What do you think?
Rate this book
The Stolen Prince: Gannibal, Adopted Son of Peter the Great, Great-Grandfather of Alexander Pushkin, and Europe's First Black Intellectual
In the spring of 1703, a young African boy stepped off a slave ship in Constantinople, the gateway between East and West. Huddling in chains, with other frightened captives, the seven-year-old claimed to be a prince of Abyssinia, a "noble Moor" kidnapped and stolen out of Africa. His tragedy was shared by millions of black people caught up in the Islamic slave trade, but his destiny was rescued by Peter the Great, the young African became Abram Petrovich Gannibal. Russia's westernizing tsar adopted the child and, in a bizarre nature-and-nurture experiment, lavished on him the best education available in the new "European" capital of Saint Petersburg. Gannibal, the "Negro of Peter the Great," soared to dizzying heights as a soldier, diplomat, mathematician and spy. He was fêted in glittering salons, from the Winter Palace to the Louvre, and came to know Voltaire and Montesquieu, who praised him as the "dark star of Russia's enlightenment." At the same time, his military exploits, from northern Spain to the icy wastes of Siberia -- to say nothing of his marital problems -- sealed Gannibal's reputation as the Russian Othello. African prince or not, the ex-slave founded a dynasty of his own in Russia, where he came to embody the strengths and weaknesses of the country itself -- volatile, courageous, handsome, gifted and always astonishing. His descendants included not only Alexander Pushkin, Russia's greatest poet, but also, in England, several Mountbattens and others close to the royal family.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published August 4, 2005
8 people are currently reading
185 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 8, 2018
Fame by association is hardly the stuff of dreams. History is peppered with the fleetingly famous who have scrambled into the chronicle of time merely by dint of their connection to people in high places. For some — Stalin’s daughter, Carter’s brother, Thatcher’s son — relative fame comes at a high price. Their flaws are magnified and their failings written in the sky. For others obscurity beckons, but for all of them, in life and in death, they must forever exist in someone else's shadow – and so it might have been for Abram Petrovich Gannibal.
Long one of history's footnote figures whenever he was mentioned, if mentioned at all, it was always in reference to the towering influence of his godfather, Tsar Peter the Great, or to the genius of his great grandson, the beloved Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin. Yet Gannibal's own life story rivals that of any iconic leader or cultural superstar.
In the entertaining and scholarly biography, The Stolen Prince: Gannibal, Adopted Son of Peter the Great, Great-Grandfather of Alexander Pushkin, and Europe's First Black Intellectual, author Hugh Barnes takes the reader across three continents in search of his fascinating, elusive subject. Describing Gannibal's life as eventful is a Siberia-sized understatement.
Continually reinventing himself, he was at various turns a mathematician, linguist, secret agent, philosopher, military engineer, naturalist, soldier, author, farmer, husband, and father. It’s all the more extraordinary that, but for an unlikely turn of events, this eighteenth-century polymath might have lived out his life as an African slave.
Hard facts about Gannibal are frustratingly thin on the ground, and one of the biggest gaps comes at the very start: no one knows where he was born. Barnes does his best to settle the matter, making a dangerous journey to Ethiopia in search of clues that might confirm Gannibal’s own claim to have been an Abyssinian prince, but Barnes’ research points also to Logone, south of Lake Chad, as Gannibal’s birthplace. Gannibal himself muddied the waters by his adoption of the Russified name of a Carthaginian general and the use of an elephant on his coat of arms.
His earliest days may be lost to history, but this much is known: at the beginning of the 18th century, while still a child, Gannibal was snatched from his homeland and sold into slavery at the court of the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople. There, he might have lingered in obscurity, ending his days in the closed world of the Topkapi palace. Instead, little over a year later, he found himself heading north on another life-changing journey.
Smuggled out of Turkey, Gannibal arrived in Moscow and was presented as a gift to Tsar Peter I. He was one of many African slaves at the Russian court, but while most were harshly treated, Gannibal's innate intelligence instantly impressed the Tsar, who adopted Gannibal as his protégé and later as his godson. He had the young man educated and took Gannibal into his confidence about his plans for the new city of St Petersburg.
