military decline of the western islamic world

8/9/2019 Military Decline of the Western Islamic World

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Measuring the Military Decline of the Western Islamic

World: Evidence from Barbary Ransoms

Eric Chaney∗

November 7, 2014

Abstract

This paper uses data on thousands of captives ransomed from the Barbary corsairs

to track the military power of the Ottoman Empire’s most powerful North African

regency over time. Results suggest that as the 17th century advanced, Algerian-based

Corsairs found it increasingly difficult to capture “hard” targets. These results do not

appear to be driven by changes in the ransoming preferences or by other unobserved

factors and provide the first empirical evidence that the western Islamic world’s relative

military decline began in earnest in the 17th century.

∗Harvard University. For comments and helpful discussions I thank Mauricio Drelichman and StanEngerman. I am responsible for any remaining errors.

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For generations, scholars have argued that between the 16th and 18th centuries the Is-

lamic world fell decisively behind Western Europe. These “decline” narratives often highlight

Ottoman defeats on the battlefield or at sea, implicitly assuming that the Empire’s relative

military decline also reflected an increasing gap in the levels of economic and technological

development between Western Europe and the Islamic West. In many ways, recent researchhas supported this assumption by suggesting that military technology was less likely to be

blocked by Ottoman elites than other technological advances (e.g. Pamuk, 2004). Conse-

quently, the Empire’s relative military position may actually be a conservative proxy for its

relative level of technological and socioeconomic development.1

Despite the potential value of this proxy, to my knowledge there are no systematic quan-

titative investigations of the evolution of the relative military standing of the western Islamic

world over time. This dearth of studies is likely driven, at least in part, by data limitations.

Scholars have traditionally focused on the outcomes of battles, which occur relatively infre-

quently against enemies of varying levels of economic and military development. In this data

environment, it is perhaps not surprising that studies have arrived at very different estimates

of the timing of the Ottoman world’s relative decline. Thus, scholars have traditionally as-

serted that the military decline of the western Islamic world began after the battle of Lepanto

in 1571 or sometime in the 17th or 18th centuries (e.g. Lewis, 1982; Inalcik, 1994). In recent

years, however, scholars have argued for a more nuanced view of the Empire’s decline. For

example, Grant (1999), suggests that the Ottomans were able to maintain military parity

with the Russians and Venetians and successfully adopted military innovations coming from

Europe from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries.This paper provides new evidence regarding the timing of the relative military decline

of the western most reaches of the Ottoman Empire by tracking the fortunes of Algerian-

based corsairs in what has been called the “little war of piracy” during the 16th and 17th

centuries (Friedman, 1983, p. xviii). Using a data set on over 4000 captives ransomed

by Spanish clerics from the Ottoman Regency of Algiers between 1575 and 1692 I develop

three metrics to proxy for the relative military power of the Regency, which emerged as a

major center of corsairing activity in the sixteenth century. These include the proportion of

ransomed captives caught fishing, those caught on land and those captured in the Atlantic.

The evolution of these metrics supports the hypothesis of a decline in the relative power

of the Algerian-based corsairs during the 17th century. For example, the proportion of

ransomed captives captured while fishing jumps toward the end of the 17th century. Since

fisherman presented easier, but less valuable targets than other categories, this trend implies

1Throughout, I will use Islamic world, Ottoman Empire and the western Islamic world synonymously forease of exposition.

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a shift towards less militarily ambitious raids. I also show that the proportion of captives

captured on land and the proportion captured in the Atlantic both decline as the 17th

century advances. Although there is some variation across metrics, after 1675 all three

metrics suggest the regency was less military powerful than had been the case at the start

of the 17th century.Do these changes in the characteristics of the ransomed population denote a decline in the

relative military power of the corsairs? Perhaps the most worrying alternative explanation is

that the results reflect a change in the ransoming preference/procedures as the 17th century

wore on. I show, however, that the available data are not consistent with the claim that

systematic changes in the preferences of the ransoming missions are driving the results.

