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1:08

Hello. Until their demise in the 19th century,

1:10

the Barbary Corsairs were a source

1:12

of great pride and wealth in North

1:14

Africa, where they sold the people and

1:16

goods they'd seized from European ships and

1:19

coastal towns. Nominally, these

1:21

Corsairs were from Algiers, Tunis

1:23

or Tripoli, outreaches of the

1:25

Ottoman Empire, but often their Turkish names

1:28

concealed their European birth. And

1:31

in the imagination and experience of their

1:33

enemies, they were pirates who

1:35

represented the values and threats of North

1:37

Africa to be tolerated only

1:39

until gunboats could destroy them.

1:42

With me to discuss the Barbary Corsairs

1:44

are Joanna Nolan, a research associate at

1:46

SOAS, University of London, Clare

1:49

Norton, former associate professor of history

1:51

at St Mary's University Twickenham, and

1:54

Michael Talbot, associate professor in the history of the

1:56

Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East at

1:58

the University of London. Michael

2:01

Tolbert. It's a complex situation, but

2:03

let's start with something simple. What,

2:05

at the very worst, was the

2:07

European experience of the Barbary Corsairs?

2:10

In the European imagination, and we're talking

2:12

across the whole of Western and Northern

2:14

Europe, the Barbary Corsairs

2:16

were bogeymen. They were the

2:18

opposite of everything that European

2:21

Christian civilization had to offer.

2:23

They were painted as pirates,

2:27

as anarchic states,

2:29

as really the worst of

2:31

humankind. And this

2:34

happens both on sea and on

2:36

land in the encounters between Europeans

2:39

and people from North Africa. And

2:41

this is mostly around encounters of

2:43

piracy, privateering, enslavement. And

2:46

what tends to happen in the narratives that

2:48

get constructed about North Africa is that the

2:50

things that the North Africans do, the

2:52

Europeans also do, are painted in the

2:55

worst possible light. So

2:57

whereas Europeans go around engaging

2:59

in glamorous privateering, the

3:01

North African states are vicious pirates.

3:05

Whereas it's acceptable in an 18th century

3:07

mind for Europeans to enslave hundreds of

3:09

thousands, millions of people on the west

3:11

coast of Africa, it's unacceptable for Europeans

3:14

to be taken and sold in the

3:16

slaves' markets of North Africa. What

3:18

period of time are we talking about, the 16th to the

3:21

19th century? Is that what you're talking about? That's the main

3:23

period. So the Barbary Corsairs,

3:25

there's a prehistory that goes back as

3:27

far as the 13th century in

3:29

some respects. But the

3:31

period that we call the Barbary Corsairs,

3:34

that really starts with the Ottoman conquests

3:36

of North Africa that start at the

3:38

beginning of the 16th century. The

3:40

real height, I suppose, of corsairing activity is

3:43

at the end of the 16th and the

3:45

first quarter, first half of the 17th century.

3:48

And then there's a very brief but violent resurgence at

3:50

the start of the 19th century. What

3:53

do the Europeans understand by the word

3:55

Barbary? The term Barbary is the

3:57

same, essentially, as the word Barbary. what

4:00

we would call the Berber people

4:02

in North Africa. They wouldn't call

4:04

themselves that often these days. They

4:06

call themselves Amazigh because Berber and

4:09

Barbary have this negative connotation of

4:11

uncivilised and that is

4:13

rooted in both a

4:15

sort of a European understanding of that

4:17

coast as being a place of uncivilisation

4:20

as I just mentioned before. It's also

4:22

because North Africa is a place that's

4:24

repeatedly conquered and colonised

4:27

by outsiders. So it's surprising

4:29

in some ways that it's persisted as

4:31

long as it has in describing the

4:33

complex states and societies of North Africa.

4:35

Yeah and Corsair? Corsair

4:38

is a really complex word.

4:40

It tends to denote violence at

4:43

sea that is legitimate violence. So

4:45

we tend not, if we do refer to the

4:48

North African states, we tend not to use the

4:50

word piracy anymore because piracy has the moral

4:53

and legal implication that it's not right,

4:56

it's illegal. Whereas what was happening

4:59

in the Western Mediterranean was

5:01

legal. These were not rogue pirates, they

5:03

were employees of a state and so

5:05

although they were committing violence it

5:08

was legitimate violence. So Corsairing is

5:10

kind of a link to privateering

5:12

and being legitimate maritime warfare. These

5:14

North African places that we alluded

5:16

to and that we will be talking about

5:18

were Muslim. How did that play in? This

5:20

plays into the the Barbary Pirates narrative very

5:22

much. As I mentioned before, North

5:25

Africa becomes the opposite of everything

5:27

that Western European civilisation represents and

5:29

that includes the fear of Islam.

5:31

It's at this time, particularly in the

5:33

16th century, that the Ottoman Empire is

5:36

getting towards the height of its power. Vienna

5:39

gets besieged in the 1520s, it will

5:41

get besieged again in the 1680s. This

5:43

is a time when the Ottoman armies

5:46

are really threatening the borders of the

5:48

states in the West of Europe. So

5:50

in the imagination of European

5:52

intellectuals and in many respects the

5:54

general populace, Islam is this

5:56

looming figure of threat. So the Barbary Corsairing

5:59

is a very important part of the world. says come to represent

6:01

a very real manifestation of that threat.

6:04

Thank you. Claire Norton, what were the rules

6:06

of engagement for these ships sailing out from

6:08

the ports in North Africa? Okay,

6:11

so very similar to the

6:13

rules of European Christian privateering.

6:15

First of all, a privateer, the ship,

6:17

the captain, the crew had to be

6:19

issued with a letter of mark or

6:21

an ottoman and a letter of mark.

6:25

It's a written permission from the state

6:27

authority, be that an empire, the Ottoman

6:29

Empire, or a city state saying

6:32

that this crew, this ship

6:34

could go out and legitimately,

6:36

legally attack the ships of

6:38

a designated nation, a

6:41

designated state that the authorizing

6:43

state was at war with.

