Salt and Blood: A Global History of Piracy

The most successful pirate in history never swung a cutlass in the Caribbean.She was a Chinese woman named Ching Shih who rose from a floating brothel to command 70,000 pirates—more than most national navies. She defeated the Chinese, Portuguese, and British fleets, then negotiated her own amnesty and retired to run a gambling house. She died wealthy, free, and old.You've never heard of her. That's the problem with pirate history.Salt & Blood tears down the Hollywood myths and rebuilds piracy from the waterline up. This is the complete global story—from Bronze Age "Sea Peoples" who collapsed entire civilizations, to Somali fishermen who discovered hostages paid better than tuna.What you'll discover:Pirates operated the most democratic societies of their age. Written constitutions. Elected captains. Equal profit-sharing. Disability compensation. Black crew members voting alongside white ones—a century before abolition.The Barbary corsairs enslaved more Europeans than the Atlantic slave trade took Africans in certain periods. Raiding parties reached Iceland and Ireland, emptying entire villages.Viking pirates founded Russia, served as Byzantine emperors' bodyguards, and reached America five centuries before Columbus.What you won't find:Recycled stories about Blackbeard. Romanticized adventure tales. Walking the plank (which probably never happened).Instead: court transcripts, ship logs, eyewitness accounts, and archaeological evidence—woven into a narrative that moves like a thriller.This is piracy as it actually was: brutal, strategic, surprisingly progressive, and absolutely relentless. For 3,000 years, wherever ships carried wealth, someone figured out how to take it.They still are. Read more