Descending from the heights, part Zombie!

Nope, we're not talking about "cruel, demented, vicious pirates who cannot be killed," though that's interesting too:



But rather, as has been extensively well-documented on the pirate blog, Catherine and I are perhaps understandably concerned with being taken seriously, not in spite of, but rather because of, our study of something as popular as pirates. So we're always on the look-out for cases where popular culture is treated as analytically relevant to scholarly research, and the BBC today was happy to oblige. According to an article entitled "Science ponders 'zombie attack'," mathematical researchers at the University of Ottawa have used the hypothetical scenario of a zombie attack as an exercise in infectious disease modeling.

Professor Robert Smith? (the question mark is part of his surname and not a typographical mistake) and colleagues wrote: "We model a zombie attack using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions."

The researchers only considered old-school slow zombies, but even so, the results were worrying:

... their analysis revealed that a strategy of capturing or curing the zombies would only put off the inevitable. In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity's only hope is to "hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often". They added: "It's imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else... we are all in a great deal of trouble." According to the researchers, the key difference between the zombies and the spread of real infections is that "zombies can come back to life".

This study (available in full here) is an example of the "popular culture as a mirror" approach outlined in the introduction to Harry Potter and International Relations (11-13), as can be seen from the article's abstract:

Zombies are a popular figure in pop culture/entertainment and they are usually portrayed as being brought about through an outbreak or epidemic. Consequently, we model a zombie attack, using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. We introduce a basic model for zombie infection, determine equilibria and their stability, and illustrate the outcome with numerical solutions. We then refine the model to introduce a latent period of zombification, whereby humans are infected, but not infectious, before becoming undead. We then modify the model to include the effects of possible quarantine or a cure. Finally, we examine the impact of regular, impulsive reductions in the number of zombies and derive conditions under which eradication can occur. We show that only quick, aggressive attacks can stave off the doomsday scenario: the collapse of society as zombies overtake us all.

Meanwhile, on his Foreign Policy blog, Daniel Drezner briefly and light-heartedly applies some theories of International Relations to a zombie attack. While Drezner's analysis is not fully fleshed-out (sorry!), a brief survey (n=3) I conducted in the last 5 minutes unanimously suggests that zombies should probably be considered alongside Kosovo to understand IR theory. As Daniel Nexon and Iver Neumann write, "The mirror approach is broader than simply deploying popular culture artifacts as a teaching aid. IR scholars can examine popular culture as a medium for exploring theoretical concepts, dilemmas of foreign policy, and the like" (12). As an important caveat, 2/3 of respondents conditioned their response on zombie attacks, unlike extraterrestrial visitations, remaining confined to the realm of hypothetical thought experiments.

How do you hide an elephant?

The Maltese-flagged, Finnish-chartered ship that reported being attacked by pirates in the Baltic sea on July 24 has apparently disappeared. The Arctic Sea, a cargo ship carrying 6,500 tons of timber, was supposed to have reached Algeria on August 4 and was last spotted on July 30 when it passed through the Bay of Biscay, but the Portuguese naval commander states that, "We can guarantee that the ship is not in Portuguese waters nor did it ever pass through Portuguese waters." This bizarre occurrence has sparked confused debate about whether or not the ship could have fallen victim to a pirate attack. Some maritime experts are hesitant about attributing the disappearance to pirates, suggesting a commercial dispute instead. From today's AP article:

"There have been no attacks in European waters," said Pottengal Mukundan, director of the London-based International Maritime Bureau. "It's not the kind of area where pirates would find it easy to operate." Nick Davis, the chief executive of the Merchant Maritime Warfare Centre, told the BBC that if anything had happened to the ship, cargo would have been found. "I strongly suspect that this is probably a commercial dispute with its owner and a third party and they've decided to take matters into their own hands," he said Wednesday.

Other maritime security experts have labeled this scenario "a new type of piracy" and have expressed amazement at the disappearance of a 4,000 tonne ship in the world's best-traveled shipping route:

Graeme Gibbon-Brooks, managing director of Dryad Maritime, an intelligence company specialising in piracy, said that if the ship may have been the victim of a new kind of piracy.

“If this is a criminal act, it appears to be following a new business model. It seems likely that the vessel will head to the west coast of Africa,” he said.

Mark Dickinson, general secretary of seafarers’ union Nautilus International, said: “It is alarming that, in the 21st century, a ship can apparently be commandeered by hijackers and sail through the world’s busiest waterway with no alarm being raised and no naval vessel going to intercept it.

“It is unbelievable that a ship can sail around for more than a fortnight with no one seemingly knowing its precise location or who is in control.”

The International Maritime Bureau, for its incredulous part, has not classified the incident as piracy: "We are not going to classify this as a piracy event, mainly because of the location and circumstance," he [Jeremy Harrison of the British Chamber of Shipping] said. The bureau is unaware of any piracy in recent memory in the waters off Sweden," spokesman Cyrus Mody said.

The Russian navy has joined in the hunt for the ship, and its warships and nuclear submarines have have been told to “take all necessary measures to find and free” the ship and its 15-man Russian crew. According to CNN, Mikhail Voitenko, editor of the Russian Maritime Bulletin Web site said he believed the vessel was carrying "some kind of secret cargo" which made it attractive to potential hijackers. The crew's account of the July 24 attack suggests a drug connection, a possibility the Telegraph has speculated about.

The New York Times reports that Maltese officials believe the ship to be headed out into the Atlantic.

Somalia and its pirates - back in the news again

While in Kenya last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged greater support for Somalia's incredibly weak transitional federal government, met with Somali president Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, and threatened sanctions against Eritrea for supporting al-Shabab and the other Islamist militias which are reported by the Somali president himself to control all but a few city blocks of Somalia. In keeping with the tone of Clinton's remarks (including those made after the meeting), much of the recent coverage of Somalia has been focused on the threat of terrorism (including this interesting story about an attempt by a Minneapolis radio station to counter extremist propaganda with Somali-language VOA news coverage; apparently airing a program in produced by US public diplomacy is illegal in the US).

However, the renewed discussion of Somalia's identity as a failed state has obvious implications for addressing piracy off its shores. The recent rebirth of the Somali navy has attracted a moderate amount of news coverge, though a Coast Guard anti-piracy task force might be more effective. This BBC article on Somali's new Navy chief highlights the absurdity of commanding a Navy in the absence of a government, ships, equipment, and control of the coastline, but the Somali government has long maintained that training such a force is the best way to prevent piracy. Writing for Information Dissemination, Robert Farley suggests that the need for training represents an opportunity for the US to "influence the institutional development not just of the Somali Navy, but also of the various other navies of East Africa, and the rest of the world." The EU has already announced its plans to train a Somali anti-piracy security force, but it appears this would be distinct from the nascent Navy.

