It’s an interesting book, but Rediker has always been accused of reading too much into too few sources, and having some problems with accuracy. But it’s a very intriguing book, and seems to have raised some good points of argument that, ten years on, should still be taken into account.
A very harsh critique: https://archive.ph/KKpb2
And a response to the critique:
To be fair, Davis’ critique is at least partially rooted in his much older historiographical outlook being challenged by younger, “modern” historians. A more “modern” historian takes on the book here:
Another review:
https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=7645
There is much to admire in this book; its scope, ambition, and ingenuity make it worth reading. At the same time, there are some serious problems. To take but one example, Linebaugh and Rediker’s heavy-handed treatment of slavery throughout the text is a testament to their tendency to ignore historical subtleties whenever they run against the grain of their thesis, which too often reads more like an agenda. In the first chapter they make the point that during the reign of Edward VI, vagabonds “had their chests branded with the letter V and were enslaved for two years” (p. 18). What they fail to mention, however, is that although this measure was enacted in 1547 it was rescinded two years later and no record survives of it being enforced while it was on the books. Later on, they allow the false impression to persist that “English participation in the slave trade … began in 1563,” in spite of the fact that, although there were four famous slave trading voyages during that decade and most Englishmen were by no means repulsed by the traffic in human cargoes, English merchants more often went to West Africa (before the mid-seventeenth century) in search of gold, ivory, and pepper than for human beings (p. 28).
To be sure, human bondage was a profound conceit and experience in Tudor and early Stuart England, and it appears regularly and in a number of guises in the sources. The authors are to be applauded for elevating this subject, particularly in light of the fact that many previous historians have not. Still, it would have been preferable if they had thought through two issues: first, the use of the word “slave” (or “slavery”) has to be understood in context and, second, the fact that Tudor and Stuart elites treated the lower orders callously, even brutally, does not mean that laborers and servants were in any way slaves. On the first point, Linebaugh and Rediker blur a number of issues when they determine that the Putney Debates in 1647 were a reflection on the issue of slavery. True enough. But, what we are not told is that mid-seventeenth-century political rhetoric regularly culled the language of slavery not because the commons was trying to throw off physical shackles but because a large swath of society (indeed, perhaps the vast majority) were asserting political liberty in language that was especially familiar. As Quentin Skinner has argued, classical Roman writers and, especially, the Digest of Roman law, were central to the developing “neo-Roman” discourse of slavery in early Stuart England. To us it may be paradoxical, but to seventeenth-century Englishmen, to be against slavery in the 1640s did not necessarily mean that you were in any way against holding human beings in a state of bondage in order to fulfill labor needs.
On the second point, Linebaugh and Rediker obfuscate when they use language to make a point that promotes essential misconceptions. For example, they argue that Bacon’s Rebellion was “a war against slavery, waged by servants and slaves who entered the fray after being promised their freedom by Nathaniel Bacon” (p. 136). The authors even refer to Bacon’s rebels anachronistically as “abolitionists” (p. 137). Again, there is some truth in this assertion. Bacon’s forces did include a number of African slaves and indentured servants, many of whom held out to the bitter end. But the rebellion was neither a war about or against slavery; it was about access to land and a virulent hatred of the Indians. The misuse of the term abolitionist here is simply inappropriate, as it is when they refer to “the tradition of Spanish abolitionism” in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world because Spain encouraged slaves to escape from their bondage in the Anglo-Atlantic world (p. 205).
