★★★★☆ An intricate, idiosyncratic survey of empire and rebellion which makes a strong argument for the Atlantic character of the Age of Revolution

As an academic text, THE MANY-HEADED HYDRA assumes familiarity with many names, places, and events that the typical reader might not be familiar with. References to Thermidor, Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland, 1688, and similar historical flashpoints abound. This (I flatter myself) is the main reason why it took me a couple years to finish the book after I first picked it up; it was only after I had learned about these and other topics from other sources, that I was able to come back to this book and grasp its arguments and structure. Even now, I’m sure that I don’t fully understand it, and I’m excited to come back in two more years to see what I can glean from the text then. This is the main barrier to me recommending this book to others, unless they already have a high-level understanding of the traditional histories of Atlantic peoples and states from the 17th through the 19th century.

For those with the prior knowledge to understand it, even as feebly as I have, this is a work of intricate beauty and righteous outrage (in this, it is not dissimilar to the works of William Blake, featured in the concluding chapter). Linebaugh and Rediker’s narrative begins on the shores of Bermuda in 1609, where a shipwrecked crew is determined to remain in ‘paradise’, only to be violently forced by their officers to sail to Virginia to toil in the construction of that colony. As it weaves forward through the Putney Debates, the golden age of piracy, Despard’s Conspiracy, etc, a consistent theme emerges – capitalist empire is a machine that can survive only by forcing participation within it, whether as worker or consumer, and throughout its history, its prisoners have again and again struggled to break free. Sometimes they succeed. Often they do not. But each generation sends its lessons ahead to the next, and as methods of domination grow stronger, so do theories of liberation and praxis.

This was understood by Sir Francis Bacon*, who I suppose could serve as a sort of spiritual antagonist for the book. An early theorist and proponent of empire, Bacon’s 1622 An Advertisement Touching a Holy War is cited extensively by the authors to help develop their main metaphor, that of Hercules and the Hydra. In myth, Hercules slew the dreaded Hydra as one of his Twelve Labors. This was no easy feat, as the Hydra was a beast with many heads, and when one head was cut off, two more would emerge in its place. Bacon, like many in his time and since, identified the labors of Hercules with the labors of empire-building, and the Hydra with the various forces of social disorder that threatened that work. In particular, he noted “West Indians; Canaanites [dispossessed commoners]; pirates; land rovers [lumpenproletariat]; assassins; Amazons [non-compliant women]; and Anabaptists [religious dissenters and proto-communists]”(39, 62-65) as especially dangerous and deserving of nothing less than wholesale slaughter. Indeed, Bacon argued that this genocide was “not only as lawful, but as meritorious, even divine honour” (40). He understood full well that empire could only be built upon violence and terror.

Linebaugh and Rediker take this argument and turn it on its head(s). To them, the Hydra is a thing of beauty; cut off one head, and two more appear. And indeed, throughout the book, we find that struggle begets struggle, as Masaniello’s Revolt, Tacky’s Revolt, the Haitian Revolution, and similar echo throughout the ages to inspire new generations of ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’ to rise up in the name of liberty and justice. Furthermore, although the struggle for freedom takes many forms in many times and places, these heads are all part of the same body. The authors identify this body as Hydrarchy, or, the self-organization of sailors of all nations, who had their own cant, customs, and values quite different from landed society, and took these with them to every port of call. Though the sailors were responsible for the labor of drawing the entire Atlantic into a single capitalist market, they also carried the word of revolution from faraway lands and often participated in whatever conspiracies attracted their attention.

How does the story end? Time will tell. However, as a forgettable man once said, knowledge is power. Indeed, it was the knowledge carried by these Atlantic sailors, combined with the unique self-knowledge of every locale they visited, which helped to fan the flames of the Age of Revolution. Whether the last embers have faded remains to be seen.

* As someone who also has a list of popular historical figures I absolutely despise, I hope the authors had as much fun lacerating Bacon as I imagine they did. Well done, professors; I’ll see your Bacon, and raise you a Thomas Carlyle.