Marcus Rediker

Marcus Buford Rediker (born October 14, 1951) is an American historian, writer, professor, and social activist. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1976 and attended the University of Pennsylvania for graduate study, earning a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in history. He taught at Georgetown University from 1982 to 1994 and is currently a distinguished professor of Atlantic history of the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh.

Rediker is best known for his books on piracy and the Middle Passage that follow a people's history narrative. On occasion, Rediker has collaborated with contemporaries such as Peter Linebaugh and Paul Buhle. Rediker has also worked on the production of a one-man show based on Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay with playwright Naomi Wallace as well as a documentary on La Amistad with filmmaker Tony Buba.

Politically, Rediker has described himself as far-left, but he does not align with any political party. He is the first of two children, preceding his brother Shayne. Rediker's family came from a working class background, and they later moved to Nashville, Tennessee and Richmond, Virginia.

A first-generation college student, Rediker began attending Vanderbilt University in 1969 before dropping out in 1971. Commenting on his time at Vanderbilt, Rediker recalled that he felt out of place due to the university's connections with the Southern elite. Initially attending on a basketball scholarship, Rediker credited campus protests against the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and the black power movement with influencing both his interest in history and his political beliefs. In Richmond, Rediker worked in a DuPont textile factory for three years making cellophane. Rediker's experiences with his co-workers fueled his passion for social history. Rediker published his dissertation, Society and Culture Among Anglo-American Deep Sea Sailors, 1700-1750, in 1982.

Throughout his career, Rediker has written several books on Atlantic social, labor, and maritime history.

Tate Britain Rediker's resignation from Tate Britain centered around J.M.W. Turner's unfinished 1835 painting A Disaster at Sea.

After serving five years as guest curator of the Tate Britain art museum in the J.M.W. Turner Gallery, Rediker resigned in June 2023 after his request to display a punishment box in front of Turner's 1835 painting, A Disaster at Sea, was denied by the museum. The painting, which was never finished, is theorized to have been based on the 1833 loss of Amphitrite, a British merchant and convict ship. On her final voyage, Amphitrite carried 108 female convicts and 12 children, all of whom perished. According to Rediker, the box was meant as a tribute to the ship's victims.

Other work In May 2013, Rediker and filmmaker Tony Buba traveled to the home villages of slaves that revolted on the Spanish vessel La Amistad in July 1839. During their trip to southern Sierra Leone, Rediker and Buba conducted interviews with village elders and searched for the ruins of the Lomboko slave factory. A documentary chronicling the journey, Ghosts of Amistad: In the Footsteps of Rebels premiered in November 2014 at the Three Rivers Film Festival in Pittsburgh. The film has been screened at multiple film festivals and universities across the world and aired on PBS since its release.

Rediker wrote a book and a play on Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay (pictured). Rediker called Lay “the most fascinating historical person that most people have never heard of,”.

In 2017, Rediker and playwright Naomi Wallace started production on a play based on Benjamin Lay, a Quaker abolitionist. The play received positive reviews from critics such as Michael Billington, who praised Povinelli's performance. The show played until July 8, 2023. In April 2023, Rediker announced he would again collaborate with Tony Buba on a film chronicling the making of the play. Rediker is on the board of the Pittsburgh theater company Quantum Theatre.

Scholarship Informed by Marxian economics, Rediker's works explore their respective subjects in systemic terms while emphasizing human class-consciousness and agency. Historical narratives that emphasize the plights of the poor and oppressed are known as a people's history or "history from below".

Rediker has contended that few historians have used this narrative outside of American history, and that the struggle of the oppressed has had a largely unspoken yet considerable impact on world history. Viewing the pirates as a "motley crew", Rediker highlights the multiculturalism and alliances between pirate crews. This approach puts perspective on the egalitarianism of some pirate crews. In Villains of All Nations, Rediker wrote that by mutinying or capturing a ship, pirates were seizing the means of maritime production from merchant capitalists and declaring their ships to be under common ownership.

According to Rediker, pirates were not just targeted by the authorities because of their illegal activities, but also for liberating and radicalizing laborers. In that same introduction, Rediker summarizes that the link between slave ships and social relations shaped the modern world despite their obscure histories.

In describing what he wanted to accomplish in his book, The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom, Rediker commented that he wanted to call attention to how the slave trade contributed to the rise of capitalism. Rediker mentioned that the role slave ships had in forming the concept of race was critical to the book, going on to say that the concept of race was created aboard the slave ships when multi-ethnic Africans were labelled as negroes and subjected to violence and terror. Many of the sources in Rediker's book on La Amistad come from journalists and visitors who interviewed the defendants during their 27 months in Connecticut. Rediker ends the introduction by expressing how the events surrounding La Amistad can be seen through the lens of a people's history, arguing that it puts the rebels "back at the center of their own story and the larger history they helped to make."

Many-Headed Hydra A statue of Hercules fighting the Lernaean Hydra. Rediker has used this imagery as symbolism for class struggle.

The Lernaean Hydra, a serpentine water monster in Greek mythology and Roman mythology, is used as a metaphor for commoners and persecuted groups throughout many of Rediker's works. Hercules, the slayer of the many-headed beast, represents the Atlantic capitalists. Hercules' battle against the Hydra is thus symbolic of "the difficulty of imposing order on increasingly global systems of labor." Rediker and Linebaugh label oppressed groups such as felons, indentured servants, African slaves, pirates, and religious radicals as some of the many heads of the Hydra. Though this symbolism indicates cooperation between these various groups, Rediker has also made clear that it can depict the chaos of a disorganized and conflicted Atlantic proletariat.

Terracentrism Rediker coined the term "terracentrism" to describe the tendency of historians to solely concentrate on history that occurs on dry land. In an interview published in Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Rediker described slavery as an "African holocaust" and likened slave ships to concentration camps. He has two children.

From 1984 to 1985, Rediker resided in Moscow. Brandin Knight, the associate head coach for the Rutgers Scarlet Knights and a University of Pittsburgh alumnus, has cited Rediker as an influence in obtaining his degree in history.

Awards Rediker has earned a number of awards for his works. He was given the Organization of American Historians' Merle Curti Award in 1988 and 2008. In 2008, Rediker was awarded the George Washington Book Prize, one of the largest book awards in the United States. In 1988, Rediker received the John Hope Franklin Publication Prize from the American Studies Association. The Organization of American Historians designated Rediker as a distinguished lecturer from 2002 to 2008.

Works

Books TitleCollaborated withYearAwardsBetween the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–17501987Merle Curti Award - 1988 Clare Anderson

Film Year Title Director Writer Producer Awards Source 2014Ghosts of Amistad: In the Footsteps of Rebels John E. O'Connor Film Prize Best Historical Documentary - 2015 TBABecoming Benjamin Lay

Theatre Year Title Director Writer Producer Actor Notes Source 2023Return of Benjamin Lay co-written with Naomi Wallace