'A characteristically radical re-reading of history that places the social and political
experiments of pirates at the heart of the European Enlightenment. A brilliant companion volume
to the best-selling Dawn of Everything' Amitav Ghosh The Enlightenment did not begin in Europe.
Its true origins lie thousands of miles away on the island of Madagascar in the late
seventeenth century when it was home to several thousand pirates. This was the Golden Age of
Piracy a period of violent buccaneering and rollicking legends - but it was also argues
anthropologist David Graeber a brief window of radical democracy as the pirate settlers
attempted to apply the egalitarian principles of their ships to a new society on land. For
Graeber Madagascar's lost pirate utopia represents some of the first stirrings of
Enlightenment political thought. In this jewel of a book he offers a way to 'decolonize the
Enlightenment' demonstrating how this mixed community experimented with an alternative vision
of human freedom far from that being formulated in the salons and coffee houses of Europe. Its
actors were Malagasy women merchants and traders philosopher kings and escaped slaves
exploring ideas that were ultimately to be put into practice by Western revolutionary regimes a
century later. Pirate Enlightenment playfully dismantles the central myths of the
Enlightenment. In their place comes a story about the magic sea battles purloined princesses
manhunts make-believe kingdoms fraudulent ambassadors spies jewel thieves poisoners and
devil worship that lie at the origins of modern freedom.
