثالث مع شعوبهم وطبعا لصالح ماما أمريكا أولا ثم لمصالحهم الشخصية الكتاب قد يكون ثقيل لغة وأسلوب نوعا ما على الرغم من محاولة المترجم التخفيف لذلك لا انصح بقراءته مرة واحد ة وخاصة لغير المحبين أو المهتمين بهذا النوع من الكتب
وأقتبس "إما أن الفقر لابد أن يستخدم الديمقراطية ليدمر سلطة الملكية ، أو أن الملكية خوفا من الفقر ستدمر الديمقراطية"
وأقتبس "لقد علموك أن السياسة موضوع لا يجب أن تفكر فيه أبدا أنك يجب أن تتنازل لأثرياء وعظماء البلد عن تقديرك في مسألة الحكم … ماذا سيستفيدون من جهلك …"
وأقتبس"حوار بين الشعب والطبقة المتميزة
الشعب: وما العمل الذي تؤدونه في مجتمعنا؟
ط.م.: لا شئ لم نخلق لنعمل
��لشعب: كيف إذا استحوذتم على هذه الثروات؟
ط. م.: ببذل عناء أن نحكمكم…"
كتاب مهم سياسيا وتاريخيا لمحاولة فهم الطريقة التي تتعامل ماما أمريكا ودول أوربا مع باقي الأمم الأخرى وهي ذات الطريقة التي يستخدمها بعض حكام العالم الثالث مع شعوبهم وطبعا لصالح ماما أمريكا أولا ثم لمصالحهم الشخصية الكتاب قد يكون ثقيل لغة وأسلوب نوعا ما على الرغم من محاولة المترجم التخفيف لذلك لا انصح بقراءته مرة واحد ة وخاصة لغير المحبين أو المهتمين بهذا النوع من الكتب
February 22, 2015
Makes a fine gift for the Marxist in your life. I will definitely pay this forward to my voting friends.
The book would be much stronger if the authors took their conclusion, which they've mysteriously saved for the end, and moved it up to the introduction. You know, like a thesis statement? That way, the reader could grasp their argument without having to wade through the evidence. Without that argument spelled out at the beginning, we end up meandering through so many old-time stories of genocide, wondering how it's all going to add up.
Could've used a lot more sailors (what book wouldn't be improved with more sailors?) The subtitle and back copy promise a story about sailors. Instead, you only get like three good chapters of sailors. The rest is highly repetitive, kicking the same dead horse about the ways history has been written by the victors (i.e. wealthy capitalists and their friends in politics).
Some nits I have picked:
- The authors use the word "jihad" to refer to England's colonial efforts. This is a really dumb way to appropriate a word from foreign civilization when we've got a perfectly good word ("crusade") of our own.
- Shameless use of the exclamation mark
- Insisting that Shakespeare's "Tempest" must be read as an historical analogy for actual events in the Caribbean, while ignoring its aesthetic merits.
- They keep banging on about the Hydra and Hercules. But these are just classical symbols. We don't have to make such a big deal about them. And they over-explain everything. At times I could see the author's outline, listing the points they wanted to reiterate.
- As others have noted, it's absurd to claim that poor people were embracing Marxist ideology a century before Marx was born.
Most of these incidents and historical figures were unknown to me, so I'm grateful for that. This book could serve as a decent reference work or a springboard to future reading.
But without a coherent, readable style, it's very difficult to go from one cover to the other.
The book would be much stronger if the authors took their conclusion, which they've mysteriously saved for the end, and moved it up to the introduction. You know, like a thesis statement? That way, the reader could grasp their argument without having to wade through the evidence. Without that argument spelled out at the beginning, we end up meandering through so many old-time stories of genocide, wondering how it's all going to add up.
Could've used a lot more sailors (what book wouldn't be improved with more sailors?) The subtitle and back copy promise a story about sailors. Instead, you only get like three good chapters of sailors. The rest is highly repetitive, kicking the same dead horse about the ways history has been written by the victors (i.e. wealthy capitalists and their friends in politics).
