Brad’s Reviews > Agents of Empire: Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits and Spies in the Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World > Status Update
Brad
is on page 329 of 604
The definite strength of this book's historical analysis is the complexity it brings to "realist" historiography [in the sense of focusing on 'great powers' like the Ottomans or Poland].
Corsairs and raiders were not merely auxiliaries---they could certainly act as such, but "they often had interests and policies of their own, to which their protector-powers were sometimes forced, with great reluctance, to adapt."
— Jul 08, 2026 12:52PM
Corsairs and raiders were not merely auxiliaries---they could certainly act as such, but "they often had interests and policies of their own, to which their protector-powers were sometimes forced, with great reluctance, to adapt."
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Brad’s Previous Updates
Brad
is on page 414 of 604
Reminder that waning geopolitical dominance and imminent total imperial collapse are not the same thing. It's a centuries-long process...
*Sigh*.
— Jul 10, 2026 08:56PM
"historians have tended to be fixated on a golden age of the Ottoman ‘classical system’, from Mehmed the Conqueror to Süleyman the Magnificent; any deviation from it is liable to be described as a decline."
Reminder that waning geopolitical dominance and imminent total imperial collapse are not the same thing. It's a centuries-long process...
*Sigh*.
Brad
is on page 208 of 604
— Jul 04, 2026 11:05PM
Slavery was a fact of life…Its basic features – acquisition by raiding or war, public and private sales, the economic and military function, its legal status, the possibility of manumission – were the same on either side of the Christian–Muslim divide. And...that divide was constantly criss-crossed by individuals and agents of many kinds, seeking to organize an exchange or a ransom.