Video: Marcus Rediker — History from Below after the Transnational Turn: The Case of a Forgotten 18th-century Revolutionary

Last October, Marcus Rediker gave a talk at SOAS, as part of the Development Studies Seminar Series. Titled "History from Below after the Transnational Turn: The Case of a Forgotten 18th-century Revolutionary," Rediker's lecture narrates the life of Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay (subject of Rediker's The Fearless Benjamin Lay The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist) and explicates the methods and results of "history from below." 

Watch a full video of Rediker's presentation below.

The Fearless Benjamin Lay

by Marcus Rediker

The Fearless Benjamin Lay chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular and astonishing man-a Quaker dwarf who became one of the first ever to demand the total, unconditional emancipati...

Villains of All Nations

by Marcus Rediker

Pirates have long been stock figures in popular culture, from Treasure Island to the more recent antics of Jack Sparrow. Villains of all Nations unearths the thrilling historical truth behind such ...

The Many-Headed Hydra

by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker

Long before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motely crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, labourers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and...

The Amistad Rebellion

by Marcus Rediker

On 28 June 1839, the Spanish slave schooner La Amistad set sail from Havana to make a routine delivery of human cargo. After four days at sea, on a moonless night, the captive Africans that compr...

Outlaws of the Atlantic

by Marcus Rediker

Outlaws of the Atlantic turns maritime history upside down, exploring the dramatic world of seafaring adventure, not from the perspective of admirals, merchants and other builders of empire, but ra...

Albion's Fatal Tree

by Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh, John G. Rule, E. P. Thompson and Cal Winslow

In the popular imagination, informed as it is by Hogarth, Swift, Defoe and Fielding, the eighteenth-century underworld is a place of bawdy knockabout, rife with colourful eccentrics. But the artist...

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