PIRATE ENLIGHTENMENT, OR THE REAL LIBERTALIA

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 revoluti...[Read more]