ALGIERS IN THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
In early May of 1619, Jean-Baptiste Gramaye—a professor at the University of Leuven, in Brabant, in what is now Belgium—had[…]
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Author: Adam Nichols
I'm an associate professor with the University of Maryland, in the U.S. I spent twenty years teaching for the University of Maryland’s European division, in England, Scotland, Norway, Iceland, and Germany, and downrange on military installations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. I've also lived and worked in Australia, China, and Canada. I presently live in the U.S.
JOÃO DE CARVALHO MASCARENHAS: WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE A GALLEY SLAVE
We started this year (2023) with a series of excepts from a captivity narrative written by a Portuguese soldier named[…]
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PRIVATEERING — THE BUSINESS OF PIRACY: PART 2
(This post is a continuation of Privateering — The Business of Piracy: Part 1. If you haven’t done so already,[…]
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PRIVATEERING — THE BUSINESS OF PIRACY: PART 1
The early seventeenth century was a wild, violent time. The discovery of the New World a century before—and the riches[…]
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PIRATES, PRIVATEERS, AND CORSAIRS
In this post, we get back to basics. Barbary corsairs are also often called Barbary pirates, but they were not[…]
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BARBARY CORSAIR SHIPS: SQUARE-RIGGED VESSELS – PART 2
(This post is a continuation of Corsair Ships: Square-Rigged Vessels – Part 1. If you haven’t done so already, it’s[…]
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BARBARY CORSAIR SHIPS: SQUARE-RIGGED VESSELS – PART 1
By the early decades of the seventeenth century, Barbary corsairs were employing two very different types of ships: oared galleys[…]
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TYRKJARANS-SAGA: EINAR LOPTSSON’S EXPERIENCE AS A SLAVE IN ALGIERS – PART 2
This week continues with the excerpt from Tyrkjarans-Saga describing the experiences of Einar Loptsson, an Icelander enslaved in Algiers in[…]
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TYRKJARANS-SAGA: EINAR LOPTSSON’S EXPERIENCE AS A SLAVE IN ALGIERS – PART 1
In the summer of 1627, two sets of Barbary corsairs—one from Salé, one from Algiers—raided Iceland. The Salé corsairs pillaged[…]
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DEFINITELY A COMPLICATED ALLIANCE
When people think about the relationship between North African Barbary corsairs and the European states in the seventeenth century, they[…]
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