Although the data preclude a detailed investigation of the reasons behind the military

decline of the corsairs, it is interesting to note that the results are broadly consistent with

Panzac (2005) who notes that the Algerian corsairs lost power during the course of the 17th

century. He and other historians attribute this divergence to changes brought about by

changes in Western European navies (Panzac, 2005, pp. 28, 32) such as the improvement of

European artillery in the 17th century (Greene, 2002). The North African Regencies and the

Ottoman Empire more generally did not keep pace with these developments (Lewis, 1982,

p. 226) and by the end of the 17th century one author has written that “the traditional

Algerian corsair fleet [was] almost an anachronism” (Wolf, 1979, p. 287).

While the external validity of these results for other areas of the Ottoman Empire remains

a topic for future research, existing scholarship suggests that the military fate of the Regency

and that of the rest of the Ottoman Empire were closely intertwined (e.g. Lewis, 1982, p.226). The results are thus consistent with research suggesting that the roots of the military

divergence between the Islamic world and Western Europe predate the 18th century and

may reach back to the medieval period (Hoffman, 2012; Blaydes and Chaney, 2013). In this

sense, the paper contributes to a broader literature investigating the causes of the divergence

between Western Europe and the Islamic World (Kuran, 2011; Blaydes and Chaney, 2013).2

The remainder of the paper proceeds as follows: the first section provides a brief histor-

ical background; the second section explains the data construction and provides summary

statistics and correlations; the third section documents and discusses the trends in the data;

a final section concludes.

2In addition to this literature, the paper adds to a growing literature investigating piracy from an economicstandpoint (Leeson, 2007, 2009; Hillmann and Gathmann, 2011; Ambrus et al., 2014).

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1 The Rise and Fall of the Corsairs: Historical Overview

By the start of the 16th century, the western most reaches of the Islamic world seemed on the

verge of being incorporated into the expanding Spanish Empire. In the decades following the

conquest of the last Islamic state on the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, the Spanish established

coastal forts across North Africa in what many at the time believed was a precursor to the

invasion of North Africa (Wolf, 1979, p. 4). Although no large-scale invasion of North Africa

was ever attempted, the origins of the Ottoman Regency of Algiers can be traced to the

resistance of local populations to the construction of these presidios.

In 1516 two Greek-born privateers established themselves as rulers in Algiers after the

Spanish erected a military base at the city’s entrance. Following the death of one brother

after an encounter with Spanish forces, the surviving brother (Khair al-Din or “Redbeard”)

received Ottoman military aid in his struggle against the Spanish. In the decades following

the Spanish withdrawal from their Algerian presidio in 1529, Algiers morphed under Ottomanrule into an important naval base which eventually became one of history’s most famous

centers of piracy and corsairing (Abun-Nasr, 1977, pp. 162-164).

In many ways, the rise of Algiers mirrors the rise of Ottoman naval power in the Mediter-

ranean. At least since the end of the 15th century, the Ottoman Navy had been slowly

claiming mastery of the Eastern Mediterranean. Under the command of Khair al-Din, the

Ottoman threat spread to the Western Mediterranean. Following the battle of Preveza -in

which the Ottoman Navy defeated the combined forces of Spain, Venice, Genoa, the Papal

States and the Knights of Malta in 1538- the Ottomans dominated the Mediterranean until

the battle of Lepanto in 1571 (Parry, 1976a, p. 89). After repelling a Spanish invasion

of Algiers in 1541, Khair al-Din captured Nice in 1543 and the Ottoman fleet destroyed a

Christian fleet at Djerba in 1560 (Parry, 1976a, p. 101). Following failures at Malta and

Lepanto, the 1574 Ottoman conquest of Tunis marked the effective end of major hostilities

in the Mediterranean between the Ottomans and the Spanish (Parry, 1976b, p. 110).

