Hello and welcome to Navara FM. I'm your host, Erna Penny.

In the early 1700s, Europe was a light with the story of Libertalia, a supposed pirate

kingdom on Madagascar where people lived in freedom, democracy and plenty. That kingdom

itself may be almost certainly the stuff of legend, but like many legends, it has grown

from a seed of truth. There were real communities and collectives in Madagascar where malagassy

people in coordination with pirates and sailors from around the world were practicing democracy

in action many decades before the Enlightenment revolutions of France and America.

The late David Grober's final publication, Pirate Enlightenment or the Real Libertalia,

takes an alternative look at Madagascar's pirate past and what we can learn from it in

the present. To discuss this work and all things swashbuckling, I talked with academic and

writer Marcus Reddiker. Marcus is distinguished professor of Atlantic history at the University

of Pittsburgh and the author of many works on maritime history from below, including the

many headed hydra, a slave ship, human history and villains of all nations. I asked him

about the radical history of piracy and how the mobile international working classes

experimented in living free. Marcus, thank you so much for coming to talk to us about all

things revolutionary and piratical. I would love to kick us off with the story of William

Fly not in Madagascar, but in Boston, Massachusetts, Turtle Island, who is hanged on the 12th of July,

at 1726 and his final words as you relate in your book Villains of all Nations are chronical

as our captain has made used us barbarously. We poor men can't have justice done us. There is

nothing said to our commanders, let them never so much abuse us and use us like dogs. Fly also said

all masters of vessels might take warning of the fate of the captain that he'd murdered

and to pay sailors their wages when due. That seems very class conscious, very revolutionary conscious

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