elanya

I just got a comment on my last post from the author (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, in any case!) of one of the pirate books I read last week, Quelch's Gold: Piracy, Greed and Betrayal in Colonial New England, asking for my thoughts. 9Why me, you ask? I checked. If you google the short title, my lj is the first entry that isn't a book store or similar ;) So I figured, what the heck, I'll just make it a post. Unfortunately, I had to take the book itself back to the library already (it was a new book, so I couldn't just renew it and hoard it indefinitely), so specific references will be thin on the ground, alas.

So, general thoughts first. This book is conceptually strong. It is another examination of piracy and politics, and (though it doesn use the terms) tries to investigate ascribed versus adopted identities. Did John Quelch consider himself a pirate, how does his behaviour reflect his thoughts on the matter, why did he think he could get away with it, what was going on in local and global politics that affected how he was received on his return to new England, and so on. Quelch's trial was the first in the New World to use the statute of 1700 which applied England's piracy laws to its colonies and plantations, and though it was questionably handled, it was important for that fact. It is clear that the author did a lot of careful research into the trial, the personalities involved, and used it to paint a very clear picture of the different factors influencing the book's events.

The book falls down when it comes to the way the author presents early colonial piracy. This might be more apparent to me, because I have spent a lot of time familiarizing myself with the subject. He makes some pretty broad generalizations to try and understand Quelch's decisions. Some of these generalizations are outright wrong. Not all pirates followed formalizes rules or codes, and these were certainly not the same from crew to crew. The idea that Quelch's piratical intent can be inferred from the way he organized his ship is a bit naive. It is true that many crews had articles that all members signed, and some of these have survived - but a fairly small sample to make such sweeping generalizations. Other historical information (for example, William Snelgrave's account of being held hostage by pirates in Sierra Leone) reveals that some pirate crews organized themselves much along the same lines as the merchant marine or the Royal Navy, with a full complement of (elected) officers.

In his forward, Beal admits hat he is working outside of his period, and though his primary source research is great, his inexperience with the scholarship on pirates shows in some of his arguments. This lack of familiarity also results in the poor choice of general sources (which probably ties in to problems as seen above). He relies in places on more popularized accounts like Richard Zacks' account of Captain Kidd's trial and experience.*

This is not an academic press book, and I think that if it were, a lot of these issues could have been caught and fixed. There might also have been more careful discussion of sources, of which I am always a fan. There are some other spots that a more careful editor could have been useful - a couple of passages where the writing was noticeably awkward, the occasional typo, etc. These are really minor quibbles though!

In the end, I liked the book well enough. I think that despite the flaws, it makes some really good points. Taken as part of the broader scholarship, it helps to highlight some of the trends in the changing attitudes towards piracy in the early eighteenth century, and in how pirates were dealt with in the colonies. Quelch isn't a figure who gets a lot of notice in other accounts, but this helps put him in perspective. Overall, this is a book with a solid concept, and the author presents a strong case for the arguments he makes about the politics of Quelch's trial, but it is weakened by his lack of familiarity with the broader topic of early eighteenth century piracy, and the relevant scholarship. I'd certainly recommend it to people with a casual interest in pirates and piracy.

*I might have more to say on this, but now I am not sure whether I might be confusing the two pirate books I read back to back, so I'll have to go and peek through the library later. One of them mentioned Capitan Mission, one of the pirates from The General History of the Pirates as a real historical figure. Mission is one of the few sections of the book that is *not* accepted as historically accurate however - he was a sort of utopian fantasy cooked up by the author (or possibly the editor). Much of the rest of the text has been corroborated from other sources, but not Mission.

(I hope this doesn't come off as too pretentious - I was reading the book to judge its academic merit, and that is what I focused on here :o)