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Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean |  |
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Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean | |
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Forget the pirates of the Caribbean: their Old World brethren were an altogether more colorful and fearsome lot, according to this swashbuckling study. Historian Tinniswood (The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War, and Madness in Seventeenth-Century England) revisits the kleptocratic heyday of the Barbary states--Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, bits of Morocco--which offered fortified harbors to pirates and in turn built their economies around the sale of stolen cargoes and captives. The buccaneers, who kidnapped whole villages as far north as Ireland and Iceland, were denounced as the scourge of Christendom. Yet most of the "Turkish" pirates Tinniswood highlights were British, Dutch, or Italian renegades who sometimes bought pardons and obtained naval commands from their native countries. The million Christians sold into bondage often converted to Islam and became pillars of the North African economy. The author makes this story an entertaining picaresque of crime, combat, and moral compromise; fierce sea battles and daring escapes alternate with corrupt hagglings as European governments vacillate between gunboat diplomacy and offering tribute for the release of their enslaved countrymen. Tinniswood gives us both a rollicking narrative and a rich brew of early modern maritime history. Illus., map. (Nov.) (c)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --此文字指本书的不再付印或绝版版本。
Adrian Tinniswood is the author of more than a dozen books, including The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War, and Madness in Seventeenth-Century England, which was a finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction. He is a consultant to Britain's National Trust.
网友对Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean的评论
Western education skips or glosses over some chapters in our history. Here is an illuminating view of Mediterranean and Indian Ocean piracy, with it's participation of European players and its lasting effect upon world commerce. Written as interestingly as a novel, this is how history should be written.
This is a terrific book written beautifully. It is a great read, especially for summer but for the child in all of us. Who is not fascinated by pirates? This writer is great. I look forward to more of his work.
Pirates of Barbary
Corsairs, Conquests, and Captivity in the 17th Century Mediterranean
By
Adrian Tinniswood
Mr. Tinniswood's new book on "piracy" is particularly relevant in light of today's problems off of the coast of Somalia. While this may seem to be a "new" problem to many, it certainly is not as his book illustrates so well. The book is a collection of very colorful, dramatic and true stories of yesterday's pirates. They have many similarities to today's pirates; however, today's probably will not gain the panache of yesterday's.
"Pirates of Barbary" starts in the early 1600's. Those were the days when a small group of men in a small boat with scaling ladders, few weapons and sheer nerve would commandeer a much larger vessel for ransom. These men were part of a sophisticated system of a state sanctioned, state regulated, public-private partnership used to grow the coffers of the pirates and the government. Gosh, that sounds a little familiar, don't you think?
What do the names John Nutt, Richard Bishop, Peter Eston and Sir Henry Mainwaring have in common? All were Barbary pirates that were offered pardons by King James I, if they promised to come home to England and behave. Oh yes, they were allowed to keep all the booty. Probably the most famous and successful was Sir Henry Mainwaring who not only was pardoned but was also appointed to Vice-Admiral of the Royal Navy by King James. Actually, it makes sense when you realize what a problem piracy was, and the knowledge Sir Henry possessed of other pirates and piracy, in general. It was such a problem that King James ended up offering a blanket pardon to approximately 3,000 British subjects who had participated in piracy at that time.
In 2009, the U.S. Navy established a task force to take care of this problem once and for all. Oh yeh, Thomas Jefferson established a U.S.Navy task force in 1801 to do the same thing (which happened to be the beginning of the U.S. Navy). Both had success, however, have not cured the problem.
What Mr. Tinniswood helps make clear is that the solution was and remains onshore. As long as there are governments and pseudo-governments that support and profit from piracy, it's going to be around. The ocean is just too darn big to police (even today). We have to deal with the people and organizations that back these efforts in diplomatic and other ways. There have been major successes in the distant past that have been the result of aggressive onshore efforts that are well documented in this book. Recently FBI agents captured Mohammad Shibi, who negotiated the ransom for the 4 American captives who were recently killed by Somali pirates. The agents had the help of Somalian authorities and, actually did this in Somaliland. Hopefully, this is a step in the right direction to resolve our "piracy problems" of the last 500 years.
This book reviews the intriguing history of Barbary pirates who operated off the shore of North Africa in the seventeenth century with extraordinary effectiveness and who later motivated the creation of a new navy for the United States. For those interested in maritime history, it covers an important period of armed conflict on the high seas.
Great !
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