The relationship between shoring up Somali governmental institutions and the media focus on piracy cuts both ways. In a briefing on the semi-autonomous Puntland region published today, the International Crisis Group states that:

The [Somali] government must take advantage of the piracy-driven international attention to mobilise funds and expertise to carry out comprehensive political, economic and institutional reforms that address the fundamental problems of poor governance, corruption, unemployment and the grinding poverty in coastal villages. The international community needs to refocus on the long-term measures without which there can be no sustainable end to that practice or true stability. Equipping and training a small coast guard is obviously a necessary investment, but so too are other steps, such as to improve the general welfare and help impoverished fishing communities.

Meanwhile, a Turkish frigate working with NATO forces in the Gulf of Aden captured five suspected pirates today and is claiming to have prevented a possible ship hijacking, and the Hansa Stavanger, the German ship released last week, is headed home to Germany where Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung has called for a constitutional amendment giving German armed forces a greater role in hostage rescue situations, citing the length of time it took for German police forces to deploy to the Horn of Africa after the Hansa Stavanger was hijacked.

US officials too are worried about the threat of piracy in the Gulf of Aden. Citing dangers to US shipping (and thereby linking pirates to the "trade" commonplace in our analytical model), Elijah Cummings, Chair of the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, recently wrote an op-ed about his amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that "would require the Department of Defense to place small teams of armed security aboard those few U.S. flagged ships truly at risk of being boarded when they carry U.S. government cargo through an area where there is a high risk of piracy." The House passed the Act and Cummings's amendment last month.

Pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden are expected to increase in coming weeks with the end of monsoon season in east Africa.

We made a movie!

The video below demonstrates the ways in which a finite number of rhetorical commonplaces (morality, romance, law, marginality, history, trade, nation, and violence) were configured during five eras of the pirate tradition (the Golden Age of Piracy, the period between the Golden Age and the Civil War, the Civil War era, the 20th century, and today). The straight lines represent links made between commonplaces; the dashed lines represent distancing mechanisms, that is, when the commonsensical link between two commonplaces was severed. For instance, in the first slide, the commonplaces of "marginal" and "nation" are both linked and distanced. This is because some key texts from that period articulate a link between pirates' marginal identity and a given nation, while others carve out space for pirates within the national discourse. The linking mechanism occurs in a 1699 letter, published as a broadsheet, and calling upon Parliament to stamp out piracy in the Americas by "bring[ing] all these Colonies to a more immediate dependence on the Crown." Distancing can be seen in the preface to the second edition (1684) of Buccaneers of America, which talks about "the unparallel'd, in not inimitable, adventures and Heroick exploits of our own Countrey-men ... whose undaunted and exemplary Courage, when called upon by our King and Country, we ought to emulate."


(For some reason, creating an animated version of the rhetorical topographies we drew up last week seemed like a good project to start around 11:30 last night ... When I finished in the wee hours of the morning, I couldn't figured out a better way to turn a PowerPoint presentation into a video than the following, though clearly it has some problems. We are, of course, working on a formal analytical write-up of this complex process during the daylight hours.)

Book Critique: The Invisible Hook

The following critique is from a first draft of our literature review. It is deliberately analytical, rather than normative, in keeping with the orientation of our own research project. This is why, instead of objecting to Leeson's characterization of torture as rational on normative grounds, I have pointed out the empirical contradictions in his analysis of torture and looked at his arguments as a means to undermine the explanatory power of rational choice theory on this subject. This is not to suggest that I in any way agree with the normative implications of Leeson's hagiographic treatment of pirates, but merely that for the purposes of our project, it made sense to confine my critical reading to the analytic realm.
***
In his 2009 book The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, economist Peter T. Leeson argues that rational choice theory is the only way to understand “flamboyant, bizarre, and downright shocking pirate practices” of the 18th century (6). Leeson’s thesis is that ostensibly modern societal ideas such as the democratic process, power-sharing, and racial equality emerged not as liberal ideological ends, but as rationally efficient means by which pirates could operate as a successful criminal social group. Leeson offers an economic basis for accounts of piratical democracies, codes of conduct, and racial tolerance; presents flying the Jolly Roger and torturing captives as rationally-motivated examples of economic signaling; and argues that conscription was the inefficient exception, not the rule, aboard pirate ships. However, because Leeson begins with the assumption that pirates were rational actors (5), his subsequent empirical proof of how pirates’ actions were rational is unnecessary, rendering his analysis an unimpressive contribution to understanding the pirate tradition¹. Indeed, The Invisible Hook is better viewed as a particular configuration of commonplaces than as a conceptual history of piracy (Hansen 2006: 81). There are three main problems with Leeson’s work as a piece of analytical literature: flawed reasoning; empirical errors; internal inconsistencies.

Leeson’s account is unique among modern sources on historical piracy in its acknowledgment of the important role perception plays in the pirate tradition. He argues that pirates deliberately crafted a terrifying image of themselves in order to more efficiently elicit information from hostages, punish government officials, and regulate conduct on board the ship. “Pirates skillfully deployed their infamous instruments of terror, generating a reputation for cruelty and madness that spread throughout the maritime world” (108). Similarly, by flying the Jolly Roger, pirate ships signaled their identity to merchant ships in order to minimize resistance (90), and to capitalize on the fact that merchants were less likely to resist pirates than state-sanctioned attackers (99). Leeson’s research suggests that pirates quite deliberately linked their marginal identity to a discourse of barbarism and excessive violence. Although this argument reveals a particularly interesting rhetorical positioning of piratical identity, as an analytical justification for pirates’ rationality, it is fundamentally tautological. If we begin with the assumption that pirates are rational actors, then of course pirates’ actions can – indeed, must – be read as rational, but this is little more than an elaborate definition of the original assumption, akin to Leeson’s statement that “Pirates’ system of private governance was highly successful, a fact reflected in the success of piracy itself” (79). In addition to being a tautology, the conclusion of this statement is not entirely true. By the late 1700s, piracy would be virtually eliminated as large-scale threat for close to 300 years. The Invisible Hook only explains a discrete moment in the pirate tradition; it does not consider how interpretations of the threat of piracy changed over time nor does it explain how piracy ceased to be regarded as a credible threat at all.