6:45

And they were allowed to attack this

6:47

state during a particular period of time

6:49

when they might be at conflict. So

6:51

an example might be in

6:54

the 1570s, the Ottoman Venetian

6:56

War. At that time, the

6:58

Ottomans gave letters of mark

7:00

or this izharzet to Ottoman

7:02

privateers, which allowed them to

7:04

attack the shipping both mercantile

7:06

and naval shipping of the

7:08

Venetians because they were at

7:11

war with them and to capture the

7:13

ship, the goods and the people. But

7:15

as soon as that war ends, as

7:18

soon as the peace treaty is agreed,

7:20

these same actions by the privateers would

7:22

slip over the line and become seen

7:24

as piracy, which would be illegal and

7:27

punished. And the second

7:29

difference between piracy and

7:31

privateering is that all goods

7:33

taken during a privateering raid

7:35

would have to then be

7:37

checked and were subject to

7:39

a tax payable back to

7:41

the authority, the state that had

7:43

issued the letter of mark. How

7:46

far were these rules followed? Well,

7:49

well, that is a thing, isn't it?

7:51

In theory, they should be followed strictly,

7:53

but in practice, they weren't and they

7:56

weren't by any state in the Atlantic

7:58

and the Mediterranean. many Ottoman

8:00

privateers after the conclusion of peace

8:03

with Venice, for example, although they

8:05

could legitimately still attack the Habsburgs

8:07

and not the Venetians, often

8:10

did still attack people. And often

8:12

with the collusion of local officials

8:14

as well as them turning a

8:17

blind eye, there was considerable effort

8:19

at times put in for the

8:22

illegal systems in place to offer

8:24

redress to people and free people

8:26

taken illegally and to provide restitution

8:29

or compensation for goods taken, but

8:31

that wasn't always the case. So

8:33

they set off the corsairs, they set sail.

8:35

What could their rulers, who had given them

8:38

these letters of mark, these permissioners to attack

8:40

anybody they thought was an enemy, what could

8:42

they expect back at home? So

8:45

one of the key benefits of

8:47

this was that you could quite

8:49

cheaply and dramatically increase your military

8:52

force at a time of conflict

8:54

by bringing in these private, privateers,

8:56

by bringing in these ships, which

8:58

allowed you not only to harass

9:01

enemy shipping across a broader geographical

9:03

space, but also these ships could

9:05

participate in large naval battles. They

9:08

would bring in intelligence as well

9:10

from their travels around, so that

9:12

was another positive. And also the

9:14

tax taken from the captives

9:16

and the goods and the

9:19

ships brought in allowed the

9:21

building of considerable infrastructure around

9:23

the Mediterranean world, fortifications, towns,

9:25

urban infrastructure, and of course

9:27

manpower with the captives of

9:29

the enslaved people too. That

9:31

was a big part of it, the enslavement. Yeah, yeah.

9:33

Another thing that gave it its merciless

9:36

image. Yes, I mean

9:38

on all sides, I mean everybody within the

9:40

Mediterranean was subject to privateering attacks,

9:42

be they Christian or Muslim. That's one

9:44

thing we have to remember, it wasn't

9:46

simply something that North Africans participated in.

9:49

Thank you, Joe. What evidence do we

9:51

have for the variety of people who

9:53

might be corsairs? There's

9:56

a Spanish abbot who was taken hostage

9:58

in Algiers in... of the late 16th

10:01

century and he

10:03

wrote of the most powerful

10:05

corsairs stationed in Algiers

10:07

and of the 35 who

10:09

had galleots which were the most expensive ships,

10:12

25 of them were

10:14

European and drawn from predominantly

10:16

they were Venetians, Genoese and

10:18

Greeks. Are these people who had been

10:20

captured? No, these are

10:23

renegades. These are Europeans

10:25

who for whatever reason have either

10:27

been exiled or have sought exile

10:29

from their home country because they

10:31

were in trouble for presumably some

10:33

form of corsaring or privateering elsewhere

10:35

and they sought refuge in Algiers

10:38

or Tunis or Tripoli in the

10:40

sense that they could be harbored

10:42

by the state because they were

10:44

useful to the state there. Because

10:46

we think of the corsairs as a situation

10:48

in North Africa but you're basically saying

10:51

it was flooded with Europeans. Absolutely flooded

10:53

with Europeans. Two of the most

10:55

famous corsairs operating during the period

10:57

that we've outlined were known

10:59

as Morad Rice the Elder and Morad

11:01

Rice the Younger. They weren't related at

11:04

all. Morad Rice the Elder allegedly lived

11:07

to the age of 104. He was an Albanian born in Rhodes. So

11:12

already you have the sense of

11:14

a multilingual, multicultural, multinational

11:17

background. He worked for the Ottoman Empire.

11:19

He worked for himself. He worked out

11:21

of Salih, the port in Morocco and

11:23

then Morad Rice the Younger was a

11:26

Dutch Jansian Thun who is a

11:28

Dutch corsair who based himself again

11:30

at times in the Barbary Regencies.

11:32

At times after Salih he conducted

11:34

land raids as well as sea

11:36

raids. So there is this incredibly

11:39

multicultural, multinational and crucially

11:41

multilingual element to the

11:44

corsairs. You'd have to be an

11:46

intrepid person to take a ship into the

11:48

Mediterranean wouldn't you? You would, or foolish potentially.

11:50

Yeah or up and down that part of

11:52

the Atlantic Front as well. Yes. How

11:55

did they communicate with each other? There's a lot of

11:57

Europeans but a lot of Europeans have a lot of

11:59

different languages. and then there are languages of North Africa.

12:01

And then Leslie, you tell me how they communicated with

12:03

each other. You're absolutely right, obviously. There

12:06

were many, many nationalities, and this extended

12:08

not only to the Corsairs, but then

12:11

obviously the slaves who

12:13

they had captured aboard multinational ships.

12:15

You could see just in the

12:17

microcosm of individual ships that there

12:19

were many, many nationalities across

12:22

and on the Mediterranean. A Belgian

12:24

diplomat who was imprisoned in Algiers,

12:27

I think in the 1660s, wrote that of the 550

12:30

slaves in his banjo, there

12:32

were... Banjo. I beg your

12:35

pardon, banjo is a jail that was established

12:37

for the slaves because they were in such

12:39

numbers that they had to create sort of

12:41

a barracks-type scenario for them. Of

12:43

the 550 slaves captured there, he heard 22 separate languages. So

12:48

they needed some form of communication. And

12:50

there had been this nautical mercantile jargon

12:52

that had evolved over the Mediterranean from

12:55

probably about the 13th, 14th century onwards,

12:59

which is what we know as

13:01

lingua franca. Can you give us

13:03

some notion of what lingua franca sounded

13:05

like? I can do my

13:07

best. Obviously, we don't know.

