Hydrarchy, is the organizational structure of a ship, or the ability for individual(s) to gain power over land by ruling through the instrument of water, as defined by English poet Richard Braithwaite (1588–1673), who coined the term.The term is most commonly used to describe a maritime society or maritime history in the Atlantic world, concerning political, economic, and social tensions on the docks and ports and out at sea, between the mid sixteenth-century extending to the nineteenth. The term also attests to the resistant and rebellious sailors, slaves and other oppressed individuals who acted out against the "land" powers of the central imperial government, like England between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Origins The term's origins are found in its two syllables: Latin (archia) or the Greek ἄρχειν (archein) meaning “the rule of" and the Ancient Greek ῠ̔́δρη (húdrē) Ionic or hīdrə (hudra) meaning "water snake," as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary.
Hydra, also applies the Greek mythological sea monster representation. The Lernaean Hydra, is the "gigantic water-snake-like monster with nine heads (the number varies), one of which was immortal...Anyone who attempted to behead the Hydra found that as soon as one head was cut off, two more heads would emerge from the fresh wound," as defined by Encyclopædia Britannica.
The story of Greek hero, Hercules, includes the slaying of the Lernaean Hydra as his second labor. The hydra would arise from the depths of the sea and terrorize the land of Lerna. The immortality of the Lernaean made this feat nearly impossible, except Hercules and his nephew Iolaus defeated the monster by lighting each headless neck—that Hercules decapitated—afire to prevent the regrowth of numerous ones.
Scholars Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker's expand upon Braithwaite's concept of hydrarchy in their text, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. The many-headed hydra stands as a symbolic representation of the multi-ethnic band of rebellious and resistant sailors seen as an imposing threat to the imperial powers who sought to exterminate them—dismember the many 'heads' of the hydra.
Encyclopædia Britannica also provides a modern application of the term, "In modern English, hydra or hydra-headed can describe a difficult or multifarious situation."
The contemporary recognition of the "terraqueous globe" has created a wave of research regarding many modern literary scholars overlook of the unique quality concerning the maritime society or the complexity of the hydrarchy, "Twentieth-century literary scholars suffered from hydrophobia (Origin: Late Latin, from Greek, from hydr- + -phobia; "morbid fear of water"): they too readily mapped the land onto the sea, imagining the ocean as a metaphor for landward practices." "The sea is an insurgent space: it violates and defies representational schemas through its liquidity, atemporality, and sheer uncontainability. The sea, according to Iain Chambers, evokes ‘‘the laboratory of another modernity, in which the hegemonic time and space of capital are viewed askance, diverted, and subverted."
Historical context
Earliest unique maritime society
In the thirteenth century of Northern Europe, earlier representations of the term can be traced to conflict concerning the North and Baltic Seas. Specifically in the power structure implemented by the leader of privateers, Klaus Stortebeker. He led a fleet of pirates called the Victual Brothers. "Victual" (Origin: Latin vivo, means 'life')a band of brothers who perhaps sustained one another in their unity. They became involved in the Hanseatic League, an alliance of cities along Germany's northern coast—what made this alliance unique was their commercial alliance.
The Hanseatic League had their own military unit and their own ships. They were able to negotiate with sovereign kings that were treated as their equals. The Hansa could be considered one of the first practitioners of hydrarchy, which appeared and became widely used in 1630.The early seventeenth century marked a surge of expansion in regards to colonization and trade—especially across the Atlantic Ocean. The journey across the Atlantic consisted of and served a variety of purposes: a trade route for maritime privateers serving their nation state as well as a forced route of slave transportation. The journey also created a growing political and economic interest in the sea
Contemporary scholarship and analysis In 2000, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker explored the revolutionary term in their text. David Armitage reviewed Linebaugh and Rediker's text in 2001, and identified the existence of two forms of hydrarchy that were interrelated and equally-influential developments that occurred between the 1670s and the 1730s. perhaps due to the interdependent nature. Armitage points out Linebaugh and Rediker's identification of, “the organization of the maritime state from above, and the self-organization of sailors from below.”
The self-organization of sailors from below.” developed into an understanding and adherence to the pirate code or the distribution of justice. Although there was no exact uniform list of expectations as to how each individual ship would be managed, the characteristics of distributive justice enabled "the fair allocation of resources among diverse members of a community. Fair allocation typically takes into account the total amount of goods to be distributed, the distributing procedure, and the pattern of distribution that results."