Leeson’s empirical evidence for his claims about pirates’ rational actions is flawed or incomplete in several places. Many of his arguments about piratical democratic institutions and systems of governance are based on so-called pirate codes (58). While there is indeed evidence that pirates drew up such agreements, there is much less to suggest these codes were reliably enforced. There are three reasons to regard the presumed adherence to these codes with skepticism. First, Leeson presents Charles Johnson’s account² of such articles aboard Captain Robert’s ship as evidence for pirates’ private governance (62). Aside from the obvious point that existence of an ostensibly liberal democratic constitution does not in any way guarantee liberal democratic rule, there is textual evidence in the Johnson account itself which suggests that the articles enumerated therein were incomplete and probably whitewashed:

These, we are assured, were some of Roberts's Articles, but as they had taken Care to throw over-board the Original they had sign'd and sworn to, there is a great deal of Room to suspect, the remainder contained something too horrid to be disclosed to any, except such as were willing to be Sharers in the Iniquity of them ... (Defoe 1724: 233)

Second, Leeson also offers Alexander Exquemelin’s description of 17th century buccaneers’ articles of agreement as further evidence of the triumph of piratical private governance. However, if Johnson expressed doubts about the content of the articles aboard Roberts’ ship, the anonymous author of the preface to the 1699 edition of Exquemelin’s Buccaneers of America specifically calls into question the enforcement of the articles designed to prevent negative externalities:

However it is very remarkable, that in such a lawless Body as these Bucaniers seemed to be, in respect to all others; that yet there should be such an Oeconomy (if I may so say) kept and regularity practiced among themselves, so that every one seemed to have his property as much secured, as if he had been a member of the most Civilized Community in the World; tho at the same time when I consider of some of their Laws, such as those against Drunkenness and the like immoralities, I believe I have a great deal of reason to remain suspicious of their Sincerity. (Esquemeling 1699: 5. Emphasis added)

Although neither of these quotations specifically says that pirates’ compliance with their articles of confederation was less than exemplary, they do indicate that even pirates’ contemporaries had reason to doubt the adherence to liberal democratic norms aboard pirate ships. Leeson’s uncritical acceptance of piratical obedience indicates a lack of analytical rigor for the sake of theoretical coherence, since rational choice theory only tells us something about pirate laws if these laws were actually obeyed.

Finally, because Leeson walks a fine line in his analysis (pirates were only just violent enough to craft a public identity for themselves as violent), he ends up undermining his initial claim that adherence to pirate codes was purely voluntary. Leeson contends that private governance is superior to state governments, and he alleges that the primary difference between the two is that governance is voluntary while government is characterized by coercive force (47-50). It is therefore essential that he prove that pirate codes were consented to voluntarily, an argument he makes in his application of Tiebout model to competition among pirate crews (61). Actually, because Tiebout competition describes how governments (not forms of governance) compete for citizens, this concept directly refutes Leeson’s earlier assertion that “If you don’t like the rules government sets up, it’s too bad. You don’t have the choice of saying … ‘no thank you, I don’t much care for your rules, so I’m going to take my money and live according to my own rules’” (50). Tiebout competition assumes citizens can, to use Leeson’s formulation, say, “I don’t much care for your rules, so I’m going to take my money and live according to some other rules.”³

Leeson’s initial assertion is not only a questionable application of social contract theory⁴ and theoretically inconsistent with his use of Tiebout competition, but most importantly it is empirically refuted in his chapter on impressments. Leeson begins this chapter by asserting that conscription and forced adherence to pirate law was seen as inefficient and therefore rare aboard pirate ships (136). However, the empirical accounts he uses to support this assertion suggest that coercive force played a significant role even in “voluntary” adherence to pirate codes:

When Edward Low captured Philip Ashton, for instance, he began with the pirates’ traditional inquiry of the captured crew about who would join them. As Ashton put it, “according to the Pirates usual custom ... [he] asked me, If I would sign their Articles and go along with them.” A man of strong moral fiber, Ashton declined. When this failed Low returned to him later and “asked the Old Question, Whether we would Sign their Articles, and go along with them?” When Ashton refused again, Low waited and then reapproached Ashton, this time demanding “with Sterness and Threats, whether I would Joyn with them?” On his third refusal the pirates “assaulted” Ashton -- but not with fists. Rather, they subjected the upright sailor to “temptations of another kind, in hopes to win me over... [they] treated me with an abundance of Respect and Kindness,” offering Ashton a drink and doing all they could to “sooth my Sorrows.” Only when Ashton rebuffed the fourth advance did a frustrated Low resort to violent intimidation, declaring, “If you will not sign our Articles, and go along with me, I'll shoot you thro' the Head.” Much to Low's consternation, Ashton remained obstinate, and the pirate captain dragged Ashton with him anyway. (137-138)

Though Leeson inexplicably reads the repeated attempts to convince Ashton to sign the articles as evidence of the high value pirates placed on volunteers, there can be no clearer articulation of coercive force than, “If you will not sign our Articles, I’ll shoot you through the head.” The bizarreness of this interpretation is underscored by Leeson’s earlier statement that, “Voluntary choice requires that our options aren’t framed under the threat of force” (50).

Leeson goes on to say that “Some prisoners ‘converted’ because pirate crews denied conscripts the rights afforded to volunteers, such as participation in the ship's democratic decision making, the right to their shares of plunder, and the right to settle disputes with other crew members by duel” (141). However, the denial of rights to those who will not adhere to the laws is yet another example of the sort of coercive force Leeson so strongly objects to in governments (50-51). Despite his professed preference for private governance, Leeson does seem to tacitly admit the necessity of government in some cases. In his chapter in the rational applications of torture, Leeson writes that “In terms of the costs and benefits they faced of bringing justice⁵ to abusive merchant ship captains on the high seas, pirates were better suited to this task than government” (127). However, he later notes that “absent any controls, pirate justice could be unfair, excessive, and in more than a few cases was probably totally unwarranted” (132). This is essentially Hobbes’ argument for why coercive government is necessary.

In addition to being empirically weak and internally inconsistent, Leeson’s book ends up telling us little more than the following: If we assume pirates were rational actors, then we can construct rational explanations for their actions. Leeson has attempted to do this, resulting in an analytically empty tautology that says that rationally self-interested cooperation can lead to ostensibly democratic social groups, excessively brutal torture, racial equality, participation in the slave trade, and colorful flags.

