Introduction to the United States: An Autonomist Political History, Noel Ignatiev
PUBLISHER'S INTRODUCTION
Article on class struggle and compositon in the period leading up to and during the American revolution, showing how the struggles of sailors and slaves drove the movement to national liberation.
Introduction
An interesting look at the life and times of pirates in the 17th and 18th centuries. This article explores the somewhat libertarian and communalist values which guided the life of a pirate during those years.
"In an honest Service, there is thin Commons, low Wages, and hard Labour; in this, Plenty and Satiety, Pleasure and Ease, Liberty and Power; and who would not ballance Creditor on this Side, when all the Hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sower Look or two at choaking. No, a merry Life and a short one shall be my Motto" - Pirate Captain Bartholomew Roberts.(1)
A short history of the Golden Age of Piracy and the origins and role of the pirates in the class struggle on the high seas at the time.
On the afternoon of the 26 July 1726, William Fly walked the steps of the Boston gallows. Unlike his fellow condemned, Fly had shown no fear at his fate. The great and the good who had gathered to see the pirate die were uncomfortable: he was not playing his agreed part in the moral drama. But, as Fly neared the rope, their fears it seemed were unfounded.
A history of song, music and revolutionary working class politics in France from the 1789 Revolution up to the 1980s and punk.
Like
other political groups, anarchists have seen music as an excellent means of
agitation and of popular education, and have made it one of their key activities
of propaganda in many countries.
Information and explanations of the likely origins of the pirate flag, the Jolly Roger.
There have been a number of different explanations of the origin of the most famous of the pirates’ flags: the ‘skull and cross bones’, which was first used around the year 1700.
A short history of puppets, puppeteers and working class politics from the English Civil War to the streets of Seattle in 1999.
The ‘carnivalesgue’ has often been a feature of popular rebellion. Recently we saw its self-conscious re-emergence in the US and the UK (notably on Reclaim the Streets actions). Masks, fancy dress and puppets perform a dual role, providing both a pleasurable escape from the routines of everyday life and means of disguise.
A short history of the first ever strike in North American history, by Mexican silver miners.
In the summer of 1766 Mexican silver miners of Real del Monte, about one hundred kilometres north of Mexico city, developed a major industrial strike without a trade union or a political ideology to sustain them. It was the first strike in the history of Mexican labour and the first strike in North America
If women, of all the subordinate groups in a society dominated by rich white males, were closest to
home (indeed, in the home), the most interior, then the Indians were the most foreign, the most
exterior. Women, because they were so near and so needed, were dealt with more by patronization
It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers
were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men.
The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status.
The American victory over the British army was made possible by the existence of an already-
armed people. Just about every white male had a gun, and could shoot. The Revolutionary
leadership distrusted the mobs of poor. But they knew the Revolution had no appeal to slaves and
Indians. They would have to woo the armed white population.
Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove
enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol,
a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from
favorites of the British Empire. In the process, they could hold back a number of potential
In 1676, seventy years after Virginia was founded, a hundred years before it supplied leadership for
the American Revolution, that colony faced a rebellion of white frontiersmen, joined by slaves and
servants, a rebellion so threatening that the governor had to flee the burning capital of Jamestown,
and England decided to send a thousand soldiers across the Atlantic, hoping to maintain order
A black American writer, J. Saunders Redding, describes the arrival of a ship in North America in
the year 1619:
Sails furled, flag drooping at her rounded stern, she rode the tide in from the sea. She was
a strange ship, indeed, by all accounts, a frightening ship, a ship of mystery. Whether she was
