"Pirate Vices, Public Benefits": The Social Ethics of Piracy in the 1720s

Abstract:Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates demonstrates a complex, even ambivalent, ethical perspective on the pirates who form the subject of his narratives. On the one hand, Johnson acknowledges that pirates, legally designated as hostis humani generis, the “enemy of all humanity,” are monsters with respect to legitimate trade; their rapacity and violence threaten the stability of Commerce itself. On the other hand, Johnson engages with Bernard Mandeville’s argument, in The Fable of the Bees, that vice is, in fact, an integral part of a functioning modern society: Johnson even acknowledges that successful pirates display some aspects of “great men.” This article examines Johnson’s moral perspective on pirates in the General History and compares this perspective to comments made about Mandeville’s controversial book by two figures often associated with the mysterious Johnson: Daniel Defoe and Nathaniel Mist.