¹Furthermore, Leeson concedes that rational choice theory fails to account for all piratical actions, noting that “although pirates overwhelmingly tortured ‘with purpose,’ there are cases that were no more than sadism as well” (132). The distinction between “rational” torture and “sadistic” torture is left wholly unclear.

²Some editions of A General History of the Pyrates have been inaccurately attributed to Daniel Defoe. Although present-day research indicates that Defoe was not in fact the author, our citations reflect the author listed on the edition being cited.

³Or more formally, “In a Tiebout model, local jurisdictions compete for citizens by offering bundles of public goods. Citizens then sort themselves among jurisdictions according to their preferences.” (Ken Kollman, John H. Miller and Scott E. Page. “Political Institutions and Sorting in a Tiebout Model.” The American Economic Review, Vol. 87, No. 5. Dec. 1997: 977)

⁴For example, Rousseau argues that sovereign authorities only gain their authority from the general will and that when the people are displeased by a law, they can dissolve and reconstitute the existing sovereign and its laws. The distanced formulation “I don’t much care for your rules” is meaningless in such a government. Indeed, most social contract theorists articulate answers to the question of individual disagreement with societal laws. For instance, one can construct a defensible reading of Locke’s Second Treatise on Government that says it is entirely possible and acceptable for people to remain outside a government they have no interest in joining. “This [forming a civil society] any number of Men may do, because it injures not the Freedom of the rest; they are left as they were in the Liberty of the State of Nature” (John Locke. Two Treatises of Government. Ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989: 331). However, a further extension of this kind of critique is rendered largely unnecessary by the internal contradictions in Leeson’s work.

⁵Leeson is apparently condoning torture as an acceptable form of justice. Although my present critique is deliberately analytical, not normative in orientation, it is worth noting how Leeson’s application of rational choice theory positions piracy as outside the realm of ethical judgment.

Salayan sailors and Somali swashbucklers

While there have been several news and human interest stories about US and European victims of piracy -- and several articles about the Somali pirates themselves -- the perspective of non-Western victims of piracy has not received the same level of coverage. However, the BBC has a radio report here about the plight of one Gujarati community whose maritime economy is being impacted by Somali pirate attacks, offering a more poignant perspective on the impact of piracy than that of higher insurance premiums and multi-million dollar ransom payments from large shipping companies.

An alarming amount of our project can be illustrated using Dinosaur Comics

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=209

Debatable indeed.

Anti-whaling pirates

Whales and whaling seem to have worked their way into our project in a variety of subtle ways this summer, beginning back in May with our theory and methodology reading, when we read Charlotte Epstein's The Power of Words in International Relations: The Birth of an Anti-Whaling Discourse. This book is not only an excellent example of how to conduct a discourse analysis in International Relations, but also examines what James Rosenau would call a "genuine puzzle": how the anti-whaling discourse became dominant and created normative changes that then made certain national and international policies possible.

We ran into whales again in Mystic Seaport (after we had finished our time in the archives) where we watched a video on whaling practices explained through passages from Moby Dick (a significant work in the construction of the anti-whaling discourse for the way in which its representation of whales creates a distance between actual whales out in the ocean and the whale in the story -- a narrative reappropriated by anti-whaling activists) and handled a bronze whaling gun:
However, perhaps the most interesting pirate-whaling link we've come across has been the appropriation of pirate imagery and identity by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, the organization featured in Animal Planet's popular show Whale Wars (a connection we found out about from this Foreign Policy photo essay). Apparently some members of this society have taken it upon themselves to harass Japanese whaling vessels which they believe to be whaling for commercial rather than research purposes (though they would clearly object to the latter as well). This show is of note, first of all, for the extent to which it vividly illustrates Epstein's thesis about the "real-world" power of the anti-whaling discourse and the construction of (disputed) political space for non-governmental environmental actors. It's hard to see the same show being made with another environmental discourse (I can't see the Environmental Liberation Front's burning down of a Colorado ski lodge to save lynx habitat mobilizing quite the same level of enthusiasm), and even more challenging to envision a non-environmental non-state illegal group garnering such wide-spread popularity.

But, an even more interesting twist (at least from the standpoint of our research), involves the deliberate appropriation of the pirate identity by the Sea Shepherds. Faced with accusations of piracy by Japanese whalers, Sea Shepherd Captain Paul Watson asserted his pride in being a "pirate of compassion" in an op-ed published in the Guardian. The op-ed is worth reading in full, but several points jump out.

First, Watson deploys the "pirate as (national) hero" commonplace that enjoyed great popularity in the early 18th century with English descriptions of Captain Morgan and again in the early to mid 19th century in American representations of John Paul Jones and, later, Jean Lafitte. Indeed, these are the pirate heroes that Watson cites:

At least proper piracy has a long list of renowned and admirable practitioners: John Paul Jones, who founded the navies of both the US and Russia; Jean LaFitte, who stood with General Andrew Jackson in defence of New Orleans; and Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, knighted by Elizabeth I. I stand in honourable company as a modern-day pirate, though I've not shot anyone, burned any ships, looted any cargos or kidnapped anyone.

Watson's grasp on history is tenuous (he denies the British Navy had anything to do with the suppression of 18th century Caribbean piracy, attributing it instead to Henry Morgan), but his strategic deployment of the same pirate-legitimating commonplaces used centuries ago is quite interesting to observe.

Second, having made note of the pirate imagery used by the Sea Shepherd and Whale Wars, I was intrigued to read about both the deliberately defiant way in which it was deployed and also the popular appeal it lent to the Sea Shepherd's controversial cause:

My ship, the Steve Irwin, does fly a modern version of the Jolie Rouge, the original name of the banner that evolved into the skull and crossbones of the Jolly Roger. We decided years ago that if people were going to call us pirates, we would adopt our own version, and designed the crossed Neptune trident and shepherd's staff with the skull.

As soon as we hoisted that black flag, kids from around the world began to write to us in support. Our Jolly Roger hats and shirts have become our most popular merchandise. Why? Because there is a romance associated with piracy that is separate from the reality. Some pirates were noble heroes and some were dastardly villains. It's all a matter of perspective. If you love whales, we be heroes; but if you eat whales then we be pirates.

Finally, the introductory paragraphs of Watson's op-ed suggest he is aware of just how persuasive the popular imagery and language of pirates can be in summoning up enthusiasm:

Shiver me timbers, boys and girls, we is awash in a sea of pirates down here in the Southern Ocean and it's time for a parley to do a little 'splaining on the subject. This ocean now rivals the 17th century Caribbean for reported acts of piracy. The only thing lacking is the Sea Shepherd member Orlando Bloom.

