In this installment of the Highlight Series, The Life of a Historian presents a quick summary and review of…
Rediker, Marcus. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700 – 1750
.New York: Cambridge Press, 1987.
Affiliate Disclosure
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700 – 1750
The omnipotence of the elements and the fragility of human life marked the consciousness of every early-eighteenth century seaman.” 1
A work by historian Marcus Rediker
Purpose & Argument
Purpose
According to Rediker, the purpose of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is to “recover the experiences of the common seaman in the first half of the eighteenth century, to continue and extend the path-breaking work of Jesse Lemisch, and to do so in the spirit of ‘history from the bottom up.'” 2
Additionally, his work is “part of a larger current effort to transform ‘labor history’ into ‘working-class history.'” 3 That is to say, labor history should be more than the political and economic conflicts between capital and labor. It should include the cultural background and social relations that defined and bounded individual and collective groups of workers.
Therefore, his narrative is more inclusive than traditional labor history and expands on the historiography by continuing its trajectory toward a working-class history.
Arguments
Rediker’s contribution to historiography is the expansion of the theoretical framework for the relationship of capital and labor to include seafarers of the pre-industrial period. His work is founded on the central idea that “the seaman was central to the changing history and political economy of the North Atlantic world.” 4 According to Rediker, early eighteenth-century seaman accomplished such a feat by entering “new relations both to capital–as one of the first generations of free waged labors–and to each other–as collective laborers.” 5
Rediker argues that not only did the merchant ship engender a sense of collectivity among the entire ship in “confrontation with nature and by the need for survival,” but also a collectivity among the common tars. 6 The latter led to a pre-industrial class of workers delineated by shared language, culture, and characteristics of anti-authoritarianism, egalitarianism, and cooperation for the common good of all seamen.
The free wage laborers nineteenth-century and twentieth-century–the field hands, the factory workers, the skilled and unskilled laborers–descended the eighteenth-century seamen. The conflicts over pay and working conditions and the negotiating tactics and strategies seaman employed not only represented a shared experience for later laborers but also marked the beginning of collectivism among workers against capital. In essence, the merchant ship was the precursor to the factory.
Methodology
For Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, Rediker uses an interdisciplinary approach to construct his working-class history. He draws upon recent scholarship in history, linguistics, sociology, economics, anthropology, and ethnography. Such an approach allows Rediker to elaborate on the work of eighteenth-century seafarers. More importantly, it enables Rediker to explore and illuminate the cultural and social identity and consciousness of these seamen.
The necessity of employing an interdisciplinary approach stems from Rediker’s view of history. He believes “that the history of seafaring people can and must be more than a chronicle of admirals, captains, and military battles at sea: It must be made to speak to larger historical problems and processes. The seaman’s life and labor require an international history, linking the pasts of Britain and America to broad intercultural histories of continental Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, and the East and West Indies.” 7
Furthermore, and in a similar vein to E.P. Thompson, Herbert Gutman, and Eugene D. Genovese, Rediker approached and conducted his interpretation of source material in a way to present history from the bottom up.
Sources
Rediker relies seemingly equally upon, both, primary and secondary sources. As mentioned above, his choice of secondary sources derived from an array of historical fields and academic disciplines. This is required for two reasons. First, to build his theoretical framework that includes expanding characteristics associated with nineteenth-century global industrial capitalism to a pre-industrial period. And second, to detail how early-eighteenth century seamen formed a collective identity and consciousness. One that was acknowledged even among the general populous in port towns of the British Empire.
Although Rediker employs newspapers, ship logs, an assortment of governmental documents, and personal correspondences, journals, and diaries, “the records produced by the admiralty courts–documents on more than 2,200 cases between 1700-1750–have served as a foundation for this study.” 8 The records of the admiralty court records provide a variety of perspectives from those aboard the merchant ship. Thus, offering invaluable insights into the daily life and relationships of seamen and their captains.
However, as Rediker notes, these sources are not without their “problems and inconsistencies.” 9 Namely, the admiralty courts favored merchants and captains over seamen and final court decisions are often unknown due to appeals and settlements outside the court.
Other Works by Marcus Rediker
• The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist
• Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail
• The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom
• The Slave Ship: A Human History
• Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age