Some nits I have picked:
- The authors use the word "jihad" to refer to England's colonial efforts. This is a really dumb way to appropriate a word from foreign civilization when we've got a perfectly good word ("crusade") of our own.
- Shameless use of the exclamation mark
- Insisting that Shakespeare's "Tempest" must be read as an historical analogy for actual events in the Caribbean, while ignoring its aesthetic merits.
- They keep banging on about the Hydra and Hercules. But these are just classical symbols. We don't have to make such a big deal about them. And they over-explain everything. At times I could see the author's outline, listing the points they wanted to reiterate.
- As others have noted, it's absurd to claim that poor people were embracing Marxist ideology a century before Marx was born.
Most of these incidents and historical figures were unknown to me, so I'm grateful for that. This book could serve as a decent reference work or a springboard to future reading.
But without a coherent, readable style, it's very difficult to go from one cover to the other.
January 15, 2012
I'm currently re-reading this and so far haven't encountered any of the convoluted writing or arguments that were such an impediment before. (Seems to be a common complaint). Maybe this is just a book that requires more than one reading, or subject matter that can't be understood in one reading.
This time around I'm reading the MESSINGAROUND edition.
First Time:
As I read this I kept going back and forth between, "This is awesome!" and "am, I actually enjoying this?" And then "this is really interesting," and "I don't know if I'm following this." But it was weird not because of normal reasons for not understanding a text, it was almost as though they proved their points backwards or something. So I was left a lot of the time thinking, "Did they even just prove what they set out to in this section?" or worse "did they even address what they said they just would?"
Over all I really enjoyed this book, and it kept me reading at a steady pace.
4.2
This time around I'm reading the MESSINGAROUND edition.
First Time:
As I read this I kept going back and forth between, "This is awesome!" and "am, I actually enjoying this?" And then "this is really interesting," and "I don't know if I'm following this." But it was weird not because of normal reasons for not understanding a text, it was almost as though they proved their points backwards or something. So I was left a lot of the time thinking, "Did they even just prove what they set out to in this section?" or worse "did they even address what they said they just would?"
Over all I really enjoyed this book, and it kept me reading at a steady pace.
4.2
May 8, 2016
An excellent, expansive treatment of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries across the Atlantic world, highlighting the intense tricontinental links that forged early industrial capitalism but also created the spaces for resistance to it. The text does a solid job of bringing together multiple independent stories from the emerging proletariat, especially those of slaves and sailors, and creating a cohesive thesis through them without homogenizing or glossing over their differences. While I might have liked even more detail from the experiences of factory workers, that would have merely been icing on the cake.
October 12, 2019
An essential, expansive and foundation shaking read. A version of this should be taught to all. Resistance is our heritage and our present and for me this book is the alpha and omega of radical history. A profound, enormous book.
December 16, 2008
This is an excellent history of the rise of "global capitalism" and its opposition during the 17th and 18th Centuries, from a marxist historical perspective. Linebaugh and Rediker attempt to reconstruct a history "from below" by extracting from the history written by the winners (in this case, the Empire, the Trading Companies, and the bourgeoise). By expounding upon two reoccurring themes found throughout the dominant history -- Hercules' slaying of the hydra and Joshua's enslaving of the Gibeonites -- the authors develop a history of resistance which includes the enclosure of the Commons, the English Civil Wars, the mass expulsion of English, Irish and Africans into slavery in the Americas, and the expansion of European maritime trade. Each of these events generates a movement of resistance, and the authors plot points of connection between the Ranters & Levellers, the maroon uprisings, Pirate "hydrachy", and American colonists who chose to "go native."
While the authors stress the multicultural component of the resistance movements, one shortcoming I found with the book is that the focus was almost exclusively in relation to the English. I would have like to see how these movements manifested themselves in relation to the French and Spanish attempts at Empire building the New World.
