Islamic seapower during the age of fighting sail

Abstract

adopt contemporary stereotypes regarding the ‘untrustworthy and unpredictable Barbary pirates’. It is, however, the case that the traditional Eurocentric diplomatic historiography against which Heinsen-Roach chooses to tilt has since some years been discredited. In the field of New Diplomatic History, it has long been emphasised that western diplomats, whether ambassadors or consuls, found it necessary to adapt to the conventions of their host states and to be prepared to be flexible with respect to their own diplomatic-cultural frames of reference. This is exemplified by the wellknown need for representatives of the Dutch East India Company to be prepared to perform the ritual obeisance of the kowtow before Chinese and Japanese potentates. A weakness of the book that may be mentioned is the rather narrow focus on its principal subject. Heinsen-Roach is determined to show that, in the second half of the seventeenth century, the States General proved unable, in its role as central lynchpin in the Republic’s political system, to raise sufficient funds to secure the release of the prisoners. This, she notes, ‘reflects the shortcomings of a decentralized state’. However, this is not really tenable if one reflects that, during this period, the States General were taking the lead in the creation of an enormously expanded standing navy of purpose-built warships, one furthermore that was intended as the property of the nation as a whole. This fleet did duty in the defence of the Republic and its maritime economy against the France of Louis XIV and the England of Charles II. It further played a leading role in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. That the raising of funds for the redeeming of the captives was left to the families involved, and to their individual towns and regions, was not so much the result of the powerlessness of a decentralised system, but more a consequence of the scale of other, higher-priority matters demanding the attention of the States General and the provincial states.