Published: 1 August 2016
ISBN: 9780141978376
Imprint: Penguin Press
Format: Paperback
Pages: 640
RRP: $29.99

Categories:

History

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Agents Of Empire

Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits And Spies In The Sixteenth-Century Mediterranean World

Noel Malcolm

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The sixteenth-century Mediterranean seen through the extraordinary history of a family, uncovered by one of Britain's most original scholars

Agents of Empire describes the paths taken through the eastern Mediterranean and its European hinterland by members of a Venetian-Albanian family, almost all of them previously invisible to history. They include an archbishop in the Balkans, the captain of the papal flagship at the Battle of Lepanto, the power behind the throne in the Ottoman province of Moldavia, and a dragoman (interpreter) at the Venetian embassy in Istanbul.

Through the life-stories of these adventurous individuals over three generations, Noel Malcolm casts the world between Venice, Rome and the Ottoman Empire in a fresh light, illuminating subjects as diverse as espionage, diplomacy, the grain trade, slave-ransoming and anti-Ottoman rebellion. A masterpiece of scholarship as well as story-telling, Agents of Empire builds up a panoramic picture, both of Western power-politics and of the interrelations between the Christian and Ottoman worlds.

Published: 1 August 2016
ISBN: 9780141978376
Imprint: Penguin Press
Format: Paperback
Pages: 640
RRP: $29.99

Categories:

History

Share…

Praise for Agents Of Empire

Dazzling . . . a work of astonishing richness and detail . . . Agents of Empire uses the intertwined stories of two Albanian families – the Brunis and the Brutis – as a prism through which to view the contacts and the conflicts that made the early modern Mediterranean
John Gallagher, Guardian

Astonishing . . . an exceptional, enthralling book . . . The best introduction to the 16th-century Mediterranean since Fernand Braudel
David Wootton, Wall Street Journal

Triumphant . . . arrestingly re-orders the perspective of the Renaissance Mediterranean world
Jonathan Keates, The Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year