Braudel (1995, p. 865) attributed the surge in piracy in the Mediterranean after 1574 to

the end of these hostilities, noting that “the end of conflict between the great states brought

to the forefront of the sea’s history that secondary form of war, piracy.” From the end of

the 16th through the first half of the 17th centuries, the Algerian corsairs are thought tohave reached the peak of their powers (Clark, 1944, p. 28) even expanding their operations

from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic. This expansion is thought to have been crucially

aided by the influx of Dutch and English pirates into the Regency following Spain’s peace

agreements with England and the Netherlands in the first decade of the 17th century (Lewis,

1982, p. 226).

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After around 1650, however, many scholars believe that the military power of the corsairs

began to decline. Historians often illustrate this process by listing European attacks on the

Algerian fleet during this period. For example, in 1671 the British sunk the best ships of

the Algerian navy, in 1673 the Dutch sunk 18 corsair vessels (Friedman, 1983, p. 29) and in

the 1680s the French bombarded Algiers three times (Greene, 2002, p. 64). These militaryactions forced Algiers to sign treaties for the first time which protected the commerce of

these states against corsair attacks.3 By the end of the 17th century, the Algerian corsairs

are thought to have been depended increasingly on the capture of “soft” targets such as

small fishing vessels (Wolf, 1979, p. 294) and reports from Algiers “told of many fewer slaves

in the city” (Davis, 2001, p. 106). This decline in the military position of the corsairs seems

to have also been reflected in the political structure of the Regency (Clark, 1944, p. 29).4

This relative decline is thought to have been the product of changes in Western European

navies (Panzac, 2005, pp. 28, 32) such as the improvement of European artillery in the

17th century (Greene, 2002). The North African Regencies and the Ottoman Empire more

generally did not keep pace with these developments (Lewis, 1982, p. 226) and by the end

of the 17th century one author has written that “the traditional Algerian corsair fleet [was]

almost an anachronism” (Wolf, 1979, p. 287).

1.1 Slavery and Ransom in the Ottoman Regency of Algiers

Although Algerian corsairs derived significant wealth from the sale and re-export of captured

merchandise, the ransoms of individuals captured in corsair raids constituted a major source

of income for both the corsairs and the Algerian economy. Scholars believe that at its height

at the start of the 17th century, Algiers had one of the busiest slave markets in the Islamic

world, with over 25000 slaves.

In general, slaves were divided at the time of sale into two groups. The first group

were those whom the Algerians believed would be ransomed. These captives were usually

spared the most onerous tasks as their owners were anxious to preserve their ransom value

(Friedman, 1983, pp. 55, 71). Those who were not believed ransomable were often assigned

brutal work such as transporting rocks or rowing in corsair galleys. When not working,

government-owned captives were housed in government prisons, while privately-owned slaveswere kept in government prisons (for a price paid by the slave-owner), in smaller in-house

3No such treaties were signed with the Spanish during the period covered by the data.4Since its founding, the Ottoman Regency of Algiers enjoyed a significant degree of autonomy. This

autonomy is thought to have gradually increased throughout the 17th century, and starting in 1659, theOttoman-appointed pasha’s power was gradually usurped by a local ruler who from 1671 onward bore thetitle of dey. By 1711, Istanbul ceased to dispatch pashas and instead conferred this rank on whomever theforeign-born militia (who were referred to as janisarries) nominated as their leader (Shuval, 2000, p. 333).

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Algiers concentrated on freeing two groups of individuals. The first group included captives

of a certain type such as women, children, soldiers, clerics, nobles and others in danger of

converting to Islam. The exact identity of the captives did not matter inasmuch as s/he

belonged to one of these groups. The second group contained the group of captives for

whom family and friends had donated money. Here, the exact identity of the captives wasextremely important since the ransoming missions were required to use these funds to ransom

the individual for whom they had been earmarked.

