Property and Freedom Podcast, Episode 299.

This talk is from the recently-concluded 19th annual PFS 2025 Annual Meeting (Sep. 18–23, 2025, Bodrum, Turkey).

Alessandro Fusillo (Italy): The Pirates of the Caribbean as Forebears of the Libertarians and of the American Revolution [Sebastian Wang, “Pirates, Liberty, and Revolution: Alessandro Fusillo in Bodrum,” Libertarian Alliance [UK] Blog (Sep. 19, 2025)] Shownotes and transcript below.

Other talks appear on the Property and Freedom Podcast. Other videos may also be found at the PFS 2025 Youtube Playlist.

Grok shownotes

PFS Conference Talk: “Pirates of the Caribbean – A Libertarian Perspective”

Hans Gillshin opens with humor about his non-piratical attire and thanks the audience at the Property and Freedom Society (PFS) conference. He frames the talk with St. Augustine’s famous quote (via Cicero) equating kingdoms without justice to large-scale robbery, as recounted in the story of Alexander the Great and a captured pirate.

Historical Context (17th Century)

• The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia births the modern state, ending medieval liberties.


• The Thirty Years’ War introduces mass destruction, secret services, and centralized legislation.


• England’s 1640s Civil War (often overshadowed by later revolutions) features Levellers, religious freedom advocates, and figures like John Lilburne (“Freeborn John”).


• The 1688 Glorious Revolution establishes the Bank of England—model for all future central banks—enabling unlimited war financing via fiat money.


• Enclosure Acts expropriate medieval common lands, creating a rural proletariat, urban migration, and forced impressment into the Royal Navy.


• Displaced English, Scottish, and Irish peasants become the first chattel slaves in the West Indies (7-year terms), predating African slavery.

The Golden Age of Piracy (ca. 1713–1726)

• Post-War of Spanish Succession, mutinies on brutal navy and merchant ships spawn pirate crews.


• Pirates fly the Jolly Roger; merchant crews often force captains to surrender and voluntarily join.


• Pirate justice: captains tried by crew; tyrants executed, fair ones (e.g., Captain Snellgrave) spared.


• Non-pirates set adrift with provisions; violence targeted oppressors, not random cruelty.


• Pirates attack slave ships to free captives—leading to significant Black crew members and even captains.


• British pardon laws and mock “forced enlistment” defenses briefly reduce piracy, but by 1726 most pirates are hanged.

Pirate Governance & Libertalia

• Primary source: A General History of the Pyrates (Captain Charles Johnson, likely Daniel Defoe).


• Notable pirates: Henry Every (romantic treasure legend) and Blackbeard (terror via flaming beard).


• Highlight: French pirate Olivier Misson (possibly fictional) and ex-priest Caraccioli found Libertalia in Madagascar—a libertarian anarchist society based on John Locke’s principles.


• Universal pirate practice: every ship had a signed charter—egalitarian shares (captain 1.5–2×), revocable leadership, and a quartermaster as crew tribune.


• Many crews issued formal declarations of war against all states.

Conclusion

Pirates were not mere criminals but rebels against tyranny, slavery, and state power—early fighters for individual liberty. Gillshin closes to applause, suggesting the talk may reframe popular views of piracy.

Grok/Youtube transcript

Introduction and Thanks

[0:01 ]

Hans Gillshin, as usual I will start with thanking you for the invitation here at the PFS conference. It’s a great pleasure to be here year after year and a great honor to be invited as a speaker. Hans previously drew my attention to the fact that my attire today is not in line with my topic. I should have sported at least an eye patch or a peg leg or hired a local parrot to have him on my shoulder. But okay, we will do without.

Topic Announcement: Pirates of the Caribbean

[0:37 ]

Today’s topics are the Pirates of the Caribbean and piracy in general.

St. Augustine’s Quote on Piracy and Empire

[0:45 ]

I will start with a quote from St. Augustine, a very famous quote that he got from Cicero. It’s a story of Alexander the Great’s fleet navigating through the Mediterranean. They caught a pirate ship and as he was about to execute the pirate as a criminal, the pirate said to Alexander, “What have you in mind? What do you think, trying to rob all people and to seize the other ships? This is completely illegal.” And the pirate answered, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth, but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou dost it with a great fleet, art styled an emperor.”

The legend goes—maybe it’s not so much a legend—that Alexander the Great had two possible finales for this story. The first one, the nicer one, is that Alexander the Great was so pleased by the answer that he spared the pirate’s life. The other one is that he executed him nonetheless after having a good laugh at his response. In fact, this story was reminded by the late Pope Benedict XVI to the German Parliament a few years ago because the conclusion of St. Augustine is: justice being taken away, then what are kingdoms but great robberies. And I think this is a very good conclusion, a very libertarian conclusion from one of the fathers of the church.

Shift to Classical Piracy and the Golden Age

[2:38 ]

But today we won’t speak about ancient piracy but of the, let’s say, the classical piracy—sometimes you hear about the golden age of piracy. And it is the piracy especially of the Caribbean, but not only the Caribbean: the Bahamas Islands, the Caribbean Islands and the whole East African coast, and especially the island of Madagascar, which was one of the base points of the pirates.

Historical Context: The Birth of Modern States

[3:11 ]

But before we go on to the pirates, I would like to put the story in a general context. And so we go back on land and we go back to the 17th century. The 17th century is, in my opinion, a crucial time of modern history because during the 17th century modern states were born. In fact, the birth date and birth place of the modern states is the Westphalian Treaty of 1648, which ended the Thirty Years’ War and which established a new actor in history, which is the modern state.

Modern states are what we know, and at that time they were just in their infancy, in their beginnings, but still they had already in place things which we will learn to understand during the next centuries: like legislation, like secret services—secret services began in the Thirty Years’ War—like extensive wars. I think the Thirty Years’ War was the first mass war with mass destructions and so on. And it was the end of medieval liberties.

The English Revolution and Loss of Liberties

[4:37 ]

The country where this loss of medieval liberties was felt the most is for sure Great Britain—England at that time—where in the same years started the great English Revolution of 1644. It is somehow maybe a forgotten revolution because we always speak about the three great revolutions: the American Revolution, the French Revolution and of course the Russian Revolution. But in fact, especially the American Founding Fathers in some way were the heirs to the English Revolution.

Where we have certain themes which will later on—in fact the pirates, as I will tell you, and the American Founding Fathers—I’m speaking especially about the Levellers, about the rebels, about religious freedom. And you have these mythical figures like John Lilburne, Freeborn John, and lots of rebels who for the first time asserted the same ideals of liberty which are our ideals of liberty in a way lots of time before but still this is what they were telling the world. Of course they lost to the beginning of the global financial elites which were born in England during that time.

The Glorious Revolution and the Central Bank

[6:19 ]

In the roughly 60 years after the first English Revolution you have the second revolution, the so-called Glorious Revolution. I’m not so sure about the glorious but still it brought about a new dynasty and a new ruling elite in England and it brought about something fundamental from our libertarian point of view, namely the institution of the Central Bank of England. The Central Bank of England is the model of all later cent