The Republic of Pirates

Welcome to the Pirate Republicthe early-eighteenth-century home to some of the great pirate captains, including Blackbeard, "Black Sam" Bellamy, and Charles Vane. Along with their fellow piratesformer sailors, indentured servants, and runaway slavesthis "Flying Gang" established a crude but distinctive democracy in the Bahamas, carving out their own zone of freedom in which servants were free, blacks could be equal citizens, and leaders were chosen or deposed by a vote. For a brief, glorious period the Pirate Republic was enormously successful. It cut off trade routes, sacked slave ships, and severed Europe from its New World empires. Imperial authorities and wealthy shipowners denouncedits residentsas the enemies of mankind, but common people saw them as heroes. Colin Woodard tells the dramatic untold story of the Pirate Republic that shook the very foundations of the British and Spanish Empires and fanned the democratic sentiments that would one day drive the American Revolution.

COLIN WOODARD writes for the Chronicle of Higher Education and is the author of The Lobster Coast and Ocean’s End. He lives in Portland, Maine.