Marcus Rediker – författare

Under the Banner of King Death is a tale of mutiny, bloody battle, and social revolution, bringing to life an itinerant community of outsiders behind today's legends. This graphic novel breaks new ground in our understanding of piracy and pirate culture, giving us real reasons to love the rebellious and stouthearted marauders of the seas.At the pinnacle of the Golden Age of Atlantic piracy, three unlikely companions are sold into servitude on a merchant ship and thrust into a voyage of rebellion. They are John Gwin, an African American fugitive from bondage in South Carolina; Ruben Dekker, a common seaman from Amsterdam; and Mark (a.k.a. Mary) Reed, an American woman who dresses as a man.When the crew turn to mutiny, they and the freed slaves establish democracy aboard The Night Rambler. This new dispensation provides radical social benefits, all based on the documented practices of real pirate ships of the era: democratic decision-making, a social security net, health and disability insurance, and an equal distribution of spoils taken from prize ships. But before long the London elites enlist a war-hungry captain to take down The Night Rambler in a war that pitches high society against high-seas freebooters.Adapted from the scholarship and research of celebrated historian Marcus Rediker, Under the Banner of King Death is an inspiring story of the oppressed steering a course against adversity and injustice.

Legacy of the Lash is a compelling social and cultural history of the Brazilian navy in the decades preceding and immediately following the 1888 abolition of slavery in Brazil. Focusing on non-elite, mostly black enlisted men and the oppressive labor regimes under which they struggled, the book is an examination of the four-day Revolta da Chibata (Revolt of the Lash) of November 1910, during which nearly half of Rio de Janeiro's enlisted men rebelled against the use of corporal punishment in the navy. These men seized four new, powerful warships, turned their guns on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's capital city, and held its population hostage until the government abolished the use of the lash as a means of military discipline. Although the revolt succeeded, the men involved paid dearly for their actions. This event provides a clear lens through which to examine racial identity, violence, masculinity, citizenship, modernity, and the construction of the Brazilian nation.

This groundbreaking book presents a global perspective on the history of forced migration over three centuries and illuminates the centrality of these vast movements of people in the making of the modern world. Highly original essays from renowned international scholars trace the history of slaves, indentured servants, transported convicts, bonded soldiers, trafficked women, and coolie and Kanaka labor across the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans. They depict the cruelty of the captivity, torture, terror, and death involved in the shipping of human cargo over the waterways of the world, which continues unabated to this day. At the same time, these essays highlight the forms of resistance and cultural creativity that have emerged from this violent history. Together, the essays accomplish what no single author could provide: a truly global context for understanding the experience of men, women, and children forced into the violent and alienating experience of bonded labor in a strange new world. This pioneering volume also begins to chart a new role of the sea as a key site where history is made.

During global capitalism's long ascent from 1600–1850, workers of all kinds—slaves, indentured servants, convicts, domestic workers, soldiers, and sailors—repeatedly ran away from their masters and bosses, with profound effects. A Global History of Runaways, edited by Marcus Rediker, Titas Chakraborty, and Matthias van Rossum, compares and connects runaways in the British, Danish, Dutch, French, Mughal, Portuguese, and American empires. Together these essays show how capitalism required vast numbers of mobile workers who would build the foundations of a new economic order. At the same time, these laborers challenged that order—from the undermining of Danish colonization in the seventeenth century to the igniting of civil war in the United States in the nineteenth.

During global capitalism's long ascent from 1600–1850, workers of all kinds—slaves, indentured servants, convicts, domestic workers, soldiers, and sailors—repeatedly ran away from their masters and bosses, with profound effects. A Global History of Runaways, edited by Marcus Rediker, Titas Chakraborty, and Matthias van Rossum, compares and connects runaways in the British, Danish, Dutch, French, Mughal, Portuguese, and American empires. Together these essays show how capitalism required vast numbers of mobile workers who would build the foundations of a new economic order. At the same time, these laborers challenged that order—from the undermining of Danish colonization in the seventeenth century to the igniting of civil war in the United States in the nineteenth.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea focuses upon the seamen's experience in order to illuminate larger historical issues such as the rise of capitalism, the genesis of free wage labor, and the growth of an international working class. These epic themes were intimately bound up with the everyday hopes and fears of the common men who toiled upon the deep.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea focuses upon the seamen's experience in order to illuminate larger historical issues such as the rise of capitalism, the genesis of free wage labor, and the growth of an international working class. These epic themes were intimately bound up with the everyday hopes and fears of the common men who toiled upon the deep.

