Book Recounts Englishmen's Enslavement At Hands of Muslim Pirates
TALLAHASSEE, Fla.-Romanticized fiction about pirates plundering the sea has always captured the imagination of readers, but a new book edited by a Florida State University English assistant professor explores the real-life experiences of Englishmen on the Mediterranean Sea who were captured and sold into slavery by Muslim pirates during the 16th and 17th centuries.
Beyond enslavement, the English sailors and merchants sometimes were forced to convert to Islam. Many converted, some resisted and others died in captivity. A few escaped and returned home to tell the tale.
In "Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England," Daniel Vitkus introduces seven narratives written by English seamen and merchants that describe combat at sea, slave markets, torture and great escapes. There is a general introduction written by Nabil Matar, chair of the department of humanities and communication at Florida Institute of Technology.
"These are dramatic and compelling stories for history buffs, for people outside of the academy who like exotic travel stories, and for scholars inside the academy who are interested in cross-cultural encounters," Vitkus said.
According to Vitkus, the so-called "Barbary pirates" were more like privateers because they operated with the sanction and support of authorities in North African ports like Algiers and Tunis. Their activities helped to support the economies of the North African regencies that harbored them. They attacked Christian shipping in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, and their multicultural crews were composed of renegades from all parts of Europe, as well as Moors and Turks, and Christian slaves.
At the time, the Turkish Empire was much more powerful than England, and Islam was a threat to England's developing sense of nationalism. The narratives illustrate the power, prosperity and piety of Muslims, and they show the ideological and material challenges that Muslim powers presented to early modern Britons.
"These narratives reverse some of the stereotypes of Muslim-Christian relationships that we usually think of," Vitkus said. "Even though the narrators tend to demonize the Islamic world, they are still fascinated and awed by it."
Part of the demonization of Islam is seen in the way the English describe their providential escape from the "darkness" of Islam back into the "light" of Christendom. Their return from slavery in North Africa to freedom in England is depicted as a journey guided by the hand of a Protestant God.
The fascination with Islam is evident in the narrative told by Joseph Pitts who, after being forced to convert to Islam, became the first English man known to have made the pilgrimage to Mecca. In the narrative, Pitts describes how his loyalty was divided between the Christian and Islamic worlds. His narrative, and the inside information it provides, is offered to the English reader as atonement and compensation for the abandonment of his Christian faith.
Vitkus said the conditions experienced by English slaves in North Africa were usually more tolerable than those endured by African slaves in North America. In some cases, the Islamic captors would allow their English slaves to run their own shops and would accept them as full-fledged members of Muslim society if they converted to Islam. On the other hand, some slaves were consigned to the galleys where conditions were harsh.
One narrative, written in 1595 by Richard Hasleton, recounts his escape from Islamic captors to the island of Malaga where he was then taken captive by the Spanish Inquisition. The narrator had to "escape" back to the relative ease of his Islamic slavery after being tortured by the Inquisition and asked to accept Roman Catholicism.
When he was working at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, Vitkus became interested in Anglo-Islamic relations of the 16th and 17th centuries. He later found the seven narratives at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C. The book, published by Columbia University Press, is Vitkus' second.
Vitkus' first book, "Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England," was published last year, also by Columbia University Press. Another book, "Turning Turk: English Theatre and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570 to 1620," is forthcoming from St. Martin's Press.
Vitkus began teaching at FSU in 2000. He earned his doctorate from Columbia University in 1992.
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