Japanese whalers are accusing the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Greenpeace crew members of being pirates. Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace are accusing the whalers of being pirates. The whalers and Greenpeace are accusing Sea Shepherd of being pirates. The Japanese government is throwing the word piracy about as freely as the governor of Jamaica once did.

No one has sunk any ships, looted any cargos, kidnapped any damsels (just a couple of blokes) or forced anyone to walk the plank yet - but listening to the rhetoric, the public could be forgiven from thinking these activities are ravaging the Southern main.

That the deployment of pirate rhetoric is being used to legitimate (some) illegal non-state actions in the 21st century is a striking illustration of the extent to which the pirate discourse has shifted throughout history. That the deployment of the same word -- and some of the same commonplaces -- would, at the exact same time, be used to delegitimate other illegal non-state practices (most notably Somali piracy) indicates that, like Epstein, we too have an IR maritime puzzle to explain.

(Photo from: http://www.melbourne.indymedia.org/uploads/sea_shepherd_in_hobart_dec_06.jpg)

Pirates of the Baltic?

While some are looking back to the Barbary Wars to make sense of the Somali pirate attacks, the tempting parallel for recent events in the Baltic Sea dates back to the Viking Age. According to Bloomberg, the Arctic Sea, a Finnish cargo vessel carrying a shipment of wood from Finland to Algeria, was hijacked in the Baltic Sea on 24 July. The crew was tied up and beaten while the pirates searched the ship, though it is not clear if they what they were looking for:

The Arctic Sea was en route to Algeria from Finland with timber when it was boarded between the Swedish islands of Oeland and Gotland in the Baltic Sea on July 24 by the group who identified themselves as police officers, Swedish police said in a statement today. The ship is owned by Oy Solchart Management AB, sails under Maltese flag, and has a crew of 15 Russians.

Sweden has provided warships and soldiers to the European Union’s anti-piracy operation, Atalanta, in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates have attacked vessels off the coast of Somalia 130 times so far this year, with 28 ships seized, the U.S. Navy has said.

Incidents like the detention in the Baltic Sea have never happened “in my life,” Victor Matveev, chief executive officer of Solchart, said in a telephone interview from Helsinki today.

“We’ve operated this vessel for many, many years on a consecutive voyage basis between Finland and the Mediterranean, and this is more than disturbing,” Matveev said. “All the crew members have been working for our company for several years, they’re professional, well educated, and there are no newcomers. It makes us wonder what happened.”

Monsters and Critics has a bit more detail:

According to the ship's 15-member Russian crew, the armed men claimed to be drug enforcement agents and thoroughly searched the ship, reacting violently to anyone who got in their way, including using a rifle butt to knock out teeth from one crew member. The ship was held for 12 hours before the hijackers men left again without taking anything. Investigators speculated that the 'pirates' may have actually been a drugs gang that was acting on a tip to search for contraband.

Meanwhile, in the Gulf of Aden, Somali pirates released a German ship, the Hansa Stavanger, and its 24-man crew after receiving $2.7 million in ransom from the owners. On Monday, a Malaysian-owned tugboat was also released.

Captain Blood .... in Space!

We've been meandering our way through some famous pirate movies of the early 20th century this summer (since the pirate discourse shifted to the silver screen from the 1920s onward) and one of the less interesting pirate movies we've watched has been Captain Blood. Although it held great promise, what with the dashing charms of Errol Flynn, the background of the Monmouth Rebellion, a man named Blood, and swashbuckling on the high seas, it was actually marked only by the quicksilver shifting of the protagonists' motivations and character, the incomprehensibility of the plot, and a grand total of one somewhat lackluster sword fight. (Please note this is not a sneering condemnation of old movies held up against the glittering, CGI-enhanced jewel of Pirates of the Caribbean; The Black Pirate from 1926 was an infinitely more exciting film with several way-cool sword fights.)

However, in complete disregard for my lousy review, it turns out that Warner Brothers are playing to remake Captain Blood ... by setting it in outer space! Producer Bill Gerber explains:

"When it comes to swashbuckling, you just couldn't go back to the pirate era, not once you've experienced the juggernaut that is 'Pirates of the Caribbean,' '' he explains. "So we needed to find a new way to tell the story."

For Gerber, the best option was not a present-day story involving the Somali pirates -- who are probably too vile and desperate to base an entertainment around -- but a story set a couple of hundred years in the future. "It's still the classic 'Captain Blood' storyline: Peter Blood has been wronged by the powers-that-be and he wants to get even. But the best way to recreate that is by putting it in space, where you can have a totalitarian style of government that's actually pretty similar to what England was like in the 17th century."

This is some pretty informative commentary, as it notes both the shifts that happened in contemporary pirate discourse that accompanied Pirates of the Caribbean as well as the Somali pirate attacks. And while I'm a bit skeptical of sword fights in outer space, there's precedent for space pirates and Geoff Boucher imagines a "live-action version of the Disney film Treasure Planet" which was sort of ok. Ultimately, there's no doubt that, far from being "a partnership that never should have begun," the new Captain Blood has the potential for great box office success, bringing together as it does three of America's favorite things to watch on screen: space, pirates, and (if this LA Times blogger has his way) Robert Pattinson.

Here, for your entertainment, is the swashbuckling scene from the 1935 Captain Blood (skip ahead to 3:44):

Cutthroat Capitalism: too soon?

Wired magazine recently published an article called "Cutthroat Capitalism: An Economic Analysis of the Somali Pirate Business Model." There's nothing particularly novel here: that historical pirates are economic actors has already been observed, and this article is a clear-cut analysis of how that applies to Somali pirates. The article is based upon an interview with a Somali pirate and includes some rather nice charts and graphs. (I would like to contest, however, the idea that just because pirates are economic actors that this makes them capitalists: Like their historical antecedents, there is no production or exchange of goods and services going on; just extortion and robbery.) Wired has included "Cutthroat Capitalism: The Game" along with their article. Computer games about pirates are hardly new, and indeed, LucasArts has a new Monkey Island game out, but the goofy Guybrush Threepwood from Monkey Island is a far cry from today's Somali pirates.

In the Wired game, you are a pirate captain in the Gulf of Aden, sailing around and attacking different vessels. After a successful attack, you are supposed to negotiate for the release of the ship and hostages by choosing different tactics that include beating and killing your hostages to prove to the pirate negotiator you are serious about your demands. If you "successfully" negotiate, you are allowed to go back to roving the high seas. There are no EU or NATO ships, monsoon weather patterns, or possibilities for shipwreck and drowning in the game, and while not all attacks are successful, every vessel is presented as a potential target.

