Podcasts · The Story of Malta: The Fortress Island of the Mediterranean — Fexingo History
The Great Ransom: Malta's Knights and the Barbary Slave Trade
· 10 min · S4 E196
Episode The Great Ransom: Malta's Knights and the Barbary Slave Trade
In this episode, Lucas and Luna step into the shadows of the Mediterranean's sixteenth-century slave economy and uncover the Knights of St. John's role as both captors and redeemers. Through the lens of the Monte di Redenzione, a fund that ransomed Christian slaves from North African bagnios, they explore the complex machinery of ransom — the negotiators, the prices, the heartbreak, and the occasional triumph. They follow the journey of a slave like Giovanni Battista, sold in Algiers, and the letters that passed between captives and their families. Along the way, they confront the uncomfortable reality that the Knights' own galleys depended on Muslim oarsmen, and that the same order that fought the corsairs also profited from the corso. The episode traces the rise of the Barbary states, the infamous 'slave of the Grand Master,' and the eventual decline of the ransom system in the eighteenth century, offering a nuanced look at faith, economics, and human suffering in an age of extremes.
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Transcript
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