Piracy, captivity, and slavery in the early modern Mediterranean have intrigued scholars for a long time. Given the rich sources in European archives and Euro-centered historiography, many scholars have written the histories of European polities and redemptive institutions to explain how Christian and Muslim civilizations formed fierce opponents. In this interpretation, the late sixteenth-century western Mediterranean was a region divided by confession and politics. In recent years, historians have offered more nuanced historical inquiries into the nature of North African and European relations. Studies on diplomatic contacts between Europe and Morocco, the complicity of Christians in privateering, and the deep commercial ties that Christians, Muslims, and Jews maintained as a result of ransoming practices in the Mediterranean, all demonstrate the fluid boundaries of the region and challenge the concept of a Mediterranean frontier zone in which lines did not get crossed. The Captive Sea contributes to the field by carefully breaking down any remnants of categorization and divisions. Hershenzon contends that human trafficking in the western Mediterranean integrated the region socially, politically, and economically.
In rejecting analyses that seek to split the Mediterranean into separate Christian and Muslim worlds, Hershenzon refrains from using contesting empires, states, and religions as categories of analysis. Trans-imperial forces, he explains, resulted in the formation of three regions that defy strict religious and political demarcations: the western corridor of Ottoman Tunis, Spanish Sicily, and Malta; the central corridor of Ottoman Algiers, Spanish Oran, the Balearic Islands, and Catalonia; and the western corridor of Morocco, southern Andalusia and Atlantic Spain. Hershenzon relies on the sources left by actors of the Spanish Empire, Morocco, Ottoman Algiers, Italy, and France to illuminate how these geographies were affected by and involved in piracy, captivity, and redemption. He has analyzed captives’ narratives, documents from the Inquisition, records from the Trinitarian and Mercedarian orders, pamphlets, maps, and plays. To give the underrepresented Muslims in the archives a voice, he also added fatwas, legal treaties, and notarial formulations to his impressive list of sources. Together, these documents form a familiar body of work, known as the corpus captivitis, which relate to all aspects of captivity and redemption. They give Hershenzon the basis to provide intricate details and analyses of how region formation and integration evolved during the last quarter of the sixteenth century.
The inclusion of different confessional, ethnic, and political sources allow Hershenzon to emphasize that Christian and Muslim captives experienced similar patterns of captivity, most notably the migration from one place to another. Slaves were sold and transferred, rented out, exchanged, or forced to do seasonal labor elsewhere. The mobility of captives, Hershenzon articulates, formed a dynamic process that contributed to the formation of a “single Mediterranean system of bondage.” (18) Because ransom was the most common (if not always the most successful) way to obtain freedom, redemptive orders, (Jewish) merchants, and Mediterranean rulers competed in the collection, distribution, and payments of ransom. Friars, for example, often brought products with them to sell in North Africa to pay for the redemption of captives, whereas merchants used ransom as an excuse to participate in (illegal) trade. Together, they created a ransoming network that blended commercial and religious interests but also left the Maghribi rulers in charge of determining the rules of redemption.
Whereas scholars usually treat the corpus captivitis as a reflection of the realities and experiences of captivity, Hershenzon contends that these documents also represent a mode of communication generated solely by captivity. Captives were not only subjected to servitude: their writings helped make intra-confessional, commercial, and political connections. Patrons, for example, were dependent on the ability and rhetorical skills of the captives to persuade families and authorities in their home countries to pay the ransom. Ransom took many forms, including the release of those promising that they would pay after their release. Whether captives wrote letters or left indebted, patrons relied on their trustworthiness to receive compensation for the latter's liberation.
Similarly, the use of (unjust) violence, such as forced conversion or the violation of contracts, produced a stream of complaints and calls for protection. Because numerous players and institutions became involved in solving or mitigating instances of violence, Hershenzon speaks of a system of reciprocity that characterized Mediterranean bondage. The modes of writing which enslaved captivity induced did not alienate parties, he observes, but brought them closer together. Another type of dependency emerged between captives and their home societies.
Many scholars have explained how captivity letters served the purpose of urging family members to ask royal and religious institutions to intervene on behalf of the letter writer. But Hershenzon explains that captivity letters also re-affirmed and changed social relations between captives and their communities, especially when (other) captives converted to Islam or Christianity and consequently became outcasts. Captives were not isolated. The values at home extended to the lives of community members in captivity, revealing that human bondage did not break ties of kinship and social norms but rather strengthened them in the process. Finally, the collection and circulation of knowledge was another critical factor that contributed to the integration of the western Mediterranean. In the late 1600s, Spanish (military) officials lacked intelligence networks and relied on information from those who came from the Maghrib. These included friars and ransoming merchants, but most of all captives who had spent long periods in North Africa and were therefore well informed about local customs and the latest news or rumors. Captives thus acted as political informants who helped early modern Spanish authorities acquire a body of political knowledge on the Maghrib that circulated widely.
In re-interpreting the corpus captivitis as a testimony to how people from all shores of the sixteenth-century Mediterranean crossed its religious, political, and geographical boundaries, Hershenzon concludes that market principles, social obligations, religious sentiments, and political interests all sustained what he calls a political economy of ransom. The best part is that The Captive Sea reminds readers of the paradox this study unraveled: human trafficking in the western Mediterranean tied the histories of its people and their home countries together rather than separating them. Perhaps most critical is the dependency of the Spanish Crown on its former religious outcasts, Jews and Muslims residing in the Maghrib, who played a vital role in the redemption of Christian slaves. Beautifully written, researched in-depth, and well analyzed, The Captive Sea is a welcome contribution to English readers interested in Mediterranean history, the history of slavery and captivity, and Christian-Muslim relations.
