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

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