Allen Lane to publish posthumous book by anthropologist Graeber

Allen Lane is to publish a posthumous book by anthropologist David Graeber. 

Tom Penn, publishing director, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to Pirate Enlightenment from Melissa Flashman at Janklow & Nesbit. It will publish on 26th January 2023.  

The synopsis says: “The Enlightenment did not begin in Europe. Its true origins lie thousands of miles away on the island of Madagascar, in the late 17th century, when it was home to several thousand pirates. This was the Golden Age of Piracy, a period of violent buccaneering and rollicking legends—but it was also, argues anthropologist David Graeber, a brief window of radical democracy, as the pirate settlers attempted to apply the egalitarian principles of their ships to a new society on land. 

“For Graeber, Madagascar’s lost pirate utopia represents some of the first stirrings of Enlightenment political thought. In this jewel of a book, he offers a way to ’decolonize the Enlightenment’, demonstrating how this mixed community experimented with an alternative vision of human freedom, far from that being formulated in the salons and coffee houses of Europe. Its actors were Malagasy women, merchants and traders, philosopher kings and escaped slaves, exploring ideas that were ultimately to be put into practice by Western revolutionary regimes a century later. 

“Pirate Enlightenment playfully dismantles the central myths of the Enlightenment. In their place comes a story about the magic, sea battles, purloined princesses, manhunts, make-believe kingdoms, fraudulent ambassadors, spies, jewel thieves, poisoners and devil worship that lie at the origins of modern freedom.” 

Penn said: “David coupled a supreme historical imagination—and an ability to ask the questions nobody else even dreamed of—with a dogged persistence: he researched, read, thought, made endless meticulous (and exceptionally neat) notes and researched some more. His original field research in Madagascar, which would form his doctoral thesis, was started back in 1989. So it feels somehow fitting that his last book (that we know of, anyhow—David was fond of surprises) should take us full circle, back to the place where his extraordinary thought first found written form. 

“David’s untimely death took from us a wonderful human being and an inspirational thinker. But he left an extraordinary legacy and his spirit bursts out of this vital, original book: one which resonates closely with the ideas laid out in his acclaimed The Dawn of Everything (Allen Lane), co-authored with David Wengrow and finished weeks before he died.”