It's probably a testament to my incredibly limited experience with computer and video games that it took me six or seven negotiations before I overcame my squeamishness about clicking "beat" or "kill" as a negotiation tactic even for purely experimental purposes, but even without doing so, the whole game seemed more than a little sick to me. (Notice to potential voters in the incredibly unlikely event I ever run for anything ever: I do not think playing violent video games makes you a bad/evil/violent person.) So why am I perfectly happy to fire cannons at the bad guy pirate LeChuck in the Monkey Island game and so incredibly uncomfortable hijacking colored dots in the Cutthroat Capitalism game? The obvious difference has to do with the tone of the two games: Monkey Island is silly while Cutthroat Capitalism is deliberately realistic in approach (if not in graphics). Although both actions are something pirates "actually do/did," Somali piracy has yet to be tempered with that temporal distancing that we have identified as a condition of possibility for the romanticization of Golden Age piracy. Until this happens, I suspect the game will continue to feel a bit "off" to me, though judging from the comments posted below the game, this is not the case for many people who have played it.

That the game would involve acting as a pirate rather than as a US Navy SEAL or a NATO commander was equally puzzling to me, since first of all, there's precedent for this kind of thing and second, increases in piracy have historically resulted in nationalist opposition to the threat. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that this happened when the Somali pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama, Captain Phillips and the Navy SEALS were frequently described as heroes, and the media response was quick to draw upon the "pirate-fighters as patriotic heroes" commonplace we identified as prevalent in the early 1800s, with TV shows and movies featuring the Somali pirates as the villains. I think a possible answer to this puzzle is that the "pirates as cool and edgy" and "pirates as free from the constraints of society" commonplaces that coexist today alongside the "pirates as a security threat" have created conditions of possibility for the appeal of this game, since they have opened up a space in which pirates can be protagonists -- and enviable ones at that. If this is indeed the case, "Cutthroat Capitalism" is a telling example of how our perceptions of contemporary piracy are shaped by historical representations, since I do not think that this game (or a non-electronic version of it) could have enjoyed the same popularity before piracy came to be seen as a purely historical phenomenon.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, we've already written an article!

If you count each circle in this conceptual diagram as a picture, that is! (Click here for a slightly more legible version.)

My, uh, artistic endeavors tend to feature geometric shapes and arrows with not infrequent forays into the Cartesian coordinate system, and even when color is involved, the result is something like this:

So when my mildly awe-inspiring friend Fletcher generously offered to make the header thingy for this blog look much cooler, there was really very little reason not to accept. I would also like to take this opportunity to tell you to read his blog, Orbital Eccentricity, as it also features an aesthetically pleasing header, in addition to thought-provoking and insightful commentary on space policy legitimation.

That thing you've been waiting for? It'll happen today!

Here it is, cats and kittens! The definitive* list of rhetorical commonplaces swirling around "pirate." A conceptual map/topography will appear soon-ish, but it is currently more in the "different-colored-shapes-and-arrows-on-a-white-board-in-an-undisclosed-location-on-the-AU-campus" stage of development. So without further ado, we give you:

THE LIST!
The pirate as ...
1. uncivilized, savage, lawless (modern version: piracy as a result of weak or failed states)
2. evil, sinner, against divine law
3. hostis humani generis/enemy of all mankind
a. active form (pirates declare themselves as such)
b. passive form (pirates declared as such by others)
4. Romantic protagonist
5. fictional villain
a. really actually very evil (PG-13, R)
b. Capt. Hook (PG, G)
6. practical (not moral) problem
a. strictly legal
b. negative externality as relates to trade and commerce
7. cool, edgy (Jack Sparrow, ambiguous morality)
8. absolutely harmless (Sesame Street fare)
9. tool of nationalism
a. hero (English, American, French)
b. villain (Spanish, English, American)
10. (inter)national security threat (pirate-terrorist conceptual nexus)
11. Goth/counter-culture symbol
12. libertarian wet dream
13. sex symbol
14. temporally/spatially distanced from the here and now
15. excessively violent actor (torture, murder, rape, etc.)

The list is in no particular order. It is worth noting that Catherine and I have adopted the numbers as shorthand for these commonplaces. Our conversations these days sound like this:
"There's definitely some '1' in this trial transcript, don't you think?"
"Yeah, plus that's an explicit reference to '3b' in the second paragraph."
"Sure but it's refuted by a deployment of '6a'."
"Beautiful! That explains the odd lack of '15' except by negation."

*ha. But we do have a considerable and comprehensive if not completely exhaustive amount of empirical and original archival research to back up this list.

Pirates in church?

Well, in a UU church, anyway! Last Sunday, Rev. Louise Green at All Souls Unitarian Church gave a sermon on "The Inconvenience of Compassion" which began with an anecdote about feeling compassion for the Somali teenager, Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, who is being tried in New York for piracy. The sermon went on to play the rhetorical commonplace of "pirates as godless and evil" against teachings on compassion, and included a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk, poet, and peace activist:

Please Call Me By My True Names

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

I don't actually like the poem very much, but I have included it here as an example of a contemporary deployment of the "pirate as ultimate evil/hostis humani generis/enemy of all mankind" commonplace. That this common understanding of pirate is, to varying degrees, deliberately contested and refuted, both in the poem and in the wider context of the sermon, is actually further evidence of its being a rhetorical commonplace: In Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson takes great care to establish that a rhetorical commonplace is only weakly shared; it is a "potential resource," and "not a univocal, completely fixed bit of meaning that is identically possessed by multiple people; that would be a strong form of shared meaning, and ... would also have the logical consequence of making debate and discussion unnecessary: if we already agreed in this strong sense, why would we have to talk about it?" (28; 44; 50). Indeed, the sort of contentious conversations about representations of actors that Charles Tilly talks about in Stories, Identities, and Political Change are only possible with what he calls a shared set of idioms and history (116-118). Using pirates to demonstrate the possibilities of human compassion is an attempt to redefine the meaning of pirate, but such redefinition is only possible given that "pirates as evil" is already weakly shared among the congregation.

I feel like T-Rex explains this concept pretty well. (click to enlarge)

Pirates in the news

http://thisisindexed.com/2009/04/less-booty-to-go-around/

Actually though, it's probably just the weather.

