Summary of Steven Johnson's Enemy of All Mankind

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Impressment was a hybrid of the modern military draft and state-sponsored kidnapping. It was used to force sailors into the Royal Navy, and it was common for cottagers to be impressed.

#2 The Vagabond Act of 1597 attempted to combat the homeless problem in England by making it punishable by public whipping if you were caught being homeless. The act also empowered the press gangs if the wandering scholars and jugglers didn’t want to be stripped naked and whipped.

#3 The life of Henry Every, the Devonshire sailor, is shrouded in mystery. Almost nothing is known about his childhood. He seems to have been born in Devonshire, England, and joined the Royal Navy as a teenager.

#4 The story of Henry Every is a palimpsest of legends. He was a mutineer, a working class hero, an enemy of the state, and a pirate king. He became a ghost after his death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jun 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822531208

IRB Media

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Insights on Steven Johnson's Enemy of All Mankind

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

impressment was a hybrid of the modern military draft and state-sponsored kidnapping. It was used to force sailors into the Royal Navy, and it was common for cottagers to be impressed.

#2

The Vagabond Act of 1597 attempted to combat the homeless problem in England by making it punishable by public whipping if you were caught being homeless. The act also empowered the press gangs if the wandering scholars and jugglers didn’t want to be stripped naked and whipped.

#3

The life of Henry Every, the Devonshire sailor, is shrouded in mystery. Almost nothing is known about his childhood. He seems to have been born in Devonshire, England, and joined the Royal Navy as a teenager.

#4

The story of Henry Every is a palimpsest of legends. He was a mutineer, a working class hero, an enemy of the state, and a pirate king. He became a ghost after his death.

#5

The first pirates were the Sea Peoples, who were a group of refugees from Mycenaean Greece who first took shape as a coherent cultural group at the end of the Bronze Age. They were the first pirates because they left behind archaeological wonders like the temple of Ramses III and the pyramids.

#6

The Sea Peoples were a group of pirates who attacked the Egyptians in the Nile Delta in 1179 BCE. They were not bound by the laws of terrestrial states, and they renounced the authority of nations and empires.

#7

The legacy of the Sea Peoples also included another key element that would come to define the pirate culture of Every’s time: the tactical deployment of spectacular violence and terror.

#8