Captivity in Morocco: a study of redemption rates, mortality and apostasy in the late 17th century

Abstract

This article proposes to calculate some of the aspects that have remained hypothetical in the historiography on Mediterranean captivity since Fernand Braudel's inaugural work: the rate of redemption, the rate of mortality and the rate of apostasy of Christian captives in the western Maghreb, and in this case in particular in the Morocco of Muley Ismail. The use of little-exploited sources allows us to put forward solid figures for the three rates mentioned above. We use the documentation, very little used until now, kept in the Archive of the Venerable Third Order and also the book of deaths of the Christians of Morocco kept in the Library of the University of Seville, together with documentation from the General Archive of Simancas to find out the fate of the more than 1500 individuals captured between 1681 and 1689 in the Hispanic presidios of San Miguel de Ultramar and Larache. Thanks to this documentation, we are able to know this rate of loss, which represents a basis for historiographical reflection that opposes the most generally and widely used hypotheses based on the work of Robert C. Davis. Compared to the redemption rate of 3-4 percent advanced by the American historian, the redemption of the captives of San Miguel de Ultramar and Larache is closer to 25 percent. Mortality and apostasy rates are also different from those advanced by the American researcher's general hypothesis. This article does not generalise from these figures. One of the aims is to show that the redemption books can indeed be a source for answering the problem of quantifying the phenomenon of Christian slavery in the western Mediterranean.