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Book Cover
E-book
Author Capp, B. S., author.

Title British slaves and Barbary corsairs, 1580-1750 / Bernard Capp
Edition First edition
Published Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2022
©2022

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Description 1 online resource (198 pages)
Summary "This is the first comprehensive study of the thousands of Britons captured and enslaved in North Africa in the early modern period, charting their lives from capture to eventual liberation, death in Barbary, or for a lucky few, escape. It outlines the character of Barbary's government and society, the world of the corsairs, and the wider context of Mediterranean slavery. Using letters from slaves and accounts by former slaves, the book describes the trauma of the slave market, the lives of galley-slaves and labourers, and the fate of female captives. It explores the significance of their faith for some captives, especially puritans, but shows how a significant minority apostatized and accepted Islam, seduced by promises or hoping to ease their conditions. For them, and for other Britons who joined the corsairs voluntarily, identity became fluid and multilayered. The book also explores in depth how ransoms were raised by families and by state-sponsored charitable collections, and how redemptions were organized by merchants, consuls, and other intermediaries. Most families were too poor to raise a ransom, and the state came under intense pressure to intervene. The book shows how from the mid-seventeenth century, the state practised a form of 'gunboat diplomacy' that eventually curbed the corsairs. The Barbary corsairs posed a threat to all European powers, and the book places the British story within the wider context of Mediterranean slavery, which saw Moors and Christians as both captors and captives"--Publisher's description
Notes This edition also issued in print: 2022
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Audience Specialized
Notes Description based on online resource; title from home page (Oxford Academic, viewed on February 9, 2023)
Subject Slavery -- Africa, North -- History -- 16th century
Slavery -- Africa, North -- History -- 17th century
Slavery -- Africa, North -- History -- 18th century
Enslaved Christians -- Africa, North -- History -- 16th century
Enslaved Christians -- Africa, North -- History -- 17th century
Enslaved Christians -- Africa, North -- History -- 18th century
Pirates -- Mediterranean Region -- History -- 16th century
Pirates -- Mediterranean Region -- History -- 17th century
Pirates -- Mediterranean Region -- History -- 18th century
Enslaved Christians.
Diplomatic relations.
Pirates.
Slavery.
SUBJECT Great Britain -- Foreign relations -- Africa, North
Africa, North -- Foreign relations -- Great Britain
Subject Great Britain.
Mediterranean Region.
North Africa.
Genre/Form History.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780191948176
0191948179