To the reviewer who complained about the premise of this book because life before the 17th Century was allegedly just as terrible (as though that is sufficient to discount the fact that there was a real movement of resistance to the destruction of social life that these hewers of wood and drawers of water actually experienced, and directly connected to the trade practices of the middle-class), I would recommend E.P. Thompson's Customs In Common for an account of how the working-class experienced a loss of social life and culture.
While the authors stress the multicultural component of the resistance movements, one shortcoming I found with the book is that the focus was almost exclusively in relation to the English. I would have like to see how these movements manifested themselves in relation to the French and Spanish attempts at Empire building the New World.
To the reviewer who complained about the premise of this book because life before the 17th Century was allegedly just as terrible (as though that is sufficient to discount the fact that there was a real movement of resistance to the destruction of social life that these hewers of wood and drawers of water actually experienced, and directly connected to the trade practices of the middle-class), I would recommend E.P. Thompson's Customs In Common for an account of how the working-class experienced a loss of social life and culture.
September 7, 2011
i really like this book for the amazing information it possesses, but the nebulous writing style really hurts it. this is basically a book about the spawning of capitalism, and the resistance to it, on both sides of the Atlantic, from 1600-1800. it deals with slavery and slave revolts, indentured servitude and pirates, land enclosures and Levellers, witch hunts and women heretics, and the Irish! the book is amazing for showing how the original anti-capitalist movements were very multiracial, multinational, often led by women, and took place on land and sea. however, the topic at time seems too broad, or perhaps too ill-defined, for the book's narrative to keep the reader's attention. often it focuses on specific individuals as representatives of different classes and groups of rebels, but it often doesn't give a solid narrative of what these people actually did. at times i lost track of what the overall point was, even though, to be sure, the information i was soaking up was fascinating. also i just think the writing could have been better. sometimes one sentence fills an entire paragraph, and has about 5 qualifying clauses. shorter, clearer, sentences would have helped a lot. so too would clear topic sentences at the beginning of each section or chapter. but there are a LOT of positives in The Many Headed Hydra, and the book is definitely recommended for all the stories it communicates from our collective past. a past which has been intentionally obscured and hidden from us, to keep us in the dark about our own legacies of resistance to capitalism.
December 30, 2010
La storia è una brutta passione: ti blandisce facendoti credere di poter sapere, e più approfondisci più ti rendi conto di sapere poco, se non nulla.
Allora hai due possibilità:
1) scoraggiarti e mollare, andartene, smettere di essere curioso e di voler conoscere;
2) capire che non saprai mai, perché la storia è figlia del tempo in cui viene raccontata, ed ogni epoca ha ed avrà la sua storia, la sua memoria o il suo oblio.
Allora hai due possibilità:
1) scoraggiarti e mollare, andartene, smettere di essere curioso e di voler conoscere;
2) capire che non saprai mai, perché la storia è figlia del tempo in cui viene raccontata, ed ogni epoca ha ed avrà la sua storia, la sua memoria o il suo oblio.
Questo lungo pippone per dire che questo libro racconta una storia poco conosciuta, quella della "vera" accumulazione capitalistica, o almeno di un pezzo di accumulazione capitalistica che nessuno ha mai raccontato: quella che avvenne per mare a metà del millennio scorso, che permise soprattutto agli inglesi di diventare una potenza mondiale fino al 1918, che portò un paio di continenti e un subcontinente alla rovina, alla fame, alla schiavitù, ad un genocidio di proporzioni colossali e di cui noi occidentali dobbiamo ancora prendere atto come si deve.
Ma questa storia è anche la storia della nascita del proletariato moderno e delle sue prime forme di resistenza, di organizzazione e, in alcuni casi, di liberazione.
La storia della nascita delle utopie libertarie, che per tanto tempo, per tanti secoli, permetteranno a milioni di uomini e donne di tirare avanti, sperando in un mondo milgiore, in alcuni casi cercando di costriurlo.
