Category: Background

A little distance eastwards, across the Zuiderzee from Amsterdam, Holland, is the town of Lelystad, where you’ll find Batavialand—a maritime[…]

Have you ever wondered how people built wooden sailing ships in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? The process seems, on[…]

(This post is a continuation of Shipbuilding in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries – Part 1. If you haven’t done[…]

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a time of violent conflict, both on land and at sea. They were also[…]

From midway through the sixteenth century until the early nineteenth, tens of thousands of people were taken captive by Barbary[…]

(This post is a continuation of The Algiers Slave Market: Part 1. If you haven’t done so already, it’s best[…]

(This post is a continuation of The Algiers Slave Market: Parts 1 & 2. If you haven’t done so already,[…]

Mostly, when we think of slavery, we think of it in terms of the Africans who were forcibly shipped across[…]

The term “great ordinance” was used throughout the seventeenth (and the late sixteenth and early eighteenth) centuries to mean “cannon”[…]

Until the autumn of 1582, all the various European countries used the same calendar: the Julian calendar, named after Julius[…]