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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Consuls and Captives: Dutch-North African Diplomacy in the Early Modern Mediterranean

Consuls and Captives: Dutch-North African Diplomacy in the Early Modern Mediterranean

Heinsen-Roach, Erica

Hardcover

Series: Changing Perspectives on Early Modern Europe, Book 20

African HistoryGeneral World HistorySpainish & Portuguese History

ISBN10: 1580469744
ISBN13: 9781580469746
Publisher: Univ Of Rochester Pr
Published: Nov 1 2019
Pages: 258
Weight: 1.25
Height: 0.80 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.10
Language: English

This work offers a new perspective on the history of diplomacy in the western Mediterranean, examining how piracy and captivity at sea forced Protestant states from northwest Europe to develop complex relationships with Islamic North Africa. Tracing how Dutch diplomats and North African officials negotiated the liberation of Dutch sailors enslaved in the Maghrib, author Erica Heinsen-Roach argues that captivity and redemption helped shape (rather than undermine) a new diplomatic order in the western Mediterranean.

Making use of extensive archival research, Consuls and Captives shows how encounters with North African society led the Protestant North to adjust to the norms and practices of the western Mediterranean. Dutch consuls became state representatives, tasked with claiming the unconditional release of captives from the Netherlands. But caught between these directives and the realities of Maghribi politics, the diplomats consented to pay ransom, participated in what they considered lavish gift-giving practices, and began to pay tribute-all practices that were departures from the norms the Dutch States General upheld in doing diplomacy.

In analyzing these adjustments, Heinsen-Roach brings into question earlier interpretations of diplomacy as a progressively evolving institution anchored in the western modern tradition. Consuls and Captives shows instead that early modern diplomacy in the western Mediterranean developed in uneven ways as a product of cultural encounters. With its compelling argument and wide-ranging evidence, this book will have a strong appeal to scholars of early modern diplomacy, slavery, and Mediterranean history, as well as to specialists on the Dutch Republic.

Erica Heinsen-Roach is visiting assistant professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

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