In your hearts you know the truth: I was here among you three hundred years ago . . . Had you chosen differently then - before slavery and greed breathed their venom so deeply into our souls - we would be living in another world now. It is not too late to purge these poisons.Benjamin Lay - shepherd, sailor, prophet, and the British Empire's first revolutionary abolitionist - returns from the grave almost three hundred years after his death, as feisty and unpredictable as ever.A four-feet-tall 'Little David' confronts the 'Goliath' of slavery once again as he pleads to be readmitted into the Quaker community that has disowned him and who still believe him to be dangerous.Now, 'trembling at the edge of playing God himself', how far will Benjamin go as he stares down his accusers?The Return of Benjamin Lay sweeps across the centuries in a bold exploration of an utterly impossible man. The play opened at the Finborough Theatre, London, in June 2023.

The slave ship was the instrument of history's greatest forced migration and a key to the origins and growth of global capitalism, yet much of its history remains unknown. Marcus Rediker uncovers the extraordinary human drama that played out on this world-changing vessel. Drawing on thirty years of maritime research, he demonstrates the truth of W.E.B DuBois's observation: the slave trade was the most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history. The Slave Ship focuses on the so-called golden age of the slave trade, the period of 1700-1808, when more than six million people were transported out of Africa, most of them on British and American ships, across the Atlantic, to slave on New World plantations. Marcus Rediker tells poignant tales of life, death and terror as he captures the shipboard drama of brutal discipline and fierce resistance. He reconstructs the lives of individuals, such as John Newton, James Field Stanfield and Olaudah Equiano, and the collective experience of captains, sailors and slaves. Mindful of the haunting legacies of race, class and slavery, Marcus Rediker offers a vivid and unforgettable portrait of the ghost ship of our modern consciousness.

This volume explores the transnational dimensions of mutiny and maritime radicalism during the great cycle of war and revolution that began in the mid-1750s and continued until the 1840s. The central theme of the volume is mutiny - its causes, frequency, forms, patterns and outcomes - charting, linking and comparing maritime insurrections in different oceans, on warships, merchant vessels and convict ships. The contributions concentrate on the mutineers themselves, their social composition, self-organisation, objectives and ideas. Also included is unrest in port cities, sites of international exchange between maritime and landed forms of resistance. Sailors spent significant amounts of time in port, sometimes connecting shipboard unrest and radical movements on land in personal, political and social ways. The contributions cover the age of revolution in its full geographic extent, including the Atlantic with its wars and revolutions, but also the Indian and Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea.

On 28 June 1839, the Spanish slave schooner La Amistad set sail from Havana to make a routine delivery of human cargo. After four days at sea, on a moonless night, the captive Africans that comprised that cargo escaped from the hold, killed the captain, and seized control of the ship. They attempted to sail to a safe port, but were captured by the US navy and thrown into a Connecticut jail. Their legal battle for freedom eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, where former president John Quincy Adams took up their cause. In a landmark ruling, they were freed and eventually returned to Africa. The rebellion became one of the best-known events in the history of American slavery, celebrated as a triumph of the US legal system in books and films, most famously Steven Spielberg's Amistad. These narratives reflect the elite perspective of the judges, politicians, and abolitionists involved. In this powerful and highly original account, Marcus Rediker reclaims the rebellion for its instigators: the African rebels who risked death to stake a claim for freedom.Using newly discovered evidence, Rediker reaches back to Africa to find the rebels' roots, narrates their cataclysmic transatlantic journey, and unfolds a prison story of great drama and emotive power. Featuring vividly drawn portraits of the Africans, their captors, and their abolitionist allies, The Amistad Rebellion shows how the rebels captured the popular imagination and helped to inspire and build a movement that was part of a grand global struggle for emancipation. The actions of that distant July night and inthe days and months that followed were pivotal events in American and Atlantic history, but not for the reasons we have always thought.The successful Amistad rebellion changed the very nature of the struggle against slavery. As a handful of Africans steered a course to freedom, they opened a way for millions to follow. This stunning book honours their achievement.

Outlaws of the Atlantic turns maritime history upside down, exploring the dramatic world of seafaring adventure, not from the perspective of admirals, merchants and other builders of empire, but rather from the point-of-view of common people whose labors made that world possible-sailors, slaves, indentured servants, pirates and other outlaws, whose formative experiences at sea are brought together for the first time.Against long-dominant national histories, this book shows that important historical processes transpired on the vast, nationless commons called the sea: the rise of capitalism, the formation of race and class, and the creation, from below, of oppositional cultures that promised more just and democratic ways of life.

