cover image The Barbary Corsairs: Warfare in the Mediterranean, 1480-1580

The Barbary Corsairs: Warfare in the Mediterranean, 1480-1580

Jacques Heers. Greenhill Books, $39.95 (304pp) ISBN 978-1-85367-552-2

Though this translated volume on Renaissance maritime history is slow to get into, its colorful, well-documented subject ultimately rewards the serious reader. After a brief history of trade and piracy in the medieval Mediterranean, the book focuses on the area's""Golden Age of Piracy."" For much of the period between the fall of Constantinople (1453) and the Spanish Armada (1588), the""pirates"" of Tunis and Algiers were actually vassals of the Ottoman Sultans who sent to sea regular war fleets numbering in the dozens or hundreds. They had a major strategic impact on the Mediterranean wars of the Renaissance, as they were often allies of the French, fighting against alleged""encirclement"" by the Habsburg Empire of Spain. This in turn made the Spanish their implacable foes, and began a French tradition of looking benignly on the Turks that lasted at least two centuries. In addition to the diplomatic background, Heers, a professor at the Sorbonne, sketches in Barbary leaders (like the best known, Khaireddin Barbarossa, many were converts to Islam or the sons of such), slavery, trade negotiations, Spanish settlements in Africa, and the literature spawned by the Barbary wars. One wishes that the notes and bibliography had been translated from the French along with the main text, but otherwise this volume will satisfy those interested in maritime history not often covered in English-language sources. The cover's colorful portrait of galley fleets in action matches Heers's good selection of historical illustrations.