While still a teenager, Gannibal was being feted in the salons of Paris by Leibniz and Voltaire. Before the phrase had ever been thought of, Gannibal was the very embodiment of "young, gifted and black." Barnes shows that the same enlightenment scholars who hailed Gannibal as Europe's first black intellectual viewed his African brothers as little more than savages. It was not the last time the colour of Gannibal's skin would generate hostility.
Throughout the book Barnes shares with the reader his exasperation at the number of fabrications, falsehoods, claims, and counter-claims surrounding his subject. Not only was he hampered by a lack of documentary evidence, but also by unreliable accounts of Gannibal’s life, including Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, which twisted the truth out of all recognition. While Barnes may grumble at the use of poetic licence, he himself is not averse to bursts of purple prose. Describing Gannibal’s banishment to Siberia after Peter the Great’s death, the author is almost breathless with excitement: "...one can imagine the Negro of Peter the Great on the road to Tobolsk, hurrying through forest-blackened hills towards the huge glimmering emptiness of Siberia – a twelfth the landmass of the world – the scenery wrapping itself around him like a fog."
The drift into fiction is excusable given the paucity of solid evidence, but in his forensic attention to what is known about Gannibal and his use of intelligent guesswork about what isn’t, Barnes never shortchanges his subject or his readers - and no one can say this author didn’t go the extra mile. Following in Gannibal’s footsteps takes him from the dark heart of Africa to the white nights of the Baltic and beyond. The account of his travels is as rewarding as the biography itself. In Siberia, close to Russia’s border with China, Barnes sees for himself the outline of a fortress Gannibal designed during his exile from the court of St Petersburg.
Unsurprisingly, confusion surrounds the precise date of Gannibal’s death, some time in 1781. His funeral was sparsely attended and no death notice was published. It was left to his great grandson, Alexander Pushkin, to revive interest in the "Negro of Peter the Great," but the real credit for uncovering the true Gannibal must go to Hugh Barnes. By dismantling the fairy tales and fraudulence surrounding Gannibal's life, Barnes has revealed a figure richer in intelligence and stronger in character than even the most gifted of writers could invent.
Long one of history's footnote figures whenever he was mentioned, if mentioned at all, it was always in reference to the towering influence of his godfather, Tsar Peter the Great, or to the genius of his great grandson, the beloved Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin. Yet Gannibal's own life story rivals that of any iconic leader or cultural superstar.
In the entertaining and scholarly biography, The Stolen Prince: Gannibal, Adopted Son of Peter the Great, Great-Grandfather of Alexander Pushkin, and Europe's First Black Intellectual, author Hugh Barnes takes the reader across three continents in search of his fascinating, elusive subject. Describing Gannibal's life as eventful is a Siberia-sized understatement.
Continually reinventing himself, he was at various turns a mathematician, linguist, secret agent, philosopher, military engineer, naturalist, soldier, author, farmer, husband, and father. It’s all the more extraordinary that, but for an unlikely turn of events, this eighteenth-century polymath might have lived out his life as an African slave.
Hard facts about Gannibal are frustratingly thin on the ground, and one of the biggest gaps comes at the very start: no one knows where he was born. Barnes does his best to settle the matter, making a dangerous journey to Ethiopia in search of clues that might confirm Gannibal’s own claim to have been an Abyssinian prince, but Barnes’ research points also to Logone, south of Lake Chad, as Gannibal’s birthplace. Gannibal himself muddied the waters by his adoption of the Russified name of a Carthaginian general and the use of an elephant on his coat of arms.
His earliest days may be lost to history, but this much is known: at the beginning of the 18th century, while still a child, Gannibal was snatched from his homeland and sold into slavery at the court of the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople. There, he might have lingered in obscurity, ending his days in the closed world of the Topkapi palace. Instead, little over a year later, he found himself heading north on another life-changing journey.