13:10

And the accents were

13:12

very varied. Part of the diversity of

13:14

the language was that although it had

13:17

a sort of grammar and fixed

13:19

vocabulary, there was variation

13:21

across time and across space. But

13:23

for example, there is a ritualistic

13:26

phrase. The language

13:28

is by nature ritualistic. There's a lot of

13:30

sort of implied violence and imperatives in it.

13:33

But there was this very standard

13:35

ritualistic phrase that allegedly the corsairs

13:37

would say to their captives, which

13:39

is, dios forte,

13:41

non telar santasia,

13:44

mondo cruzi se

13:47

veneer ventura andar

13:49

acaza. And that means God is

13:51

great. Don't delude yourselves. The

13:53

world is thus. If the

13:55

wheel of fortune turns, you will return home.

13:59

Thank you very much. Michael, to

14:01

the outsiders, the Cossairs were

14:03

Turks or Ottomans. So

14:05

let's talk about the Ottomans. What was their

14:08

relation to the Cossairs? We have

14:10

to first of all contextualize Ottoman

14:12

North Africa within the broader expansion of

14:14

the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century.

14:17

So at 1500, the Ottoman Empire

14:19

is still very much a Balkan

14:21

and Anatolian Empire. Then,

14:23

thanks to the conquest of Selim I, who

14:26

smashes through the Mamluk Empire in Syria,

14:28

Palestine, and Egypt, the Ottomans become

14:30

very much an Asian and Middle

14:32

Eastern empire. Then throughout the 16th

14:34

century, they are expanding constantly in

14:36

all directions, as far in the

14:38

east as Indonesia and in the

14:41

west to places like

14:43

Algeria. And so the

14:45

Ottoman North African states start

14:47

to become a crucial part of the

14:49

Ottoman Empire in the west as a sort

14:51

of frontier zone. The biggest

14:54

challenge facing the Ottomans in the 16th

14:56

century were the Habsburgs, and particularly the

14:58

very powerful fleets of Spain. And

15:01

so what they really needed was a kind of

15:03

filtration system in the west

15:05

of the Mediterranean to ensure that the

15:07

Ottoman trade and peaceful commerce in the

15:09

east was protected. And to some extent,

15:12

all three of the three

15:14

regency, so Algeria, Tunis, and

15:16

Tripoli, they fulfilled this role

15:18

as a kind of frontier zone, a barrier

15:20

to protect the proper Ottoman Empire to the

15:22

east. So from near the very beginning, if

15:25

we can call it the beginning, in the

15:27

16th century, that beginning, not the even early

15:29

beginning, they're drawing in the privateers. They're drawing

15:31

in these licensed persons to help them in

15:34

their empire building and holding. Absolutely. I

15:36

mean, the proper Ottoman navy was quite

15:38

busy in the 16th century. I mean,

15:40

if you think about the great clashes,

15:42

such as Lepanto later on, the Ottomans

15:45

have plenty to keep their own galleys busy

15:47

with. But by bringing in the North African

15:49

states, and as we've heard

15:51

already, by attracting the expertise of mariners

15:54

from across Europe, they're able to develop

15:56

this huge defense mechanism over in

15:58

the west of the Mediterranean. And

16:00

that is really important not just for

16:03

warfare, but also for peaceful commerce. Because

16:05

what these corsairs are doing, they're not

16:08

just raiding enemy shipping, they're checking the

16:10

shipping of nominal allies to make sure

16:12

they're not smuggling the goods or people

16:15

of their enemies on board. And the

16:17

Algerians themselves, when they refer to themselves

16:19

in their diplomatic letters, they call themselves

16:22

Dar el-Jihad, so the abode of holy

16:24

war. And that really gives

16:26

us a sense of how they viewed themselves

16:28

within this wider Ottoman system. Another

16:31

way to view them is that they become

16:33

a sort of state on sea. They absolutely do.

16:35

And very quickly, because they are so important, and

16:37

also if you think about it quite distant from

16:40

the center of power in Istanbul, the

16:43

three North African states are able to develop

16:45

quite a lot of autonomy. All

16:48

three of these entities become essentially

16:50

independent states by the

16:52

final quarter of the 17th century. This

16:55

is intriguing, Claire. Can you give us

16:58

a closer example of the way these

17:00

privateers, pirates, as they were

17:02

called by some people, mercenary pirates, were

17:04

drawn in to the great states of

17:06

the time, were drawn into the system

17:09

and became part of the system, and in some

17:11

cases rose to run the system. Absolutely.

17:13

So privateering offered a really

17:16

good way for both Muslims and

17:18

Christians, free and also enslaved people,

17:20

to rise to positions of power

17:22

within the Ottoman state or the

17:24

North African polities as well. So

17:27

this could be that they could

17:29

be talent spotted while participating in

17:31

large military campaigns or while rowing

17:33

on galleys that is an enslaved

17:35

person. They could be people who

17:37

migrated to North Africa from

17:40

Christian European countries to sell their

17:42

services and their skills. Or

17:45

they could be, in the case of

17:47

the Barbarossa brothers, people who found themselves

17:49

almost like the de facto rulers of

17:51

an area in North Africa. So if

17:53

I give you a couple of examples

17:55

from the different places, the Barbarossa brothers,

17:57

or a dress and hydrogen belt, Pasha

18:00

came from a mercantile maritime family

18:02

on Lesbos. They had a Christian

18:04

mother and a Muslim father, and

18:07

they were engaged in various merchant

18:09

and privateering activities. And Ored Schreis,

18:12

in the beginning of the 16th

18:14

century, found himself active

18:16

around our jeers, and

18:18

with a group of privateers managed

18:20

to defeat the Spanish there and

18:23

also the locala emir, and then

18:25

found himself, in a way, as

18:27

the de facto ruler of our

18:29

jeers. But fearing retribution, he thought

18:31

that the best move might be to

18:33

offer his loyalty to the

18:35

Ottoman state. And so, in a way,

18:37

he became appointed as the first governor,

18:40

the first belebe of our jeers. And

18:42

he does this for two years until he dies.

