Abstract
Research on connectivity, piracy, trade networks, interreligious diplomacy and the political and economic role of islands in the Mediterranean has gained importance in research in recent years. This goes along with a general increased interest in maritime history of the pre-modern era, which however, as Molly Green criticises in her introduction, traditionally only concentrated on the ‘realities of travelling across the sea and the norms and customs that structured such crossings’ (p. 8).
Green therefore takes a different starting point. In her thoughtful introduction she emphasizes the intention to ‘take the word “maritime” in the title’ seriously (p. 8) choosing a particular group of piracy victims, Greek merchants, as subjects of her inquiry. Moving away from a history of piracy oriented on states and political issues to a history of actors and their ways of navigating the sea Molly Green’s monograph is clearly distinguishable from previous studies. The scope is broad but at the same time the monograph is well structured: focusing on the Maltese Knights of St. John after their expulsion out of Jerusalem by the armies of Saladin, who inhabited the Islands of Malta and Gozo from the early sixteenth century onwards and on their Greek Orthodox victims. Green therefore analyses the Mediterranean as an ‘international maritime space’ (p. 12). This is a convincing approach as ‘piracy never exists in a vacuum’ (p. 5), as the author underlines. Taking this statement as a motto for her book Green also includes the role of the Ottomans, the different European Powers and alliances inspired by approaches on global history to place Mediterranean piracy in a wider context of European expansion.
The book is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter concentrates on the relationship between the Ottomans and the Venetians in the sixteenth century which is shaped by trade relations, on the one hand, and conflicts and hostility, on the other. The second chapter deals with the specific role of the Maltese knights in the context of the Veneto-Ottoman Order and with the status of the Greek Orthodox in the Latin west (especially Venice) and in the Ottoman Empire. While chapter three focuses on the ‘piratical landscape of the Mediterranean’ (p. 13) in general and on Catholic pirates within the Ottoman realm in particular, chapters four to seven are considered by Green herself as the ‘heart of the book’ (p. 14). In these chapters Green concentrates on the Greek merchants, who were in a way ‘people in the middle’ (p. 18), that is, cultural brokers in a specific way. They were Christians but did not belong to Latin Christianity. Within the Muslim Ottoman Empire they formed a religious minority. However, they were truly an ‘international community’ (p. 51) trading between Italy, the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. By describing their role as either Venetian or Ottoman subjects Green creates a paradox: ‘though they were everywhere, the Greeks were also nowhere’ (p. 51).
The book is rich in both questions and answers. To outline the achievements of the monograph I am going to pick up on two aspects only:
First and foremost, Molly Green’s monograph contributes significantly to a history of legal encounters in the early modern Mediterranean. Focussing on the ‘Tribunale degli Armamenti’, a ‘court’ of the knights in Malta, which was in charge of dealing with conflicts among the pirates and between pirates and their victims, especially the orthodox Greeks, Green is able to uncover ‘norms, laws and conventions that structured encounters at sea’ (p. 12). No previous comprehensive study of this tribunal in Malta exists. Green’s study sheds new light on this institution and its role and relevance. She can show for instance that the ‘Tribunale’ was far away from an ‘outlawed organization that stands outside the norms and attitudes of its more law-abiding neighbours’ (p. 114). The analysis of cases, like the one of ‘the Greek Giovanni’ in 1684 who appears at the ‘Tribunale’ because of an attack on his boat by the Maltese or the story of the ship owner Haji Pietro de Georgio from Rhodes in 1616, gives colourful insights into the rich source material Green has discovered.
Second, the results are very relevant for the study of interreligious and intra-religious encounters in the early modern Mediterranean, a space where Muslims, Jews, Latin and Orthodox Christians came into contact with each other. Molly Green thoughtfully describes and analyses the role of religions and religious identities. In this way the monograph contributes to a debate in research on the question of whether the increasing economic openness was accompanied by ‘religious and mental closure’ or if, the other way round it ‘led naturally to declining intolerance’ (p. 108). For Greek merchants, as Green demonstrates, the Christian identity was the ‘the best strategy for defending their trades’ (p. 19) and in this context also concentrated on their networks centred on religion.
The encounters between Maltese knights and Greek merchants in the Mediterranean, as Green writes, were much more than random events. They ‘connect up to one of the most important religious and political battles of the seventeenth century’ (p. 201), the Counter-Reformation. They interlink economic and religious issues and reach political dimensions (p. 202). Representatives of the Counter-Reformation, such as the famous cardinal Francesco Barberini, had strong interests to ‘bring the Greek Orthodox back from schism’ (p. 209). The office of an ‘inquisitor’ in Malta, who was in charge of protecting the Catholic faith, was established in the late sixteenth century. The ‘inquisitors’, like the future pope Alexander VII, Fabio Chigi, tied intensive contacts to Rome (Green reports the correspondence between Chigi and Barberini on the ‘Greek cases’ and their political implications). That means that the Greeks appealed not only to the ‘Tribunale degli Armamenti’ at Malta, but also to Vatican officials from the early seventeenth century onwards. The ‘inquisitor’ played a role as a mediator in many cases. Green presents a variety of cases where Greek merchants contacted Vatican officials, who instructed their Maltese inquisitor to solve the conflict in Malta (p. 217) but also the other way around, turning from Maltese institutions to Rome.
To sum up: this study is not only recommended for readers interested in early modern piracy. Well researched and captivatingly written Molly Green’s book impressively connects the focus on individual, sometimes anonymous actors, with general questions on maritime history, diplomacy, trade, etc. It combines dense description and source analysis with broader considerations for example on the history of religions, inter- and intra-religious contacts in the Mediterranean. Finally, thanks to her achievements it will no longer be possible to understand piracy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as anachronistic, illegal or an issue which can only ever randomly be relevant to political history.