In this majestic tour de force, celebrated historian Peter Linebaugh takes aim at the thieves of land, the polluters of the seas, the ravagers of the forests, the despoilers of rivers, and the removers of mountaintops. Scarcely a society has existed on the face of the earth that has not had commoning at its heart. “Neither the state nor the market,” say the planetary commoners. These essays kindle the embers of memory to ignite our future commons.From Thomas Paine to the Luddites, ...

El 21 de febrero de 1803, el coronel Edward (Ned) Marcus Despard fue ahorcado y decapitado en Londres ante una multitud de 20.000 personas por organizar una conspiración revolucionaria para derrocar al rey Jorge III. Catherine (Kate), su esposa de origen caribeño y raza negra, le ayudó a escribir el discurso que pronunció desde el patíbulo, en el que se proclamaba amigo de los pobres y los oprimidos. En él expresó también su confianza en que «los principios de la libertad, la humanidad y l...

Peter Linebaugh's groundbreaking history has become an inescapable part of any understanding of the rise of capitalism. In eighteenth-century London the spectacle of a hanging was not simply a form of punishing transgressors.Rather it evidently served the most sinister purpose-for a prvileged ruling class-of forcing the poor population of London to accept the criminalization of customary rights and the new forms of private property. Necessity drove the city's poor into inevitable co...

“May Day is about affirmation, the love of life, and the start of spring, so it has to be about the beginning of the end of the capitalist system of exploitation, oppression, war, and overall misery, toil, and moil.” So writes celebrated historian Peter Linebaugh in an essential compendium of reflections on the reviled, glorious, and voltaic occasion of May 1st.It is a day that has made the rich and powerful cower in fear and caused Parliament to ban the Maypole—a magnificent and r...

Peter Linebaugh, in an extraordinary historical and literary tour de force, enlists the anonymous and scorned 19th century loom-breakers of the English midlands into the front ranks of an international, polyglot, many-colored crew of commoners resisting dispossession in the dawn of capitalist modernity.

On February 21, 1803, Colonel Edward (Ned) Marcus Despard was publicly hanged and decapitated in London before a crowd of 20,000 for organizing a revolutionary conspiracy to overthrow King George III. His black Caribbean wife, Catherine (Kate), helped to write his gallows speech in which he proclaimed that he was a friend to the poor and oppressed. He expressed trust that “the principles of freedom, of humanity, and of justice will triumph over falsehood, tyranny, and delusion.”And...

Winner of the International Labor History AwardLong before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. The Many Headed-Hydra recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world.When an unprecedented expansion of trade and colonization...

I diseredati – marinai, schiavi, soldati, plebaglia, ma anche gruppi organizzati come i pirati e gli affiliati a sette religiose radicali – furono gli eroi di una guerra di classe che si protrasse per due secoli e la cui “storia dal basso” gli autori ricostruiscono in questo magnifico libro. Furono aperte vie commerciali, fondate colonie, avviata una nuova economia transatlantica. Tutto ciò rendeva vitale il controllo capillare dei lavoratori: debellare qualsiasi segno di rivolta, questa e...

Winner of the International Labor History AwardLong before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. The Many Headed-Hydra recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world.When an unprecedented expansion of trade and colonization...

Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motely crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, labourers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would for ever change history. The Many-Headed Hydra recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world.

To reconstruct or not to reconstruct? That is the question facing many agencies and site managers throughout the world. While reconstructed sites provide a three-dimensional pedagogic environment in which visitors can acquire a heightened sense of the past, an ethical conflict emerges when on-site reconstructions and restorations contribute to the damage or destruction of the original archaeological record. The case studies in this volume contribute to the ongoing debates between data and ...

Silvia Federici is one of the most important contemporary theorists of capitalism and feminist movements. In this collection of her work spanning over twenty years, she provides a detailed history and critique of the politics of the commons from a feminist perspective. In her clear and combative voice, Federici provides readers with an analysis of some of the key issues and debates in contemporary thinking on this subject.Drawing on rich historical research, she maps the connection...