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A General History of the Pyrates (1724)

The collection of chapter-length pirate lives published in London in 1724 under the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson and printed for the bookseller Charles Rivington, enlarged in further editions and joined by a companion second volume of 1728 associated with T. Woodward, which is the fullest and most influential early narrative source on Atlantic and Indian Ocean piracy.

From1724Also writtenA General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates; A History of the Pyrates; Johnson's General History; Captain Charles Johnson, General History of the Pyrates; The General History of the Pyrates (1724-1728)

A General History of the Pyrates is a printed book: a collection of chapter-length lives of the pirates of the early eighteenth century, published in London in 1724 under the name Captain Charles Johnson. Its full title is A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, and also Their Policies, Discipline and Government, and the first volume was printed for the bookseller Charles Rivington. It is the fullest and most influential single narrative source on piracy in this period, framed as sober history and furnished with speeches, articles and lists that give it a documentary air.1

The printing history

The book sold well, and further editions followed quickly, described on their title pages as corrected and enlarged, with an enlarged edition in print by about 1726. A companion second volume appeared in 1728, associated with the bookseller and printer T. Woodward, extending the coverage to further pirates and to the Indian Ocean and the Madagascar settlements. The two volumes were afterwards sold and bound together, and the work is often cited simply as A History of the Pyrates in two volumes.2

The name on the title page

Nobody knows who wrote it. Captain Charles Johnson is a pseudonym. This Archive names no author for the work, and uses "Johnson" only as a convenience of reference.3

For much of the twentieth century the book was given to Daniel Defoe. The attribution was pressed most forcefully by the American scholar John Robert Moore from the 1930s onward and was widely adopted, which is why many mid-century reprints carry Defoe's name on the title page. P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens dismantled it in The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe (Yale University Press, 1988), showing that Moore's method was unsound and that no positive evidence connects Defoe to the book.4

Other candidates have been proposed, the usual suggestion being the journalist and printer Nathaniel Mist, whose press had links to the trade in which the book circulated. That is a hypothesis rather than a demonstrated attribution, and it is carried here as one.

What the volumes contain

The arrangement is a sequence of pirate biographies, each roughly a chapter, prefaced by general matter on the rise of piracy, with an abstract of the statute and civil law relating to piracy appended to the first volume. That volume opens with Captain Avery, meaning Henry Every, and runs on through Martel, Teach, Bonnet, England, Vane, Rackham, Davis, Roberts, Anstis, Worley, Lowther, Low, Evans, Phillips and Spriggs, and it holds the joint life of the two women. The 1728 volume adds Misson, Bowen, Kidd, Tew, Halsey, White, Condent, Bellamy, Fly, Howard, Lewis and Cornelius. Interspersed through both are documents or apparent documents: sets of ships' articles, marooning and disciplinary customs, speeches at execution, and lists of crews and of ships taken.5

Libertalia and Captain Misson

The second volume presents the pirate utopia of Libertalia and its founder Captain Misson as history.6

What it carries for this Archive

It is the principal early source for three of the figures held here. It gives the fullest early portrait of Edward Thache, called Blackbeard, including his appearance and his death at Ocracoke in 1718. It provides the standard early account of Bartholomew Roberts and of his death off West Africa in 1722. And it is what made Anne Bonny and Mary Read famous; for those two the Jamaica trial print of 1721 corroborates their existence and conviction, and most of the surrounding narrative is Johnson's alone.7

It also documents Every and the Ganj-i-Sawai affair, Stede Bonnet, Charles Vane, Howell Davis, Edward England and Edward Low, and it preserves the shipboard institutions that most interest this Archive: the written articles, the elected captain and quartermaster, the votes of the company and the marooning penalty. Its ships enter the record largely through its pages, Queen Anne's Revenge and the Royal Fortune among them.

The rule this Archive applies

Any detail resting on Johnson alone is probable at best, and possible where it is colourful, self-contained or otherwise uncorroborated. The book cannot be assumed accurate on dates, dialogue, numbers or named prizes even in its better-documented chapters. Where a statement can be verified against a trial record, a state paper, a newspaper or an Admiralty file, that record is cited as the authority for it. The Libertalia and Misson material is labelled invention wherever it appears.8

Modern scholarship follows the same method. Marcus Rediker has mined the book for the social world of the pirate ship while treating its anecdotes critically, and writers including Colin Woodard and David Cordingly have used it for narrative while flagging its fictions.

Editions and access

Copies of the early editions survive in research libraries and rare-book collections and pass through the antiquarian trade; the British Library and North American libraries including the Massachusetts Historical Society hold copies or related material. Shelfmarks are copy-specific and are taken from the holding library's own catalogue rather than assumed here. Full scans of early editions sit on the Internet Archive under the item identifier generalhistoryof00john and on the Biodiversity Heritage Library, with catalogue records at HathiTrust, record 102498705. A widely used modern scholarly edition is the one edited by Manuel Schonhorn, first published in 1972; many twentieth-century reprints wrongly carry Defoe's name as author, and it should be cited with that caution.

What the sources cannot yet give is the book's own paperwork. The identity behind Captain Charles Johnson is unknown, and settling it would need external evidence such as trade records or a contemporary attribution rather than the internal stylistic argument that has already proved unreliable. The sequence and imprints of the editions between 1724 and 1728 want confirmation copy by copy against library catalogues. And the boundary between documentary and invented content is not mapped for every life, so each chapter has to be tested against the trials, the state papers and the newspapers before its details are relied on.

