Book Review: The Untold War at Sea: America’s Revolutionary Privateers by Kylie A. Hulbert

Abstract

odologies. Remarkably, for a book with a lot of numbers, it is eminently readable. My only fear is that the academic imprint and its monetization schemes will keep it from being read. Given that this might be a stumbling block towards a wide audience, I almost wished that the book were more technical. Of special interest to the readers of this journal will be the many ways that patterns of resistance were shaped by the maritime geographies within which convicts often found themselves situated. Chapter 5, on shipboard mutinies, is particularly interesting in this regard. Ships of transportation were not only floating prisons, but also hospitals – because the health of the workers was imperative – and factories – in the sense that they produced a commodity for a (labour) market. At sea and locked at the crossroads of these three entangled structures of confinement, dissent could turn mutinous, and even piratical. The book triumphs in the way that it convincingly relates such dramatic events – of which there were surprisingly many – to the more pedestrian forms of resistance, such as issuing threats, stopping work or simply running away. In this sense,Unfree Workers tells a story that fluidly combines the extraordinary and the everyday. For anyone who is even vaguely intrigued by either the subject or the methodology, this is a thrilling and inspiring work.