I really enjoyed this book - intellectual and social history, with lots of the best kind of political analysis but rarely inaccessible in its language. Lots that I sort of knew about...the Diggers, the Maroons, the revolution in Haiti (well, I've only recently read The Black Jacobins, and I grew up on The Kingdom of This World and also a novel about Henri Christophe that I think must have been Black Fire), but also lots that I knew much less about - the antislavery of the radicals in the English Revolution, the multi-racial solidarity of sailors in England and North America, antinomianism (I had to look that up). I didn't know about the image of the hydra as a ruling-class metaphor for resistance, or of the extent to which Hercules is a symbol of ruling-class power. I knew a bit about the democratic culture of piracy, but I loved reading about it in such detail, and it's inspired me to read a bit more.
Inspiring and a reminder about why it's important to do History, and why struggles over memory are so important. I have mixed feelings about pulling down statues and renaming streets...I think that we if we erase the colonial past then what chance do we have of contesting the way it's remembered? But why isn't there a statue to the fabulous Edward and Catherine Despard, about whom much more should be widely known? Or at least a few streets or pubs named after them? Small afternote: there is a pub named after Charlotte Despard, who was pretty amazing but no relation of the other Despards.
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