Pirates, Merchants, Settlers, and Slaves

"McDonald’s carefully researched and crisply-written book makes a number of important interventions in its field: enhancing our appreciation of the vital connections between the colonial Atlantic and the emerging company state in India; by demonstrating the scope of colonial autonomy, and the corresponding limits of the British imperial state; and by revealing the extent to which imperial rivalry shaped and disrupted a set of global frontiers and zones of interaction. Pirates did not merely act as plunderers and despoilers, but were as vital in shaping a series of economic and cultural peripheries, and integrating them into an emerging global order."

— International Journal of Maritime History

"The book is well written and tells a captivating story."

— Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

"McDonald succeeds in sketching a new geography of the British Atlantic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one that extends—through Madagascar—to the Indian Ocean. He demonstrates that contemporary Englishmen’s horizons were broader than those of most historians of the British Atlantic. This is an eye-opening and enlightening contribution, which requires other scholars to reframe their histories and periodizations (including such concepts as “First” and “Second” British Empires)."

— H-War

"A thought-provoking book that will register with both scholars and students of early-modern Atlantic and Indian Ocean studies. . . McDonald’s analysis of . . . the 'pirate-slave trade nexus' contributes to the growing body of literature that argues piracy contributed to the emergence of seventeenth-century merchant capitalism rather than undermined it. . . a fascinating work of history that uncovers how diverse pursuits. . . served to interlock distant and relatively small maritime communities across the globe at the end of the seventeenth century. . . a wonderful addition and. . . a sophisticated analysis."

— International Review of Social History

"A highly readable and important contribution to our understanding of pirates’ role in colonial projects in both the Americas and Madagascar. . . sheds much needed light on the Madagascar slave trade and the subsequent Malagasy diaspora. . . deserves high praise for providing a fresh perspective on Indian Ocean pirates, their settlement of St. Mary’s on Madagascar, and their participation in the Malagasy slave trade."

— Journal of World History