Barbary Pirates: Myths, Lies, Propaganda - Tapa blanda

This book addresses the myth of Barbary Piracy. True, there were ‘Barbary’ Corsairs, but they could hardly compare to their fellow European Corsairs. They had much less might at sea; they were far fewer in numbers; they committed far fewer misdeeds, and their violence and cruelty were much less feared than those of their foes (except in propagandist literature and according to most of modern scholarship). Likewise, Christians in the captivity of ‘Barbary Pirates’ fared much better than their Muslim counterparts in Christian galleys or bagnos. However, both propagandist literature of the past centuries and modern Western narrative of history completely reshape reality and turn the lamer of the two sides into the scourge and the more ferocious one into the just punisher. This book analyses and gives many instances of how this reshaping of reality is done. It lends particular focus to the historical facts that contradict the narrative of both propagandists and historians. It also, more importantly, explains why the myth of Barbary Pirates was created and why historical narrative maintains it to this day.