Book review: Pirate Enlightenment, by David Graeber

Pirate Englightenment is the last of David Graeber’s books, published posthumously. It’s about the cross-pollination of pirate communities and Malagasy culture in the early 1700s.

It’s a fitting last word, because the first book Graeber wrote was also about Madagascar. What he discovered during his doctoral research in the country in the early 90s informs a lot of what he wrote in-between. He regularly referenced Madagascar in his other books, and his influential ideas on democracy and f...