As a kid, when I thought of pirates I dreamed of absolute freedom with plenty of swashbuckling.

When I grew up, I realized that pirates were bloodthirsty savages who deserved to be strung for their unforgivable crimes against countless civilians. So terrible was their presence in the Mediterranean that until last century parents would leave inland plots to their sons and coastal ones to their daughters, as the latter had practically no value (with the advent of tourism, of course, these girls’ descendants became rich).

So, I was surprised to discover today that, for a brief moment in history between the 17th-18th century, a golden age of piracy burst into life against all odds and burned bright for a century.

A Progressive Society

As Henrey Bradley explains in Quora, these men and women of the sea, drawn from wildly diverse backgrounds, managed to build a functional and fair society, with…