Produced by David Starner, Deirdre Menchaca, Ted Garvin and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
From "The History Of The Pyrates. Vol. II."
Richard C. Boys, _University of Michigan_ Ralph Cohen, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Lawrence Clark Powell, _Clark Memorial Library_
W. Earl Britton, _University of Michigan_
Emmett L. Avery, _State College of Washington_ Benjamin Boyce, _Duke University_ Louis Bredvold, _University of Michigan_ John Butt, _University of Edinburgh_ James L. Clifford, _Columbia University_ Arthur Friedman, _University of Chicago_ Louis A. Landa, _Princeton University_ Samuel H. Monk, _University of Minnesota_ Ernest C. Mossner, _University of Texas_ James Sutherland, _University College, London_ H.T. Swedenberg, Jr., _University of California, Los Angeles_
Defoe has been recognized as the author of _A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates_ since 1932 when John Robert Moore suggested that the supposed author, Captain Charles Johnson, like Andrew Moreton, Kara Selym or Captain Roberts, was merely another mask for the creator of _Robinson Crusoe_. Although most of the first volume is of minor literary importance, the second section which appeared in 1728 as _The History of the Pyrates_ commenced with a life "Of Captain Misson and His Crew," one of Defoe's most remarkable and neglected works of fiction. In much the same manner and at the same time that John Gay was satirizing Walpole's government in _The Beggar's Opera_, Defoe began to use his pirates as a commentary on the injustice and hypocrisy of contemporary English society. Among Defoe's gallery of pirates are Captain White, who refused to rob from women and children; Captain Bellamy, the proletarian revolutionist; and captain North, whose sense of justice and honesty was a rebuke to the corruption of government under Walpole. But the fictional Captain Misson, the founder of a communist utopia, is by far the most original of these creations.
If we were to accept the view of nineteenth-century critics, that Defoe was one of the earliest exponents of _laissez faire_, his creation of a communist utopia would seem remarkable indeed. But paradoxes fascinated Defoe, and his ideas can seldom be reduced to unambiguous platitudes. He was especially fascinated by the comparison between businessmen and thieves. In 1707 he urged the government to pardon the Madagascar pirates if they agreed to stop their crimes, pay a large sum of money and "become honest Freeholders, as others of our _West-India_ Pyrates, _Merchants I should have said_, have done before them." And he noted that "it would make a sad Chasm on the _Exchange of London_, if all the Pyrates should be taken away from the Merchants there."[1] Twelve years later just before the start of the South Sea Bubble, Defoe attacked stock-jobbing as "a Branch of Highway Robbing."[2]