In the ensuing negotiations, the redemption team seems to have carefully guarded the

identity of the captives they most wanted to ransom. Thus, the redemption team was

instructed to be careful that the translator (provided by the Algerians) not hear their private

conversations (mss 2974, f. 6). In addition, they seem to have delayed ransoming captives

to obtain lower prices as surviving instructions admonish the redemption team to delay as

the Algerians will “hurry to lower the prices” (mss 2974, f. 5) and reminded the negotiators

that “there is much difference between begging and being begged” (mss 2974, f. 6). Once

a ransom agreement was reached, the redemption team gave a receipt signed by the entire

team. When the redemption ended, the slave owner gave the redemption team the receipt

and the captive was exchanged for the amount of money on the receipt (mss 2974, ff. 6,

6r). After an exit tax had been paid for each captive, those ransomed boarded the ship and

returned to Spain. In a companion paper, Ambrus et al. (2014) provide a detailed empirical

analysis of the determinants of ransom payments.

2 Data Construction and Summary Statistics

The measures of corsair’s military power are derived from the surviving records of 22 ran-

soming expeditions performed by Catholic religious orders to Algiers that occurred in the

16th and 17th centuries. I have found records of 4680 ransomed individuals in these records.

A royally appointed scribe kept these records which could be used to audit the expedition.

Historians have generally stressed both the quality and meticulous detail of these records

(e.g. Friedman, 1983, p. 107).

The surviving records often provide fascinating insights into the conditions of a slave’s

capture. Some of the most ironic entries are found in the ransom records from the 1678

ransoming mission. In this ransoming trip, various members of a Spanish slaving expedition

to Angola were captured by the Algerians and later ransomed. One of these ransom entries

reads: “Antonio Mart́ınez from Gibraltar of 34 years and half a year in captivity was captured

in the vessel of Don Pedro de Castro going to Angola for slaves. One-hundred pesos were

paid for his ransom to Mostafa soldier and with the 40 [pesos] of exit tax make 1120 silver

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The general summary statistics show that the average age at capture was just over 29

years and the average time in captivity was roughly over six years. Women and children

were approximately 10% of the ransomed population.9

Using the ransom entries, I have identified the exact latitude and longitude of capture

for 2160 captives. These locations are provided in figure 1 in addition to the route on whicha captive was captured when the exact place of capture is not available but information re-

garding both the start and finish point of the route on which he was captured is. Routes are

mapped “as the bird flies” for expositional clarity. The concentration of captures on Spain’s

Mediterranean coast is obvious, as is the concentration on Mediterranean and Atlantic ship-

ping routes. Using these data, I have constructed the variable Atlantic which is equal to one

if the exact place of capture was to the west of Gibraltar. I also set this variable equal to

one if the captive was captured going to or coming from the Americas (i.e. on the carrera

de indias ). Of the 2369 individuals with non-missing values, roughly 40% were captured in

the Atlantic.

Panel B provides summary statistics regarding the “profession” of each captive. Although

I could not identify a profession for roughly half of the sample, 13% of all captives were caught

while fishing, 5% while on their way to or from the Americas, 24% as soldiers or otherwise

in the “service of the King”, 2% were clerics, 3% were classified as other (such as the slave

trader above) and a small fraction were from the nobility.

Panel C provides information on how ransomed individuals were captured. These statis-

tics show that just under 80% of all captives were captured at sea, 10% were captured

on land and 7% were captured in military confrontations between the Spanish and NorthAfrican/Ottoman forces.10 The remaining captives were either born in captivity or there is

no information regarding the conditions of their capture.

In table 3, I present summary statistics by year of capture in 25 year bins. I combine the

pre-1575 captives into one bin given that there are only a few captives who were captured

prior to 1550. In panel A, I provide the relevant means, whereas panel B presents the number

9Children are defined as all individuals who are less than twelve. Females are those who have the firstnames: Ageda, Agueda, Agustina, Alberta, Aldonza, Ana, Angela, Antona, Antonia, Beatriz, Bernarda,Catalina, Caterina, Catalina, Cathalina, Clara, Constanza, Cornelia, Cristina, Damiana, Dominga, Elena,Elvira, Esperanza, Feliciaa, Felipa, Francisca, Geronima, Ginesa, Gregoria, Guida, Inés, Isabel, Jacinta,Joana, Josepha, Juana, Jusepa, Leonarda, Lucia, Lucrecia, Luisa, Madalena, Magdalena, Manuela, Mar-garita, Maŕıa, Mariana, Marina, Marta, Nicolasa, Paula, Pereta, Petronila, Teresa, Theodora, Thomasa,Thomasina, Vitoria, Yasimina or is otherwise specified as female.

