THE MANY-HEADED HYDRA -
PETER LINEBAUGH & MARCUS REDIKER
In the preface to Peter Linebaugh's and Marcus Rediker's The Many-Headed Hydra (and to give its full subtitle - The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic) its stall is laid out immediately as to the reasoning behind the title. During their research as Professors of History, the authors kept coming upon a huge variety of references to the myth of Hercules doing combat with the many-headed Hydra, where Hercules was the hero always on the side of those who in victory get to write the history whilst Hydra was always the enemy to be fought and vanquished. Over time, for Linebaugh and Rediker what began as a metaphor became a concept and a way of exploring vast class struggle. The sites for this struggle are posited as being the commons, plantations, ships and factories whilst the main players - as in the dispossessed - are awarded the description of being 'hewers of wood and drawers of water' as this is what the rulers of the world at that time deemed all those they ruled to be fit for.
'For the African, European, and American hewers of wood and drawers of water in the early seventeenth century, work was both a curse and a punishment,' the authors state, and it's a really good and important point. 'These workers were necessary to the growth of capitalism, as they did the work that could not or would not be done by artisans in workshops, manufactories, or guilds. Hewers and drawers performed the fundamental labors of expropriation that have usually been taken for granted by historians. Expropriation itself, for example is treated as a given: the field is there before the ploughing starts; the city is there before the laborer begins the working day. Likewise for long distance trade: the port is there before the ship sets sail from it; the plantation is there before the slave cultivates its land. The commodities of commerce seem to transport themselves. The result is that the hewers of wood and drawers of water have been invisible, anonymous and forgotten, even though they transformed the face of the Earth by building the infrastructure of 'civilization'.
The book begins with the story of the Sea-Venture, one of eight vessels sailing from Plymouth to Virginia in 1609 that is shipwrecked upon the island of Bermuda. Rather than trying to escape and to carry on with their voyage, the sailors along with all the other passengers decide to stay, it not taking them long to weigh-up their choices: To live in freedom and harmony on this island of unexpected abundance or to continue on to the wretchedness, labour and slavery awaiting them in Virginia and the tobacco plantations there. It was a no-brainer.
Based on this incident, William Shakespeare wrote The Tempest, with Caliban the slave, Trinculo the jester, and Stephano the sailor representing the 'motley crew' of the sailors and passengers. 'Misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows', Shakespeare has one of his characters say, this applying not just to Shakespeare's cast but to those washed-up on the shore of Bermuda and indeed to great swathes of people back in England and throughout the world. These are the people of the many-headed Hydra, the likes of which being what others would call at the time 'the dregs of the earth': Dispossessed commoners, felons, indentured servants, religious radicals, pirates, urban labourers, soldiers, sailors, African slaves, beggars and vagrants.
Hercules, on the other hand, was a representation of the venture capitalists of that time, the landowners who had fenced-off the lands and ejected the commoners, the merchants, the bankers, the manufacturers, the royals, the rich. It was these who were the architects of the Atlantic economy; a Herculean task of building trade routes, colonies, and a new transatlantic economy involving the production and transportation of sugar, tobacco and various other commodities. In Hercules they found their symbol of power and order whilst in the many-headed Hydra they found their symbol of disorder and resistance, and a threat to the building of state, empire and capitalism.
In such fashion the battle-lines were drawn and the battle joined, echoing down through the ages.
Come the end of the seventeenth century, tens of thousands of men, women and children from Ireland, West Africa and Virginia were being dispossessed by the mercantilist state and forced into servitude, making slavery the foundation of Atlantic capitalism. All kept in check by the constant terror of and punishment from flogging, hanging and gibbeting. Resistance and rebellion like hope, however, sprang eternal and The Many-Headed Hydra relays no end of stories of individuals and groups who would challenge the status quo and the quashing of freedom and the rights of the individual world-wide.
These are stories and interpretations of events that if not wiped from the history books have been altered to suit the narrative as dictated by those who have gained the most from their side of the story being the dominant one. This is history from below as opposed to history from above and the importance of these stories cannot be overstated.
It is the stories of pirates running their ships in a far more egalitarian and democratic fashion than the British Navy ever did at that time. It is the stories of the Levellers, the Diggers, the New Model Army, the Anabaptists, the Ranters, and the Muggletonians. Stories of individuals such as Gerrard Winstanley, James Nayler, John Bunyan, Thomas Rainborough, Robert Lockyer, Edward Despard, Robert Wedderburn, Thomas Spence, and William Blake. Stories of Masaniello and the rebellion of Naples of 1647, the mythical land of Cockaygne, the New York conspirators of 1741, Tacky's Revolt and the Jamaican slaves rebellion of 1760, the Spa Fields riots of 1816, and the anti-pressgang riots in both England and America throughout the 17th Century.
These are stories that when collated together in bookform such as in that of The Many-Headed Hydra act not so much as a lifting of the veil to reveal hitherto unknown truths but as a reminder of what we already know but had perhaps forgotten? A reminder of that which we have always known.
The Many-Headed Hydra is in a way many books within one, so is actually a many-headed Hydra in itself. From the subject matter and the concept of which the authors write, they have created a model of that same concept. A representation of it in the form of a book. It's quite an achievement. And whether it be by complete accident or by design, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker have written, created and given us something very special.
John Serpico
