Books & Films
Below are a small selections of books and streaming films available at McKee Library. Search our catalog using the search box on the main tab of this guide.
Books
Bandits at Sea by
Dispelling the romanticized myths surrounding pirates, Pennell's edited collection provides a corrective history of bandits at sea The romantic fiction of pirates as swashbuckling marauders terrorizing the high seas has long eclipsed historical fact. Bandits at Sea offers a long-overdue corrective to the mythology and the mystique which has plagued the study of pirates and served to deny them their rightful legitimacy as subjects of investigation. With essays by the foremost scholars on these countercultural "social bandits," as Lingua Franca recently dubbed them, this collection examines various aspects of the phenomenon in the three main areas where it occurred: the Caribbean/Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and East Asia. We come to understand who pirates were, as well as the socio-economic contexts under which they developed and flourished. Comparisons between various types of piracy illustrate differences in practice and purpose between pirates of different areas; social histories, including examinations of women pirates and their historical significance and circumstances, offer similar insight into the personal lives of pirates from diverse regions. Far from serving as dens of thieves, pirate ships were often highly regulated microcosms of democracy. The crews of pirate vessels knew that majority rule, racial equality and equitable division of spoils were crucial for their survival, marking them as significantly more liberal than national governments. Scholars, students and a general audience ever intrigued by tales and now truths of piracy on the high seas will welcome Bandits at Sea.
Call Number: G535 .B26 2001ISBN: 0814766781Publication Date: 2001-04-01
Barbary Captives: An Anthology of Early Modern Slave Memoirs by Europeans in North America by
In the early modern period, hundreds of thousands of Europeans, both men and women, were abducted by pirates, sold on the slave market, and enslaved in North Africa. Barbary Captives brings together a selection of early modern slave narratives in English translation for the first time.
Call Number: Electronic BookISBN: 0231555121Publication Date: 2022
The Buccaneers of America by
Fascinating chronicle of the bands of plundering sea rovers who roamed the Caribbean and coastlines of Central America in the 17th century. Detailed accounts of shrewd and fearless men, excellent navigators, and blood-thirsty adventurers who frequently committed inhuman acts of cruelty -- among them the infamous Henry Morgan.
Call Number: F2161 .E8433 2000ISBN: 9780486409665Publication Date: 2000-02-26
Captives and Corsairs by
Captives and Corsairs uncovers a forgotten story in the history of relations between the West and Islam: three centuries of Muslim corsair raids on French ships and shores and the resulting captivity of tens of thousands of French subjects and citizens in North Africa. Through an analysis of archival materials, writings, and images produced by contemporaries, the book fundamentally revises our picture of France's emergence as a nation and a colonial power, presenting the Mediterranean as an essential vantage point for studying the rise of France. It reveals how efforts to liberate slaves from North Africa shaped France's perceptions of the Muslim world and of their own "Frenchness". From around 1550 to 1830, freeing these captives evolved from an expression of Christian charity to a method of state building and, eventually, to a rationale for imperial expansion. Captives and Corsairs thus advances new arguments about the fluid nature of slavery and firmly links captive redemption to state formation--and in turn to the still vital ideology of liberatory conquest.
Call Number: Electronic BookISBN: 0804777845Publication Date: 2011-03-01
Captives and Countrymen by
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Barbary States captured and held for ransom nearly five hundred American sailors. The attacks on Americans abroad--and the government's apparent inability to control the situation--deeply scarred the public. Captives and Countrymen examines the effect of these acts on early national culture and on the new republic's conception of itself and its position in the world. Lawrence A. Peskin uses newspaper and other contemporaneous accounts--including recently unearthed letters from some of the captive Americans--to show how information about the North African piracy traveled throughout the early republic. His dramatic account reveals early concepts of national identity, party politics, and the use of military power, including the lingering impact of the Barbary Wars on the national consciousness, the effects of white slavery in North Africa on the American abolitionist movement, and the debate over founding a national navy. This first systematic study of how the United States responded to "Barbary Captivity" shows how public reaction to international events shaped America domestically and its evolving place in the world during the early nineteenth century.
Call Number: Electronic BookISBN: 0801891396Publication Date: 2009-03-23
A General History of the Pyrates by
This classic eighteenth-century work on the Golden Age of Piracy includes stories of Black Bart, Calico Jack, Anne Bonny, and many others. How did we come to picture pirates donning peg legs, wearing eye patches, and burying treasure? This book, dating back to 1724, features biographies of the notorious buccaneers of the Golden Age of Piracy, and the history, stories, and legends that surround them. Published under the name Capt. Charles Johnson, and widely believed to be authored by Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe, A General History of the Pyrates details the lives of Blackbeard, Black Bart, Anne Bonny, Edward Teach, Mary Read, Jolly Roger, Calico Jack, and many more. Not only was this book the source of many of our present-day concepts of pirate culture, it also served as an influence for authors of pirate fiction, including Robert Louis Stevenson and J. M. Barrie.
