Participants
in New HampshirePirate Utopias and the Free State Project
Historical Note: On Sept 19th 2006, the FSP became the FSPP for one day. The entire site was piratized, and instead of moving to New Hampshire, we were all headed to the Barbary Coast. Screenshots are below, and this essay was posted discussing just why. Thanks to a link from talklikeapirateday.com, over 1400 people discovered the FSP, and hopefully some of them became porcupines in addition to pirates.
I hope you're enjoying Talk like a Pirate day... We didn't have to work hard to convince the "powers that be" to allow us mutineers to take the entire site/ship over for a day, and piratize it completely. Once we explained the clear connection between "Pirate Utopia" and the FSP, they hopped on board... So here's a bit of educational material, for those who have never heard the tale of Cap'n Mission.
We'll steal text heavily from the links below, so please feel free to do more research if this interests you... it's only a summary...
yours in piratedom,
THE SEA-ROVERS AND CORSAIRS of the 18th century created an "information network" that spanned the globe: primitive and devoted primarily to grim business, the net nevertheless functioned admirably. Scattered throughout the net were islands, remote hideouts where ships could be watered and provisioned, booty traded for luxuries and necessities. Some of these islands supported "intentional communities," whole mini-societies living consciously outside the law and determined to keep it up, even if only for a short but merry life.
Peter Lamborn Wilson, aka Hakim Bey, named this sort of society a "Pirate Utopia", in writing about what he called "Temporary Autonomous Zones"...
Daniel Defoe (the same author of Robinson Crusoe) wrote about Captain Mission and the founding of "Libertatia." Libertatia (also known as Libertalia) is said to have been a free colony forged by pirates under the leadership of Captain James Misson in the late 1600s. Whether or not Libertatia actually existed is disputed. It supposedly consisted of an enclave within north Madagascar and lasted for about twenty five years.
The pirate utopia's motto was "for God and liberty," and its flag was white, in contrast to a Jolly Roger. They were anti-statist, waging war against states and lawmakers, attacking their ships, sparing prisoners, and freeing slaves. They called themselves Liberi, and held many principles of anarchism, and lived under a communal city rule, a sort of worker owned corporation of piracy. They had pirate articles (shared codes of conduct), and used elected systems of re-callable delegates.
It may be, as some historians claim, a literary hoax meant to propagandize for radical Whig theory--but it was embedded in The General History of the Pyrates (1724-28), most of which is still accepted as true and accurate. Moreover the story of Capt. Mission was not criticized when the book appeared and many old Madagascar hands still survived. They seem to have believed it, no doubt because they had experienced pirate enclaves very much like Libertatia. Once again, rescued slaves, natives, and even traditional enemies such as the Portuguese were all invited to join as equals. (Liberating slave ships was a major preoccupation.) Land was held in common, representatives elected for short terms, booty shared; doctrines of liberty were preached far more radical than even those of Common Sense.
Having escaped the tyranny of discipline aboard merchant vessels the most striking thing about the organisation of pirate crews was their anti-authoritarian nature. Each crew functioned under the terms of written articles, agreed by the whole crew and signed by each member. The articles of Bartholomew Roberts’ crew begin: “Every Man has a Vote in Affairs of Moment; has equal Title to the fresh Provisions, or strong Liquors, at any Time seized, and may use them at Pleasure, unless a Scarcity make it necessary, for the Good of all, to vote a Retrenchment.”
Euro-American pirate crews really formed one community, with a common set of customs shared across the various ships. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity thrived at sea over a hundred years before the French Revolution. The authorities were often shocked by their libertarian tendencies; the Dutch Governor of Mauritius met a pirate crew and commented: “Every man had as much say as the captain and each man carried his own weapons in his blanket.” This was profoundly threatening to the order of European society, where firearms were restricted to the upper classes, and provided a stark contrast to merchant ships where anything that could be used as a weapon was kept under lock and key, and to the navy where the primary purpose of the marines stationed on naval vessels was to keep the sailors in their place.
So let's see: anarchy and yet equality.... firearm access... a good start according to many who are in the FSP. Other elements seem to include more sexual freedoms (for women, homosexuals, etc)... access to alcohol, ending of slavery... the more you look into the Pirates, the more clear it is, they'd have joined the FSP.
