People On The Periphery

The aim of this website is to showcase the underappreciated and downtrodden within society which are largely forgotten in the mid-16th to mid-19th Century due to the global rise of Britain as an economic power. This section will look at multiple areas including the Catholics in Ireland, Indigenous Americans, English Convicts and slaves in Africa. These are described by Peter Linebaugh and Markus Rediker as “The Many-Headed Hydra” who are exploited by the major International Powers for Capitalism power and that the process of the Transatlantic slave trade at times is like the Greek myth on the Lernean Hydra with nine heads where when one was kicked off two more would regenerate who was destroyed by Heracles.

For further reading: Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (London: Verso, 2002) and Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 2005) by Bernard Bailyn.