Back from Barbary [Ressource électronique] : captivity, redemption and French identity in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Mediterranean / Giilian Lee Weiss

Doctor of philosophy : Histoire : Stanford University : 2002

Bibliogr. p. 375-402

This study, which examines the French experience o f captivity in the Barbary States o f Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and Morocco, considers both the mechanics and perceptions o f an often forgotten phenomenon that pitted Crescent against Cross and implicated tens of thousands o f subjects. When French fishermen, merchants or fortune seekers set sail during the early modem period, they had reason to fear seizure by pirates and internm ent in North African prisons. Condemned to a lifetime o f servitude in Muslim lands if they did not die, escape, convert or purchase their freedom, slaves spent months to decades awaiting deliverance. Sometimes families and communities managed to raise the necessary ransom monev; on other occasions the king dispatched warships and emissaries to dem and the captives' release. Often the work o f redemption fell to one o f two Catholic orders founded during the Crusades. Tracking these charitable, mill tan- and diplomatic responses to Barbary captivity, and considering various representations in processions, narratives and correspondence, this study delineates changing notions o f French allegiance and changing relations with N orth Africa over two hundred years. In the seventeenth century, French leaders viewed captivity as a regrettable but prosaic risk o f travel - one manifestation of extra-temtorial violence perpetrated by enemy equals, who might be fought but not vanquished. Although Catholic and secular authorities made regular attempts to combat piracy and liberate slaves, whether to defend French commercial and strategic interests or save souls from apostasy, they did not seek to stamp out the phenomenon altogether. In the eighteenth century, however, as the religious rationale for redemption became less potent, officials and captives alike increasingly cast the enslavement o f French subjects by perceived inferiors as both inhumane and an affront to France's honor. By 1830 the Mediterranean slave system from which France suffered (but also profited) had virtually disappeared. Y'et the verv idea o f citizens in chains served as a pretext for invading and then colonizing Algeria.