THE ECONOMICS OF THE BARBARY CORSAIR ENTERPRISE

In Algiers in the seventeenth century, piracy was big business.

Algerian corsairs brought back enormous amounts of booty and hundreds of captives every year. The booty was sold at cut-rate prices—it was stolen merchandise after all—in the souks (markets) that lined the main street that ran transversely through the city: al-Souk al-Kabir, the Great Street of the Souks. Mostly, the booty was bought by European merchants, many of them from Livorno, Italy, who shipped it back to the Livorno markets and sold it there at a huge profit. The captives (along with booty as well, according to some sources) were sold in the Badistan, the slave market.

Captives about to be sold were paraded along al-Souk al-Kabir accompanied by a town crier who loudly announced their upcoming sale. At the Badistan, they were put up for auction to the highest bidder. In order to show their physical condition, they were ordered to jump up and down, run on the spot, bend and twist. Their teeth were examined; their hands were. Potentially beddable female captives were taken to a private area to determine whether or not they were virgins.

Three main considerations determined captives’ sale prices.

Their skill set. Those with useful skills—carpenters, shipwrights, surgeons, book keepers, etc.—fetched higher prices because of their utility to their new owners
Their sexual attractiveness. Young, attractive women (and boys) fetched high prices
Their background. Captives from wealthy backgrounds fetched high prices because they had the financial wherewithal to pay ransoms.

This last consideration is why inspecting captives’ hands was so important. Callused hands meant the person did manual work. A man with callused hands might be anything from a farm laborer to a fisherman to a master carpenter, so callused hands didn’t necessary mean a low sale price. But it was a pretty good indicator that the captive wasn’t wealthy. Non-callused hands, however, likely indicated just one thing: that the person was rich, or at least rich enough to be able to avoid the drudgery of daily menial tasks. And that meant that such people likely had the financial resources to pay ransoms.

And ransoms were where the really serious profits lay.

Every prospective slave owner was on the lookout for a rich captive he could buy. Such captives were encouraged—sometimes quite brutally—to write letters back home requesting the ransom funds needed to free them. If a captive were wealthy enough, his or her owner could easily turn a profit of 500% or more—sometimes much more.

That profit didn’t just go to the captive’s owner, though.

The proceeds from piracy—booty and captives—were the driver of the Algiers economy. Everybody took a cut of the profits. So when a ransom payment was successfully negotiated, the actual cost was significantly higher than the ‘asking price.’ The Bassa of Algiers (the Ottoman Governor of the city) took his percentage. There was a port tax. The official in charge of collecting the port tax (the Emmini) took his cut. Each ransomed captive needed to purchase an official document (a Hücett) certifying that s/he was now freed. The Turgeman, the interpreter who facilitated the ransom negotiations, took his share. The janissary soldiers who guarded and transported the captives took their cut. The money changers who acted as bankers—ransoms were paid either in merchandise or in cash, large sacks or chests filled with coins that needed to be valued and exchanged from one currency to another—took their percentage, too.

We know all this from several sources. One of the most interesting and revealing is a letter, dated October 15, 1622, written by Wynant de Keyser, the Dutch Consul in Algiers at the time. In this letter, de Keyser complains about all the extra costs added to ransom payments. He includes an itemized list of the expenses of a particular ransom as an example to back up his complaints. That list is included below. It was originally written in Dutch. Instead of trying to present a literal translation, I have simplified the text and reorganized the list a little where I thought it would be helpful. All prices in the list are in “doubles,” the standard unit of currency used in Algiers at the time:

Here’s the list:

______________________________________________________________________

First, it is customary to pay the patron or master of the ransomed
captive the price in doubles……………………………………….……………..…..1000,0,0

To the Bassa, 10%…..….….….….….….….….….….….….….….……..….…………..100,0,0

For the port tax, 1%.….….….….….….………………………..….….….….….………..10,0,0

To the Emmini [the port tax collector], 2%.….….….….….….….….….………….….20,0,0

For the certificate of liberty (the Hücett)..….….….……………….…………………46,0,0

For inspecting the ships transporting the freed slaves,
to the Yasakçi [the janissary guards]..……….….…..…………….……..…………..…46,0,0

To the Yasakçi guarding the Dutch nationals…………………….….….….…………..9,0,0

To the Turgeman [the interpreter] ……………………………..……………………..18,0,0

For the exchange of the above mixed amount of money, 30% at least, if the
money is in large denominations of coin, otherwise more, counted in doubles…………………………………………..……………….…..………………….377,0,0

Total amount in doubles…………………………….…………………………….….1636,0,0

______________________________________________________________________

As you can see, according to this list, the extra charges increased the original ransom price by more than 60%. Little wonder that de Keyser complained about these added expenses.

It was the way things worked, though. The details differed from ransom to ransom, and from decade to decade, but the principle remained the same. Algiers really had only the one revenue stream: booty (both human and not). Everybody tried to get what they could from that revenue stream. And those paying the ransoms—whether they were individual wealthy families, governments, monarchs, or redemptionist religious orders like the Mercedarians or the Trinitarians—had little choice but to cough up the money demanded and pay the added costs. It was either that or let their family members/citizens/subjects/co-religionists languish in slavery.

It was a ruthless, exploitive business model that worked for the better part of two hundred years.

A sobering thought.

There’s an underlying aspect to all this, however, that it is important to remember.

Corsair capitals like Algiers, that depended economically on profits from piracy, prospered in part because of the exorbitant ransoms they could demand. More generally, though, they prospered because they could sell the masses of stolen merchandise that flowed into the city. The buyers of this booty were largely European merchants who were complicit with the Barbary corsair piratical enterprise because it was extremely profitable for them.

Profit trumped all other considerations.

Sound familiar?

For those who may be interested, the list from Wynant de Keyser’s letter can be found in K. Heeringa (ed.) Bronnen tot de geschiedenis van den levantschen handel (Sources the History of the Levant Trade), Book 1, Part 2, p. 903. As mentioned above, I have modified the list slightly to clarify things for this post.