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This week I'm going to recommend The Republic of Pirates being the true and surprising story

of the Caribbean Pirates and the men who brought them down by Colin Woodard.

We are going to, slight spoilers here, be talking about pirates quite a bit for the next couple of weeks.

But of course, the first thing most people think of when they hear that word is the so-called golden age of Caribbean piracy.

And if you're interested in learning more about that history, this is a great place to start.

Go to audible trial.com slash Japan to claim your copy. Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 390, The Lords of the Sea, Part 1.

This week, I want to start the process of tackling another long-requested topic that has been on my backlog for a long time.

A topic of real interest, but when I've always been hesitant to take on, because of how complex it is and my relative lack of background in the subject.

However, thanks to my beloved Patreon subscribers, thank you all so much, I now have a much better

budget for buying overpriced academic research materials specifically for this podcast,

and I was able to use some of it to start building up some backgrounds, so now it is finally time.

And of course, the fact I had to wait this long raises some interesting points about academic access and how expensive texts can be if you don't have institutional access to a university library.

But that's neither here nor there.

Because as much as I love complaining about those issues,

I love talking about pirates even more.

...