The Fearless Benjamin Lay chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular and astonishing man-a Quaker dwarf who became one of the first ever to demand the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. He performed public guerrilla theatre to shame slave masters, insisting that human bondage violated the fundamental principles of Christianity. He wrote a fiery, controversial book against bondage that Benjamin Franklin published in 1738. He lived in a cave, made his own clothes, refused to consume anything produced by slave labour, championed animal rights, and embraced vegetarianism. He acted on his ideals to create a new, practical, revolutionary way of life.

Prophet against Slavery is an action-packed chronicle of a remarkable and radical individual. It is based on the award-winning biography by Marcus Rediker, which prompted the Quaker community that once disowned Lay to embrace him again after 280 years. Graphic novelist David Lester brings the full scope of Lay's activism and ideas to life.Born in 1682 to a humble Quaker family in Essex, England, Lay was a forceful and prescient visionary. Understanding the fundamental evil that slavery represented, he employed guerrilla theatre tactics and direct action to shame slave owners and traders. The prejudice Lay suffered as a dwarf and a hunchback, as well as his devout faith, informed his passion for human and animal liberation. Exhibiting stamina, fortitude, and integrity in the face of the cruelties practiced against his 'fellow creatures', he was frequently a solitary voice speaking truth to power.Lester's beautiful imagery and storytelling, accompanied by afterwords from Rediker and Paul Buhle, capture the radicalism, the humour, and the humanity of this uncannily modern figure. A testament to the impact each of us can make, Prophet against Slavery brings Lay'' prophetic vision to a new generation of young activists who today echo his call of 300 years ago: 'No justice, no peace!'

Freedom Ship is a gripping history of the enslaved African Americans who stowed away on vessels that carried them to liberty. Up to 100,000 fugitives successfully fled the horrors of bondage in the American South. Many moved northwards through a network of secret routes and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. Thousands of others, most of them completely unknown, escaped by sea. Their dramatic accounts of whispered conspiracy and billowing sails make Freedom Ship essential and en­thralling reading.From the docks of Savannah and Charleston to Boston Harbor and beyond, Freedom Ship traces the seekers who turned their sights to the sea. Stowaways regularly arrived in Britain aboard cotton ships bound for Liverpool. Moses Roper, one of the most determined runaways in American history, travelled 350 miles through slave coun­try before boarding the Napoleon and sailing for England. He became the first self-emancipated bondsman to lecture in the cause of abolition in Britain. Legendary abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman both saw the shipping lanes as paths to freedom.Marcus Rediker displays a prodigious command of ar­chival research to embark on a thrilling journey along the Atlantic seaboard, following those who risked everything in a maritime pursuit of freedom.

Under några få år på 1700-talet lades grunden för de historier om pirater som sedan aldrig upphört att fascinera eftervärlden. Då skapades Jolly Roger, den skräckinjagande flaggan med dödskalle och benknotor. Då gjorde Kapten Svartskägg, de kvinnliga piraterna Anne Bonny och Mary Read och en rad andra färgstarka karaktärer Atlanten och Karibiska havet till livsfarliga farvatten för varje seglare. På något av dessa piratskepp haltade också den träbente sjörövare fram som kom att stå modell för Long John Silver i Skattkammarön. I Pirater berättar Marcus Rediker om denna sjöröveriets guldålder framför andra. Historien om de verkliga piraterna visar sig inte stå fiktionen efter när det gäller dramatik. Därtill rymmer den en social dimension som sällan berörs i filmer och böcker om pirater. Piraterna utgjorde inte bara ett hot mot handel och sjöfart. Genom sin demokratiska organisering utgjorde de också ett hot mot den existerande samhällsordningen. I stark kontrast till de samtida despotiska staterna och de hårda arbetsförhållandena ombord på handelsskepp och örlogsfartyg, växte bland pirater fram ett egenartat egalitärt samhälle där kaptenen valdes av manskapet, spriten fördelades jämnt och människor av olika ras, klass, nationalitet och kön arbetade sida vid sida. Fattiga såg piraterna som hjältar. Sjömän lockades att desertera till dem för att få ett drägligare liv. I längden kunde inte stormakterna tolerera detta. Piraterna utnämndes till hela mänsklighetens fiender och många av dem slutade sina dagar i galgen. Men i den folkliga fantasin segrade de. Där har piraterna fått en förmodligen evig revansch mot sina banemän. Redikers bok är mycket underhållande, levande och full av äventyr och ögonvittnesskildringar. Caroline Leavitt i Boston Globe En fascinerande bok om piraterna som frihetspionjärer. Sverker Lenas i DN En strålande bok... ett mycket gediget forskningsmaterial och ett bra språk gör Pirater till en mycket intressant och angenäm läsupplevelse. Anders Moverare i Dagbladet