Pirate Utopias

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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 seas, apostates, traitors -- "Renegadoes"? Or did they abandon and betray Christendom as a praxis of social resistance? Peter Lamborn Wilson focuses on the corsairs' most impressive accomplishment, the independent Pirate Republic of Sale, in Morocco, in the 17th century. Corsairs, sufis, pederasts, "irresistible" Moorish women, slaves, adventurers, Irish rebels, heretical Jews, British spies, a Moorish pirate in old New York, and radical workingclass heroes all populate a book which intends to entertain and to make a point about insurrectionary communities. Book jacket