Cahiers de la Méditerranée 87 (2013) Captifs et captivités en Méditerranée à l'

Cahiers de la Méditerranée 87 (2013) Captifs et captivités en Méditerranée à l'époque moderne ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ Magnus Ressel Venice and the redemption of Northern European slaves (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ Avertissement Le contenu de ce site relève de la législation française sur la propriété intellectuelle et est la propriété exclusive de l'éditeur. Les œuvres figurant sur ce site peuvent être consultées et reproduites sur un support papier ou numérique sous réserve qu'elles soient strictement réservées à un usage soit personnel, soit scientifique ou pédagogique excluant toute exploitation commerciale. La reproduction devra obligatoirement mentionner l'éditeur, le nom de la revue, l'auteur et la référence du document. T oute autre reproduction est interdite sauf accord préalable de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Revues.org est un portail de revues en sciences humaines et sociales développé par le Cléo, Centre pour l'édition électronique ouverte (CNRS, EHESS, UP, UAPV). ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ Référence électronique Magnus Ressel, « Venice and the redemption of Northern European slaves (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) », Cahiers de la Méditerranée [En ligne], 87 | 2013, mis en ligne le 15 juin 2014, consulté le 17 août 2014. URL : http://cdlm.revues.org/7194 Éditeur : Centre de la Méditerranée moderne et contemporaine http://cdlm.revues.org http://www.revues.org Document accessible en ligne sur : http://cdlm.revues.org/7194 Document généré automatiquement le 17 août 2014. La pagination ne correspond pas à la pagination de l'édition papier. © T ous droits réservés Venice and the redemption of Northern European slaves (seventeenth and eighteenth centuri (...) 2 Cahiers de la Méditerranée, 87 | 2013 Magnus Ressel Venice and the redemption of Northern European slaves (seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) Pagination de l’édition papier : p. 131-145 Introduction 1 This paper looks at the infrastructure of a very specific –one may even call it exotic– business of the early modern era that connected Northern and Southern Europe. The ransoming of Northern Europeans enslaved by North African corsairs may be considered as a rather odd business. Only a few thousand Northern Europeans were ever taken by Muslim corsairs to Morocco, Algiers, Tunis or Tripoli, and thus their ransom was of little economic significance, the high prices and often bitter fortunes of many individuals notwithstanding. 1 2 However, the ransoming business illustrates a structural pattern of trade that is of great historical importance. The organization of ransoming Northern Europeans was a very complicated and highly precarious affair and was constantly threatened to fail by the incalculable behavior of those engaged. How could it be otherwise? Mostly illiterate sailors from very distant parts of rural and underdeveloped Northern Germany or Scandinavia found themselves captured, often on ships with foreign flags, and then abducted to poor and underdeveloped North African countries that were mostly disconnected from world commerce and constantly at war with or embargoed by the Iberian and Italian states. Northern European authorities with sufficient will power to invest substantial time and money had to negotiate with Muslim authorities to ransom the enslaved sailors and, in case of an accord, to enact a risky payment, since it was always demanded in cash. This occurred in an age that had no means of long-distance communication other than postal letters and traveling mediators. However, despite these problems, ransoming occurred, starting with the first captures of Northern Europeans, and their ransom rate was mostly much higher than that of Southern Europeans. 2 The North’s desire to have its sailors liberated ensured that substantial resources were invested to attain that goal. 3 This configuration led to a scenario that is of substantial help in mapping the infrastructure of communication and commercial organization of the early modern era. First, because of the difficulty of organizing ransoms, documentation has survived in the archives providing information on nearly every problem that could arise. Second, because of northerners’ desire to pay the least amount of transaction costs possible, they turned to the best organized and most highly developed communication and commercial centers of the age. Surprisingly, in the eighteenth century for the Danish monarchy this meant Venice, which emerges from the sources as an important node for ransom affairs. The explanation of this preference over Livorno can help to explain the still relevant position of Venice in the eighteenth-century commercial world. 