beforeitsnews.com: Today, when in the world there are millions of some wise scientists, among whom there are more than one hundred thousand of the wisest historians / archaeologists, these people every day puzzle over the search for new topics for scientific papers and dissertations.
However, there are not enough topics for academic work, so every hour academicians broadcast volumes of research about some Vikings whom no one has seen in their eyes, or about some Egyptians and ancient Greeks, from whom only mountains of stones remain - and so further and the like. Meanwhile, there is a much more interesting historical topic, which seems to be taboo among academics. And this topic is pirates.
All that we know about pirates as a historical phenomenon is children's / ladies' novels of the century before last, which tell about gangs of some wild thugs, controlled by a frostbitten captain with one eye and one leg. But oddly enough, there are no scientific historical works about pirates, although they definitely deserve them.
Have you ever heard of a one-man pirate ship? No, they haven’t, because even a small sailboat requires several dozen people to fly. And you also need to take someone on board, without interrupting the crew from controlling the sails and maneuvering. Therefore, the pirates on the ship usually numbered about a hundred people, and on large ships there were hundreds of them. And therefore, any person with experience in team management, the question arises: how did the captains manage this wild and unbridled armed crowd?
What provided the pirates with the motivation, forcing them to board the board with their sabers and brutal faces? Why did the pirates not think about the consequences, because they could have been seriously injured in battle - and who will need them later? Or could the captain then divide the booty not equally, but honestly?
At one time, Louis Lamour, the world's most famous author of westerns, before writing another novel, rode for months in the former Wild West and asked bartenders and local residents in general about the famous gunfighters relatively recently. Many people knew these shooters personally and remembered, therefore, everything that Lamour writes about the Wild West is an artistically processed real story, everything was exactly the same there. That is, one daredevil took a Colt in his hands and forced a whole corrupt town to do KU, leaving behind corpses, like road posts on the road to law and justice.
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However, it is more and more difficult with pirates - there are no longer any eyewitnesses to their exploits in the 20th century. However, in their recent book, Legal Systems Far from Ours, by David Friedman, Peter T. Leeson, and David Skarbeck, there is an entire chapter devoted to pirates that fundamentally breaks down stereotypes about these people.
As it turned out, the pirates were not some wild rabble of different sizes, but were mostly ordinary sailors who decided to embark on the path of piracy for one reason or another. Moreover, among them there were a lot of former American and British military - that is, officers who previously served in a particular fleet.
Each pirate ship was like a small state, entry into which was completely voluntary. When a ship was seized, the pirates built his crew on the deck and told about the rules of their state. That is, what rights and powers do the citizens of a pirate state have, what they are entitled to under various circumstances, how can injustice be dealt with and how they can leave the ship if they wish.
Since the per capita incomes in the pirate state were huge, there was always a queue of people wishing to obtain citizenship. However, some citizens, looking into the future, were cunning.
For example, according to the laws of Great Britain, if a person did not go to pirates himself, but was forced, then he could count on a pardon if he was caught. Therefore, sometimes, at the request of the customer, the pirates played a whole performance with beatings, so that the witnesses (who did not want to stay, the pirates were released) later said in court: this man agreed to become a pirate under torture and to save the life of the team, which the pirates promised, in case of refusal, to hang.
Further, when the recruit received, as it were, a passport of a pirate state, he became acquainted with democracy, which in the rest of the “civilized world” existed only on paper.
The main person on the ship was, as it were, the military quartermaster, who was also the quartermaster who kept the treasury, watched over the economy and generally was in charge of everything. The pirates chose the quartermaster for themselves and could impeach him at any time without hearing in Congress and other formal nonsense.
The second in rank on the ship was the captain, who was a leader exclusively during the war period and commanded only the ship on a campaign: where to go, how to attack, and so on. The captain was also elected by universal suffrage. Moreover, not only maritime and military knowledge was required of him, but also personal luck: if the captain was not lucky, whose karma shone for the whole team, he was re-elected.
All conflicts between team members were resolved by an elected jury replacing the British courts, and if the jury was at a loss with a decision, people decided the issue in a duel, as in those days it was decided by comrade officers everywhere.
The pirates' discipline was very strict and even former sailors from British ships suffered from it, who were beaten with sticks and whips for violations by their own fathers-commanders. The pirates did not beat anyone, since they respected the human dignity of their citizens, and as punishment they simply fined them when dividing the spoils.
Well, in the case of a very serious violation of the criminal, they were either immediately hanged, or subjected to maroning - that is, landing on an uninhabited island with a revolver and one cartridge. This type of punishment was applied only to those who fled from the battlefield or refused to obey orders during the battle. Even sometimes, for stealing from a team or comrades, ears and noses were cut off.
But all these hardships and deprivations of military service were offset by income. Sometimes a sailor earned more in one trip than if he had served his beloved queen for a hundred years.
The booty was divided among all equally with small additional payments for one or another position. In case of injuries, the team paid the disabled person either a one-time compensation - so that he had enough tequila on the beach until the end of his days, or pay a pension.
In general, even from the crumbs of information about pirates that has survived to this day, it should be admitted that people left to themselves, even people with a cruel and criminal past, are able to quickly form a very cohesive and just society, which will be more effective than the existing one at that time. … And therefore it is completely incomprehensible: why only pirates and nowhere else in the world had good and just people in power?