18:45

When he succeeded by his brother,

18:47

Hyridin Pasha, who, because

18:49

of his great seamanship and

18:51

skills, rises very quickly to

18:54

become the Cappadonidaria, the grand

18:56

admiral of the Ottoman fleet, where

18:59

he oversaw all sorts of

19:01

biplimactic and military alliances with

19:03

the French and the Ottomans

19:05

against the Habsburgs, but also

19:07

expanded the might of the

19:09

Ottomans into the Mediterranean. It

19:12

seems to me that in some cases, people

19:14

who did better than if they'd

19:16

stayed at home and tried to work their way up the

19:18

system. Absolutely, and another example of

19:20

that is John Ward, who

19:23

became quite notorious in English folk

19:25

literature and

19:28

plays, so he was a privateer under

19:30

Queen Elizabeth I, fighting against

19:32

the Spanish during the end

19:35

of the 16th century. And when the war

19:37

finished, he found himself

19:39

impressed into forced labor in

19:41

the navy, and he didn't

19:43

like that so much. So he

19:45

mutinies and flees with some

19:47

other people, working as a

19:49

pirate for a number of years,

19:52

before deciding that he's going to

19:54

best align himself with the local

19:56

Ottoman official in Tunis, and

19:58

then he sails under the flag of... Tunis as

20:00

a privateer, again

20:03

getting great wealth and commanding a

20:05

number of ships before converting eventually

20:07

to Islam and then retiring a

20:10

wealthy happy person. This is

20:12

Muslim territory but a lot of Christians or

20:14

non-believers, whoever they are, are coming into this

20:16

Muslim territory. A lot of them are converted.

20:18

Did that mean that they were in trouble

20:20

when they went back to their own countries?

20:22

What did it mean? It was

20:25

relatively fluid. I think you needed

20:27

to demonstrate conceivably that you had

20:29

converted and that was also a

20:31

way of buying your way out

20:33

of slavery as well. The minute

20:35

you had converted you were no

20:37

longer a slave. As

20:39

a Christian who had been captured,

20:41

if you converted to Islam you

20:43

could be freed in the regency

20:45

of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. I

20:47

think those people who

20:49

returned could plead very much

20:52

that this was something they had to do in order

20:54

to save their lives. This

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Let the greatest be your teacher with

22:03

BBC Maestro. So

22:06

can we talk a bit more about the slaves? They

22:08

were enslaved and there were different gradations of

22:11

what happened to you when you were enslaved.

22:13

Can you go through them? What happens

22:15

when you get enslaved depends a lot on

22:17

your background and your

22:20

class. So you

22:23

might be captured to be ransomed. If

22:25

there was any thought that you might

22:28

be wealthy enough or your nation state

22:30

or your community might be able to

22:32

raise enough money to ransom you, then

22:34

you wouldn't be necessarily put out to labour.

22:36

You would be kept in this manual, this

22:39

prison that we heard about before and waiting

22:41

for money to be paid. And there are

22:43

several unfortunate incidents around this. So one

22:46

of the raids by this Jan Janssen character

22:49

is to Iceland in 1627 when

22:51

a huge number of Icelandic

22:54

civilians are captured and taken

22:56

back to Algiers to

22:58

be ransomed. And twice the

23:00

Icelandic communities are able to

23:02

raise the money to free them and twice the

23:04

people who are in charge of the money

23:06

spend the money on other things. So ransom doesn't

23:09

always work out. That's if

23:11

you're lucky. This is what will happen to you. If

23:13

you are unlucky, there are other forms of

23:15

enslavement that you might be subjected to. The

23:18

most unpleasant, not that any enslavement is pleasant,

23:20

but the most unpleasant would be put to

23:23

work in the galleys and in

23:25

the industrial facilities in places like

23:27

Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. And

23:29

being a galley slave was incredibly

23:32

hard work. If we remind ourselves

23:34

what a galley is, it's an

23:36

all powered ship. So very

23:38

much like Roman triremes, that same

23:40

sort of technology, it's

23:42

based on physical manpower. And so you could have

23:45

a very, very miserable time,

23:47

a relatively short life expectancy for

23:49

a number of reasons. So the

23:51

industrial and galley slave is

23:53

a particularly nasty form. Then there

23:55

are other forms of enslavement that might see you

23:57

put into domestic service. was

24:00

both a blessing and a curse. You

24:03

had the opportunity potentially if you

24:05

had a kind enough master and

24:07

if they saw enough potential in

24:09

you and they maybe encouraged you

24:11

to convert to Islam that this

24:13

could be your way to socially

24:15

climb within the North African Regencies.

24:17

There wasn't such a rigid

24:19

as class system as we saw back

24:22

in Europe. So your talents meant something.

24:24

So if you were very lucky you

24:26

might be in that position but for

24:28

the vast majority of enslaved people in

24:30

domestic servitude it meant that. It meant

24:32

working in people's houses. For women of course

24:34

that could mean sexual slavery as well very

24:37

often it did. So none

24:39

of this was particularly pleasant but

24:42

there are different forms of enslavement. And as Claire

24:44

mentioned earlier we talk about

24:46

this happening in North Africa. The exact

24:48

same thing was happening in France, in

24:51

the Italian states and in Spain where

24:53

North African Muslims would be captured and

24:55

go through very much the same process.

24:59

Thank you Claire. What do we learn,

25:01

there were accounts of captivity accounts weren't

25:03

there. What do we learn from those

25:05

I suppose there were books? Yes

25:07

they were printed as books. They were also

25:10

transmitted as all tales. Captured as a literature

25:12

it's called. Yes, I think

25:14

one of the maybe, we

25:16

get quite a rich description of

25:18

what life was like in North

25:20

Africa. What the military

25:23

capabilities of the North African

25:25

states were in the different

25:27

polities of their naval capacity,

25:29

their geography, the socio-cultural situation,

25:33

the politics. Largely

25:35

because a lot of the captives telling their

25:37

tale when they came back wanted

25:39

to demonstrate that their time in

25:41

captivity had not been a waste. That they were

25:43

able to produce some useful

25:47

information, intelligence that would be of

25:49

use to their country.

25:51

And also to some extent to prove their

25:54

loyalty to say no, no we didn't tell

25:56

them when we were over there. We

25:59

were their spies. seeing for you

26:01

in effect. So that's very useful

26:03

information. We also get an insight

26:06

as to what life was like

26:08

for captives. But this can be

26:10

a little bit problematic in captivity

26:12

narratives because of the different functions

26:14

that they served within

26:16

sort of amongst their audiences. So

26:18

to start with, many captivity narratives

26:21

would tell a tale of extreme

26:24

violence, especially

26:26

attempts either on the captive or people

26:29

that the captive might have heard

26:31

of or knew to force them

26:33

to convert to Islam through torture

26:35

and other threats. And

26:38

the problem with this is that that

26:40

doesn't really cohere with other

26:42

evidence we have both from

26:44

Ottoman sources and other Christian

26:47

European sources. And it

26:49

also doesn't cohere with what

26:51

the captives themselves say about their

26:53

captivity. So while they might start

26:55

off with descriptions about it being

26:57

a very violent place and Christians

26:59

being persecuted, they will often then

27:02

go on to describe what looks

27:04

very much like an

27:06

interfaith tolerant society where Christians,

27:08

Jews and Muslims lived alongside

27:11

each other and worshipped

27:13

freely. So William Oakley, for

27:15

example, says that he used to meet

27:17

with up to 50 or 60 other

27:20

Christian captives three times a week to

27:22

hear a preacher give a sermon and

27:25

to worship the Christian God.

