Profs & Pints Northern Virginia: Inside Pirates' Taverns

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “Inside Pirates’ Taverns,” a look at the crucial role that bars catering to pirates and smugglers played in the Atlantic economy and the colonization of the New World, with Jamie L.H. Goodall, professor of history at Southern New Hampshire University and author of Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay.

Historians of Europe and British North America have long seen taverns as playing a crucial role in early modern society. Far more than merely spaces where travelers could find accommodations and join locals in enjoying beverages, they often served as important community gathering spots where knowledge and ideas were exchanged.

Nowhere is this truer than in the taverns of the West Indies that pirates and smugglers frequented when they weren’t at sea. Despite their rough and rowdy reputations, such taverns played a vital role in the development and preservation of the transatlantic sphere.

Within such taverns pirates and smugglers were not detractors from the transatlantic economy but active participants in it and major contributors to it. The relationships forged over drink fostered networks that crossed class boundaries and linked people from different nations and different racial and ethnic groups. They nurtured the commercial negotiation that was crucial to both the licit and illicit economies of empires, and that helped give rise to consumer revolutions.

So grab a ticket—and maybe some crackers if a parrot sits on your shoulder—and prepare to learn the full story of pirate taverns from Dr. Jamie Goodall, a scholar of piracy in and around the Atlantic who previously gave a great Profs and Pints talk on pirates of the Chesapeake Bay. Rum will be flowing, timbers will be shivering, and you might even learn a thing or two. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: One of two existing Jolly Roger pirate flags believed to be authentic. Photo color-corrected to compensate for fading. (Åland Maritime Museum / Wikimedia Commons).