Chance and the Pirate!

 Johnson, Steven.  Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First 

          Global Manhunt.  New York: Riverhead Books, 2020.  ISBN: 9780735211605

Pirates!  Who does not like to read about pirates?  Tales of swashbuckling adventures, cutlasses gleaming, and treasure to be plundered!  In Enemy of All Mankind, Steven Johnson provides a look at Henry Every, one of the most successful pirates ever, who manages to loot a great treasure and escape into obscurity, never to be caught!

Enemy of All Mankind opens with the crime.  Three small English ships under the command of Henry Every come upon a Mughal treasure ship in the Indian Ocean.  Against all odds, the English succeed in taking and plundering the Mughal vessel. Little is known for sure about Henry Every, so Steven Johnson uses all the craft of a writer to bring him to life while providing context for his life, his crime, and the impact this crime had on the world.  Johnson breaks the story into five parts - The Expedition, The Mutiny, The Heist, The Chase, and The Trial.  "The Expedition" sets the scene with background on Henry Every, terrorism, piracy, the Mughals, the East India Company, and the Spanish Expedition Shipping enterprise which hired Henry Every.  "The Mutiny" covers the mutiny Henry Every lead that provided him a ship The Fancy along with a look at the pirate haven of Madagascar and their future opponent the Ganj-i-Sawai.  "The Heist" walks the reader through the details of the fight to take the Ganj-i-Sawai, the conflicting narratives of what happened after the English victory and the consequences of this act on the fortunes of the East India Company in India and Great Britain.  "The Chase" details The Fancy's travels from the Indian Ocean around Cape Horn and into the Caribbean where the pirate crew split up with some staying, some going on to the colonies in America while Henry Every and several others travel back to England.  "The Trial" looks at the fate of 8 crew members who where caught in England, put on trial, and then put on trial again because the jury had the nerve to side with the defendants in the first trial.

Steven Johnson provides a very readable account of the crimes committed by the pirate Henry Every, placing events in the context of British imperialism in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.  If the reader wants to explore the early history of pirates, Enemy of All Mankind  is a great place to start.