Martin Mares (historian)
Martin Mares is a British historian and scholar with a special interest in the history of piracy. Mares is a researcher at University College London, a member of the Royal Historical Society, and a research associate at Oxford University. In his most important works, Mares re-examined the subject of The Golden Age of Piracy from the perspective of British colonial and imperial history, introducing a theory of
Life and career
Mares was born on July 30, 1987 to a British father and Czech mother. He was educated at Czech gymnasiums and a boarding school in Stowe, Buckinghamshire. He went on to study at Masaryk University, Brno, while spending the academic year 2007 in New York as an exchange student. He completed his Master of Arts degree in 2013, while he simultaneously undertook Humanities studies at Anglo-American University, graduating in 2015. Between 2013 and 2016, Mares had resided with his wife in New York, where he utilised this opportunity to conduct his further archival research on the history of maritime piracy in Northern America. He then moved to England, where he undertook History & Research program at Birkbeck, University of London. In 2016, he received Andersson Bequest Fund grant for his work on the Golden Age of Piracy. In 2017, he was granted a membership in the Royal Historical Society. In 2018, he joined University College London as a doctoral researcher. Mares is also a member of the Society for Nautical Research, a UK-based learned and dining society focused on maritime history and research. Mares also serves as one of the curators and contributors of Ancient History Encyclopedia.History
Mares' specialization is the early modern period with an expertise in the history of maritime piracy. In 2015, Mares first introduced his theory of 'mutual contribution' in The British Contribution to the Development of Piracy in the Golden Age of Piracy, supporting his secondary argument that the longer periodization of this era should be understood as an uninterrupted and continuous process with its points of peaks and regressions. From the economical perspective, these ideas were later expanded by Nicolás Rodríguez Arosemena. Later, Mares expanded some of his ideas in The Role of Jamaica in Fostering Maritime Piracy In the Atlantic Ocean, 1655-1702, presenting pirates as an integral element of British imperial endeavour by an implementation of a complex framework of relations between influential members involved in Jamaican colonial administration and prominent individuals of pirate crews.Dmitry A. Pautov in an article entitled "Pirate republic in the Bahamas: the causes and the impact on the system of government" highlighted Mares' interpretation of the 17th/18th centuries piracy as an "alternative and free society" operating on the peripheries of the normative society and engaging in political experiments oscillating between democracy and anarchy. In his historiographical study, Pautov emphasized the importance of Mares' arguments for the understanding of "the Pirate Republic as the unique experience of social and territorial self-organization, leaving a bright mark in the development of not only the colonial system but also in world history, as a whole, becoming yet another evidence of the viability of one or another local alternative political model, without a support of influential geopolitical forces and factors."
While Mares' works on piracy have been generally regarded as well-researched and objective, however his rhetorical arguments in favor of British aggressive expansionist policy through piracy have been likened to "the rhetoric and the reasoning used by General Zod", a fictional Kryptonian archvillain and Superman's main antagonist.
In 2018, Mares has published an academic article about James Hunt, one of the understudied British proponents of Victorian scientific racism, presenting Hunt as one of the most influential figures for the later development of racist beliefs. In a publication A reconsideration of James Africanus Beale Horton of Sierra Leone and his legacy, Odile Georg praised Mares' ability to recognize important nuances in Hunt's everlasting impact on popular British racial discourse in the second half of the 19th century.
Philosophy
In 2014, Mares published his work 'The Art of Creating a Free City: A Philosophical Analysis with Special Focus on Ancient Societies', making the case that modern societies, compared to ancient Greeks, are driven by the dogmatic beliefs in the economics as an ultimate governing force, which separates and fragments the civic society into entrenched groups, crippling the democracy itself. By contrast, Mares uses the examples of Greek city states, agoras and Plato's concept of justice as fairness to propose a different model for thinking about the civic society.In his 2016 scholarly article "Kleos, Nostos and Ponos in the Homeric Tradition", Mares defended the concept of a traditional heroism against postmodernist critiques, arguing that achieving an eternal glory through an ordeal with a successful homecoming should be viewed as a clear manifestation of one's meaningful existence - imprinting of hero's legacy. Mares illustrated this understanding by using examples of Achilles, Odysseus and Diomedes, presenting them as different avatars of such heroic qualities. Brazilian scholar Flavia R. Monteiro later used Mares' interpretation for her work on tragic heroes in Shakespeare's plays.
Other contributions
Mares has also been active in a number of fields, including popular history, game journalism and pop-culture criticism. Since the late 2000s, Mares has contributed to various historical magazines and periodicals, including Živá Historie, York Historian, HISTORY Revue, Honey History, LEVEL Magazine, ABC, Excalibur or 'Pevnost'.Writing
In 2012, Mares had co-authored an illustrated children's book Pirates.Artwork
Mares is an avid hobbyist painter, working with both traditional and digital mediums, depicting mostly fantasy and nautical motifs. He has illustrated retellings of classic Czech folktales "The Old Scratch and His Gambit". Mares also did the watercolour illustrations and pencil sketches for the 2012 Gemini edition of Ancient Greek Myths.Historical fencing
Mares is a member of a historical European martial arts group Schola Gladiatoria based in London. The fencing school is involved in both theoretical and practical activities. In 2007 Mares joined New York Jedi, a lightsaber academy inspired by Star Wars saga, practicing lightsaber techniques and fighting. Admitted with a rank of "Jedi Master" and later holding the title "Battlemaster", Mares has focused primarily on dueling, utilizing traditional combat forms with single lightsaber and dual lightsabers.Public image
In December 2015, Mares was listed on the "Top 30-Handsome Academics" list, featuring international selection of scholars.Since 2013, Mares has regularly attended the St. Luke Fundraiser for Haiti, an annual charity evening organized by fashion designer Kenneth Cole and Brazilian model Adriana Lima, taking place in New York. Mares is known for his support of several African wildlife protection and conservation organisations, including David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, an orphanage for elephants based in Kenya. Mares' frequent travels to Africa led him to join a group of academics, supporting the preservation of dying African Yaaku language.
In 2019, Mares took a part in Emilia Clarke's SameYou charity campaign, participating in the Great North Run, the annual half marathon taking place in Newcastle. Since 2019 Mares has contributed to Five Books, a project for sharing lists of five book recommendations by experts. Mares has been generally supportive of "more balanced scholarship", compiling a list entitled Great Books on Maritime History by Female Writers. According to Mares, the list "should shed more light on high-quality female contribution to this subject" because this discipline "has been predominantly shaped by male scholars and authors."
According to LittleSis, a watchdog database of who-knows-who at the heights of business and government, Martin Mares has been linked through social ties to the persons from the high-management of Atlas Merchant Capital and Cambridge Analytica. Despite these social connections, no professional or ethical conflict of interest has been suggested so far as Mares' only publication concerning Brexit "The City of London and Brexit" shows no signs of the use of mass data collecting in Mares' employed research methods or bias argumentation. Concerning Cambridge Analytica interlocks, Mares also holds membership in Historic Royal Palaces, an independent charity that manages some of the United Kingdom's unoccupied royal palaces, which had received 60,000 USD grant money in 2014 from Mercer Family Foundation, a philanthropic organization founded by Robert Mercer, a founder of Cambridge Analytica.