27:28

And he never had any problem and he was

27:30

allowed by his owner, his patron, to do that.

27:33

He also says that his patron

27:35

treated him like a son and

27:37

loved him and would give him

27:39

provisions from the farm to celebrate

27:41

Christian festivals and also

27:43

set him up in

27:45

employment. So he worked as

27:47

selling tobacco and wine and

27:50

the profits, he says, were

27:52

shared equally according to the

27:54

investment that he and his owner had put

27:56

in between them both. So we've got

27:59

sort of this inside information which

28:01

shows it being a religiously

28:03

much more tolerant place than

28:06

Christian European countries for example.

28:09

I would agree with Claire entirely. There

28:11

were anecdotally within

28:13

Banyos the jails, there

28:16

were chapels, there

28:18

were taverns, allegedly Christians

28:20

were in charge of contraband,

28:23

the cartoons within the Banyos

28:25

could sell tobacco

28:27

and alcohol. And

28:29

in fact what you say about patrons

28:32

or as they know in New them, their

28:34

padrons, their masters, allowing them

28:36

to progress beyond just the kind

28:38

of servitude of domesticity, a

28:40

lot of the slaves sort of rose

28:43

through the ranks and really became quite

28:45

senior within influential households and

28:47

would hold high positions

28:49

and would be treated with responsibility

28:51

and dignity. So I

28:53

think while there were probably plenty

28:56

who suffered and there was

28:58

definitely a level of embellishment and

29:00

exaggeration in these captivity narratives because as

29:02

Claire's point starts it served that purpose.

29:05

You wanted to come in Michael. Yeah, we

29:07

often, we shouldn't be so

29:09

surprised by what Jo and Claire have just

29:12

told us about the treatment of non-Muslims in

29:14

North Africa because we need to remember this

29:16

is not a homogeneously Muslim space. There

29:19

are local indigenous populations of

29:21

Christians and especially Jews who

29:24

live and work in Algiers, Tunis

29:26

and Tripoli within the limits of

29:29

Ottoman models of toleration which

29:31

means that they are second class citizens compared

29:33

to Muslims but they are allowed

29:35

a huge amount of communal autonomy in having

29:37

their own laws, the freedom of worship, the

29:39

right to trade and so forth. So if

29:42

we only think of North Africa as being

29:44

homogeneously Muslim and anti-Christian then that leads us

29:47

into the trap of

29:49

being surprised when non-Ottoman Christians

29:51

were treated relatively well occasionally.

30:00

I really thought about whether I

30:02

was going to return to England

30:04

when I was freed and indeed

30:06

many of them chose to stay

30:08

or maintain their business ties to

30:10

their patron, their owner, once they

30:12

were freed. And I think Jacques

30:14

Massé also says that although they

30:16

were depicted as the devils to

30:18

us, I found that actually their

30:21

humanity, their charity and their kindness

30:23

were not only as good as

30:25

those of Christian Europe, but actually

30:27

better. They treated us better. Jo,

30:30

do you have anything to add to the picture

30:32

of people coming back to

30:34

their native land and what they brought back

30:36

with them? What I've come

30:39

into contact with more through

30:41

what I've read is people

30:43

choosing to stay, people not

30:45

finding that a return to

30:47

England or to France or

30:49

Italy or Spain was actually

30:51

really what they wanted. Not

30:54

only the captivity now, but a lot of the

30:56

witnesses, the diplomats who were

30:59

imprisoned then from a preferment,

31:01

once they were freed

31:03

from prison, they were noticed for

31:06

having diplomatic skills. Potentially they were

31:08

useful because they already had links to

31:10

their homeland and they often preferred to

31:12

stay. When they stayed, did they

31:14

form a particular card of their own or

31:16

did they mix in? No, they mixed

31:18

in. Often they would marry

31:21

the daughter of the bay or

31:23

the day in the

31:25

particular state. They would be appointed to

31:27

some position. There was a lingua

31:30

franca term for the captain

31:32

of the sea, which was

31:34

rice marina. Often

31:36

a European would be elevated to

31:39

that position. Christians were

31:41

often executioners and they

31:43

would hold certain positions within households.

31:45

The executioners, it's just the pennies

31:48

you've dropped. Given

31:51

a big sword and somebody's head was on

31:53

the block and you chopped it off. Pretty

31:56

much. That sort of execution. Why did they

31:58

pick Christians? They didn't. want

32:00

to soil their hands. That's a stopper

32:02

isn't it? In

32:04

every sense. When they

32:06

stopped being slaves,

32:09

was there any temptation for them to go back to

32:12

being privateers? I think probably there

32:14

was a circularity to everybody's life.

32:16

I think there was a fluidity

32:18

in every domain of

32:21

life and at every level. I think

32:23

quite often, privateers who had been also

32:26

themselves captured once

32:29

freed returned to being privateers. I

32:31

think it was potentially in the

32:33

cultural DNA of the

32:35

era. Michael, go to a

32:37

stage where people are sending diplomats out

32:40

to the corsairs. What

32:42

effect did that have? It had

32:44

the effect of ensuring that the

32:46

country who had a treaty with

32:48

these different states was able to better protect

32:51

their shipping and therefore their goods and their

32:53

people from being attacked. So

32:55

as I mentioned earlier, in theory,

32:58

all three of these North African

33:00

Ottoman Regencies are subjects of the

33:02

Ottoman Sultan, Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli.

33:06

To begin with, the countries like

33:08

England, France and Holland assumed that

33:10

their treaties with the Ottoman Sultan

33:12

would protect them in dealing with

33:14

the North African corsairs. Of

33:17

course, because these are, as we said

33:19

before, autonomous de facto independent states, they

33:21

developed their own foreign policy and therefore

33:23

tend to ignore whatever the Sultan says.

33:26

So from the middle of the 17th

33:28

century onwards and really starting in the

33:30

1660s, places in England,

33:32

France and Holland start to negotiate

33:35

treaties with Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli.