July 23, 2020
Tutto sommato uno squarcio interessante su una parte di storia che ignoravo. Purtroppo il materiale è accatastato un po' alla rinfusa, e con una frenesia, eccessiva, che non permette di cogliere la totalità della vicenda.
July 12, 2010
The book offers a nice cut into the pre-history of the class system. By taking upon the infrastructure that emerged through the naval connections across the Atlantic, the authors take seriously the myth of Hydra in order to display the multitudous character of the formation of social identities, be it those of piracy or of race. This becomes visible through the efforts the authors made in deciphering episodes from different revolutionary/insurgent struggles.
The controversy of the book lies within its "sticking to" a conceptual heuristic that refuses to see the episodes as sui generis events, but instead as connected by the structures of resistance. This in some places begs a discussion over whether the authors are not connecting certain events together too harshly, albeit the very unification by the metaphor of hydra. This is both the books most powerful methodological contribution, but can be a source of its weakness at the same time.
In any case, a worthwhile reading to those interested in social history (especially of the "Anglosphere"), political economy, Marxism and perhaps political theory.
The controversy of the book lies within its "sticking to" a conceptual heuristic that refuses to see the episodes as sui generis events, but instead as connected by the structures of resistance. This in some places begs a discussion over whether the authors are not connecting certain events together too harshly, albeit the very unification by the metaphor of hydra. This is both the books most powerful methodological contribution, but can be a source of its weakness at the same time.
In any case, a worthwhile reading to those interested in social history (especially of the "Anglosphere"), political economy, Marxism and perhaps political theory.
January 18, 2015
Excellent history book which would go into my top five all time favourite history books
This springs from the gratitude to Christopher Hill and the analysis by generally Marxist historians of the English Revolution and particularly through and extending the work within 'The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution.
Linebaugh and Rediker follow a teasing and beautifully connected line from the outcasts of the English Revolution and its subsequent counter-revolution and follows the subsequent rise of revolution and the birth and growth of Capitalism. The essential parts of this are through the plantation system, slavery and the growth of the 'Motley Crew'.
They cite events and characters which have for the most part been lost to popular knowledge, and through this they elicit and characterise the essential changing nature and perception of history.
This springs from the gratitude to Christopher Hill and the analysis by generally Marxist historians of the English Revolution and particularly through and extending the work within 'The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution.
Linebaugh and Rediker follow a teasing and beautifully connected line from the outcasts of the English Revolution and its subsequent counter-revolution and follows the subsequent rise of revolution and the birth and growth of Capitalism. The essential parts of this are through the plantation system, slavery and the growth of the 'Motley Crew'.
They cite events and characters which have for the most part been lost to popular knowledge, and through this they elicit and characterise the essential changing nature and perception of history.
September 2, 2008
This is the best book I've read in a long time. A brilliant historial account of the emergence of the working class during an earlier stage of globalisation, before rigid ideologies of nationalism and racism had been forged and where solidarities could be formed which extended beyond the prejudices of ethnicity. At the heart of this process was the highest form of technology of the day - the trans-Atlantic ship. The authors look at the relations of production that were forged in order for the potential of the Atlantic trade to be fully-exploited, and the interests which came into the ascendency and those which were crushed. The revolutionary potential of the new working class, drawing on the resources of religious antinominism and the struggle to preserve the life of 'the commons' comes out brilliantly in the lives of the various actors of the period. A wonderful book with many things to tell us about how we should confront the issues which arise from contemporary globalisation.
October 10, 2010
An important reclaiming of multiracial organising, revolt and rebellion against the enclosure of the commons, imperial conquest, and slavery before the bounds of race and nation were too tightly defined sundering apart the lower classes, and an attempt to tell this history from a bottom up perspective. It is a fascinating and important history, but one I almost gave 3 stars too...in the attempt to recover individual voices there is by necessity a great deal of imagination and stretching of the one or two facts which exist, and I think far too much romanticization of individual acts, which could equally be read as predation and simple hustling for survival. Certain things are also glossed over, such as the reality that maroon communities held up as beacons of resistance also had slaves which is never problematized. But still, worth reading.