Some say they already have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_utopia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertatia
http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html#labelPirateUtopias
http://www.menvafan.net/pirat/files/pirates.pdf
I hope you're enjoying Talk like a Pirate day... We didn't have to work hard to convince the "powers that be" to allow us mutineers to take the entire site/ship over for a day, and piratize it completely. Once we explained the clear connection between "Pirate Utopia" and the FSP, they hopped on board... So here's a bit of educational material, for those who have never heard the tale of Cap'n Mission.
We'll steal text heavily from the links below, so please feel free to do more research if this interests you... it's only a summary...
yours in piratedom,
The Merrimack Valley Pirates, already in the Barbary Coast
THE SEA-ROVERS AND CORSAIRS of the 18th century created an "information network" that spanned the globe: primitive and devoted primarily to grim business, the net nevertheless functioned admirably. Scattered throughout the net were islands, remote hideouts where ships could be watered and provisioned, booty traded for luxuries and necessities. Some of these islands supported "intentional communities," whole mini-societies living consciously outside the law and determined to keep it up, even if only for a short but merry life.
Peter Lamborn Wilson, aka Hakim Bey, named this sort of society a "Pirate Utopia", in writing about what he called "Temporary Autonomous Zones"...
Daniel Defoe (the same author of Robinson Crusoe) wrote about Captain Mission and the founding of "Libertatia." Libertatia (also known as Libertalia) is said to have been a free colony forged by pirates under the leadership of Captain James Misson in the late 1600s. Whether or not Libertatia actually existed is disputed. It supposedly consisted of an enclave within north Madagascar and lasted for about twenty five years.
The pirate utopia's motto was "for God and liberty," and its flag was white, in contrast to a Jolly Roger. They were anti-statist, waging war against states and lawmakers, attacking their ships, sparing prisoners, and freeing slaves. They called themselves Liberi, and held many principles of anarchism, and lived under a communal city rule, a sort of worker owned corporation of piracy. They had pirate articles (shared codes of conduct), and used elected systems of re-callable delegates.
It may be, as some historians claim, a literary hoax meant to propagandize for radical Whig theory--but it was embedded in The General History of the Pyrates (1724-28), most of which is still accepted as true and accurate. Moreover the story of Capt. Mission was not criticized when the book appeared and many old Madagascar hands still survived. They seem to have believed it, no doubt because they had experienced pirate enclaves very much like Libertatia. Once again, rescued slaves, natives, and even traditional enemies such as the Portuguese were all invited to join as equals. (Liberating slave ships was a major preoccupation.) Land was held in common, representatives elected for short terms, booty shared; doctrines of liberty were preached far more radical than even those of Common Sense.
Having escaped the tyranny of discipline aboard merchant vessels the most striking thing about the organisation of pirate crews was their anti-authoritarian nature. Each crew functioned under the terms of written articles, agreed by the whole crew and signed by each member. The articles of Bartholomew Roberts’ crew begin: “Every Man has a Vote in Affairs of Moment; has equal Title to the fresh Provisions, or strong Liquors, at any Time seized, and may use them at Pleasure, unless a Scarcity make it necessary, for the Good of all, to vote a Retrenchment.”
Euro-American pirate crews really formed one community, with a common set of customs shared across the various ships. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity thrived at sea over a hundred years before the French Revolution. The authorities were often shocked by their libertarian tendencies; the Dutch Governor of Mauritius met a pirate crew and commented: “Every man had as much say as the captain and each man carried his own weapons in his blanket.” This was profoundly threatening to the order of European society, where firearms were restricted to the upper classes, and provided a stark contrast to merchant ships where anything that could be used as a weapon was kept under lock and key, and to the navy where the primary purpose of the marines stationed on naval vessels was to keep the sailors in their place.
So let's see: anarchy and yet equality.... firearm access... a good start according to many who are in the FSP. Other elements seem to include more sexual freedoms (for women, homosexuals, etc)... access to alcohol, ending of slavery... the more you look into the Pirates, the more clear it is, they'd have joined the FSP.
Some say they already have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_utopia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertatia
http://www.hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html#labelPirateUtopias
http://www.menvafan.net/pirat/files/pirates.pdf
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