4 The article is divided into two main parts: First, I provide a more global context, i.e. the origins and structure of Northern European ransoming as it evolved in the seventeenth century, when it was based in Livorno, and then how and when Venice began to play a role herein at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In the second part I connect these observations with newer research on Venice as a mercantile hub in the eighteenth century, and I assess the effectiveness of ransoming via the lagoon-city. Northern European ransoming via the Italian peninsula 5 Venice was affected by the upsurge of Muslim corsairing in the Mediterranean from the 1520s onwards. However, at a time when the newly-won Ottoman regencies of North Africa were still subject to the authority of the Porte, Venice’s ships probably enjoyed better treatment by Venice and the redemption of Northern European slaves (seventeenth and eighteenth centuri (...) 3 Cahiers de la Méditerranée, 87 | 2013 corsair fleets. 3 The problem thus remained limited for the powerful republic, which in any case had the capability to arm convoys. It was no coincidence that the first office for the redemption of slaves in the Italian peninsula was established in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1548. 4 After the watershed of Christian-Muslim warfare in the Mediterranean of 1580, made famous by Braudel, several parameters changed fundamentally. 5 The Porte lost much authority over the Barbary regencies, and the war of the fleets was replaced by a “petite guerre” of endless corsairing, primarily by Spaniards and Italians against North Africans and vice versa. 6 In the last decade of the sixteenth century Venice began to suffer more, and around the turn of the century it had to make its ransoming business more professional. 7 6 The Northern Europeans in the Mediterranean after 1590 were primarily Hanseatic, Dutch and English. They did not suffer much from corsairs until 1610 since they were often regarded as enemies of Spain. Yet, the capture of northerners rose constantly thereafter, most likely due to the Dutch-Spanish truce of 1609 that ended the latent alliance between the Dutch and the North Africans, reaching around 1,500 ships in 1610–1650. 8 Thus northerners soon had to begin ransoming. England and the Dutch Republic opted for different models. 9 The former sent squadrons to fight the corsairs and after 1641 used state funds for most of its captives. The latter did not engage in ransoming at all, leaving redemption to the private side. Regardless of this choice, which affected the frequency of ransoming, the channels are not yet traceable in detail. Both states primarily used their consuls in North Africa and, in times of war, resorted to merchants (mostly of their own “nation”) in Livorno. 10 From the surviving fragmentary sources it seems Hanseatics mainly followed the same path. After having tried ransoming via the French and Dutch consuls from 1610 onwards, a shift toward Dutch merchants in Livorno began in Hamburg in June 1620. At the latest, in 1631 the hitherto hesitant Lübeckers also made this switch. 11 7 Venice was thus left aside. In the early seventeenth century Livorno had rapidly become the new emporium for many entrepreneurial Northern European merchants, who increased the intensity of northern business contacts. 12 Venice certainly was home to many German merchants, but most were from southern Germany and, around 1600, they were still rather distinct from the Hanseatic-dominated German north. German merchants in Venice had thus at best a very indirect connection to the problems of slave redemption. 13 Livorno was the main center for organizing and enacting the ransom of northerners during the entire seventeenth century. 8 We know, however, that German and Jewish merchant communities in Venice were engaged in ransoming activities that cannot be traced with much precision. In Venice we know of a fund set up by Jews at the latest in 1609 that for some decades became a central element of ransoming activities for and by Jews everywhere in the Mediterranean, be they captured by Christians or Muslims. 14 For the Germans in Venice we have no information other than these lines from a 1715 handwritten chronicle of the nazione alemana: And in the year 1591, which followed that unprecedented famine, how many hungry were not satiated by the most pious Nazione? Many memorial-books which still exist among the old scriptures (the ones that remained after the fire) testify clearly of the liberation of poor captives and slaves from the hands of the Barbarians and of giving poor damsels pious alms. 15 9 Unfortunately, this remains vague. Most likely, German merchants gave money to the Provveditori sopra ospedali e luoghi pii e riscatto degli schiavi, the office charged with redemption of Venetian slaves. 16 10 German merchants in Venice could uploads/Geographie/ venice-and-the-redemption-of-north-europ.pdf

Tags
Administrationvenice northern ransoming eighteenth livorno
Documents similaires
  • 18
  • 0
  • 0
Afficher les détails des licences
Licence et utilisation
Gratuit pour un usage personnel Attribution requise
Partager