Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/667669
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 17 APRIL 2016 16 News WHEN I meet the young historian Liam Gauci – happily, at our com- mon current hometown of Mar- saskala – he's apologetic over the fact that the only copy of his latest book he can hand me is a spiral- bound uncorrected proof. "I'm really sorry, but this is actu- ally the only physical copy I've got left at the moment," he tells me af- ter placing the thick and colourful volume on the table of the seaside café whose shadier interior we've chosen to patronise due to the sudden heat wave. "I couldn't even give a copy to my girlfriend ¬– she's quite annoyed about that!" But mild domestic tension aside, this is actually something of a 'humblebrag' on Gauci's part. What it really means is that 'In the Name of the Prince: Maltese Corsairs – 1760-1798' – published by Heritage Malta last February – has entirely sold out its first run, and that history buffs and general readers eager to get a taste of this turbulent historical period and its colourful maritime protagonists will have to wait at least a few more weeks until the second run is released in shops. Not that the book's success is all that surprising. Though he will later go to great pains to stress that corsairing is emphatically not the same as piracy, the subject carries over a similar whiff of nautical ro- mance. And Gauci's firm histori- cal footing (he's a regular patron of Valletta's Notarial Archives), coupled with his humane focus on individual key players, is an assur- ance that the book is both histori- cally solid and readable. Gauci is also good at pinning down the pragmatic realities be- hind what may seem dramatic, col- ourful and grandiloquent histori- cal narratives. Another advantage of working from notarial archives is that they present the researcher with the historical protagonists' business and property concerns: quite literally allowing the histo- rian to get down to the brass tacks of what their subjects prioritised. And it's good to be reminded that corsairing was, first and foremost, a business. "We should look at corsairing as a motor of the Maltese economy at the time – just like the Freeport, and digital gaming are now," Gauci says. "Essentially you would have Maltese families investing in a cor- sair – giving him money to arm a ship for war, leave Malta, capture anything of value belonging to the Ottoman Empire in the name of the 'Prince of Malta' – that is, the Grandmaster – to then sell it off in a public auction for profit." Unsurprisingly, Malta's geo- graphical location was crucial to such a venture, so much so that Gauci describes how eventually, "all of Europe knew that Malta was perfect for this kind of business". But it was a business with loaded political and diplomatic implica- tions. The French weren't too keen on it because it disrupted trade in Eastern Europe – a crucial finan- cial lifeline for them. And neither was the Church too enthusiastic about the practice – not because of any moral considerations, mind, but because bringing the Catholic and Orthodox Church together was always a desirable priority… and being Ottoman subjects at the time, the Greeks were threatened by it too. But corsairing was too lucrative and flexible a pursuit to be de- terred for very long by arbitrary rules from above. In an instance when the Church clamped down on it quite heavily, Maltese corsairs simply swapped the flag around. "What the Pope really prevented was corsairing under the flag of the Order. So what the Maltese corsairs then did was to carry on corsairing as usual, only under the flag of Monaco – which effectively meant that instead of paying the required 10 percent to the order, they would pay it to the Prince of Monaco!" Gauci also recounts how Maltese corsairs got around an Ottoman 'ruse' that attempted to mask their ships to prevent corsair attacks. "They had assumed that using Greek traders would discour- age the Maltese from attacking their ships, since the Greeks were Christian too. But what usually ended up happening in that case was that the Maltese corsair would stop the Greek captain, and if he spotted any Turkish markings on their merchandise, they would ei- ther seize it from them, or 're-sell' it to the captain there and then." So corsairing certainly allowed Malta to play a part in internation- al politics. "From the point of view of international peace, it may not have played the best role," Gauci says with a smile, "but it was cer- tainly very good for local families, who made a lot of money out of it." And the most lucrative business was "human business", apparently. Human trafficking is the less polite term, and "slavery" would be the most direct way of describing what corsairs made the most money out of. Gauci describes how corsairs would be paid large sums to cap- ture slaves off Ottoman ships and then ransom them off. "This was quite different to slavery in the Americas however. The slaves weren't whipped or mistreated in any way… because it wouldn't pay the traders to 'damage' their goods. This doesn't mean that European slaves had a good time of it, but at least life wasn't as horrific as that of their Ameri- can counterparts." Merchandise was another key aspect of the corsairing business, which in this case meant they would raid Ottoman ships for goods like saffron, coffee, rice and wheat – essentials for Malta at the time since "we never really had great natural re- sources", which made the popularity and rele- vance of corsairing adventures all the more urgent to the populace at large. "This is why I'd like to appro- priate the 'nation of shopkeepers' line to describe Malta. We didn't have great natural resources, but we had the sea and made use of that. Most significantly, our big- gest plus was that we had a great harbour with a good infrastruc- ture, which was perfect for cor- sairs." Get rich or die trying Dynamic young historian Liam Gauci chats to TEODOR RELJIC about his latest – and already sold-out – book about Maltese corsairs, 'In the Name of the Prince', which paints a vivid picture of these enterprising seafarers during the vibrant 1760-1798 period "All of Europe knew that Malta was perfect for this kind of business" "Corsairing was certainly very good for local families, who made a lot of money out of it"