Everything You Thought You Knew About Maritime Piracy Is Wrong: Dead Men Do Tell Tales.

Catalog description

This course journeys through four centuries of maritime predation in the Atlantic World. Starting with the “Golden Age of Piracy” in the eighteenth century, the tendency of those in the Victorian age to romanticize a pirate’s life, Disney corporation’s fantastical profiting from that mythology, ending with the recent capture of Captain Phillips and the surprising conclusion to that story. This course looks at the blessings of honest civil government and the depravity of human nature in its absence. Students will practice historical thinking and examine different types of evidence.