Imagine a capitalist paradise. An island utopia governed
solely by the rules of the market and inspired by the fictions
of Ayn Rand and Robinson Crusoe. Sound far-fetched? It may not
be. The past half century is littered with the remains of such
experiments in what Raymond Craib calls
"libertarian exit." Often dismissed as little more than the
dreams of crazy, rich Caucasians, exit strategies have been
tried out from the southwest Pacific to the Caribbean, from
the North Sea to the high seas, often with dire consequences
for local inhabitants. Based on research in archives in the
US, the UK, and Vanuatu, as well as in FBI files acquired
through the Freedom of Information Act, Craib explores in
careful detail the ideology and practice of libertarian exit
and its place in the histories of contemporary capitalism,
decolonization, empire, and oceans and islands. Adventure
Capitalism is
a global history that intersects with an array of figures:
Fidel Castro and the Koch brothers, American segregationists
and Melanesian socialists, Honolulu-based real estate
speculators and British Special Branch spies, soldiers of
fortune and English lords, Orange County engineers and Tongan
navigators, CIA operatives and CBS news executives, and a new
breed of techno-utopians and an old guard of Honduran coup
leaders. This is not only a history of our time but, given the
new iterations of privatized exit—seasteads, free private
cities, and space colonization—it is also a history of our
future.