Charles Johnson's "General History of the Pyrates" and Global Commerce
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1680-1730
1720s
1724
18th century
A01=Noel Chevalier
Anne Bonny
Atlantic world
Author_Noel Chevalier
Bartholomew Roberts
Black Sails
Blackbeard
book-length study
British colonialism
British piracy
buccaneers
Captain Misson
Category=DS
Category=DSBD
Category=KCC
Category=KCZ
Category=NHTM
Charles Johnson
colonial history
Colonialism
Colonizer
commerce
context
Daniel Defoe
early modern period
Edward Low
Empire
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
General History of the Pyrates
Global Commerce
global history
Golden Age of Piracy
Golden Age of Pirates
Henry Avery
Highwaymen
historical source
Jolly Roger
law
legal history
Libertalia
Marcus Rediker
Maritime culture
maritime law
Mary Read
merchants
monster theory
Monsters
multi-faceted
Nathaniel Mist
Peter Linebaugh
Piracy
piracy culture
piracy history
piracy narrative
Pirate code
Pirate history
Pirate literature
Pirates
pyrates
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Walpole
Slave trade
slavery
Source stories
Sourcebook
South Sea Company
Stede Bonnet
study
text
Trade
transatlantic trade
Treasure Island
volume
Whig
Product details
- ISBN 9781684485536
- Weight: 286g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 17 Jun 2025
- Publisher: Bucknell University Press,U.S.
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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A bestseller upon its publication in 1724, Charles Johnson’s General History of the Pyrates shaped public perceptions of piracy with its portraits of such legendary figures as Blackbeard, Mary Read, Anne Bonny, and Bartholomew Roberts. Yet despite influencing everything from Treasure Island to Peter Pan, Johnson’s book has yet to be taken seriously as a literary work in its own right.
This study explores how General History of the Pyrates was at the heart of early eighteenth-century British debates about commerce, colonialism, and law. Examining how pirates are depicted as both monsters and Great Men, Noel Chevalier untangles the contradictions within a Britain emerging as a colonial superpower, where ruthlessness and ambition were both feared and praised. Traveling the high seas to plunder treasure from foreign lands, pirates were not so different from the British capitalists who built fortunes from resource extraction, the plantation economy, and the transatlantic slave trade. Connecting the work to later books like Gulliver’s Travels and The Beggar’s Opera that satirized the era and its power-hungry prime minister Robert Walpole, Chevalier shows how the pirate became an iconic figure in 1720s Britain, a time of cold-hearted capitalism and rapacious colonial expansion.
This study explores how General History of the Pyrates was at the heart of early eighteenth-century British debates about commerce, colonialism, and law. Examining how pirates are depicted as both monsters and Great Men, Noel Chevalier untangles the contradictions within a Britain emerging as a colonial superpower, where ruthlessness and ambition were both feared and praised. Traveling the high seas to plunder treasure from foreign lands, pirates were not so different from the British capitalists who built fortunes from resource extraction, the plantation economy, and the transatlantic slave trade. Connecting the work to later books like Gulliver’s Travels and The Beggar’s Opera that satirized the era and its power-hungry prime minister Robert Walpole, Chevalier shows how the pirate became an iconic figure in 1720s Britain, a time of cold-hearted capitalism and rapacious colonial expansion.
NOEL CHEVALIER teaches English at Luther College at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan. The author of several articles on pirates and pirate literature, he has also edited an edition of David Garrick and George Colman’s The Clandestine Marriage and, with Min Wild, coedited Reading Christopher Smart in the Twenty-First Century (Bucknell University Press).
