Description
Book SynopsisPiracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean explores the early modern genre of European Barbary Coast captivity narratives from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. During this period, the Mediterranean Sea was the setting of large-scale corsairing that resulted in the capture or enslavement of Europeans and Americans by North African pirates, as well as of North Africans by European forces, turning the Barbary Coast into the nemesis of any who went to sea.
Through a variety of specifically selected narrative case studies, this book displays the blend of both authentic eye witness accounts and literary fictions that emerged against the backdrop of the tumultuous Mediterranean Sea. A wide range of other primary sources, from letters to ransom lists and newspaper articles to scientific texts, highlights the impact of piracy and captivity across key European regions, including France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Scandinavia, and Britain, as
Table of Contents
Lists of figures
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Mario Klarer
Part 1 Labor and Law
1. Trading Identities: Balthasar Sturmer’s Verzeichnis der Reise (1558) and the Making of the European Barbary Captivity Narrative
Mario Klarer
2. Unkind Dealings: English Captivity Narratives, Commercial Transformation, and the Economy of Unfree Labor in the Early Modern Period
Daniel Vitkus
3. Ambivalences of Recognition: The Position of the Barbary Corsairs in Early Modern International Law and International Politics
Walter Rech
4. "Free, Unfree, Captive, Slave:" António de Saldanha, a Late Sixteenth-Century Captive in Marrakesh
Peter Mark
Part 2 Home and Hybridity
5. "Renegades:" Converts to Islam in American Barbary Captivity Narratives of the 1790s
Anna Diamantouli
6. Identity Crises of Homecomers from the Barbary Coast
Robert Spindler
7. "Arab Speculators:" States and Ransom Slavery in the Western Sahara
Christine E. Sears
Part 3 Diplomacy and Deliverance
8. Michael Heberer: A Prisoner in the Ottoman Navy
Robert Rebitsch
9. Piracy, Diplomacy, and Cultural Circulations in the Mediterranean
Khalid Bekkaoui
10. A Comparison of Confraternity Models in the "Redemption of Slaves" in Europe: The Broederschap der alderheylighste Dryvuldigheyt of Brugge/Bruges and the Scuola della Santissima Trinità of Venice
Andrea Pelizza
Part 4 Oppositions and Otherness
11. A Huguenot Captive in ‘Uthman Dey’s Court: Histoire chronologique du royaume de Tripoly (1685) and Its Author
Gillian Weiss
12. Khayr al-Din Barbarossa: Clashing Portraits of a Corsair-King
Diana de Armas Wilson
13. Two Arabic Accounts of Captivity in Malta: Texts and Contexts
Nabil Matar