10Military confrontations only include staged battles. In other words, if an individual was captured ona naval ship being transported to another location I count this individual as being captured at sea. Anexample of such staged battles is the attempt of Muslim forces to retake Spanish enclaves on the NorthAfrican coast. To be consistent, I classify individuals captured while soldiers at these posts (even if they arecaptured while out foraging for food) as being captured in military confrontations.

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of captives with non-missing values in each bin. In the first column, I show that the nominal

ransom price increases over time. In the second column, I show that the average value of

earmarked money seems to follow a similar pattern up until roughly 1650. After this date,

average earmarked funds decline. Column 3 shows that the age at capture remains roughly

constant over the sample period. Column 4 suggests that there is a downward trend in timein captivity that seems to be more pronounced by the end of the sample.

In column 5 I show that the proportion of ransomed captives who were caught fishing

increases over time whereas column 6 shows that the proportion captured on land seems

to decrease after roughly 1625. In columns 7 and 8, I provide evidence consistent with the

historical overview provided in the previous section. First, in column 7, I show that the

proportion of ransomed individuals caught in formal “pitched battles” with the Ottomans or

other North African forces drops sharply after 1575 which was the year after the last major

direct military confrontation between the Ottomans and the Spanish. In column 8, I provide

evidence supporting the claim that the corsairs greatly intensified their Atlantic activities

at the start of the 17th century. This timing provides evidence in support of the claim that

English and Dutch pirates brought naval technological advances that allowed the corsairs to

expand into the Atlantic around this date.

Finally, in table 4, I provide the correlates of ransom prices. In these regressions the

natural logarithm of the ransom prices is the dependent variable. I drop all captives with

prices of 0 and those for whom only the exit tax was paid. In addition, I report standard

errors clustered by year of capture.11

It is important to stress that all of these estimates are conditional on being ransomed.Since I always include trip dummies, they are identified off of within trip variation. In

column 1, I examine how professions are correlated with ransom prices, where the omitted

category is captives for whom I have not been able to identify a profession. The results show

that fishermen are 9 log points cheaper, those captured on their way to or from the Americas

are 25 log points more expensive, clerics are 66 log points more expensive, soldiers are 8 log

points more expensive, a member of the nobility is 179 log points more expensive than the

omitted group. Other identified captives cost roughly the same as the omitted group.

In the second column of table 4, I investigate how the circumstances in which a captive was

captured correlate with his ransom price. Here, the omitted category includes both captives

born in captivity and those for whom I was unable to identify how they were captured.

11Given that I always include trip fixed effects I am most worried about within-year correlations as manyindividuals caught in the exact same circumstances were ransomed in different trips. However, I have alsoexperimented with double-clustering by both this dimension and at the trip level (Cameron et al., 2011).A drawback of this approach is that I only have 22 trip clusters and I am not aware of work addressingsituations in which there is multi-way clustering and few clusters.

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The point estimates suggest that the omitted group was ransomed for significantly less than

captives caught on land at war or at sea.

In the third and fourth columns of table 4, I explore the sign and magnitude of four ad-

ditional variables without and with the dummy variables used in the previous two columns.

These results show that both a captive’s age when captured and time in captivity are nega-tively correlated with ransom prices, whereas being a female or child are positively correlated

with the size of the ransom. To a large extent the results are consistent with the historical

literature stressing that captives such as those coming to and from the Americas and soldiers

commanded higher prices than other captives (e.g. Friedman, 1983, p. 146).

