Adrian Tinniswood - Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean

96 kbps; Unabridged, Read by Clive Chafer

Overview
The true story that's "bloody good entertainment" (New York Times) about the colorful and legendary pirates of the 17th century.

If not for today's news stories about piracy on the high seas, it'd be easy to think of pirating as a romantic way of life long gone. But nothing is further from the truth. Pirates have existed since the invention of commerce itself, and they reached the zenith of their power during the 1600s, when the Mediterranean was the crossroads of the world and pirates were the scourge of Europe. Historian and author Adrian Tinniswood brings this exciting and surprising chapter in history alive, revealing that the history of piracy is also the history that has shaped our modern world.

Editorial Reviews

Above all, Pirates of Barbary reminds us that history, whatever else it is, is also a genre of literature. It always has been, ever since it was first written down by the ancient chroniclers. You can scour it all you like for insights, arguments and conclusions. But it's still worth reading if only because it's bloody good ­entertainment.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly
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.