Red Round Globe Hot Burning - by Peter Linebaugh (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Red Round Globe Hot Burning tells the story of an Irish revolutionary, Edward Despard, and his wife, Catherine, an Afro-American abolitionist, in their efforts on both sides of the Atlantic to maintain the commons against attempts to enclose and privatize its land and resources. Their story takes the form of a quest, or two related searches for a woman and for the commons. The story begins in Ireland, joins them at first in Jamaica and then in central America, before returning to London and their final struggle on behalf of "the principles of freedom, of humanity, and of justice." He attempted to organize an insurrection, she succeeded in halting the construction of the panopticon. His defeat at the gallows and hers in anonymous exile were part of a turning point in the history of the earth and the commencement of the anthropocene"--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

On February 21, 1803, Colonel Edward (Ned) Marcus Despard was publicly hanged and decapitated in London before a crowd of 20,000 for organizing a revolutionary conspiracy to overthrow King George III. His black Caribbean wife, Catherine (Kate), helped to write his gallows speech in which he proclaimed that he was a friend to the poor and oppressed. He expressed trust that "the principles of freedom, of humanity, and of justice will triumph over falsehood, tyranny, and delusion."

And yet the world turned. From the connected events of the American, French, Haitian, and failed Irish Revolutions, to the Anthropocene's birth amidst enclosures, war-making global capitalism, slave labor plantations, and factory machine production, Red Round Globe Hot Burning throws readers into the pivotal moment of the last two millennia. This monumental history, packed with a wealth of detail, presents a comprehensive chronicle of the resistance to the demise of communal regimes. Peter Linebaugh's extraordinary narrative recovers the death-defying heroism of extended networks of underground resisters fighting against privatization of the commons accomplished by two new political entities, the U.S.A. and the U.K., that we now know would dispossess people around the world through today. Red Round Globe Hot Burning is the culmination of a lifetime of research--encapsulated through an epic tale of love.

From the Back Cover

"This wide-ranging, intricate, penetrating analysis of the developing process of enclosure and exploitation during a critical era of the development of capitalism in the Atlantic world, and the manifold modes of popular resistance, provides fascinating insight into the origins of our society, with rich implications for addressing its crimes and its current race to destruction."--Noam Chomsky

"It's often assumed that superb scholarship and beautiful writing are rival forces, but in Peter Linebaugh's work they are the same tremendous force evoking and contextualizing moments of crisis and possibility in the past with a vividness that casts new light on our own time."--Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

"Poetic and moving, Red Round Globe Hot Burning shows what history can do. This is the work of a historian of genius, rich in detail, powerfully written, and animated by a passion for justice."--Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

"A remarkable tour de force of eloquence and erudition, Peter Linebaugh's new book brilliantly recovers the popular-democratic histories of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, tracking them back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish Sea. Histories of capitalist modernity, he shows, are inseparable from the courageous creativity of the popular struggles whose defeats enabled them."--Geoff Eley, author of A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society

"Peter Linebaugh is the best, most creative, most original historian living today. Red Round Globe Hot Burning can be seen as a distillation of his life's work. This is a window on the 600-year struggle over the commons that has a lot to say about our current times. Writing in prose that channels the poetry of William Blake in every sentence, this may be his most innovative book, yet."--Robin Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Review Quotes

"Hypnotic and compelling. . . .Red Round succeeds in evoking the textures and feverish emotional pitch of radicalism in the 1790s, as well as the crushing disappointments of the early nineteenth century."-- "Journal of Modern History"

"Red Round Globe Hot Burning is a culmination of Linebaugh's lifework. . . .impressionistic and multi-layered, an approach...that advances rather than occludes understanding of such a richly overlayered and conflicted world."-- "The European Legacy"

"It is a treat to have a wonderfully erudite scholar determined to instruct and entertain readers. . . . In an historiographical world in which historians are expected to be balanced and practise cool ironic detachment, it is fun to read a book where the writer's heart is always on his sleeve. Linebaugh gives a marvellous portrait of one of the most interesting periods in British and Irish history, taking the side of the disadvantaged against those who wanted to keep the disadvantaged in their place."-- "English Historical Review"

"An erudite work by a scholar who adapted classic 'history from below' to more diverse subjects, while integrating environmental history and literary studies . . . Red Round Globe Hot Burning will hold the interest of a wide array of historians. The vignettes collected in the book display the burning power of ideas in a period of tumultuous change."

-- "Journal of Interdisciplinary History"

"Red Round Globe Hot Burning is [Linebaugh's] greatest masterpiece yet in a lifetime of triumphs. It is a mind-blowing contribution to his lifelong quest for the commons. . . . You have a writer of such extraordinary power that reading him can move you to tears (and will always lift your spirits)."-- "Independent Left"

"A live, immediate, textured portrait."-- "World History Connected"

"Astonishing . . . . Builds on decades of research and investigation, the meticulous sifting of popular archives that span the Atlantic and combine political broadsheets, scientific tracts, and folksongs.. . . . Reading the book as the murder of George Floyd sparked the Black Lives Matter movement into a global reckoning with legacies of slavery, war, colonialism and empire, it was hard not to feel a tingle on the back of the neck."
-- "Antipode"

"Far-ranging and fascinating. . . . It is impossible to summarize briefly the enormously rich content of this work."-- "Fifth Estate"

"Once more, Peter Linebaugh highlights uncomfortable truths."
-- "Monthly Review"

"Very occasionally a book comes along that anyone with an interest in history and politics must read, and this is such a book. . . . An immensely rewarding book and worth the effort to accompany Linebaugh on his journey through history."-- "Irish Marxist Review"

"Red Round Globe Hot Burning is a disturbing and challenging book. It kept me awake and note-taking through a whole night. . . . Linebaugh's exploration of the assault on the Commons and how our antecedents struggled to resist the depredations is an invaluable education."-- "International Socialism"

"While it is nearly impossible to convey the flow of subjects embodied in Red Round Globe Hot Burning, the sweep of interracial history, the place of seemingly ordinary people in challenging the very basis of class society, will be understood better by those reading this worthy volume."

-- "Truthout"

"Offers unconventional biography and unconventional history. Linebaugh goes where biographers and historians are often taught not to go: to places where there are no archival records and where a writer has to be inventive and imaginative. . . . Few tomes are as much fun to read."-- "Counterpunch"

"Peter Linebaugh is acknowledged as a chronicler with a left-wing view. He is also described as a historian of genius. His book presents us with the facts, and what a glorious luxury that is. But of course we have a choice about which facts we want to examine, and he assiduously takes us up neglected side roads on a journey to America, England, Haiti, Honduras, Ireland and Nicaragua. And to prison. In Red Round Globe Hot Burning he invites us to benefit from his lifetime of reading and writing."-- "Irish Times"

"Peter Linebaugh has produced another masterful history 'from below' . . . . In language that is sometimes visceral, imaginative and often sublimely eloquent he analyses the conditions in which people were living and working, making connections, while leaving the reader with a global overview of the struggle against colonial and imperial power."

-- "Socialist Review" (10/1/2019 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Peter Linebaugh is a historian and the author of The Magna Carta Manifesto, The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day, and Stop, Thief!, among many others, and the co-author, with Marcus Rediker, of The Many-Headed Hydra. His articles have appeared in publications that include CounterPunch, the New Left Review, and Radical History Review.