Research trip, part VI: Harry Potter and International Relations

(This is unfortunately not Platform 9 3/4)

As Catherine noted some time ago, this project draws upon, among other analytical tools, the theoretical approach of popular culture as constitutive that is articulated in the introduction to Daniel Nexon and Iver Neumann's Harry Potter and International Relations. Primed as I was by a midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at the Morehead City, NC cinema, I decided to read it was my turn to read HP and IR on the train ride back to DC. One can only spend so much time pretending that the Carolinian is the Hogwarts Express, after all, especially as Amtrak refuses to serve pumpkin juice and chocolate frogs in its snack car. My reading generated the following uh, articulation of righteous indignation, posted here as I am not sure what else to do with it. Caveat lector: There are virtually no pirates whatsoever in this post.
***
For the record, I do not automatically critically object to everything I read, my comments regarding Peter Leeson's op-eds, Janice Thomson's footnotes, and deconstructionism notwithstanding. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed many of the chapters in Harry Potter and International Relations, especially Ann Towns and Bahar Rumelili's chapter on the reception of Harry Potter in Sweden and Turkey; Maia Gemmill and Daniel Nexon's chapter on the religious politics of Harry Potter; Iver Neumann's chapter on the mythical geography of the magical world; and Martin Hall's chapter on mythology as methodology. However, Jennifer Sterling-Folker and Brian Folker's chapter, "Conflict and the Nation-State: Magical Mirrors of Muggles and Refracted Images," got my goat.

Setting aside for a moment the theoretical conclusions they draw by equating the conflict with Voldemort with a nationalist war, my first gut-level reaction to the chapter concerned the authors' unqualified use of the term "mudblood" to describe Muggle-born wizards (117). As anyone who has even skimmed Chamber of Secrets ought to know, "mudblood" is an incredibly derogatory term in the wizarding world, inciting a violent response from the entire Gryffindor Quidditch team when Malfoy uses it against Hermione. There are numerous other examples of the non-neutral connotations of the term from Snape's calling Lily Potter a mudblood in a remembered scene in Order of the Phoenix (a key plot point) to its wide-spread use in the Ministry of Magic after Voldemort seizes control of that particular state institution (more on that later). The obvious equivalent in the muggle world is, of course, the word "nigger," and the parallel becomes particularly acute with Hermione's bold and deliberate reappropriation of the term in Deathly Hallows.

It is odd, then, that not only do the authors cavalierly use the word "mudblood" when "Muggle-born" is clearly the appropriate term within the fictional social context the authors are analyzing, but they go on the explicitly equate the widely-used and value-neutral term "Muggle" with "nigger" (119). While I will grant that wizards often take a paternalistic tone in describing Muggles (and a downright evil one in the 7th book, though the authors could not have known that when writing the chapter, of course) the term "Muggle" itself is widely used by good and evil characters alike in the wizarding world. Indeed, the paternalistic tone the authors refer to is, I would argue, a deliberate literary device that adds some humor to the books (Mr. Weasley doesn't know how electricity works! Archie can't figure out the vagaries of Muggle dress!) and even a way to get young muggle readers thinking critically about their own taken-for-granted cultural norms in the tradition of "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema." Hermione, who clearly loves her parents very much, refers to them as Muggles; Hogwarts offers a class in Muggle Studies; the pre-Thicknesse Ministry of Magic had departments with "Muggle" in the name; even Dumbledore, the embodiment of goodness, talks of Muggle knitting patterns. Indeed, the lack of another term for non-wizarding humans points to the innocuous ubiquity of the term "Muggle." In short, there is nothing to support the authors' statement that "Muggle" is in any way a derogatory term.

These are two fundamental errors of empirical analysis in this chapter of Harry Potter and International Relations. There is no real question of interpretation here; while the precise wizard-Muggle relationship is debatable, that "mudblood" is "a disgusting thing to call someone" and "a really foul name" is not. This type of misreading has two implications: First, it seriously detracts from the authors' credibility in their analysis of Harry Potter and international relations. Either they did not read the books at all and relied instead on secondary sources, or their reading was superficial and ignored the nuances of wizarding social identities. My insistence on this seemingly small linguistic point may sound laughably nerdy and pedantic -- and indeed a social science analysis of a transparently constructed fictional world is always going to be subject to that sort of critique -- but the authors' decision to treat the world of Harry Potter as worthy of academic analysis effectively moots such critiques in this debate. I also felt this misuse of terms detracted from the overall credibility of the book; that sort of misreading should have been flagged by an editor or reviewer. Since the editors of the book were clearly targeting a Harry Potter-literate audience, they should have known to hold their contributors to the same standard.

The second implication of this linguistic imprecision is that it is indicative of a deeper misreading of the Harry Potter texts. Chief among these is the authors' equation of the wizarding world's conflict with Voldemort with identity-based (nationalist, religious, ethnic) conflict in the Muggle world. The authors argue that the fundamental difference between the liberal IR fantasy of the wizarding world and the realist reality of the Muggle world is that in the wizarding world power inheres to the individual and therefore the need for collective action is minimized. The authors' then state that there should be "relatively little cause for collective conflict among wizards and witches themselves as a result," and use this as evidence of the logical inconsistency of Rowling's "ultimate fantasy of liberal philosophy." They are correct in stating that there should be little collective conflict; in fact, there is not.

The problem lies not in Rowling's logic but in their reading of Voldemort's war against elements of the wizarding community as a collective conflict, on par with the Nazis' quest for racial purity. There are parallels, to be sure, and the Harry Potter series is nothing if not a call for greater tolerance in the world, but Voldemort's primary concern is not with creating an exclusively pureblood race (Voldemort himself is a half-blood). While blood purity is certainly the goal of the Death Eaters whose service he needs, Voldemort himself is obsessed with becoming the greatest wizard of all time by overcoming death. (In Rowling's fictional universe, it is occasionally possible to determine a character's motivations directly, but even without relying on a motivational account for Voldemort's actions we can conclude that the image he has crafted for himself is that of a wizard obsessed with power at all costs). The conflict in the Harry Potter series is not between purebloods and half-bloods (in any case, that only starts to become the case in the 7th book, which the authors did not know about); it is between Harry and Voldemort. It is a highly individualized conflict and whether or not that is a liberal fantasy, it is emphatically not an identity-based conflict in the model the authors envision.