3 Measuring the Military Decline of the Western Is-

lamic World

3.1 Measuring the Timing of the Decline

While the balance of the existing historiography suggests that the corsairs began a relative

military decline at some point in the 17th century, there are no systematic empirical inves-

tigations of the exact timing of this decline. In this section, I provide the first empirical

investigation of the timing of the relative decline of the corsairs using the ransom records

explained above.

As these data are conceptually best viewed as a time series, throughout this section

I use the year of capture as the unit of observation and take the mean of the relevant

variables by year. However, I always present results weighted by the number of captured

individuals in each year. The point estimates of these weighted regressions are identical to

those obtained running the regression at the captive level (e.g. Angrist and Pischke, 2009,

p. 92). Throughout, I provide Newey-West standard errors allowing for autocorrelation up

to four lags.12

To analyze the evolution of my proxies for the relative military power of the corsairs more

formally, I use the six 25-year bins explained above and run a regression of the form:

btf = γ +∑

f ̸=1600

β f + ϵtf (1)

Where b denotes the dependent variable of interest for captives captured in year t and in

25-year bin f. I omit the interval [1600, 1625) because this is the period that many historians

12For completeness I include captives that were captured in war although results are qualitatively similarif these captives are included.

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corsairs although this metric suggests that the decline began roughly 25 years earlier. In

column 3, I show that after 1675 the proportion of captives taken in the Atlantic drops by

18 percentage points when compared to the proportion of Atlantic captives on the interval

[1600,1625).

In column 4, I show that there is no trend in the proportion of captives caught in militaryconfrontations in the 17th century. This result is important, given that one possible worry is

that the results are reflective of variation in the extent to which the Spanish were conducting

military operations in North Africa.16

Although the results are consistent with a relative military decline of the Barbary states

during the 17th century, there are clearly other possible interpretations of the results. Per-

haps the most worrying is that the results are driven by a change in the ransoming prefer-

ences/procedures as the 17th century wore on. Although I am not aware of any evidence

suggesting this is the case, there are increasing numbers of ransomed captives in my sample

after roughly 1650. While this increase does not necessarily mean that the Spanish were

ransoming more captives after this date (it simply shows that more ransom records have

survived), it could be indicative of such a change which may be related, in turn, to the

military decline of the corsairs (e.g. Mart́ınez Torres, 2004, p. 151). To the extent to which

there was an increase in the total number of captives ransomed after roughly 1650, it could

affect the results by including larger numbers of lower value captives that were previously

not ransomed.

I investigate the extent to which this hypothesis is consistent with the data in column 5

of table 5. To do this, I calculate the standard deviation of log ransom prices in each year(omitting those with prices of zero and those for whom only the exit price was paid). The

idea behind this metric is that if the underlying ransomable population remains constant

over time but the sampling scheme changes only in that it includes a higher proportion

of lower-valued captives that were previously not ransomed this should be reflected in an

increase in the standard deviation of the ransom price. The results in column 5 are not

consistent with this prediction.

While the proportion of ransomed captives caught while fishing, on land and in the

Atlantic are imperfect metrics on their own, when taken in unison, they suggest the Regency

entered a relative military decline in the 17th century. Indeed, after 1675 all three metrics

suggest a decline relative to their position at the start of the 17th century.

16Indeed, this variation prior to 1600 may help explain the rise in the proportion of fisherman from thestart of the sample until 1600.

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4 Conclusion

Information detailing the conditions under which over 4000 ransomed captives were cap-

tured by corsairs from the Ottoman Regency of Algiers suggests that the corsairs found it

increasingly difficult to take “hard targets” as the 17th century progressed. By the end of

this century, ransomed captives were more likely to have been captured while fishing and

less likely to be taken on land or in the Atlantic. These results are consistent with claims

that the corsairs lost military power during this century after approximately 1675.

While the results in this paper provide reasonable evidence that the western Islamic

world had begun to decline -at least when compared to Western Europe in the military

realm- by the late 17th century, they provide little insight into the reasons behind this de-

cline. Although the available historical evidence suggests that this decline was driven by

technological developments in Europe, it is difficult to test the effects of any single techno-

logical development in a convincing way with the data. However, to the extent to whichthe decline measured in this paper was driven by technological advances, it suggests that

future research investigating military developments in 17th century Europe -and the roots

of these developments- may provide additional insights into the timing of the military rise

of the Western world vis-à-vis the Islamic Middle East.

