ABSTRACT

The labouring classes of the Atlantic world were diverse in terms of their role, origin and ethnicities but unified by forms of solidarity and communication. The question of 'the pirate' in historiography has been shaped by the idea that they were bandits or 'de-classed' elements divorced from the emerging, global proletariat and on the margins of the civilisation of capital. The fragmentary histories of labour, specifically the 'nautical proletariat', pirates, and the slave and factory ships the 'forcing houses of internationalism' of the past can serve not just as resources of hope though but also as warnings about the current state of labour, race and women's organisation. The nautical histories of labour, and specifically slavery, are central because they hint at a new politics of utopia where 'the centrality of the maritime realm in the gestation of global modernity'. The enclosures of the commons by capital were replicated nautically by the subjugation of the oceans to the merchant ships.