Call Number: Electronic BookISBN: 1504064062Publication Date: 2020-07-28
Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean by
At the end of the fifteenth century, the Spanish Inquisition forced many Jews to flee the country. The most adventurous among them took to the high seas as freewheeling outlaws. In ships bearing names such as the Prophet Samuel, Queen Esther, and Shield of Abraham, they attacked and plundered the Spanish fleet while forming alliances with other European powers to ensure the safety of Jews living in hiding. JEWISH PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN is the entertaining saga of a hidden chapter in Jewish history and of the cruelty, terror, and greed that flourished during the Age of Discovery. Readers will meet such daring figures as the Great Jewish Pirate Sinan, Barbarossa's second-in-command; the pirate rabbi Samuel Palache, who founded Holland's Jewish community; Abraham Cohen Henriques, an arms dealer who used his cunning and economic muscle to find safe havens for other Jews; and his pirate brother Moses, who is credited with the capture of the Spanish silver fleet in 1628--the largest heist in pirate history. Filled with high-sea adventures--including encounters with Captain Morgan and other legendary pirates--and detailed portraits of cities stacked high with plunder, such as Port Royal, Jamaica, JEWISH PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN captures a gritty and glorious era of history from an unusual and eye-opening perspective.
Call Number: F2191 .J4 K75 2008ISBN: 9780385513982Publication Date: 2008-11-18
Piracy in the Early Modern Era by
"This volume represents a sea change in educational resources for the history of piracy. In a single, readable, and affordable volume, Lane and Bialuschewski present a wonderfully diverse body of primary texts on sea raiders. Drawn from a variety of sources, including the authors' own archival research and translations, these carefully curated texts cover over two hundred years (1548-1726) of global, early-modern piracy. Lane and Bialuschewski provide glosses of each document and a succinct introduction to the historical context of the period and avoid the romanticized and Anglo-centric depictions of maritime predation that often plague work on the topic." --Jesse Cromwell, The University of Mississippi
Call Number: G535 .P483 2019ISBN: 1624668259Publication Date: 2019-12-02
The Politics of Piracy by
The seventeenth-century war on piracy is remembered as a triumph for the English state and her Atlantic colonies. Yet it was piracy and illicit trade that drove a wedge between them, imperiling the American enterprise and bringing the colonies to the verge of rebellion. In The Politics of Piracy, competing criminalities become a lens to examine England's legal relationship with America. In contrast to the rough, unlettered stereotypes associated with them, pirates and illicit traders moved easily in colonial society, attaining respectability and even political office. The goods they provided became a cornerstone of colonial trade, transforming port cities from barren outposts into rich and extravagant capitals. This transformation reached the political sphere as well, as colonial governors furnished local mariners with privateering commissions, presided over prize courts that validated stolen wares, and fiercely defended their prerogatives as vice-admirals. By the end of the century, the social and political structures erected in the colonies to protect illicit trade came to represent a new and potent force: nothing less than an independent American legal system. Tensions between Crown and colonies presage, and may predestine, the ultimate dissolution of their relationship in 1776. Exhaustively researched and rich with anecdotes about the pirates and their pursuers, The Politics of Piracy will be a fascinating read for scholars, enthusiasts, and anyone with an interest in the wild and tumultuous world of the Atlantic buccaneers.
Call Number: Electronic BookISBN: 1611686989Publication Date: 2014-12-02
The Republic of Pirates by
An entrancing tale of piracy colored with gold, treachery and double-dealing (Portland Press Herald), Pulitzer Prize-finalist Colin Woodward's The Republic of Pirates is the historical biography of the exploits of infamous Caribbean buccaneers. In the early eighteenth century, the Pirate Republic was home to some of the great pirate captains, including Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, "Black Sam" Bellamy, and Charles Vane. Along with their fellow pirates -- former sailors, indentured servants, and runaway slaves -- this "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. They cut off trade routes, sacked slave ships, and severed Europe from its New World empires. For a brief, glorious period the Republic was a success as the pirates became heroes in the eyes of the people. Drawing on extensive research in the archives of Britain and the Americas, award-winning author 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.
