From Barbary corsairs to people-traffickers: the violence of the Mediterranean

Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World Noel Malcolm

Allen Lane, pp.604, £30

Peiresc’s Mediterranean World Peter N. Miller

Harvard University Press, pp.640, £29.95

With summer on its way, thoughts turn south to olive groves and manicured vineyards, to the warm water and hot beaches of the Mediterranean. But this sea that is a place of rest and beauty for some of us is the scene of drama and often despair for many others, among them people trying to cross from North Africa.

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'Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World', £24 and 'Peiresc’s Mediterranean World', £26.95 are available from the Spectator Bookshop, Tel: 08430 600033. Anthony Sattin is the author of The Young Lawrence, A Winter on the Nile, The Gates of Africa and Lifting the Veil.

TaggedBarbary corsairs, Book review - History, Charles v, Christianity, Dubrovnik, Habsburgs, Hayreddin Barbarossa, Islam, lunar eclipse, map-making, Marseille, migrants, Montenegro, Nicholas Fabri de Peiresc, Ottomans, Suleiman the Magnificent, the Adriatic, the battle of Lepanto, the Brunis, the Brutis, the Mediterranean, Ulcinj, Venice

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From Barbary corsairs to people-traffickers: the violence of the Mediterranean

Two new histories of the Mediterranean emphasise its central importance to European history from ancient times to the present

As the US decides, so can you