From the 16th to the 19th century, Moslem corsairs from the Barbary Coast ravaged European shipping and enslaved many thousands of unlucky captives. During this period, however, thousands of Europeans also converted to Islam and joined the pirate "holy war." Were these men (and women) the scum of the earth - "Renegadoes"? Or, did they abandon and betray Christendom as a praxis of social resistance?
Author Peter Lamborn Wilson focuses on the corsairs' most impressive accomplishment, the establishment of the independent Pirate Republic of Salé, in Morocco, in the 17th century. Corsairs, Sufis, pederasts, "irresistible" Moorish women, slaves, adventurers, Irish rebels, heretical Jews, British spies, and radical working-class heroes all populate a literary landscape which informs, entertains, and makes a point about the viability of insurrectionary communities.
"One of those rare books which give historians new ideas to think about. It deals with 17th-century European converts to Islam - usually but not always as pirates - whose numbers Wilson puts at thousands. His careful analysis of (the) renegadoes, their ideas, and political practice leads to a very tentative suggestion that some of them may have links with Rosicrucianism and the 18th-century Enlightenment; they may form an 'incipient culture of resistance' by escapees from a civilization of economic and sexual misery... Historians will have to think about this book's novel theme and pursue its implications. Wilson really does turn the world upside down!"
¾ Christopher Hill, author of The World Turned Upside Down