Post FB de Rediker:
"July 4th from below! How rebellious sailors, enslaved people, and the motley crew propelled the American Revolution, a condensed chapter of *The Many-Headed Hydra*, written by Peter Linebaugh and me, now published in *Economic and Political Weekly*, based in Mumbai."

The protest of the Atlantic seafarers and enslaved people against the Stamp Act in 1765–66, which intended to raise taxes in the American colonies, was dismissed as the chaos of the “motley crew.” Often silenced in the history of the American Revolution, the maritime insurrections from below in the third quarter of the 18th century, led to the beginning of the modern wars for liberation against the colonial rule. However, what began with a revolutionary zeal, had its own inclusions and exclusions leading to a dilution of the language of universalism, inscribed in the Declaration of Independence.