Smuggled out of Turkey, Gannibal arrived in Moscow and was presented as a gift to Tsar Peter I. He was one of many African slaves at the Russian court, but while most were harshly treated, Gannibal's innate intelligence instantly impressed the Tsar, who adopted Gannibal as his protégé and later as his godson. He had the young man educated and took Gannibal into his confidence about his plans for the new city of St Petersburg.
While still a teenager, Gannibal was being feted in the salons of Paris by Leibniz and Voltaire. Before the phrase had ever been thought of, Gannibal was the very embodiment of "young, gifted and black." Barnes shows that the same enlightenment scholars who hailed Gannibal as Europe's first black intellectual viewed his African brothers as little more than savages. It was not the last time the colour of Gannibal's skin would generate hostility.
Throughout the book Barnes shares with the reader his exasperation at the number of fabrications, falsehoods, claims, and counter-claims surrounding his subject. Not only was he hampered by a lack of documentary evidence, but also by unreliable accounts of Gannibal’s life, including Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, which twisted the truth out of all recognition. While Barnes may grumble at the use of poetic licence, he himself is not averse to bursts of purple prose. Describing Gannibal’s banishment to Siberia after Peter the Great’s death, the author is almost breathless with excitement: "...one can imagine the Negro of Peter the Great on the road to Tobolsk, hurrying through forest-blackened hills towards the huge glimmering emptiness of Siberia – a twelfth the landmass of the world – the scenery wrapping itself around him like a fog."
The drift into fiction is excusable given the paucity of solid evidence, but in his forensic attention to what is known about Gannibal and his use of intelligent guesswork about what isn’t, Barnes never shortchanges his subject or his readers - and no one can say this author didn’t go the extra mile. Following in Gannibal’s footsteps takes him from the dark heart of Africa to the white nights of the Baltic and beyond. The account of his travels is as rewarding as the biography itself. In Siberia, close to Russia’s border with China, Barnes sees for himself the outline of a fortress Gannibal designed during his exile from the court of St Petersburg.
Unsurprisingly, confusion surrounds the precise date of Gannibal’s death, some time in 1781. His funeral was sparsely attended and no death notice was published. It was left to his great grandson, Alexander Pushkin, to revive interest in the "Negro of Peter the Great," but the real credit for uncovering the true Gannibal must go to Hugh Barnes. By dismantling the fairy tales and fraudulence surrounding Gannibal's life, Barnes has revealed a figure richer in intelligence and stronger in character than even the most gifted of writers could invent.
January 30, 2018
This book is written in some code which takes a while to 'read'. It at first appears sympathetic but is downright hostile: It emphasises endlessly that this was an African slave when he was abducted and later freed. Horace, the famous Roman writer was born of a freedman but no one calls him the son fo a slave but because Gannibal is African that is acceptable. Barnes calls him a 'monkey' at one point and despite Peter The Great praising hm for courage in battle and the French army praising hm for courage in battle Barnes concludes that he was 'easily frightened and a coward'. This is a book full of thinly veiled racial stereotypes. More detail on the concealed racism can be found at:
https://www.academia.edu/35773247/Rev...
https://www.academia.edu/35773247/Rev...
July 11, 2013
Fascinating topic, horribly written. Repetitive, tenuous, and dull. Needs to be edited for clarity. As the reviewer below notes, it is hard to tell where fact and speculation lay; the author does not always do a good job explaining where a fact comes from, and a lot of the conjecture feels off somehow. Also, no ones cares about your time in the archives, please stick to the story.
March 19, 2016
Fascinating. Hugh Barnes tries to separate the fairytale from the historical truth about the life of one of the most famous European Black intellectual and noblemen. His story is colourful and dramatic enough, it needs not be embellished.
Gannibal was a 7 or 8 years old Black slave offered to Peter the Great who won the tsar's admiration by his brilliance. The tsar took him under his protection and "adopted" him as a godson. A brilliant intellectual, he excelled at mathematics, architecture and languages and had an impressive career portfolio: top officier in the Russian army, spy, translator, engineer, architect, teacher... Though he was a nobleman, he stood out as a defender of the rights of serfs, whose life was compared to the life of slaves. A friend of Montesquieu, Diderot and Voltaire, he was called by the latter 'the dark light of the enlightenment' and rightly so.
At the end of his life, Gannibal retired to a small nobleman's property where he spent his days tending to his garden. He died shortly after his wife Christina with whom he had 10 kids. One of his great-grandsons is the magnificent Russian poet Pushkin who was famously very proud of his "blackamoor" heritage.
Gannibal was a 7 or 8 years old Black slave offered to Peter the Great who won the tsar's admiration by his brilliance. The tsar took him under his protection and "adopted" him as a godson. A brilliant intellectual, he excelled at mathematics, architecture and languages and had an impressive career portfolio: top officier in the Russian army, spy, translator, engineer, architect, teacher... Though he was a nobleman, he stood out as a defender of the rights of serfs, whose life was compared to the life of slaves. A friend of Montesquieu, Diderot and Voltaire, he was called by the latter 'the dark light of the enlightenment' and rightly so.
At the end of his life, Gannibal retired to a small nobleman's property where he spent his days tending to his garden. He died shortly after his wife Christina with whom he had 10 kids. One of his great-grandsons is the magnificent Russian poet Pushkin who was famously very proud of his "blackamoor" heritage.
February 21, 2018
The book gets three stars, but the story of Gannibal gets five. He's mostly known for being Pushkin's great-grandfather, but that man had one heck of a life. Born on the shores of Lake Chad in the Sahel, he becomes a slave and ends up in Istanbul, gets broke out of the Sultan's palace by the Russian ambassador and a Balkan adventurer. Gannibal then gets brought to Russia where he greatly impresses Peter the Great who enrolls him in the army. He is very successful and gets sent to France for further training where he meets some stars of the Enlightenment -- Voltaire, Diderot, and Montesquieu. While in France he hangs out with people who want to overthrow the government, gets caught up and flees to Spain. From Spain he makes his way, by land (!) back to Russia where Peter, his benefactor, soon dies. The new rulers send him into internal exile in Siberia (once again he was hanging around with people trying to overthrow the government) all the way on the Chinese border near the Pacific. He eventually makes his way back to European Russia where he dies after the life of a family man. Someone's gotta make a movie out of this.
Also a better subtitle would've been a good idea. Modern Christian Europe's First Black Intellectual is more accurate.
Also a better subtitle would've been a good idea. Modern Christian Europe's First Black Intellectual is more accurate.
October 10, 2020
As a stranger to the subject, I found this book to be very interesting; I also enjoyed and appreciated when the author detailed his own painstaking research, and felt some of his thrill of obscure discovery. However, again as a stranger to the subject, I do wish he had spent more time on the normal, known-to-"all" history; such as by having more than one chapter on Gannibal's years of service in Elizabeth's court, when he was a high officer of state. Full blog post: https://tylerwolanin.com/2020/9/29/wh...
March 24, 2024
One of the better books written by a journalist. Though Hugh Barnes could have given more information about how he found the necessary material for his book. It does seem that there is more written about Abram Gannibal that has yet to be translated into English.
July 3, 2020
Nice book
November 19, 2021
I was amazed by his story and his extraordinary life journey. He was black excellence.
September 1, 2007
The life of this black man in Russia during the 1700's is absolutely fascinating. It is equally fasinating to realize that due to impressive marriages by his descendants, today some of them are first cousins to Charles, HRH Prince of Wales.
December 29, 2011
The fascinating life of Pushkin's great-grandfather, who was abducted as a slave from southern Sudan, and ended up as a general in Russia. It is not always clear where non-fiction ends and speculative narrative commences, and the story sometimes feels a bit clunky as a result.
Want to Read
November 5, 2007about /pushkin's grandfather
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews