Satire and Civil Governance in A General History of the Pyrates (1724, 1726)

In spite of its prominent role in producing lasting images of the pirate, scholars have rarely considered Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates (1724) as a literary work in its own right. More often, scholars have extracted single chapters from the whole or have drawn on the work as a source of information about the historical practices of pirates, particularly in support the thesis that early pirates formed rogue commonwealths on egalitarian principles. This article raises questions about the use of the General History as a reliable historical source and shifts the terms of inquiry to focus instead on how the General History imaginatively constructs piracy in an examination of the problems of constituting and maintaining new forms of civil government. It argues that the figure of the pirate in the General History serves less to exemplify progressive brotherhood than to expose the vices and predatory desires that threaten all social organization, from the center to the periphery of empire.