Adventure Capitalism: A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age

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. Your own private archipelago. 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 or--in the words of libertarian godfather Murray Rothbard--"cockamamie stunts," exit strategies were tried out from the southwest Pacific to the Caribbean, from the North Sea to the high seas, and often with dire consequences for local inhabitants.

Taking the activities of Nevada libertarian, land developer, and coin dealer Michael Oliver as a case in point, and 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 rewrites Oliver's story as a global history, one 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. His story, in other words, is a history of our time. Given the new iterations of privatized exit now being pursued--seasteads, free private cities, and space colonization--it may also be a history of our future.