February 10, 2012
The Many-Headed Hydra is a dense, complex and truly insightful book about what being a commoner, a proletarian, a slave meant from the early 16th to the early 19th century. It also a amazing history of these exploited people who were revolutionaries. Linebaugh and Rediker bring these forgotten struggles back to life, which is much-needed in our times since communism has reduced all these struggles to a single view of classes and since racialism has divided blacks and whites and since nationalism has divided the people into nations.
As capitalism, which was the impetus behind the exploitation and the invention of this proletariat, is crumbling before our very eyes, this book is a must-read for anyone trying to think what may lie beyond this tyrannical system.
As capitalism, which was the impetus behind the exploitation and the invention of this proletariat, is crumbling before our very eyes, this book is a must-read for anyone trying to think what may lie beyond this tyrannical system.
December 22, 2007
This book ought to be a follow-up read to Zinn's "People's History of the US", and I was surprised when I found it that it isn't a more popular read. Beginning with the enclosure movement in England (this was when folks started throwing up fences around commonly farmed land and kicking people out), we track the ugly growth of capitalism and trans-Atlantic trade through to the rise of the United States. Told through accounts of struggles which have been buried by mainstream history (well, except maybe the parts about pirates), this is a valuable book for anyone who wants to really understand the roots of today's world. I found it to be very dense, but still engaging.
February 23, 2013
A hesitantly Marxist look at revolutionary, bottom-up resistance to capitalist oppression, slavery, and the death of the commons around the Atlantic rim during the 17th-18th centuries leading up to the American Revolution. Awesome stuff, good bits on piracy, Levellers, etc. Goes far to show how common human decency and a love of freedom against indomitable odds should surge one forth!
September 19, 2013
A wonderful history of the people in a time of sharpening class conflict and the development of racial laws to strengthen class divisions. Resistance and resilience from history to inspire people today.
September 14, 2014
Really great history about the commoners, slaves, pirates, proletariats, and other groups who were targeted by the government as problems that needed to be destroyed. Shows a different story of the struggles of the lower classes across the Atlantic to paint an overall picture of Atlantic history
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February 1, 2019My friend recently acquired a very cheap sailboat and has formed an extremely motley neighborhood crew of wannabe sailors. Most of our experience with boats and ships is from Moby Dick, so we’ll see how we fare on the open water. But, before the weather is warm enough to move the boat, we’re starting a reading group. The Many-Headed Hydra is about resisting capitalism, centralized power, and national borders. There are stories of pirates, religious utopias, and enslaved people, women, and other marginalized groups rising up against oppressive powers with the ocean as their stage. The best part, so far, is the description of a ship full of Puritans who shipwrecked in Bermuda and then got into big fights with the shareholders of the Virginia Company who wanted them to get back on the boat and set sail for what is now the United States. The Puritans refused because they (correctly) assumed that they were just going to be exploited by the Company once they landed in the colonies and that there wasn’t enough food to go around. —Nina (excerpted from Bookish's Staff Reads)
January 13, 2021
Simply an essential work of historical materialism. History from below at its most exciting. Thrillingly romantic and energising, but ultimately sober and scholarly in its methodology, arguments, and conclusions. Incredibly rich, expansive, humane, and eloquent. A truly wonderful book.
February 18, 2023
Magnificent, beautifully threaded history of the Atlantic’s revolutionary outcasts. A major work that is both a “black book of capitalism” and a stirring call to arms, or by the means of the Tyger, to “seize the fire”
July 10, 2020
I'm reading Tacky's Revolt by Vincent Brown so I went back to this book and reread a few chapters. I remember how hard it was to read the first time around mostly because of how dense the histories are. But that was younger me getting in the way. I think I might reread the full book soon.
December 17, 2024
Up there with Federici and Graeber in terms of coloring my understanding of the world. The history of the Atlantic from 1500-1776 is critically important and too frequently glossed over.
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