This unique society, or "insurgent hydrarchy from below" consisted of castaways and slaves—a motley crew of sailors. Richard Braithwaite defined the seventeenth-century mariners of 1631 as, “necessary instruments are they, and agents of main importance in that Hydrarchy wherein they live; for the walls of the state could not subsist without them.”
The rapid development and rise of hydrarchy took place between 1670 and 1730 as a direct challenge to the development of capitalism and international trade led by Western powers in Europe—notably England.This self-organization was a radical form of political order that also had the tendency to manifest in other forms exhibiting violence and piracy, "The ship thus became both an engine of capitalism in the wake of the bourgeois revolution in England and a setting of resistance, a place to which and in which the ideas and practices of revolutionaries defeated and repressed by Cromwell then by King Charles escaped, re-formed, circulated, and persisted."
Below-deck
The individuals that made up this "below-deck" society consisted of sailors, slaves, and other considered outcasts of society. The term "motley" attempted to categorize this multi-racial population as the anarchic rebels. Linebaugh and Redikier, identified such individuals within the historical context of Marxism: "Thus falling within the statutory meaning of 'sturdy rogue and beggar' were all those outside of organized wage labor, as well as those whose activities comprised the culture, tradition, and autonomous self-understanding of this volatile, questioning, and unsteady proletariat. Marx and Engels called the expropriated a motley crowd."
The marginalized population protested against low wages, mistreatment, poor ship quality, and oppression. English authorities regarded the rebels as outcasts of all nations: convicts, escaped slaves, debtors, indentured servants, prostitutes, and others on the margins of society.
Men were often assigned to ships, by force, as punishment for petty crimes as well as unpaid debts, they became subject to spending most of their lives on the water in the labors of desperate indentured servitude.
The exhibition of a version of a centralized authoritarian master was found in the ship's master, these would normally be the merchant captains of commerce who considered themselves as the authoritarian figure or absolute master, in which they considered their ability to enact harsh punishments of flogging and even execution as they wished or deemed necessary to display their power over their maritime society.
This space was a product of a maritime radical tradition “that also made it a zone of freedom.” The space 'below-deck” consisted of a gathering of multiple individuals from a variety of backgrounds, criminal status, and such that other upper-class individuals like Braithwaite might have condescended as savage-like and of low intelligence.
They are described to discover a haven in the lower decks of the ships where the motley-crew would gather and trade their own stories, perhaps a variation of Mary Louise Pratt's coined term, "contact-zone" the blending of culture, language, and mannerisms are said to have developed in this space of the ship. A culture and language unique to the multi-ethnic and multi-racial individuals united through the same marginalized positions during the seventeenth century: "As the strong hands of Braithwaite’s sailors made the Atlantic a zone for the accumulation of capital, they began to join with others in faithfulness, or solidarity, producing a maritime radical tradition that also made it a zone of freedom."
The motley crew developed its own language within its diverse and ever-expanding population, "It spoke its own speech, with a distinctive pronunciation, lexicon, and grammar made up of slang, cant, jargon, and pidgin—talk from work, the street, the prison, the gang, and the dock."
Richard Braithwaite uses the term when describing his late son who died at the hands of Algerian Pirates during the seventeenth century:He was never acquainted with much civility; the sea hath taught him other rhetoric. . . . He cannot speak low, the sea talks so loud. His advice is seldom taken in naval affairs; though his hand is strong, his headpeace is stupid. . . . Stars cannot bemore faithful in their society than these Hans-kins in their fraternity. They will have it valiantly when they are ranked together, and relate their adventures with wonderful terror. Necessary instruments are they, and agents of main importance in that Hydrarchy wherein they live; for the walls of the State could not subsist without them; but least useful they are to themselves, and most needful for others supportance.Marcus Rediker defines the community of diversity as "the multi-ethnic freebooters" which by "1716-1726 numbered around four thousand over the decade. They wreaked havoc in the Atlantic system" as the acts of trade disruption affected "various strategic zones of capital accumulation--the West Indies, North America, and West Africa."
Black Atlantic history Modern literary scholars have also raised the issue of the necessary inclusion of the development of black culture among the forces of cultural nationalism concerning the history of the Atlantic world. The modernity of trade also contributed to the shaping of the Black Atlantic world during the same identified transformation period of the industrial revolution. It has been estimated that approximately twelve million Africans crossed the Atlantic Ocean between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Converting to piracy
Many sailors who entered into hydrarchy, led by commercial and military power by sea, contributed to the development of the pirate code, or the development of pirate society. Linebaugh and Rediker noted that by the 18th century, many slave ships were captured and converted to pirate duties.