By rebelling against hierarchical society and living under the Jolly Roger, pirates created an upside-down world of anarchist organisation and festival, with violence and death ever-present. This creation was not a purely whimsical process. In Devil's Anarchy, Stephen Snelders focuses on Claes Compaen and examines rare 17th-century Dutch pirate histories to show the continuity of a shared pirate culture, embodied in its modes of organisation and methods of distributing booty and resolving disputes, as well as their tendencies for high living.