Libertalia: The Pirate Utopia That Never Was

What is Libertalia, and did it exist?

Libertalia — also spelled Libertatia — is a pirate colony described in Volume 2 of A General History of the Pyrates, published in 1724. According to that account it was founded in the late 17th century on Madagascar under Captain James Misson. Little to no corroborating evidence has ever been found, and the consensus of modern scholarship is that it was not a real place but a work of fiction.

What does the 1724 account actually say?

The book describes a free colony whose name comes from the Latin liberum, meaning free. Misson’s idea was a society in which people of all colours, creeds and beliefs lived free of scrutiny, and where people were given their own name rather than one inherited from a country of origin.

The settlement is said to have had an elevated fort on each side of the harbour, 40 guns in each, taken from the Portuguese, with the living quarters and the rest of the town below under their protection. It was placed roughly 13 miles east-south-east of the nearest town. The colony is described as practising direct democracy, with councils of delegates who were supposed to think of themselves as comrades of the population rather than rulers; it had a socialist economy, its own language, the motto “for God and liberty” and a white flag rather than a Jolly Roger.

Misson himself is presented as French, born in Provence. While in Rome on leave from the warship Victoire he lost his faith, disgusted by the decadence of the Papal Court, and met Caraccioli, a “lewd Priest” whose long arguments converted him and a sizeable part of the crew. The 200-strong crew called on Misson to be captain and decided “all should be in common”.

Why do scholars doubt it?

Because the paper trail is one document long. Libertalia appears only in Johnson’s General History, Volume 2. The real pirate settlements on and around Madagascar — Abraham Samuel’s at Fort Dauphin, Adam Baldridge’s at Île Sainte-Marie, James Plaintain’s at Rantabe, all ex-pirates who founded trading posts and towns — appear frequently in official accounts and letters from the period. Libertalia does not.

The journalist Kevin Rushby toured the area looking for descendants of pirate inhabitants without success, noting that others had tried and failed many times, though the Betsimisaraka have historically claimed descent from pirates. Johnson’s Libertalia has been treated as completely fictional, as apocryphal, or as a utopian commentary; the inclusion of such material has led some scholars to discount the whole General History as a reliable source, though other parts of it have been at least partly corroborated. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History calls Libertalia “fictitious”.

Where does the political reading come from?

The story has been kept alive less by historians than by people who wanted it to be true. Historian and far-left activist Marcus Rediker claims the pirates who settled in Libertalia would be “vigilant Guardians of the People’s Rights and Liberties”, standing as “Barriers against the Rich and Powerful” and waging war on behalf of “the Oppressed” against the “Oppressors”.

The anarchist writer Peter Lamborn Wilson coined the term “pirate utopias” in his 1995 book Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes, describing secret islands used for supply by pirates as early forms of autonomous proto-anarchist society. Wilson was open about the method: “We’ve certainly had to use our imagination more than a ‘real’ historian would allow, erecting a lot of suppositions on a shaky framework of generalizations, and adding a touch of fantasy.” His historical base was the Barbary Coast — Salé, Algiers, Tunis — and the Pirate Republic of Salé in 17th-century Morocco, which may have had its own lingua franca and sometimes signed treaties with European states.

David Graeber’s Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, published posthumously in 2023, takes a different route. Graeber argues that Ratsimilaho, a member of the Zana-Malata Malagasy ethnic group and a descendant of a pirate, oversaw a period of democracy and peace as a precursor to the Age of Enlightenment, contesting the usual portrayal of him as a figure who brought European-style “civilisation” to Madagascar. The book grew out of a chapter of On Kings (2017) and Graeber’s early 1990s anthropology dissertation work in Madagascar, and was finished in 2013.

How should you read it, then?

As a text, not a place. The useful question is not whether the forts existed but what the story was doing in 1724 and what people have done with it since. Read the General History passage itself — it is short — and then read Rediker, Wilson and Graeber as arguments about it rather than as evidence for it. Where a claim rests on a single 18th-century volume, say so.

It is also worth keeping the real Madagascar settlements in view. They were trading posts, not utopias, and they are documented. That contrast is more interesting than another round of will-it-won’t-it.

Where does Libertalia turn up now?

The list is long and uneven. In literature: William S. Burroughs’ Cities of the Red Night (1981) and Ghost of Chance (1991), Daniel Vaxelaire’s Les mutins de la liberté (1986), Peter Lamborn Wilson’s Pirate Utopias (1995), Kevin Rushby’s Hunting Pirate Heaven (2001), Rick Langrehr’s Libertalia: Stealing Equality (2022) and Graeber’s book. In games: Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (mentioned only), Europa Universalis IV, Fallout 4 (a floating settlement of bandits) and Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, which reassigns the founding to Henry Avery and Thomas Tew. On record: Ye Banished Privateers’ The Legend of Libertalia, Jake and the Infernal Machine’s Libertalia, Ja, Panik’s Libertatia (all 2014), Running Wild’s “Libertalia” as a bonus track on Rogues en Vogue (2005), and Arc De Soleil’s Libertalia EP (2020).

For more on the pull this material has on punk, see our piece on why punks love pirates; for the practice rather than the myth, squats, cellars and sound is the more honest place to look.

FAQ

Did Libertalia actually exist?

The consensus of modern scholarship is that it did not. Libertalia appears only in Volume 2 of A General History of the Pyrates, while the real pirate trading posts on and around Madagascar — Abraham Samuel's at Fort Dauphin, Adam Baldridge's at Île Sainte-Marie, James Plaintain's at Rantabe — show up in official accounts and letters from the period. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History describes Libertalia as fictitious.

Who was Captain Misson?

According to A General History of the Pyrates, Misson was French, born in Provence. He lost his faith while on leave in Rome, disgusted by the decadence of the Papal Court, and fell in with Caraccioli, a priest whose arguments converted him and much of the crew of the Victoire. The 200-strong crew then called on him to be their captain and agreed that all should be held in common.

What was Libertalia supposed to be like?

In the account, it was a free colony where people of all colours, creeds and beliefs lived without scrutiny, with a name taken from the Latin liberum, meaning free. It is described as practising direct democracy through councils of delegates who saw themselves as comrades rather than rulers, with a socialist economy, its own language, the motto for God and liberty and a white flag instead of a Jolly Roger.

Why does Libertalia still get talked about?

Because the idea outlived any claim to fact. Marcus Rediker has written about the radical potential of pirate communities, Peter Lamborn Wilson's 1995 Pirate Utopias framed such enclaves as proto-anarchist, and David Graeber's posthumous 2023 book Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia argues that Ratsimilaho, a descendant of a pirate, oversaw a period of democracy and peace as a precursor to the Enlightenment. The story also turns up in novels, games and albums.