Of Captain Mission
Defoe, Daniel, 1661-1731
English
We will print you a perfectly bound paperback of your selected title and send it to you at your nominated address
Below is a summary of Of Captain Mission
Ted Garvin and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
DANIEL DEFOE
OF CAPTAIN MISSON
GENERAL EDITORS
Richard C. Boys, _University of Michigan_ Ralph Cohen, _University of
California, Los Angeles_ Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California,
Los Angeles_ Lawrence Clark Powell, _Clark Memorial Library_
ASSISTANT EDITOR
W. Earl Britton, _University of Michigan_
ADVISORY EDITORS
Emmett L. Avery, _State College of Washington_ Benjamin Boyce, _Duke
University_ Louis Bredvold, _University of Michigan_ John Butt,
_University of Edinburgh_ James L. Clifford, _Columbia University_
Arthur Friedman, _University of Chicago_ Louis A. Landa, _Princeton
University_ Samuel H. Monk, _University of Minnesota_ Ernest C. Mossner,
_University of Texas_ James Sutherland, _University College, London_
H.T. Swedenberg, Jr., _University of California, Los Angeles_
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
Edna C. Davis, _Clark Memorial Library_
INTRODUCTION
Defoe has been recognized as the author of _A General History of the
Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates_ since 1932 when
John Robert Moore suggested that the supposed author, Captain Charles
Johnson, like Andrew Moreton, Kara Selym or Captain Roberts, was merely
another mask for the creator of _Robinson Crusoe_. Although most of the
first volume is of minor literary importance, the second section which
appeared in 1728 as _The History of the Pyrates_ commenced with a life
"Of Captain Misson and His Crew," one of Defoe's most remarkable and
neglected works of fiction. In much the same manner and at the same time
that John Gay was satirizing Walpole's government in _The Beggar's
Opera_, Defoe began to use his pirates as a commentary on the injustice
and hypocrisy of contemporary English society. Among Defoe's gallery of
pirates are Captain White, who refused to rob from women and children;
Captain Bellamy, the proletarian revolutionist; and captain North, whose
sense of justice and honesty was a rebuke to the corruption of
government under Walpole. But the fictional Captain Misson, the founder
of a communist utopia, is by far the most original of these creations.
If we were to accept the view of nineteenth-century critics, that Defoe
was one of the earliest exponents of _laissez faire_, his creation of a
communist utopia would seem remarkable indeed. But paradoxes fascinated
Defoe, and his ideas can seldom be reduced to unambiguous platitudes. He
was especially fascinated by the comparison between businessmen and
thieves. In 1707 he urged the government to pardon the Madagascar
pirates if they agreed to stop their crimes, pay a large sum of money
and "become honest Freeholders, as others of our _West-India_ Pyrates,
_Merchants I should have said_, have done before them." And he noted
that "it would make a sad Chasm on the _Exchange of London_, if all the
Pyrates should be taken away from the Merchants there."[1] Twelve years
later just before the start of the South Sea Bubble, Defoe attacked
stock-jobbing as "a Branch of Highway Robbing."[2]
Although these attacks were directed mainly at "trade thieves" and
corruptions in business practices, they reflect Defoe's growing concern
with problems of poverty and wealth in England. In his preface to the
first volume of the _General History of the Pyrates_, Defoe argued that
the unemployed seaman had no choice but to "_steal or starve_." When the
pirate, Captain Bellamy, boards a merchant ship from Boston, he attacks
the inequality of capitalist society, the ship owners, and most of all,
the Captain:
_damn ye, you are a sneaking Puppy, and so are all those who will submit
to be governed by Laws which rich Men have made for their own Security,
for the cowardly Whelps have not the Courage otherwise to defend what
they get by their Knavery; but damn ye altogether: Damn them for a Pack
of crafty Rascals, and you, who serve them, for a Parcel of hen-hearted
Numskuls. They villify us, the Scoundrels do, when there is only this
Difference, they rob the Poor under the Cover of Law, forsooth, and we
plunder the Rich under the Protection of our own Courage._[3]
Bellamy asks the crew of the captured ship to abandon the slavery of
working for low wages under severe captains for the complete economic
and political equality of life on a pirate ship.
Government on Captain Misson's ship, the _Victoire_, and in the colony
Back