The authors' concluding point is that the wizarding world has no link between identity and collective political structures, and this is why Voldemort and the Death Eaters never make an attempt to "seize the reins of power that the state embodies." But if the conflict in the series is read as something other than a collective identity-based movement, there is no immediate need for its instigators to gain state control. It seems to me that a more apt reading of the conflict is that of a lone wolf terrorist or a small guerilla movement that is intent on achieving a deluded, highly individual goal or acquiring power with no wider social agenda. This does not imply that Voldemort's actions do not have broader societal implications; because he does not care who gets hurt in his pursuit of power and because a climate of fear only makes his exercise of power easier, many, many people can and are maimed, killed, and tortured along the way.

The authors of the article write that "the seizure or control of the state is the means whereby muggle collectives can obtain goals such as racial purification and oppression that involve violence en mass [sic]" (122). But since racial purification and oppression are not Voldemort's chief concerns, except as means to an end, it makes sense that taking control of the Ministry of Magic would not be his primary goal, particularly since, as the authors note, the Ministry has only limited power in the wizarding world anyway. Here is where the inevitable and admittedly mediocre pirate reference comes in: desperate for to obtain some sort of power (at least of the economic flavor) but largely unconcerned by larger identity-based social concerns, the Somali pirates are not targeting the incredibly weak Somali government or any government at all. I do not in any way want to equate the Somali pirates with Voldemort's evilness; I merely wish to point out that targeting the state is not always the best way to become powerful, especially when you are starting from ground zero.

Ultimately, of course, Voldemort and the Death Eaters do gain control of the Ministry through holding Thicknesse under the Imperius Curse, literally turning the Ministry into a puppet government and the wizarding world into a police state, though -- in fairness -- the authors of the chapter could not have known this when they were writing. Once the wizarding world accepts that Voldemort is back, spreading fear is a good way for Voldemort to gain power, and control of even weak state institutions helps make this possible. That it would take so long for Voldemort to infiltrate the Ministry is thus indicative of the following: his primary concern with personal power and thus his relative unconcern for collective identity politics (personal power, at least in its early stages, does not require control of the state); the physical and social limitations of his power in the earlier books (does anyone really think Voldemort could infiltrate the Ministry of Magic when he didn't even have a body of his own?); and presumably also the fact that control of state institutions is a subject of little interest to most 10-14 year olds: the audience of the earlier books.

The broader point I wish to make here is that a cursory or incomplete reading of text to support a broader theoretical commitment fails at creating a compelling case on two levels: First, it destroys a scholar's credibility and authority on a given subject; and second, it leads to empirically flawed analysis that does little to support the theory in question. And on a much lower third level, it opens you up to criticism from 20 year-old IR students who grew up reading and re-reading the texts in question and do not like to see them carelessly wielded.

On that note, this quote from Dumbledore seems a particularly apt way to end this post, with its wonderful constructivist overtones* and its recognition the power of myth and story:

That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped. (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, 710)

*Dumbledore himself might be more of an interpretivist, however:

"Tell me one last thing," said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?” “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

Research trip, part V: North Carolina

Our trip to down to North Carolina was a pleasant change from the long days we spent overly air-conditioned windowless reading rooms on our earlier academic voyages. (Though as should be evident from the slew of posts below, I clearly have no shortage of affection for the resources such halls contain.) We traveled to Beaufort, North Carolina to talk to David Moore, an nautical archaeologist who is currently excavating Blackbeard's flagship the Queen Anne's Revenge and an expert on Blackbeard. Because the popular imagery and myths surrounding Blackbeard have exerted a considerable influence on contemporary conceptions of pirates and piracy, Blackbeard, like Buccaneers of America, makes a good case to trace through history.

We learned several interesting and significant things in the course of this interview, including changes made to the 2nd edition of Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates which point to increased dramatization of the subject matter. At one point, the first edition has Blackbeard marooning some men on an island with no inhabitants or provisions; in the second edition, this account has been embellished to say that there was neither bird, beast, or herb for their subsistence -- an unlikely story given the presence of fresh water on North Carolina's Outer Banks. Even Johnson's famous description of Blackbeard indicates considerable dramatic excesses:

So our Heroe, Captain Teach, assumed the Cognomen of Black-beard, from the large quantity of Hair, which, like a frightful Meteor, covered his whole Face, and frightened America more than any Comet that has appeared there a long Time. This beard was black, which he suffered to grow of an extravegant Length; as to Breadth, it came up to his Eyes; he was accustomed to twist it with Ribbons, in small Tails, after the Manner of our Ramilies Wiggs, and turn them about his Ears. In Time of Action, he wore a Sling overe his Shoulders, with three Brace of Pistols, hanging in Holsters like Bandaliers; and stuck lighted Matchs under his Hat, which appearing on each Side of his Face, his Eyes naturally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such a figure, that Imagination cannot form an Idea of a Fury, from Hell to look more frightening.

According to Moore, the only eyewitness account of Blackbeard is in Henry Bostock's deposition where the pirate is desribed merely as "a tall, spare man with a black beard which he wore very long." We were also intrigued to learn that Moore knows when a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie has been released based on the sudden spike in interest in his work, mainly among schoolchildren working on history projects. He also equated the enthusiasm and excitement surrounding the finding and excavating of the Queen Anne's Revenge with the similar emotions evoked by Pirates of the Caribbean, which indicates just how strongly the contemporary popularity of pirates is linked to their historical origins (however historically inaccurate current representations may be). Moore also kindly provided with an excellent annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources on piracy, making note of the ones that had passed his litmus test of credibility by getting the sections on Blackbeard right.

The interview was productive, the North Carolina Maritime Museum both free and informative, and the free day we spent at the beach sunny and relaxing. We also took a great deal of delight in the pirate-themed atmosphere that pervades the town of Beaufort:

The following day we headed back up to Raleigh, where the North Carolina Museum of History has an exhibit on piracy called Knights of the Black Flag, skillfully curated by the Maritime Museum who donated many of the artifacts on display from the Queen Anne's Revenge. We didn't learn much relevant to our project at the exhibit -- not through any fault on its part, but because we have spent the last three months immersing ourselves in this very material. In that sense it was a gratifying visit, and we certainly enjoyed seeing depictions of and artifacts from the stories we've been treating with such academic disinterest. Here is the pirate flag we designed on a computer there, using common symbols of piracy:

The definite highlight of the exhibit, however, was the hands-on section where they had pirate costumes to try on and a model pirate ship to clamber upon -- clearly necessary components of our research. Here is Catherine as Blackbeard:

And here are some pictures depicting serious scholarly investigation at the history museum: