Piracy and diplomacy in seventeenth-century North Africa: the journal of Thomas Baker, English consul in Tripoli, 1677-1685

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Title:	Piracy and diplomacy in seventeenth-century North Africa: the journal of Thomas Baker, English consul in Tripoli, 1677-1685
Author:	Baker, Thomas
Year:	1989
Pages:	261
Language:	English
City of publisher:	Rutherford
Publisher:	Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
ISBN:	0838633021
Geographic term:	Libya
Subjects:	piracy history 1600-1699 diaries (form)
About person:	Thomas Baker (-ca1721)
Abstract:	In May 1677 Charles II appointed Thomas Baker consul in Tripoli, one of the coastal city-States of the Ottoman Empire that served as bases for the Barbary Corsairs. Baker kept a detailed journal of his trip and his stay in Tripoli, from 1677 to 1685. Baker's journal presents a perspective that no other source provides on corsairing, on diplomatic rivalries among the European powers in the Mediterranean, and on the political, economic, and social environment surrounding Tripoli in the 17th century. In revealing Baker's attitudes as an Englishman abroad among Muslims and 'renegade' Europeans, his journal in effect records one side of a meeting of cultures. The editor's presentation provides an extensive introduction to European involvement in North Africa in this period, to Tripoli (Libya), to corsairing activity, and to Baker himself. Supplementing the text are numerous appendixes that provide biographical information about Europeans and North Africans who are mentioned, and accounts of the Tripoli fleet and of the European merchant vessels which put in to Tripoli's port.