ABSTRACT
An early, possibly the first, European Barbary captivity narrative is Balthasar Sturmer’s Verzeichnis der Reise (1558), written by hand in German. Mario Klarer’s discussion of Sturmer’s detailed adventures as a merchant, pirate, slave, and slaveholder in the 1530s serves well as the opening essay to this collection on piracy and captivity in the early modern Mediterranean. Despite Sturmer’s idiosyncratic and unique experiences, his account touches upon the major themes pertinent to European and North African piracy and slavery in the centuries to come. Sturmer’s confession-like memoirs negotiate and amalgamate the main ingredients of early modern Mediterranean corsairing and slavery, revolving around questions of identity, alterity, and hybridity but most prominently the intersection of religion and economy—all of which the contributions to this volume discuss widely.
