Pirate Enlightenment

Pirate Enlightenment is David Graeber’s lively investigation into how Golden Age pirates and their Malagasy neighbors co-created bold experiments in freedom on the northeast coast of Madagascar. Forget clean myths. What emerges here is stranger and more human: pirate crews who elected captains and wrote their own articles of agreement; Malagasy women who turned wealth and love magic into a form of power; and a confederation—Betsimisaraka—built less like a European state and more like a ship’s assembly, with a public voice and a mock king at the center. Graeber follows the trail of stories that fascinated early Enlightenment Europe, then shows how politics, ritual, and rumor were used as tools—sometimes weapons—by people who refused to be governed in the old ways. This is a fast, vivid tour through forts, kabary assemblies, duels, and oaths mixed with gunpowder, ending with a clear argument: the Enlightenment didn’t only happen in Paris and London. It also happened in ports and villages far from Europe, in conversations that still echo today.

• Listeners who love vivid, people-first history that changes how you see familiar eras
• Fans of political thought who want non-European origins of democratic practice
• Anthropology and sociology buffs curious about ritual, gender, and power
• Leaders and organizers seeking grassroots models of consent and governance
• Anyone who enjoys pirate lore and wants the stranger, truer version

David Graeber (1961–2020) was an anthropologist, activist, and essayist known for bold, humane ideas. A professor at the London School of Economics, he wrote Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Bullshit Jobs, and, with David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything. His work bridged field research, deep history, and political imagination, and his organizing helped spark Occupy Wall Street. Pirate Enlightenment brings his Malagasy field experience and love of unruly archives together into one fast, generous book.