Overview

British Slaves and Barbary Corsairs is the first comprehensive study of the thousands of Britons captured and enslaved in North Africa in the early modern period, an issue of intense contemporary concern but almost wholly overlooked in modern histories of Britain. The study charts the course of victims' lives from capture to eventual liberation, death in Barbary, or, for a lucky few, escape. After sketching the outlines of Barbary's government and society, and the world of the corsairs, it describes the trauma of the slave-market, the lives of galley-slaves and labourers, and the fate of female captives. Most captives clung on to their Christian faith, but a significant minority apostatized and accepted Islam. For them, and for Britons who joined the corsairs voluntarily, identity became fluid and multi-layered. Bernard Capp also explores in depth how ransoms were raised by private and public initiatives, and how redemptions were organised by merchants, consuls, and other intermediaries. With most families too poor to raise any ransom, the state came under intense pressure to intervene. From the mid-seventeenth century, the navy played a significant role in 'gunboat diplomacy' that eventually helped end the corsair threat. The Barbary corsairs posed a challenge to most European powers, and the study places the British story within the wider context of Mediterranean slavery, which saw Moors and Christians as both captors and captives.

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9780192857378

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Readers looking to understand the experience of Maghrebi enslavement, and the English discourse around it, will find this book incredibly useful. * Graham Moore, Culture and Social History *

Author Information

Bernard Capp was born in Leicester and studied history at Pembroke College Oxford, graduating in 1965. He was appointed a Lecturer at the then new University of Warwick in 1968, and taught there as Senior Lecturer, Reader, Professor, and Emeritus Professor for fifty-two years, retiring in 2020. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2005.

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