Pack your cutlass and blunderbuss--it's time to go a-pirating! The
Invisible Hook takes readers inside the wily world of late seventeenth-
and early eighteenth-century pirates. With swashbuckling irreverence and
devilish wit, Peter Leeson uncovers the hidden economics behind pirates'
notorious, entertaining, and sometimes downright shocking behavior. Why
did pirates fly flags of Skull & Bones? Why did they create a "pirate
code"? Were pirates really ferocious madmen? And what made them so
successful? The Invisible Hook uses economics to examine these and
other infamous aspects of piracy. Leeson argues that the pirate customs
we know and love resulted from pirates responding rationally to
prevailing economic conditions in the pursuit of profits.
The Invisible Hook looks at legendary pirate captains like Blackbeard,
Black Bart Roberts, and Calico Jack Rackam, and shows how pirates'
search for plunder led them to pioneer remarkable and forward-thinking
practices. Pirates understood the advantages of constitutional
democracy--a model they adopted more than fifty years before the United
States did so. Pirates also initiated an early system of workers'
compensation, regulated drinking and smoking, and in some cases
practiced racial tolerance and equality. Leeson contends that pirates
exemplified the virtues of vice--their self-seeking interests generated
socially desirable effects and their greedy criminality secured social
order. Pirates proved that anarchy could be organized.
Revealing the democratic and economic forces propelling history's most
colorful criminals, The Invisible Hook establishes pirates'
trailblazing relevance to the contemporary world.
