Customer Reviews

White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives

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While reading Baepler's book WHITE SLAVES, AFRICAN MASTERS I kept asking myself, Why didn't I know about this fascinating part of American and world history before? While I found the men's stories to be captivating, I was especially enthralled with the stories of women captives such as Eliza Bradley and Maria Martin. The stories kept me wanting to read more...wanting to know what would happen next. I think some of these captivity narratives would make a great movie or TV mini-series! I'm recommending the book to friends who are history buffs and others who just want a good read.

A hard one to rate. The stories vary from well done to poorly crafted. Some are fictional, some truthful, and some fictional but pretend to be truthful. There oldest story is 3 centuries earlier than the most recent- and thus the stories represent a very varied style of writings. But the editor is up front with all of this, and most preemininetly, it is the editor who should be judged in this case.

I do not find him wanting. He has brought together a very unique collection that needs greater public scrutiny. It is intriguing to see all the ways the myth of slavery by whites alone is exploded. While the evils of slavery under whites in America are great indeed, so is all slavery, in all times, and this is shown very clearly in this collection. It is horrible to hear the events in these stories, and to contemplate how much more horrible are the stories of those who never got a chance to speak, for they were in slavery throughout their lives. Of little better joy are those who apostocized to Islam simply to avoid the horrors of slavery, exposing another interreligious myth.

It would be nice to have more detail on how reliable these stories are. Although there is a long introduction in the beginning, it doesn't fully give us the information we need to judge the authenticity of these narratives. For instance, it seems very likely that the story of Adams was at least in part manufactured, as the animals he describes do not exist or else do not act in the manner that he ascribes to them. But the editor only mentions that another author has shown with a great deal of evidence that Adams' story has veracity, and then we never hear what that evidence is. Also, it would be more helpful if Cotton Mathers sermon were updated. Frankly, the language has changed so much in 300 years, that a partial translation is in order. I found myself skimming over this first installment as I could not understand a lot of the language from the turn of the 18th century.

Small detractions. I would heartedly recommend this work. The stories are enthralling, and it is helpful to understand the history that went into the end of the Islamic Slavery Era, as well as the events around the first American war, the War with Tripoli/Tunisia. Just be sure to remember that not all events in the stories can be considered verifiable, and there may be some exaggerations by the storytellers who saw the world in stark Western-Islamic terms, with the "evil Musselman" and the "good Christian".