"There was a constant temptation for the corsairs to attack not only Moslem shipping, but also to attack Christians. Although this was in direct contradiction of their oath, the corsairs justified their activity on various grounds. The Christians were not really Christians, they were only pretending to be Christians. If they were Christians, the goods they were carrying belonged to Turks, and thus it was legitimate to seize them. Or even if they were Christians and the goods that they carried belonged to them, they were Greek Orthodox and therefore schismatic, and therefore heretics, and therefore enemies of the Faith, and thus liable to depredation.
During the seventeenth century these unfortunate Greeks and the representatives of the other minority Christian groups in the Levant, such as the Maronites, were on their own and their only hope of recompense was to come to Malta and sue the corsairs in the island’s courts. It is some measure of the justice of the courts in Malta at this time that many Greeks who sued for wrongful depredation actually won their case and recovered damages. In the eighteenth century, however, while Maltese attitudes hardened towards the Greeks, the latter found a powerful protector in the Pope."
— Peter Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary (1970)
"Apart from searching the passengers and crew, the captain and the purser (khodja) were always quick to get hold of the ship’s books and to seal the cargo in order to prevent their men from sacking that as well. But on the score of pillaging captured ships the Barbary corsairs had a better reputation than most privateers of the period.
It was the universal custom of corsairs that certain goods such as the possessions of captured sailors and passengers should be the personal reward of those who captured them. Other goods such as any cargo below deck and the contents of the captain’s cabin were reserved either for the general share-out or for particular persons who had customary rights to them.
The normal practice of the Barbary corsairs was to pile goods that were destined for the general share-out around the mast. Many writers were surprised at the high standard of honesty shown in doing this. D’Arvieux went as far as to say that the Barbary corsairs did not pillage at all. This seems rather unlikely though the punishments for the individual found defrauding his mates were characteristically savage. None the less the general behaviour of the corsairs when capturing a ship was very much better than that of their Maltese rivals, and incomparably better than that of a contemporary English privateer.
The strong discipline of the janissaries and the scrupulously fair division of booty in the Barbary ports were the main reasons for this. D’Arvieux writes: "It is surprising that people as brutal and barbarous as the Algerians can keep so much order and justice as they do in their brigandage. One never sees the least difficulty amongst them over the division of the booty"."
— Peter Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary (1970)
Owned?: Yes
Page count: 253
My summary: The wars between the establishment and pirates raged for many years - pirates, not being a single group, would crop up here and there, and the Navy and colonial authorities could not always stop them. This is a story of the Golden Age of piracy, of the men who took the black, and the men who sought to stop them.
My rating: 2/5
My commentary:
Sigh. Another research book. And one that I really did not get along with. I had such high hopes for this one - it was referenced very often in the bibliographies of other research books I have read, to the point where I've somehow accidentally ended up with two copies because I must have seen it recommended and independently bought it twice. And…I didn't like it at all. There were some solid facts in here, but they're hampered by the author's obvious bias showing through, including the foreword where he spends some time railing against historians who talk about female, black, or potentially gay pirates. He at one point specifically states that there is 'no evidence' that pirates were gay, as though these men would have taken the time to write down and leave lasting records of their sexual encounters that we would have today. He seems to think that Anne Bonny and Mary Read were the only women who became pirates, because they're the only ones we know about (funny that they coincidentally wound up on the same ship) and that most pirates would probably have seen Black men as property moreso than shipmates (it's complicated, but there were Black and other non-white pirates in this time and place, some of whom seem to have been treated as free men based on the small amount of evidence we have). He seems not to have heard of the idea that absence of evidence is not by necessity evidence of absence - there could have been any number of pirates who were women dressed as men and never caught, or who were gay and left no evidence of such, or were people of colour and didn't necessarily have that get written down. But to Earle, pirates were white and straight and men and that's it, seemingly.
Well, except the corsairs. If you don't know, 'corsair' is a term that usually refers to pirates of the Barbary Coast (north Africa, around Morocco and Tunis). The corsairs were Muslims, and usually preyed on European shipping, often enslaving the crews. Which is something that people like Earle focus inordinately on. Look, I'm not defending slavery, it's an awful, evil act no matter which group is doing the enslaving and which is being enslaved, but in wider historical discourse the spectre of the corsair is often used as a defence of European chattel slavery - 'well, they were enslaving white people too!' Which is nonsense. Some Muslims enslaving white Christians does not make white Christians enslaving Black Africans any less monstrous. These are two separate things, which can be taken separately. But Earle barely addresses the fact that many of the white people that he talks about were enslavers. He harps on and on about the corsairs and how they enslaved people and how awful that was, but only ever mentions the enslavement of Black people by some of his subjects (including Captain Morgan and Woodes Rogers, both of whom he lauds as brilliant tacticians) in passing, and only then to contrast the violence of pirates to their victims with violence towards enslaved people.
This book was written in 2003. With that context, I think it's safe to make the assumption that Earle had an agenda against Muslims, and in particular his focus on Muslim 'terrorists' is coloured by the Islamophobia rampant in the time after 9/11. (Fun fact, the corsairs were more properly privateers of the Ottoman Empire, but the fact that their actions were legal by Ottoman law does not seem to mitigate them by the thinking of certain historians. The same historians who are more willing to give white privateers and enslavers a free pass because they were acting legally by European law.) And, I'm sorry, I just can't get over this. There's no excuse for being Islamophobic, and it's particularly noticeable when he spends his whole foreword railing against the inaccuracies in pirate media and historiography caused by historians and writers with 'agendas', but doesn't see that he's doing the exact same thing in his writing. Just because his views are seen as the norm, and his agenda was shared by the UK and US governments at the time. That's not even getting into how the slavery of white Christians in the Ottoman world was different to Anglo-American chattel slavery! Hey, did you know that a lot of white Christians who were enslaved in the Ottoman world were ransomed by their governments and got to go home? That's not true for any Black people enslaved in the Americas.
Again, slavery is awful no matter who it's happening to, but the fact that white Christian people enslaved in the Ottoman Empire seemed to have some scant few rights and opportunities here and there really highlights how Black Americans had absolutely nothing. Same way that white indentured servants, who were often poor and Irish and are also used by some people as a 'white people were enslaved too' gotcha, were in appalling conditions during their servitude and had very little, to the point that many died before their indenture was up - but it was still a more legally protected position than that of the slave. There's some solid history here. But the bigotry of the author shines through in every regard, and I'm sorry, I just can't endorse this book because of it.
Pollacca. This sort of prize could easily be converted into a corsair.
"A common feature of many raids, and one which was often essential to their success, was the use of local guides. Since Barbary had such an enormous population of renegades there were in most North African cities potential guides for much of the Christian Mediterranean coastline. Indeed there are several documented cases of Christians, with a grudge against their neighbours or their masters, sailing for Barbary with the specific intention of apostasizing and returning with the corsairs to guide a raiding party. In Sicily, Calabria, and Corsica such actions had become a recognized extension of many a local vendetta."
— Peter Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary (1970)
