exquisitecorp • read

Though this is a 'pleasure topic' this was not at all a pleasure read for me. Despite its 'novella' size it too was something of a slog, though not on the scale of the Dawn of Everything. These academic anarchists certainly match their academic kin for heaviness of their texts. Not a conversational book. The point is that pirates, themselves largely non-authoritarian despite the appearance of fierce leadership in stories or during times of battle, settled and married in to local Malagasy culture. Their wives, themselves political intentional political actors seeking influence by being insider-outsiders, their offspring, and the communities that formed favored conversation and various forms of relatively non-authoritarian rule. That about sums it up. The book goes through the details, largely through speculation. It posits this period as being an important but less-acknowledged part of the project of 'The Enlightenment' and then sends us on our way. Okay. Somewhat interesting. I wish it had been 20 pages instead of 150, but there you go.