On the Barbary Coast
A historically grounded novel of captivity, diplomacy, and survival in the ruthless world of seventeenth-century North Africa. Based on documented events, maritime records, and diplomatic accounts, the story brings to life the political, economic, and human realities of the early modern Mediterranean.
1678. The Dutch trader ship Sint Joris leaves the Dutch Republic in high spirits, bound for Paramaribo (Suriname) with a hold full of gin and a handful of unsuspecting passengers. But off the Cape Verde Islands, disaster strikes: Algerian corsairs overwhelm the ship, and every soul on board is thrown into chains. What begins as a routine crossing becomes a nightmare as the Dutch disappear into the brutal world of Moorish slave markets, forced labor, and desperate bargaining for freedom.
In Algiers, envoy Thomas Hees fights a different battle. Tasked with securing a peace treaty to protect Dutch merchant ships from Mediterranean piracy, he enters a city shaped by power struggles, corruption, and political intrigue. But the English and French have the same goal-and they are willing to sabotage negotiations, manipulate rivalries, and spill blood to dominate the region's maritime trade. Amid shifting alliances, court conspiracies, and the crushing machinery of North African slavery, a darker threat descends upon Algiers: the Black Death, cutting down rich and poor alike and sending the city into chaos.
On the Barbary Coast delivers an unflinching portrayal of a world where diplomacy is as deadly as warfare, where survival depends on calculated loyalty, and where the line between captor and captive is thinner than anyone dares to admit. Meticulously grounded in original seventeenth-century accounts, maritime records, and diplomatic history, the novel recreates the political, economic, and cultural realities of the early modern Mediterranean world.
This is not a tale of swashbuckling pirates. It is a raw and immersive journey into a society held together by fear, ambition, and the fragile hope of redemption-a historical novel that brings documented history to life through human experience.
On the Barbary Coast is the second of four standalone historical novels about the Dutch and the slave trade in the 17th century. The novel is included in the literature list of the new Historical Canon of the Netherlands.
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