https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9877-4853
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Alexander Martin, Julie Kalman. The Kings of Algiers: How Two Jewish Families Shaped the Mediterranean World During the Napoleonic Wars and Beyond., The American Historical Review, Volume 129, Issue 4, December 2024, Pages 1792–1793, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhae408
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Extract
This is a fascinating book. It is a small story about one family network, nested inside a big story about the Napoleonic Wars, French and British imperialism, and Jewish, North African, and Ottoman history. Julie Kalman’s The Kings of Algiers is also a book that invites reflection on the scholarly genre of microhistory, for it exemplifies the challenges and opportunities of using a small subject as an entry point into large historical phenomena.
At the center of the book is the Bacri clan, an extended family who played a dominant role in business and politics in the Regency of Algiers in the decades around 1800. The ruling Deys of Algiers, quasi-independent vassals of the Ottoman Empire, sustained their wealth through grain exports and corsairing. The states of Western Europe were major importers of Algerian grain, and they and the United States paid the Deys to have their countries’ shipping exempted from corsair attacks. The interactions between Algiers and the West thus revolved around money, and the local consuls who represented the Western governments accordingly conducted relations through the regency’s most powerful businessmen: the Bacris.
