The Many‐Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, and the Atlantic Working Class in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

This article uses the myth of the many-headed Hydra, commonly employed by members of various ruling classes around the Atlantic to describe the class struggles that surrounded them, to illuminate the history of the working class in the eighteenth century. It concentrates on two groups ofworkers. wage laborers (especially sailors) and slaves, two zones of the Atlantic, Europe and North America, and four moments in the history of the Atlantic working class: 1747, when, in the Knowles Riot in Boston, sailors and slaves fought the King's press gangs and in so doing created one of the central ideas of the 'Age of Revolution'; 1768, when, in the London port strike, sailors, Irish coalheavers, and others pioneered one of the central ideas and activities of the modem working-class movement, the strike; 1776, when, in the American Revolution, sailors and slaves helped to instigate and win the world's fist colonial war for liberation; and 1780, when, in the Gordon Riots. the polyglot working class of London liberated the prisons amid the greatest municipal insurrection of the eighteenth century. It argues that fured, static notions of race, ethnicity, and nationality among historians have obscured a vital world of cooperation and accomplishment within a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, international working class.

An Archaeology of Community Life: Appalachia, 1865–1920

“…Scholars have drawn connections between the 'white race' concept and labor problems within plantation society (e.g., Allen 1994;Wilson 2001). European indentured and wage laborers were beginning to bond with African slaves and Native Americans into a rebellious, working class that opposed impressments and oppression of workers, and inequities of income and power (Beaver and Lewis 1998, p. 55;Linebaugh and Rediker 1990). In response, the ruling class proclaimed that all white men were superior to people of color.…”

Antifragility analysis and measurement framework for systems of systems

“…When Hercules attempted to kill the monster by cutting off its head, two would grow in its place (Linebaugh and Rediker 1990). This may be the ultimate example of antifragility as there were no limits to the expanding generation of Hydra's heads.…”

Boarding: Black Women in Nantucket Generating Income and Building Community

“…Important African Diaspora scholarship has de‐emphasized the dominant portrayal of Blacks as slaves in order to broaden scholarly knowledge of the lives and aspirations of free Black people in the northern United States. For example, studies of the maritime industry have increasingly focused on the contributions of male Black sailors in an effort to give non‐elites and other historically marginalized people a greater role in Atlantic history (Bolster ; Linebaugh and Rediker ). Documenting Black men's extensive service on coastal schooners as well as on codfish, whaling, naval, and slaving vessels (Barsh ; Bolster , ; Farr , ; Putney , ; Vickers , ), this literature has described Black sailors’ experiences as members of racially and ethnically diverse crews who likely developed a fraternal ethos that sometimes transcended racial divisions while at sea (Linebaugh and Rediker ).…”