Compassion, Fear, Fugitive Slaves, and a Pirates’ Shrine: Lampedusa, ca. 1550–ca. 1750

Abstract

The deserted island of Lampedusa shaped an unexpected meeting of the currents of early modern Mediterranean piracy and slavery that suggests the emotional complexity of European and North African pirates—both the potential that some of them felt compassion for the people whose capture was their business, and the reality of their fear that they themselves could become fodder in the Mediterranean system of slavery. This dyad marked the island’s unusual shrine that was shared by Muslim and Christian mariners. There, pirates made offerings of practical items intended to help any seafarer in need, including fugitive slaves. Though this island was a site of captive-taking, it offered slaves a chance at liberty. Lampedusa and its shrine thus also illuminate slaves’ strategies of sea-borne self-liberation.