Linebaugh attempts to re-capture the mental universe and social context of British radicals Edward and Catherine Despard at the turn of the nineteenth century, as they sought to contest the onslaught of capitalism, defend the commons, and define “the interests of the human race” (407). Expanding an earlier chapter about the Despards in the Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston, 2000), which he co-wrote with Marcus Rediker, Linebaugh seeks to recapture radical voices at a moment of brutal state repression and economic exploitation. His attempt to save dissidents from the condescension of history consciously builds from the work of Thompson.1
He treats the story of the Despards—Edward a minor member of the Irish gentry and administrator in British Honduras turned convicted would-be royal assassin, and Catherine a woman of color who became a prominent prison reformer—as a point of departure; his...