33:37

And this does two things. First

33:40

of all, it ensures that their subjects will

33:42

be protected against corsairing activities. So if an

33:44

Algerian ship sees an English flag, they know

33:46

that that's the flag of a friend and

33:49

they're not to attack it. However,

33:51

on the other hand, these treaties give

33:53

huge amounts of rights to the North

33:55

African navies to search those

33:58

friendly ships for enemy goods. And

34:00

in every single one of these treaties,

34:02

from the end of the 17th century

34:04

until the beginning of the 19th century,

34:06

it gives Algerian, Tunis and Tripoli ships

34:08

the right to search enemy

34:11

and friendly ships anywhere in the world. So

34:13

if an Algerian ship is somewhere in the middle

34:15

of the Atlantic and sees an English ship, they

34:18

have treaty rights to search that ship looking for

34:20

enemy goods. And so this

34:22

is kind of intolerable for proud

34:25

states like England, France and Holland.

34:28

And so they constantly try to renegotiate

34:30

these treaties to get better terms. And

34:32

I use the word renegotiate very lightly

34:35

because what we see in fact from

34:37

the end of the 17th century are

34:39

the first instances of European gunboat diplomacy.

34:42

So that these consuls, these diplomats

34:45

who arrive in these three North

34:47

African ports are always accompanied by

34:49

warships of their states who threaten

34:51

and in some cases actually carry

34:54

out bombardments of these cities. Claire

34:57

Norton, was this still the surface of

34:59

chaos and violence? We're

35:01

beginning to talk in rather cosy

35:03

structured legalistic terms now. Are

35:06

we in the right place? Well,

35:09

in theory, yes, there was

35:12

a legal framework for dealing

35:14

with privateering and for providing

35:16

recompense for people who had

35:18

been captured illegally. Are they

35:21

goods taken illegally? But

35:23

to the extent to which that functioned

35:25

in reality. Well, we're not really sure.

35:27

But people did have recourse to the

35:29

court of law. So

35:32

all of the major towns would have had

35:34

Muslim courts, which would be open to Christians

35:36

and Muslims who could bring a case saying,

35:38

well, we think we were enslaved

35:40

illegally or our goods have been

35:43

taken illegally. Now, of course, if

35:45

you're an experienced captain or seafarer

35:47

in the Mediterranean, you've got connections,

35:49

you speak the language or you're

35:51

familiar with some of the languages

35:54

that you can make use of

35:56

that court. If however, you're taken

35:58

from the coast of... Italy from

36:00

a tiny village and then transported across

36:03

the Mediterranean to sort of the East

36:05

Mediterranean coast, you're going to have no

36:07

idea of the court system and what

36:09

you can do. So in that case,

36:12

people could be illegally enslaved and

36:15

just disappear. Thank you. Joe,

36:17

after centuries, two or three centuries of corsairing,

36:20

how did anything basically change for these

36:22

North African countries? They were

36:24

in such constant flux throughout those

36:27

centuries that I'm not sure

36:29

that they looked, say, in the early

36:31

19th century, how they had in

36:33

the late 16th century. Nevertheless,

36:36

there's no point along

36:38

those three centuries that you can

36:40

say this was representative of Algiers

36:43

or this was representative of Tunis,

36:45

because there were these vast swathes

36:47

of population flux and

36:49

the different nationalities, the

36:52

different language communities coming in. And

36:54

for example, in 1600, there were 60,000 people living in Algiers and

36:57

25,000 of them were

37:00

Christian slaves. By

37:02

the kind of late 18th century, that would have

37:05

been very different, but there would have still been

37:07

this diversity of nationality.

37:11

And as such,

37:13

I'm not sure how much they

37:15

would have evolved in an ethnographic

37:17

sense. Certainly, the corsairing provided

37:20

the resources to build cities. There was

37:22

a huge amount of infrastructure that was

37:25

built. The cities had a

37:27

mint, they had fountains, they had

37:30

streets, they had sewage, they had all

37:32

kinds of infrastructure that hadn't existed when

37:35

they were first conquered by the

37:37

Barbarossa Brothers. Thank you very

37:39

much. The stage where

37:41

the European powers, including

37:43

American powers, took this

37:45

in hand and decided that they would

37:47

exercise their authority and superior strength and

37:50

organization in this and as it were,

37:52

get rid of privateers. Can

37:54

you tell us how that happened? It's

37:56

a pretty long process. So as I mentioned

37:58

at the end of the 17th century. we see

38:01

the first bombardments of North

38:03

African ports by Britain

38:05

and France, particularly. And these can be...

38:07

Which ports were they? So specifically Algiers,

38:09

Tripoli and Tunis. So these three ports,

38:11

the main centres of these states. And

38:14

these could be catastrophic. We have a

38:16

number of Algerian sources who remember

38:19

constantly these events as

38:21

examples of brutality of

38:23

European states against their

38:25

civilised multicultural cosmopolitan cities.

38:28

Because when we're talking about bombardment, we're

38:30

not talking about carefully aimed cannons against

38:32

fortifications. They're using bombard ships.

38:35

So mortars on a ship aimed roughly

38:37

in the direction of the port. So

38:40

mosques are destroyed, civilian houses are

38:42

destroyed, civilians are killed. And

38:44

so as early as the 17th century, the North

38:46

African states get a taste of

38:48

this European violence. The

38:50

18th century is a period of relative

38:53

peace comparatively. The North African states settle

38:56

down a little bit and their

38:58

commerce diversifies beyond coursering and they

39:00

become very important nodes in the

39:02

Mediterranean trade. By the end of

39:04

the 18th century, this changes again. And that's

39:07

in no small part due to the

39:09

huge tumult in Europe itself. The French

39:11

Revolutionary Wars changed the balance

39:13

of power. We see arms races. And

39:16

we also have a decline as a result

39:19

of the war in peaceful commerce. And that

39:21

starts to force the North African

39:23

states to once again send out their

39:25

coursering boats to try and get

39:27

some money in. And this brings

39:29

them into conflict once again with European

39:32

states. And as you mentioned, after their

39:34

independence, the United States of America, except

39:37

naval technology has come on a huge

39:39

way in the past century. And whereas

39:41

in the end of the 17th century,

39:44

the Algerians, Tunisians could hold their own

39:46

to some extent against European navies, by

39:48

the end of the 18th century, they

39:50

are massive and outgunned. And so it's

39:52

no longer an equal fight of

39:54

any description. And so this

39:57

marks the beginning of the end for

39:59

coursering. an activity and there are

40:01

some really key moments in this

40:03

struggle. The United States

40:06

has two wars in

40:08

North Africa to try

40:10

and stop their subjects being enslaved.

