<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

Lead book review

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

30 May 2015

9:00 AM

30 May 2015

9:00 AM

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.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Black Friday sale

Subscribe today and get 10 weeks of The Spectator Australia for just $1

  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au and app
  • The weekly edition on the Spectator Australia app
  • Spectator podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock this article

REGISTER

'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.


Comments

Black Friday sale

Subscribe today and get 10 weeks of The Spectator Australia for just $1

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close