Viswanathan K's Thoughts

As mentioned in the earlier blog , Henry Every and his crew were now the target of the largest global manhunt in history. But there was a problem, writes Steven Johnson in Enemy of all Mankind : “It was… handicapped by the sluggish communication channels of the day.” By the time word was out, Every already had a 10 month headstart!   By then, Every had dumped his ship. And he and his crew had started to launder their money, so that one day they could go back home to Britain as rich men. The easiest way to launder money then? Horrific while it may sound, the answer was in slave trading. Who could ever prove how much money anyone made that way?   Some of the crew made their way to the US, an area that was indifferent to piracy and thus a safe haven. Others went to Britain. Where some of them got arrested. “At long last, the world – and Aurungzeb most of all – would have a chance to see England’s true position on piracy.” The biggest problem was finding any witnes...

In 1694, the East India Company was just a corporation, not the rulers of India. Their operations in India were subject to the permission of the Mughals. Keep that in mind while you read what follows.   In that year, a man named Henry Every joined a privately sponsored British expedition to the Americas, writes Steven Johnson in Enemy of all Mankind . But the ship got blocked in Spain indefinitely. With no end to the stoppage, their salaries no longer being paid, and rumours swirling that the men might be sold into slavery, Every and some of the crew took over the ship. It had now become a pirate ship.   Instead of going to the Caribbean though, Every made the fateful decision to round the Cape of Good Hope and find his prey among the trading ships between Arab lands and India. He ended up picking a much larger and wealthy ship called the Ganj-i-Sawai . Returning from the hajj , and laden with enormous wealth, it also had many women on board. Every’s ship shouldn’t ha...