Book Review: Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500–1800

Thomas Davis’ “The Sack of Baltimore”: A Literary-Historical Perspective

“…In Barbary, those who hunted and traded slaves certainly hoped to make a profit, but in their traffic in Christians there was also always an element of revenge, almost of jihad --for the wrongs of 1492, for the centuries of crusading violence that had preceded them, and for the ongoing religious struggle between Christian and Muslim that has continued to roil the Mediterranean world well into modern times. (Davis, 2004, p. xxv) Davis (2004, p. 17) later subsumes the captives of the Baltimore raid into the category of ideologically-and revengemotivated slavery in the Barbary Coast states. For him, it is this insistence on vengeance that spurred and characterised Muslim slavery in the Barbary Coast.…”

“…Apparently basing their arguments in popular contemporary anti-Muslim views and writings about Islam which have come to the fore since the tragic attack of September 11, 2001, both Ekin (2012) and Davis (2004) view the Baltimore onslaught as part of an age-old systematic Islamist war against Christendom. Since its occurrence, the attack has often been seen in the western world in terms of a long ongoing holy war between the east and the west, Islam and Christianity.…”

“…Since its occurrence, the attack has often been seen in the western world in terms of a long ongoing holy war between the east and the west, Islam and Christianity. Davis (2004) and Ekin (2012) seem to have been impacted by the event and its anti-Muslimism representations in the media. Rather than anchoring their discourse about the Baltimore pirate narrative in the European-Ottoman seventeenth-century background, both authors primarily place it in the context of present-day west and Islam dichotomy in which the raid is conceived as an old example of a long sequence of what they consider Islamic jihad or terrorist attacks against the west.…”

“…Significant counterarguments to those of Davis (2004) and Ekin (2012) and, more generally, to the prevailing western discourse on old Islamic piracy and slavery, can be seen in Matar (1999) and Murray (2006). Matar provides a different perspective about the realities of exchange between England and the Islamic Mediterranean in the early seventeenth century, maintaining that during this period, the rhetoric of a "holy war" was not restricted to Muslims.…”

“…However, in his poem, Davis does not use the term "jihad" or "holy war" as Davis (2004) and Ekin (2012) do. At the time the poem was written, British imperialism had begun to establish its international hegemony and the power of Islam had been declining.…”