40:12

The North African states also demand

40:14

tribute from this new United States

40:16

that they don't want really to

40:18

pay. And so there's

40:20

a kind of a combination of factors leading up

40:22

to a very important bombardment

40:25

in 1816 by the British

40:27

and Dutch navies that essentially

40:29

eradicate the military force of the

40:31

North African states, which paves the way

40:34

in 1830 for the French invasion

40:36

of Algeria, which is the start

40:38

of North African colonisation. So

40:41

finally all of you, how does the idea

40:43

of the corsair or the myth of the

40:45

corsairs play nowadays? The stereotypes

40:48

of the corsair or the

40:50

privateer do live on and

40:52

they have provided an excuse

40:54

for people to narrate the

40:56

history of the Mediterranean almost

40:58

as this clash of two

41:00

qualitatively different but mutually antagonistic

41:02

civilisations, the Christian West and

41:04

North and an Islamic South

41:07

and East, where the Islamic

41:09

world is somehow lawless because

41:11

they're engaging in piracy or

41:13

corsairing rather than the more

41:15

legal privateering and they're violent

41:17

and they're religiously intolerant because they're trying

41:19

to force Christians to

41:21

convert. And then this spills

41:23

over I think into how

41:25

we can look at this

41:27

geographical region today and also

41:29

Muslim communities today and that's

41:31

problematic because if we instead

41:33

see privateering as something that

41:36

was spread throughout the Mediterranean,

41:38

that was engaged in by

41:40

all maritime states, we

41:42

can think of the Mediterranean more

41:44

as a shared world where all

41:46

the communities around contributed to

41:48

developments in legal and political

41:51

and maritime sciences

41:54

and institutions and

41:56

we can to some extent move away from

41:59

this idea. of Christian European

42:01

exceptionalism? I think part of the

42:03

issue is that the vast majority

42:05

of the sources that we have

42:07

are European. And so we do

42:10

have a European centric understanding

42:12

of the corsairs. And Claire's point is really

42:14

well made that in fact, there

42:17

were mirror images across the Mediterranean. If

42:19

you looked at the ethnographic makeup of

42:21

Marseille and the structures there and the

42:24

way that different communities were treated, it

42:26

wasn't so different from what

42:28

Algiers, genus and Tripoli looked like. And

42:30

likewise other sort of Western European

42:32

ports on the Mediterranean. I

42:36

think the legacy is actually still a

42:38

very dangerous one. So we

42:40

mentioned earlier that the conquest of Algiers in 1830

42:42

by France, and

42:45

they used the Barbary Pirates narrative

42:47

as a justification for the imperialism

42:49

and colonization of North Africa. In

42:51

1758, a writer called Ahmed de Vatel wrote

42:55

a book on international law in

42:57

which he called the North African states

42:59

an enemy of humanity. Just

43:01

think of those words, an enemy of

43:04

humanity, who you had a

43:06

right, if not a duty to kill

43:08

and eradicate. And so

43:10

the narrative of the Barbary Corsairs,

43:12

first of all, became a justification

43:14

for 19th century imperialism. It

43:17

was revived again at the beginning

43:19

of this century. So after the

43:21

9-11 attacks, historians

43:25

with an agenda started looking

43:27

back to find other clashes

43:29

between Islam and Christianity, and

43:31

particularly in the United States. They

43:33

found in their history books, this

43:36

long forgotten story of American Marines

43:38

storming Tripoli and attacking Algiers. And

43:41

it became a kind of justification for more

43:43

recent wars. Well, thank

43:45

you all very much indeed. Thanks Claire

43:47

Norton, Joanna Nolan, and Michael Talbot. And

43:49

to our studio engineer, Duncan Hennant, next

43:52

week, the theory of the leisure class,

43:55

Ponsdine Weyblin's critique of

43:57

conspicuous consumption from 1890 to 1990. taken

46:00

this ship by force, we don't have

46:02

a letter of mark, and they'll punish

46:04

us, they'll put us in the galleys

46:06

and we'll have to row as galley

46:08

slaves. Shall we go to Algiers? No,

46:10

they're too greedy, they will tax us

46:12

too much. Shall we go to Tripoli?

46:15

They're too poor. So they

46:17

settled on going to Tunis, where they

46:19

thought that they would make the best

46:21

possible life. So you've got

46:23

the French captain, who's a Christian, he

46:25

later converts to Islam, with a mixed

46:27

crew, as you were saying, Joe, of

46:29

Christians and Muslims, now sailing a

46:31

friendship but out under the flag

46:33

of Tunis. And I think that,

46:35

although a fictitious story, sort of

46:37

exemplifies what probably did go on. Oh,

46:40

there's so much I would have loved to have

46:42

said. I mean, because it's so complicated, right? I

46:44

mean, we're talking about three very distinct states that

46:46

we wouldn't talk about France or Spain or Portugal

46:48

in the same breath in this period, yet we

46:50

talk about Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli in the same

46:53

breath. But one thing I guess we focus quite

46:55

a lot on the sea, which makes sense because

46:57

we're talking about corsairs. But

46:59

the land is really interesting and the military forces

47:01

on land in both, in all three of those

47:03

states are really interesting because they are Ottoman

47:06

Janissaries. And so

47:08

this... Janissaries being... So the Janissaries are,

47:10

this is why I didn't bring it up because it's such

47:12

a complicated subject in its own right. They

47:14

start off as enslaved Christian children

47:16

who are recruited to be the

47:18

Sultan's private army, kind of like

47:20

the Praetorian guard of the Ottoman

47:22

Empire. However, by the

47:24

17th century, they're so powerful that Muslims

47:27

are volunteering their children to join this

47:29

thing. So it's no longer doing

47:31

what it was meant to do in the first place. And

47:33

the Janissaries become, particularly in these

47:35

three North African ports, a

47:38

huge political and economic power in their

47:40

own rights. And they have massive

47:43

impacts on the political structures. So

47:45

Algiers, for example, has a weird kind

47:48

of democracy in not for everyone, but

47:50

the rulers are elected by the Corsairs

47:52

and the Janissaries. And

47:54

so it's a really interesting

47:57

insight into complicating this Barbary-Corsairs

47:59

narrative. They're not

48:01

just North African, these people are from Anatolia,

48:03

from Greece, from Crete and so forth, and

48:05

they're not just on the sea, you have

48:07

this huge power on land too. But

48:10

yeah, I think we need to do a whole other show on the Janissaries

48:12

to be honest with you.

