Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia

Author  David Graeber
Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia

One of The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2023

The final book from David Graeber, the iconic intellectual, activist, and co-author of the New York Times bestseller, The Dawn of Everything.

Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societies— vibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of European empire.

In graduate school, David Graeber conducted ethnographic field research in Madagascar, producing what would eventually become a doctoral thesis on the island’s magic, slavery, and politics. During this time, he encountered the Zana-Malata, an ethnic group made up of mixed descendants of the many…