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Figure 1: Place of CaptureCircles denote exact or approximate point of capture. Lines denote routes on which captiveswere captured if no exact point is available. Larger circles denote more captives captured in

that place.

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Table 1: Data SourcesYear Archive FullRansom ExitTax Missing All

1575 mss2963 140 5 0 1451580/1581 l118,l120 151 0 0 1511582 l119 106 1 0 1071587/1588 l122 96 6 0 1021591/1592 l121 116 4 0 1201618 l125 144 1 0 1451627 mss3872 141 2 0 143

1642 l133 139 3 0 1421649 l132 92 14 0 1061651 mss3597 230 8 1 2391660 mss4359 365 1 2 3681662 l139 261 22 2 2851664 mss4394 230 32 0 2621667 mss3586 199 12 0 2111669 mss3593 180 9 0 1891670 l135 168 24 0 1921675 mss2974 518 1 0 5191678 mss7752 421 28 0 449

1679 l146 127 38 0 1651686 mss4363 308 12 0 3201690 l145 133 16 15 1641692 l147 140 16 0 156Total 4405 255 20 4680

Notes: Archive entries prefaced with l are from the Archivo Histórico N acional, códices.The number after l details the legajo. Archive entries prefaced with mss are from theBiblioteca Nacional de Madrid. The number after mss gives the manuscript number.The column FullRansom provides the number of captives for whom a full ransom waspaid, the column ExitTax provides the number of captives for whom only the exit tax

was paid and the column Missing provides the number of captives who were missinginformation on their price or this was zero.

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T a b l e 3 :

S u m m a r y

S t a t i s t

i c s

I I : S e

l e c t e d

V a r i a

b l e s

I n 2 5 Y e a r

B i n s

b y

Y e a r o

f C a p

t u r e

l n ( R a n s o m )

l n ( E a r m a r k e d )

A g e a t C a p

T i m e C a p t i v e F i s h e r m a n

L a n d

W a r

A t l a n t i c

( 1 )

( 2 )

( 3 )

( 4 )

( 5 )

( 6 )

( 7 )

( 8 )

P a n e l

A :

M e a n

[ 1 5 3 6 , 1 5 7 5 )

7 . 0 5

6 . 3 8

2 9 . 0

1

1 0 . 3

4

0 . 0 1

0 . 1 7

0 . 5 1

0 . 0

3

[ 1 5 7 5 , 1 6 0 0 )

7 . 1 6

6 . 6 2

3 2 . 4

3

5 . 4 1

0 . 0 8

0 . 2 3

0 . 2 1

0 . 0

4

[ 1 6 0 0 , 1 6 2 5 )

7 . 3 8

7 . 5 4

3 3 . 6

0

6 . 6 3

0 . 1 3

0 . 2 1

0 . 0 4

0 . 5

9

[ 1 6 2 5 , 1 6 5 0 )

7 . 3 3

7 . 3 5

2 7 . 3

6

8 . 9 7

0 . 1 4

0 . 1 2

0 . 0 6

0 . 4

8

[ 1 6 5 0 , 1 6 7 5 )

7 . 3 9

6 . 9 5

2 8 . 3

3

5 . 4 0

0 . 1 2

0 . 0 8

0 . 0 1

0 . 5

0

[ 1 6 7 5 , 1 6 9 2 )

7 . 3 0

6 . 6 4

2 9 . 9

0

3 . 5 7

0 . 2 2

0 . 0 5

0 . 0 6

0 . 4

1

P a n e l

B :

N

[ 1 5 3 6 , 1 5 7 5 )

2 4 5

6 6

2 4 2

2 4 5

2 4 5

2 4 5

2 4 5

1 9 0

[ 1 5 7 5 , 1 6 0 0 )