48:15

Was there any communication between

48:17

the North African states? Yes,

48:20

and it was again incredibly complicated

48:22

and it wasn't always friendly. So

48:24

particularly between Algiers and Tunis, they

48:26

have several pretty major wars between

48:28

them at the end of the

48:30

17th and into the 18th century. They

48:32

mostly result in Algiers winning and Tunis becoming

48:34

a sort of vassal state. But

48:37

they have a huge amount of competition over

48:39

economic resources, both on land and on sea.

48:41

And we haven't even talked about Morocco,

48:43

which is the other part

48:46

of this story, which we haven't covered because

48:48

obviously we've covered the Ottoman world, but there

48:50

are frequent conflicts between Algiers

48:52

and Morocco and they have

48:54

their own corsairing culture. But

48:57

also which overlaps at times with

48:59

vast vajirs. The only other

49:01

thing I wanted to also bring up was the

49:04

democratisation, as it were, within the

49:07

households as European slaves made their

49:09

way up through

49:11

sort of performance is reflected

49:14

also in the language, in the use

49:16

of lingua franca. It was often used

49:18

because it offered this sort of neutral

49:20

form of communication. No one

49:22

was demeaning themselves that the Arab elites

49:24

or the Ottomans weren't demeaning themselves by

49:27

speaking the European language,

49:29

a pure European language,

49:31

Toscan or Venetian. And

49:34

at the same time, it allowed the slaves

49:36

to find this sort of middle ground whereby

49:39

they could communicate successfully with their

49:41

masters. I would add one

49:44

more thing while we were talking about Morocco. We've

49:46

got the sort of the city state

49:49

of Salih, which is often seen or described

49:51

as a pirate city.

49:54

And that sort of illustrates the double standard

49:56

that we have that they're described as a

49:58

pirate city. than say a

50:01

city-state in the way that Venice or

50:03

other Mediterranean cities where it was a

50:06

powerful privateering polity really, I mean smaller

50:08

but independent from Morocco for much of

50:10

the time we're talking about and it

50:12

was issuing its own permissions for its

50:15

privateers to work rather than being a

50:17

nest of pirates. So I think we

50:19

have to be careful with vocabulary when

50:21

we talk about it. There were clear

50:24

structures, I mean yes there was spillover

50:26

and overlap and not everybody adhered to

50:28

their rules but in all the

50:30

different cities there were clear

50:33

structures of governance and I

50:36

guess where they sit through the cracks is

50:38

that the corsairs were the economic powerhouse across

50:41

the board so they could write their

50:43

own rules at times. That's right and we

50:45

know from the sort of, I mean we talked about sources

50:47

before so much of this history has only

50:49

been written using the European sources but there's hundreds

50:52

of documents in Arabic and in Turkish in

50:54

the European archives of documents,

50:56

letters from the North African states to

50:58

the British king or queen to the

51:01

French king and they have

51:03

a real sense of injustice when their rules

51:05

aren't being followed by Europeans so I think

51:08

that as Queen Anne gets a letter

51:10

from Hajj Muhammad who's the day of

51:12

Algiers and he's complaining you know your

51:14

ships are meant to be our friends

51:16

but you're smuggling our grain to our

51:18

enemy in Spain and you're smuggling weapons

51:20

to give to our enemies why are you doing

51:22

this so they have a real

51:24

sense of justice of their own rules.

51:27

Anybody else? I'm talking

51:29

about Lingua Franca's legacy in

51:31

Palari so there

51:33

are various words within

51:35

Palari which is a

51:38

language that sort of

51:40

existed throughout the 19th and some of

51:42

the 20th century it was a language

51:44

of initially performers, street performers, circus performers

51:47

and then in the theatre and then

51:49

it became the sort of in language

51:51

of the gay community particularly in

51:53

Britain and Palari obviously

51:56

the name itself comes from

51:58

Palare allegedly the Italian name. but also

52:00

potentially lingua franca and there are

52:03

lots of elements of the vocabulary

52:05

which stem from lingua franca so

52:07

and bona tavada which means nice

52:10

to see you is almost lingua

52:12

franca exactly and with

52:14

the structure of lingua franca bona

52:17

nocchi good night, scarpa

52:19

to escape, vogue

52:23

a cigarette comes from fogo which is

52:25

fire and lingua franca so there are

52:27

all kinds of little

52:30

pockets of lingua franca in well across

52:32

various european nations but even in a

52:34

language like um palari which obviously was

52:37

made particularly current at mark i was

52:39

made particularly popular by round the horn

52:41

the radio force series with um kenneth

52:44

williams and hugh paddock and they spoke

52:46

a lot of palari within that and

52:48

a lot of the expressions they use

52:51

stem from lingua franca much good

52:53

our back issues around the horn yes

52:55

indeed it means for the word simon

53:01

asked me to say something about the island of lundey

53:03

which is so the island

53:05

of lundey is in the britain channel

53:07

and it's it was briefly a part

53:09

technically of the ottoman empire i suppose

53:11

a very far reaching outpost of it

53:14

yan yansen who took on this name

53:16

muslim name murad race who we've

53:18

heard about a few times in this show he

53:21

set up base on lundey island and we

53:24

thought for a long time it was kind of like

53:26

an urban myth but in the state papers the british

53:28

state papers there are actual

53:30

minutid documents from the

53:32

cabinet of states complaining and concerned

53:34

of the presence of north african corsairs off the

53:37

coast of england and

53:39

uh for quite a while they're raiding

53:41

along the coast of cornwell the south

53:43

of wales the west coast and east

53:45

coast of ireland um and

53:47

it's it's kind of weird to think about

53:49

it that the ottoman crescent flew over the

53:51

island of lundey in the bristol channel we're

53:54

going to be not interrupted so

53:56

she's joined our producers armantillists

53:58

and bearing gifts It doesn't want

54:01

to be a coffee. Sounds

54:03

amazing. I'm fine, thank you. Yes, please, thank

54:05

you, it was very kind. Teeth sounds great.

54:07

Teeth, that's lovely. Teeth, please. Thank

54:09

you. Thank you, please. Maybe this is a

54:12

bit more water, if there were. Yeah, thank you. From

54:15

BBC Radio 4, life

54:18

can be unexpected. It was big. This

54:20

was not a wind, this was not a storm,

54:22

this was a tsunami. But

54:26

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54:28

are remarkably resilient. I knew in

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that moment as I fell to

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more. I'm Dr. Sharn Williams,

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psychologist and presenter of Life Changing, the

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