Product Description

In June 1631 pirates from Algiers and armed troops of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, led by the notorious pirate captain Morat Rais, stormed ashore at the little harbour village of Baltimore in West Cork. They captured almost all the villagers and bore them away to a life of slavery in North Africa. The prisoners were destined for a variety of fates - some would live out their days chained to the oars as galley slaves, while others would spend long years in the scented seclusion of the harem or within the walls of the Sultan's palace. The old city of Algiers, with its narrow streets, intense heat and lively trade, was a melting pot where the villagers would join slaves and freemen of many nationalities. Only two of them ever saw Ireland again. The Sack of Baltimore was the most devastating invasion ever mounted by Islamist forces on Ireland or England. Des Ekin's exhaustive research illuminates the political intrigues that ensured the captives were left to their fate, and provides a vivid insight into the kind of life that would have awaited the slaves amid the souks and seraglios of old Algiers. "The Stolen Village" is a fascinating tale of international piracy and culture clash nearly 400 years ago and is the first book to cover this relatively unknown and under-researched incident in Irish history. It was shortlisted for the Argosy Irish Nonfiction Book of the Year Award.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #80825 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 488 pages

Review
'An enthralling read, not simply for the story of the raid itself, which Ekin recreates with bloodcurdling vividness, but for the parallels the author draws with the current geo-political situation' -- The Irish Times The Irish Times 'Wonderfully interesting ... A labour of love is how the author describes it, and after 350 easily read pages, it's well worth the journey' -- Irish Examiner The Irish Examiner 'a harrowing tale that sheds light on the little-known trade in white slaves ... a fascinating exploration of a forgotten chapter of British and European history' -- Giles Milton - BBC History Magazine 'Ekin is admirably surefooted as he finds his way through an impenetrable thicket of often contradictory sources and weaves his findings into an irresistibly readable narrative. Human interest is always well to the fore in a compelling book which also reminds us of the inexhaustible capacity of history to spring surprises.' -- The Scotsman 'This is a gripping account that's exhaustively researched but wears its learning lightly, and proceeds along at a lively pace ... proof if it was needed, that fact is often more interesting than fiction' -- Metro Newspaper 'Do yourself a favour and read this book, it's utterly captivating' -- Living In magazine

Irish Examiner
'Wonderfully interesting . . . A labour of love is how the author describes it, and after 350 easily read pages, it's well worth the journey'

Giles Milton, BBC History Magazine
'a harrowing tale that sheds light on the little-known trade in white slaves ... a fascinating exploration of a forgotten chapter of British and European history'

Customer Reviews

Amazing piece of forgotton history
This is an amazing book chronicalling a rarely spoken of history of white slavery. Although the writer focuses on the fates of the villagers of Baltimore his wide lens views the lives of many white English and European slaves and the decadent playground of North Africa with its fearsome pirate hordes.He paints a real breathing picture of the harems,jails, societies cities, and high seas of the time.I took this book on a holiday to Morocco enjoying the link geographically with the events in this book so perhaps I'm particular biased, but it was a fantastic read and I highly reccomend it.

Excellent History
A very fine book indeed on a topic of increasing interest and relevance - the slave trade driven by the Barbary Corsairs resulted in over a million Europeans being taken into slavery, from Iceland to Spain.

The question of of captives and identity is a tragic one. Women and children in particular suffered badly, but over the years return becomes almost impossible - this is the case the world over. An old Kiowa woman who died in the 1920s only found out weeks before she died that she was white - all of her real family had been butchered by the people she thought were her real family.

The author doesn't try to mitigate the horrors of this slave trade - of any slave trade - and its consequences.

Fascinating
On 20 June 1631, pirates from Algiers descended on Baltimore in County Cork and kidnapped over a hundred of its inhabitants, most of the population, bringing them back to Africa and selling them into slavery. Ekin describes this as "the most devastating invasion ever carried out by the forces of the Islamist jihad on Britain or Ireland", and while I regret that he asserts the jihadism of the pirates, who were clearly less interested in religion than, say, Sir Francis Drake or Oliver Cromwell, you can see what he means.

Yet in fact very little of this is quite as it seems. The leader of the pirates was a Dutch renegade whose sons settled in New Amsterdam (or as we now call it, New York), and whose descendants include, for instance, Caroline Kennedy. The kidnapped villagers were a small Calvinist colony in a hostile territory; Ekin makes a good case against a local Irish Catholic dignitary for having organised the pirates' raid in the first place, and makes it quite comprehensible that when the opportunity of ransom came aroud fifteen years later, only two of the hundred-plus former villagers of Baltimore chose to go home. Algiers had a decent health service, running water in the houses and a decent climate; Baltimore is still lacking in some of these respects and certainly lacked all of them in the seventeenth century.

Ekin is a journalist rather than a historian, and has got perhaps a bit carried away by his research into what life was like for the slaves of Algiers, his description of which occupies most of the book. (Having said that, his attitude is properly sceptical and his documentation scrupulous; my criticism is of his structure, not his methods.) He also doesn't appear to have visited Algiers personally, which is not a criticism, it's just a shame that he doesn't give us the benefit of today's perspective.

Even so, the story is a fascinating insight into the world of seventeenth-century maritime commerce linked by the Atlantic Ocean: New Amsterdam at one end, Don Quixote and Zoraida at the other. The fact that Algiers and New Amsterdam were such cosmopolitan places, with people moving pretty freely between them and Western Europe, makes it rather difficult to justify describing one city as "Islamic" or indeed the other as "Christian". (And makes his choice of words to describe the raid even more regrettable.)

Anyway, fascinating stuff.