The Political Economy of Ransom in the Early Modern Mediterranean

In 1608, Christian corsairs captured a ten-year-old Algerian girl named Fatima and sold her into slavery in Livorno, Italy. Her father paid her ransom and nearly succeeded in returning her to Algiers. But the ship that was intended to carry her to freedom stopped in Corsica, where she was forced to convert to Christianity and baptized as Madalena. She never returned home, despite more than a decade of diplomatic effort involving the Spanish king and nobles, Jewish subjects of Spanish Oran, Algerian pashas and janissaries and the Ottoman sultan. Fatima’s travails were far from unique. In the early modern Mediterranean, a wide range of individuals, networks and institutions dealt with the trafficking of people — capturing, enslaving, smuggling and ransoming — across and beyond the borders of Spain’s Mediterranean territories, Morocco, and Ottoman Algiers and Tunis. According to a recent estimate, at least three million people — Muslims and Christians — lost their liberty at sea or on land and were enslaved between 1450 and 1850. 1 Out of this number, few managed to obtain release through compensation, swapping of captives or flight. 2 As Fatima’s narrative makes clear, this was not for lack of trying. Her story reveals a complex and integrated political economy that deeply preoccupied commercial, political and religious actors. Rulers and captives, ransom dealers and institutions together became the chief actors in a Mediterranean political economy of ransom stimulated by violence, privateering and piracy. 3

Ancient history · Archaeology · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Geography · Mediterranean climate · Political science · Politics · Ransom · Sicilian · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law

• Ragion di stato e salvezza dell’anima

  Open Access•Michèle Bosco•Ragion di stato e salvezza…•2019

  Incluir item

• “Towards a connected history of bondage in the Mediterranean

  Open Access•Daniel Hershenzon•History Compass•2017

  Incluir item

• Redentores de almas ante la Real Hacienda

  Open Access•Michèle Bosco•Cuadernos de Historia Moderna•2021

  Incluir item

• The Lonely Girl. External Factors in the Conversion and Failed Ransom of the Turkish–Algerian Fatima (1608–1622)

  Open Access•Bruno Pomara Saverino•Religions•2023

  Incluir item

• Heritage Washed Ashore

  Open Access•Naor Ben-Yehoyada, Naor Ben‐yehoyada•Critically Mediterranean•2018

  Incluir item

• Indigenous war captives and mobility-oriented punishments

  Nancy E Van Deusen•Atlantic Studies•2023

  Incluir item