Saturday, April 24, 2010

Pirate Duds

The topic is pirates and why they wear all those fancy duds--patterned head scarfs, bright-colored blouses and such.

Maybe you knew but I'm just finding out: it's because they were predating on (inter alia) the East India trade, as it hauled fancy goods back from the great Mughal Empire to the rather more threadbare upstart in London. So, you take the gold and rape the women and boys. And you play dress-up. Or so I surmise from Colin Woodard's The Republic of Pirates (2007). which tells you know all that you may want to know and perhaps more about what life was like before Johnny Depp.

1 comment:

elrojo said...

pirates reference made me think of that great scene on the whore ship bound for america -- baltimore i guess, to bring women for wives to female starved settlers farming maryland's tobacco fields. in john barth's The Sotweed Factor. when the pirates captured the ship and its cargo of london whores on the way to america to become wives there truly was the proverbial "friggin' in the rigging."