How the proletariat and slaves made global capitalism and invented universal human rights

Review of The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker

Though this book is a bit of a jumble, it is an attempt to cover those normally invisible to history, at least as agents of change: slaves, sailors, and the proletariat at the birth of capitalism as well as the revolutionary era. They are the “motley crew” that form the heads of the hydra in the title.

The story begins with the Enclosure Movement in Great Britain, when the commons was taken over by the landed gentry. Though this occurred over centuries, by the 17^th century, landowners had expropriated hundreds of thousands who had long depended on open pastures and tiny farm patches to live at subsistence level. While the landlords began to develop the land in systematic fashion to enhance efficiency and yield, with such measures as crop rotation and management innovations, the expropriated were stripped of their traditional feudal rights and often thrown out of their villages. Unsurprisingly, this led to violent upheaval and insurrection by wandering mobs. As they flooded into the cities, there was widespread starvation, crime, and state-sponsored terror to suppress them.

The authorities, according to the authors, turned largely to imperialism – shipping the undesirables to colonies – and the creation of an extensive maritime state to support the empire. At home, they also employed the disenfranchised to clear cut more land, build shipping ports, and work as servants, in effect building the infrastructure for merchant capitalism.

The Royal Navy soon became the largest employer of the Empire. Recruitment was brutal and capricious, i.e., by impressment – simply dragooning available men into ships – or via military recruitment. These ships, we learn, provided a laboratory for a new society to emerge, at once disciplined into teams and cosmopolitan, bringing together peoples from all over the world. Indeed, the discipline of the ship, the authors assert, became the basis for the conception and creation of the modern factory. (This was the first time I encountered this unusual argument, which I have not seen, or found, in other economic histories.) Most interestingly, given the authoritarian brutality of the earliest ships, the crews also became a hotbed for resistance and even revolutionary action. The authors stress that political actors of the period, such as Oliver Cromwell, used the power of the mob for their ends, only to abandon them once their uses become burdensome.

As the situation stabilized towards the middle of the 17^th century, the problem of Empire evolved from one of excess manpower to one of scarcity. This was the time when the colonial plantations began to require vast numbers of laborers to undertake the deadly task of clearing land for cultivation. Indeed, it was so hazardous that up to 60% of them died from exposure and exhaustion or disease. Without them, liberal capitalism could have taken a different form or perhaps not emerged at all.

The solution to manpower “scarcity”, it appears, was slavery. Not only would it supply manpower that was more profitable to work to death and less politically dangerous than the Irish or even English criminals, but it divided the motley crew by race. Yes, it was at this time that scientific racism made its appearance as a political tool. Needless to say, the human toll was so horrendous that it spawned a new ideology of universal human rights, a concept that sailors spread in seaside ports and taverns, leading to a number of insurrections; Samuel Adams studied their methods – Boston Harbor was, after all, the site of the Tea Party.

The book is packed full of interesting narratives, some of which I am following up on, such as the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano. Unfortunately, this makes the thread of logic rather difficult to follow. In a nutshell, not only did the proletariat – slaves, sailors, and the urban working classes – lay the groundwork for capitalist infrastructure, but they invented human rights.

The rough chronology the book presents is: 1600-1640 was a time of great struggle, when the commons was decisively lost and thousands were disenfranchised; the next 40 years were failed “revolutions”, though antinomians emerged claiming a higher obligations and ideals than the laws imposed by authoritarian states; 1680-1760, when the capitalist order was consolidated and stabilized via maritime state and Empire; culminating in 1760-1835, a revolutionary age, according to which universal rights emerged as a rallying point and perhaps even a viable political roadmap.

I recommend this book as a raw introduction to the modern era. It is fun to read, but I had to read it twice before I felt ready to review it. The core logic of what the authors are trying to get across is often lost in narrative detail, but a careful read is highly rewarding and indeed fascinating.

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