The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic
by Peter Linebaugh and Markus Rediker
(Beacon Press) $18

The history of the movement against neoliberal globalization did not start in 1999 in Seattle. It did not even start on January 1, 1994, that legendary day when "subcommandante insurgente" Marcos led an army of Zapatista indios down the slopes of Chiapas' mountains into battle against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). No, the war on neoliberal globalization began much earlier--on the afternoon of July 25, 1609, on an English ship.

Such is the thesis of Peter Linebaugh and Markus Rediker, probably two of the most daring American historians writing today. Their new book chronicles the history of the first two centuries in the history of what they call "the Atlantic working class," from the birth of capitalism in the early 17th century to the aftermath of the American and French revolutions in the early 18th and 19th centuries. That is the "many-headed hydra" they invoke: a planetary monster with innumerable heads in all parts of the world, linked together by a diaphanous, almost intangible trunk.

According to Linebaugh and Rediker, the revolt against capitalist globalization begins not simply as a struggle against property-title-clutching aristocrats, who in early modern times were trying to privatize lands held in common by English peasants. With a far more cosmopolitan vision than even Karl Marx, they argue that this revolt was also immediately global in scope, the product of transatlantic coalitions between European commoners, African slaves, and Native American societies.

The different constituencies were often brought together and kept in contact with each other by ethnically heterogenous crews of sailors, who glided from one end of the world to the other on ships that recalled a prison chain gang rather than merry shipmates. Those sailors frequently mutinied, threw their officers overboard, or worse, and joyfully converted to the faith of the pirate: Eat well, drink well, and above all, make decisions on every aspect of life "in common" or, as we would say today, democratically.

You'll have to read the book to find out what happened on that famous afternoon in July, 1609. Suffice it to say that neither then nor afterward did things always go smoothly for this "many-headed hydra" of a revolt. Indeed, the name itself was bestowed upon this multi-ethnic assemblage of peoples by elite intellectuals such as Francis Bacon and Walter Raleigh, who eagerly counseled their lords to decapitate the hydra whenever it reared one of its ugly heads. Apparently, then as now, these intellectuals were unaware of the mythical hydra's magical property: If ever one of its heads is cut off, it regenerates itself almost immediately.

Today, the hydra is again under attack. The Republicans in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and in the various right-wing think tanks are out to get the democratic hydra. Taking advantage of the recent terrorist attacks--acts which speak as much of the twistedness of its perpetrators as they do of the desperation of hundreds of millions of dispossessed peoples around the world--these stone-hearted crocodiles are using the shock and grief of many of us here in the States to put forward an agenda that surpasses in folly even the most obnoxious fantasies of Dr. Strangelove. In less than a month, conservatives have managed to take back the lead in defining the issues on the public agenda. From talking about the sweatshops, unemployment, and the consequences of a recession for working people, we have all been brought into dismal speculations on the possibility of World War III, how many of our civil liberties we'd have to give up for "security" at home, and the effects of the recession on the wealthy.

But neither a war abroad nor more police at home is going to make the problem go away: Global environmental degradation and poverty are not made better by uranium-depleted bullets or more phone taps.

So has the anti-capitalist hydra been decapitated in one fell swoop? No, for as Linebaugh and Rediker put it: "The globalizing powers have a long reach and endless patience. Yet the planetary wanderers do not forget, and they are ever ready from Africa to the Caribbean to Seattle to resist slavery and restore the commons."