Call Number: F2161 .W56 2008ISBN: 9780156034623Publication Date: 2008-05-12
Slaves, Subjects, and Subversives by
Almost eleven of the twelve million Africans who survived the trauma of enslavement in Africa and the horrors of the Middle Passage, remade their lives in territories claimed by Spain or Portugal. Drawing on a wealth of previously unused sources, the authors show that although plantation slavery was a horrible reality for many Africans and their descendants in Latin America, blacks experienced many other realities in Iberian colonies. Paul Lovejoy analyzes a treatise by a seventeenth-century Muslim scholar in Morocco and argues it shaped the slave trade to Latin America. John Thornton examines the early and significant adaptations Central Africans made to European material culture and Catholicism, noting how closely Angola resembled Latin America by the mid-seventeenth century. Lynne Guitar studies the grueling nature of African slavery in the sugar plantations of Hispaniola and the rebellions they triggered--the first in the New World. Jane Landers discusses slave rebellions in seventeenth-century New Spain and the development of maroon communities strong enough to negotiate their freedom. Matthew Restall tracks the life of one eighteenth-century Afro-Yucatecan to demonstrate how enslaved persons experienced competing English and Spanish systems in the circum-Caribbean. Renée Soulodre-La France considers how the expulsion of the Jesuit order from Latin America in 1767 transformed slaves' lives and identities in New Granada. Matt Childs investigates the tensions between African-born and creole members of Havana's black brotherhoods in the eighteenth century. Stuart Schwartz probes a Muslim uprising of Hausa dockworkers in nineteenth-century Brazil. Seth Meisel shows how enslaved blacks parlayed their military service against British forces in 1806 into freedom and citizenship in the new republic of Argentina. The appendix includes translated primary documents from each of these essays.
Call Number: F1419.N4 S53 2006ISBN: 0826323979Publication Date: 2006-10-01
Villains of All Nations by
Villains of All Nations explores the "Golden Age" of Atlantic piracy (1716-1726) and the infamous generation whose images underlie our modern, romanticized view of pirates. Rediker introduces us to the dreaded black flag, the Jolly Roger; swashbuckling figures such as Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard; and the unnamed, unlimbed pirate who was likely Robert Louis Stevenson's model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island.This history shows from the bottom up how sailors emerged from deadly working conditions on merchant and naval ships, turned pirate, and created a starkly different reality aboard their own ships, electing their officers, dividing their booty equitably, and maintaining a multinational social order. The real lives of this motley crew-which included cross-dressing women, people of color, and the "outcasts of all nations"-are far more compelling than contemporary myth.
Call Number: F106 .R42 2004ISBN: 0807050245Publication Date: 2004-06-15
White Slaves, African Masters by
Some of the most popular stories in nineteenth-century America were sensational tales of whites captured and enslaved in North Africa. White Slaves, African Masters for the first time gathers together a selection of these Barbary captivity narratives, which significantly influenced early American attitudes toward race, slavery, and nationalism. Though Barbary privateers began to seize North American colonists as early as 1625, Barbary captivity narratives did not begin to flourish until after the American Revolution. During these years, stories of Barbary captivity forced the U.S. government to pay humiliating tributes to African rulers, stimulated the drive to create the U.S. Navy, and brought on America's first post-revolutionary war. These tales also were used both to justify and to vilify slavery. The accounts collected here range from the 1798 tale of John Foss, who was ransomed by Thomas Jefferson's administration for tribute totaling a sixth of the annual federal budget, to the story of Ion Perdicaris, whose (probably staged) abduction in Tangier in 1904 prompted Theodore Roosevelt to send warships to Morocco and inspired the 1975 film The Wind and the Lion. Also included is the unusual story of Robert Adams, a light-skinned African American who was abducted by Arabs and used by them to hunt negro slaves; captured by black villagers who presumed he was white; then was sold back to a group of Arabs, from whom he was ransomed by a British diplomat. Long out of print and never before anthologized, these fascinating tales open an entirely new chapter of early American literary history, and shed new light on the more familiar genres of Indian captivity narrative and American slave narrative. "Baepler has done American literary and cultural historians a service by collecting these long-out-of-print Barbary captivity narratives . . . . Baepler's excellent introduction and full bibliography of primary and secondary sources greatly enhance our knowledge of this fascinating genre."--Library Journal
Call Number: HT1345 .W47 1999ISBN: 0226034046Publication Date: 1999-05-15
Open Access/eBooks
The atrocities of the pirates; being a narrative of the sufferings endured by the author during his captivity among the pirates of the island of Cuba by Call Number: Google Books (Electronic Book)Publication Date: 1824- The Buccaneers of America by Call Number: Google Books (Electronic Book)Publication Date: 1893A True Account of the Most Remarkable Assaults Committed of Late Years Upon the Coasts of the West Indies by the Buccaneers of Jamaica and Tortuga (both English and French) Wherein are Contained More Especially the Unparalleled Exploits of Sir Henry Morgan.
- A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland, Etc. in the Year 1699 by Call Number: Project Gutenberg Electronic Book
- A Lady's Captivity among Chinese Pirates in the Chinese Seas by Call Number: Project Gutenberg Electronic BookPublication Date: 18??
- New light on Drake : a collection of docuements relating to his voyage of circumnavigation, 1577-1580 by Call Number: Electronic BookPublication Date: 1914
- The official letters of Alexander Spotswood, Lieutenant-Governor of the colony of Virginia, 1710-1722, now first printed from the manuscript in the collections of the Virginia Historical Society, with an introduction and notes by R. A. Brock. by Call Number: Electronic BookPublication Date: 1882-1885
- A Voyage to New Holland, Etc. in the Year 1699 by Call Number: Project Gutenberg Electronic Book
