Enemies of All: The Rise and Fall of the Pirates by Richard Blakemore
The Laws of all Nations define & declare a Pirate to be an Enemy of Mankind He is perhaps the only Criminal on Earth, whose crime cannot be absolutely pardoned a Pirate is equally an Enemy and dangerous to all Societies Piracy is in its self a complication of Treason, Oppression, Murder, Assassination, Robbery and Theft.
You know what a pirate is. You know how they dress, how they speak. If you think of the word pirate, you most probably think of black flags and peg legs, cutlasses and cannon, walking the plank and buried treasure. These stereotypes are familiar and entertaining, but they arent the whole truth.
Or, perhaps, they were never true at all.
From their origins and identities to their everyday lives and exploits, Enemies of All is a voyage of discovery that investigates piracys incredible, and often unrecognised, impact on history. Socially, economically and politically, pirates moulded European empires as they rose to global power in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They shaped our modern world and left behind troubling legacies.
You will never see pirates in the same way again.