Category: Corsairs

In 1612, the republic of the Netherlands negotiated a treaty with the Ottoman Sultan that guaranteed trade privileges for Dutch[…]

In Algiers in the seventeenth century, piracy was big business. Algerian corsairs brought back enormous amounts of booty and hundreds[…]

Have you ever wondered how much it cost to outfit a ship for a pirate cruise in the seventeenth century?[…]

(This post is a continuation of Calafat Hassan – the Tale of a Corsair Reis: Part 2. If you haven’t[…]

(This post is a continuation of Calafat Hassan – the Tale of a Corsair Reis: Part 1. If you haven’t[…]

During the age of the Barbary corsairs, successful corsair captains were not only wealthy and important men; they were folk[…]

The image at the top of this post is a digital reproduction of a seventeenth century painting depicting a sea[…]

(This post is a continuation of Of Piracy, Profit, and Prudence — Part 1. If you haven’t done so already,[…]

In its heyday as a corsair capital, the city of Algiers had one major economic driver: piracy. Legally speaking, Algerian[…]

By the early decades of the seventeenth century, Barbary corsairs were employing two very different types of ships: oared galleys[…]