摘要：In 1827 there was a bloody mutiny aboard the slave ship Defensor de Pedro sailing from
Africa to Brazil. The mutiny was successful and the leader of the revolt, a Galician sailor
turned pirate named Benito de Soto, reportedly renamed the ship “The Black Joke” (La Burla
Negra) and, after selling its human cargo in the West Indies, proceeded to terrorize
commercial shipping in the South Atlantic.[1] I mention this incident here both because it
encapsulates the violent logic of an Atlantic world forged by the slave trade and because the
chosen name for De Soto’s ship, The Black Joke, is in many ways emblematic of the
combination of dark humor and spirited anti-authoritarianism found in pirate communities
and in the maritime proletariat at large in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Although this piratical sense of humor is frequently celebrated and is probably at least
partially responsible for the continued fascination with pirates in Hollywood and popular
fiction, it does not often receive the type of serious critical attention it deserves.
