The Lamentable Cries of at Least 1500 Christians – Lecture

The Lamentable Cries of at Least 1500 Christians with Dr Jo Esra has now finished. Thank you to everyone who attended.

Piracy was rife in the early modern Mediterranean, with the so-called ‘Barbary’ pirates of North Africa becoming notorious for their taking of people rather than goods. Captives were held for ransom or enslaved in the Islamic worlds of Morocco or Ottoman Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers. From the 1620s, North African pirates extended their activities out of the Mediterranean and preyed upon the coasts of the West Country. Focusing on documentation within British archives, this talk will explore the experiences of captives, their families, and their communities, in addition to looking at the wider cultural and political impact of this form of piracy during the 17th century.

Dr Jo Esra is a Lecturer at the University of Exeter, specialising in 16th- and 17th-century maritime literature and culture.

Tickets

Tickets are no longer available for this lecture.

Lecture Series

The Lamentable Cries of at Least 1500 Christians is part of National Maritime Museum Cornwall’s 2023 lecture series. Other lectures in this series include:

• Forward and Courageous with Dr Elaine Murphy, Thursday 14 September. Female pirates and the experiences of women at sea.
• Did Pirates Bury Their Treasure? with Dr Richard Blakemore, Thursday 9 November. Myths and reality in the history of piracy.