Corsairs'activity and contracts

Abstract

The redemption of captives in Barbary occupied a considerable place in the diplomatic relations between the Barbary and Christian powers in France during the modern period. Many actors, it is true, intervened to varying degrees. The best known were the religious orders, specializing in the redemption of captives, mainly in the Middle Ages, the Trinitarians and the Mercedarians, acting on the scale of Christendom, but also more local orders in Spain, France, or Italy. Similarly, we note that civil, secular people played a major role as intermediaries in these transactions, not only for commercial purposes, transforming the buyback operations into real commercial transactions, using the probative force of the signing of contracts to obtain their execution as if they were trading in goods.

Merchants were subrogated by families of captives. They were used to charter ships, trade, barter or smuggle men and goods. Finally, to help the poorest being the object of land raids, sailors forming part of the crews, or merchants kidnapped with their cargoes, the municipalities could carry out redemptions, collective or individual, by resorting to notaries in France. On the other side of the Mediterraneean, private agreements were taking place between customs intermediaries, traders, consuls, and Ottoman authorities in the Regencies.

In all cases, the terms of the negotiation, fixing of the price, payment of taxes and commissions to the intermediaries followed purely commercial logics, with a sometimes vague or extremely standardized legal framework, depending on whether one was within the framework of the application of peace treaties, respect for “capitulations”, or private agreements between traders, contracts signed before a notary. But sometimes also, words or verbal oaths were exchanged only according to one's religion, within the framework of “rescatti” contracts.

Finally, some captives escaped any normative rule and any writing. They could either be released immediately on the boat which was to bring them back into captivity in Barbary, thanks to the process of the “Alafia” and the payment of a verbally agreed ransom, or fled, sometimes by returning to France and escaping the trials of the Inquisition, thus diverting attention from a momentary Muslim conversion that they forgot as soon as they reached their country.