3 6 8

1 2 3

3 6 6

3 6 8

3 6 8

3 6 8

3 6 8

2 1 0

[ 1 6 0 0 , 1 6 2 5 )

2 5 1

2 9

2 4 3

2 5 2

2 5 2

2 5 2

2 5 2

1 4 9

[ 1 6 2 5 , 1 6 5 0 )

4 9 1

5 6

4 9 7

5 0 2

5 0 2

5 0 2

5 0 2

2 3 1

[ 1 6 5 0 , 1 6 7 5 )

2 3 1 4

5 3 3

2 3 4 0

2 3 5 1

2 3 5 1

2 3 5 1

2 3 5 1

1 1 1

4

[ 1 6 7 5 , 1 6 9 2 )

8 0 6

9 1

8 2 8

8 3 0

8 3 0

8 3 0

8 3 0

4 4 2

N o t e s : E a r m a r k e d f u n d s a r e t h o s e s e n t f r o m

S p a i n f o r t h

e r a n s o m

o f a s p e c i fi c c a p t i v e .

A t l a n t i c d e n o t e s t h e p r o p o r t i o n o f c a p t i v e s c a u g h t i n t h e

A t l a n t i c .

S e e t e x t f o r

d e t a i l s .

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Table 4: Correlates of Ransom Prices: Full Ransoms

(1) (2) (3) (4)Fisherman -0.09∗∗∗ -0.09∗∗∗

(0.02) (0.02)

Carrera 0.25∗∗∗ 0.22∗∗∗

(0.05) (0.05)

Cleric 0.66∗∗∗ 0.66∗∗∗

(0.08) (0.08)

Soldier 0.08∗∗∗ 0.11∗∗∗

(0.03) (0.03)

Noble 1.79∗∗∗ 1.62∗∗∗

(0.37) (0.37)

Other -0.04 0.04(0.05) (0.05)

Land 0.28∗∗∗ 0.32∗∗∗

(0.08) (0.07)

W ar 0.38∗∗∗ 0.38∗∗∗

(0.08) (0.08)

Sea 0.39∗∗∗ 0.44∗∗∗

(0.08) (0.08)

Age(capture) -0.006∗∗∗ -0.005∗∗∗

(0.001) (0.001)

T imeCaptive -0.01∗∗∗ -0.01∗∗∗

(0.001) (0.001)

Female 0.05 0.14∗∗

(0.06) (0.06)

Child 0.002 0.15∗∗∗

(0.05) (0.05)

N 4318 4318 4287 4287

Clusters 127 127 127 127

Notes: The dependent variable is the natural logarithm of a captive’s ransom price. All regressionsinclude trip dummies. Carrera denotes captives caught on their way to or returning from the Americas.Standard errors clustered by year of capture are provided in parentheses. ∗∗∗, ∗∗and ∗indicate significanceat the 1%, 5% and 10% levels. See text for details.

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Table 5: The Decline of the CorsairsFishing Land Atlantic War Std.(Ransom)

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)[1625, 1650) 0.01 -0.09 -0.11∗ 0.02 -0.09

(0.02) (0.07) (0.06) (0.03) (0.06)

[1650, 1675) -0.01 -0.13∗∗ -0.09 -0.03∗∗ 0.01(0.03) (0.06) (0.06) (0.02) (0.05)

[1675, 1692) 0.09∗∗ -0.16∗∗ -0.18∗∗∗ 0.02 -0.05(0.04) (0.06) (0.06) (0.02) (0.05)

Constant 0.13∗∗∗ 0.21∗∗∗ 0.59∗∗∗ 0.04∗∗∗ 0.53∗∗∗

(0.02) (0.06) (0.04) (0.02) (0.04)

N 127 127 121 127 116

Notes: HAC standard errors allowing for autocorrelation up to 4 lags are provided in parentheses. ∗∗∗,∗∗and ∗indicate significance at the 1%, 5% and 10% levels. See text for details.

military decline of the western islamic world

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