Lately I've been thinking about the unwritten rules of Piracy in the One Piece world. How choosing the life of Piracy pretty much equals considering yourself or the bounds of your ship to be it's own sovereign nation that does not fall under the structured rules that the rest of Society has decided. We see it being mentioned all the time as Luffy says that he has to know how to survive on his own in the forests of Mt Colubo if he wants to be a Pirate, how being a pirate means choosing for your own what you want to do or believe in (Whitebeard speech after his crew started doubting him during the Paramount War). Because of this, I started reading a bit about real life Pirate Code and was intrigued by what I found.
So a Pirate Code is a set of rules that each Ship has to follow on any given voyage. It details how loot is divided, how officers are chosen, certain punishments for crimes committed and other such guidelines. It is different on every Ship, Captain, and sometimes even specific to different voyages. If you want to become a member of a Pirate crew, you have to swear allegiance to your specific code. A lot of these famous pirate codes were drafted during the Golden Age of Piracy, roughly between the 16th-17th century.
What's astonishing to me is that during this time, the biggest Western powers were still very much Monarchical in nature. Governmental powers were concentrated on the monarchy and ideas like Democracy or voting for your leaders was just not that much a thing, EXCEPT, when it came to Pirate Codes.
The most well known Pirate Codes always included voting shares. One crew member had one vote and that vote could be used to chose all the officers of the pirate crew. MEANING, pirate leaders were Democratically elected. So here we have a democractic process of chosing leaders in a ship, a microcosm of a sovereign nation, while the world was still following Monarchical rule. That's ONE PIECE!
It's also interesting to note that near the end of the Golden Age of Piracy, around the start of the 17th Century, is also when the British Monarchy started to lose their grip on power and was also when the first ever election took place in the UK.
This could all very well be coincidental in terms of how One Piece is being written, but for me, it's nice to think how the One Piece world and it's eventual conclusion (defeating the World Government/Celestial Dragons) kind of mirror how events took place in the real world.
Hope you found this tidbit interesting as well and if there are any historical inaccurracies here and there, please feel free to correct them.
So a Pirate Code is a set of rules that each Ship has to follow on any given voyage. It details how loot is divided, how officers are chosen, certain punishments for crimes committed and other such guidelines. It is different on every Ship, Captain, and sometimes even specific to different voyages. If you want to become a member of a Pirate crew, you have to swear allegiance to your specific code. A lot of these famous pirate codes were drafted during the Golden Age of Piracy, roughly between the 16th-17th century.
What's astonishing to me is that during this time, the biggest Western powers were still very much Monarchical in nature. Governmental powers were concentrated on the monarchy and ideas like Democracy or voting for your leaders was just not that much a thing, EXCEPT, when it came to Pirate Codes.
The most well known Pirate Codes always included voting shares. One crew member had one vote and that vote could be used to chose all the officers of the pirate crew. MEANING, pirate leaders were Democratically elected. So here we have a democractic process of chosing leaders in a ship, a microcosm of a sovereign nation, while the world was still following Monarchical rule. That's ONE PIECE!
It's also interesting to note that near the end of the Golden Age of Piracy, around the start of the 17th Century, is also when the British Monarchy started to lose their grip on power and was also when the first ever election took place in the UK.
This could all very well be coincidental in terms of how One Piece is being written, but for me, it's nice to think how the One Piece world and it's eventual conclusion (defeating the World Government/Celestial Dragons) kind of mirror how events took place in the real world.
Hope you found this tidbit interesting as well and if there are any historical inaccurracies here and there, please feel free to correct them.