What the evidence does not settle

Authorship of Captain Charles Johnson

  • The identity behind the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson is unknownUnverified
  • The Daniel Defoe attribution has been discredited by later scholarshipVery likely

Editions between 1724 and 1728

  • The sequence and dating of the 1724 to 1728 editions is unsettledUnverified

Documentary versus invented content

  • How much of each pirate life is invented is not fully mappedLikely

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. A General History of the Pyrates is a collection of chapter-length lives of early eighteenth-century pirates published in London in 1724 under the name Captain Charles Johnson, its full title reading A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, and also Their Policies, Discipline and Government, the first volume printed for the bookseller Charles Rivington; it is the fullest and most influential single narrative source on Atlantic and Indian Ocean piracy of the period, framed as sober history and furnished with speeches, articles, letters and lists that lend it a documentary air. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Period narrative: "A general history of the pyrates, from their first rise and settlement in the Island of Providence, to the present time" (London, 1724 and later editions), early edition scan, Internet Archive item generalhistoryof00john, archive.org/details/generalhistoryof00john, for the title, the pseudonymous title-page attribution and the character of the work (Confirmed); Bonhams sale catalogue entry, Johnson, A General History (Rivington / Woodward, 1724-28), lot 1186, auction 19421, for the Rivington imprint of the first volume (Confirmed)
  2. The book sold well and further editions followed quickly, described on their title pages as corrected and enlarged, with an enlarged edition in print by about 1726; a companion second volume appeared in 1728, associated with the bookseller and printer T. Woodward, extending the coverage to further pirates and to the Indian Ocean and the Madagascar settlements, after which the two volumes were sold and bound together and the work was commonly cited as A History of the Pyrates in two volumes. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Auction bibliography and library catalogue records: Bonhams sale catalogue entry, Johnson, A General History (Rivington / Woodward, 1724 to 1728), lot 1186, auction 19421, bonhams.com/auction/19421/lot/1186/, for the publishers and the two-volume 1724 to 1728 structure (Probable); HathiTrust catalogue records for A general history of the pyrates, record 102498705, catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102498705, for the editions and imprints, including the enlarged edition in print by about 1726 and the subsequent circulation of the work as a two-volume set (Probable). The exact sequence and imprints of the intermediate editions are reported inconsistently and are carried no higher
  3. The author of the work is unknown: "Captain Charles Johnson" is a pseudonym. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Modern scholarship: P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, "The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), ISBN 0300041195, Internet Archive item canonisationofda0000furb, for the demonstration that the authorship is not established (Confirmed)
  4. The attribution of the work to Daniel Defoe, advanced most forcefully by the American scholar John Robert Moore from the 1930s onward and widely adopted so that many mid-century reprints carry Defoe's name on the title page, was decisively challenged by P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens in The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe (Yale University Press, 1988), who showed that Moore's method of attribution was unsound and that there is no positive evidence connecting Defoe to the book; it should not be repeated as fact. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Modern scholarship: P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, "The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), ISBN 0300041195, Internet Archive item canonisationofda0000furb, archive.org/details/canonisationofda0000furb, for the dismantling of Moore's method and the absence of positive evidence for Defoe (Confirmed)
  5. The work is arranged as a sequence of pirate biographies, each roughly a chapter, prefaced by general matter on the rise of piracy and, in the first volume, followed by an appended abstract of the statute and civil law relating to piracy; the first volume opens with Captain Avery, meaning Henry Every, and proceeds through Martel, Teach, Bonnet, England, Vane, Rackham, Davis, Roberts, Anstis, Worley, Lowther, Low, Evans, Phillips and Spriggs and contains the joint life of Mary Read and Anne Bonny, while the 1728 volume adds Misson, Bowen, Kidd, Tew, Halsey, White, Condent, Bellamy, Fly, Howard, Lewis and Cornelius; interspersed through both are documents or apparent documents, among them sets of ships' articles, marooning and disciplinary customs, speeches at execution, and lists of crews and of ships taken. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Period narrative: "A general history of the pyrates" (London, 1724 and later editions), early edition scan, Internet Archive item generalhistoryof00john, for the chapter arrangement, the named lives, the appended abstract of the statute and civil law, and the embedded articles, customs, speeches and lists (Confirmed); HathiTrust catalogue records for A general history of the pyrates, record 102498705, catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102498705, for the 1728 second volume and the lives it adds (Confirmed)
  6. The work presents the pirate utopia of Libertalia and its founder Captain Misson in the second volume as history. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Period narrative: "A general history of the pyrates" (London, 1724 and later editions), early edition scan, Internet Archive item generalhistoryof00john, for the Libertalia and Misson material as printed in the second volume (Confirmed)
  7. The work is the principal early source for Edward Teach, called Blackbeard, for Bartholomew Roberts, and for Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Period narrative and trial pamphlet: "A general history of the pyrates" (London, 1724 and later editions), early edition scan, Internet Archive item generalhistoryof00john, archive.org/details/generalhistoryof00john, for the lives of Teach, Roberts, Bonny and Read as printed (Confirmed); "The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and other Pirates" (Jamaica: printed by Robert Baldwin, 1721), National Library of Jamaica copy, further copy at The National Archives, Kew, CO 137/14/1, for the independent record of Bonny and Read against which the work's primacy as a narrative source is measured (Confirmed). The portrait of Teach and the account of Roberts and his death are Probable, and the surrounding Bonny and Read narrative Disputed; neither is included in this claim
  8. The controlling caution for the Archive is that any detail resting on this work alone is treated as Probable at best, and as Possible where it is colourful, self-contained or otherwise uncorroborated, that the work cannot be assumed accurate on dates, dialogue, numbers or named prizes even in its better-documented chapters, and that a claim should wherever possible be verified against an independent record, a trial print, a state paper, a newspaper or an Admiralty file, before it is stated as fact. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Modern scholarship: P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens, "The Canonisation of Daniel Defoe" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), ISBN 0300041195, Internet Archive item canonisationofda0000furb, for the unreliability of internal argument and the need for external corroboration (Confirmed)