Adam Nichols – författare

From the mid-sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, Barbary corsairs from North Africa swarmed the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, seizing enormous amounts of booty and tens of thousands of captives, hauling them back to the slave markets in their home ports and auctioning them off to the highest bidder.The conflict between these Barbary corsairs and Europe was military, but not just that; religious, but not just that; social and economic, but not just that either. Above all, it was a human conflict, with all the confusion, blurred lines, and inherent messiness of such things, and the narratives it generated were more complicated than simple swashbuckling pirate tales._Corsairs & Captives_ presents a collection of these narratives, all based directly on primary-source documents, a number of which are translated into English for the first time. They include biographies of four renegade corsair captains (Europeans who converted to Islam and became corsairs), descriptions of sea battles by those who were there, accounts of ransomed captives, the report of a French Trinitarian friar who led a ransoming expedition to Algiers, even the transcript of a trial held by the Canary Islands chapter of the (in)famous Spanish Inquisition.These narratives bring to life a world much rougher than our own but no less complicated, in which people with the ordinary human fears and aspirations we are familiar with today struggled to endure. It is not the world most people expect when they think of Barbary corsairs. It is more interesting than that.

It is now widely recognised that learning a language should not just involve linguistic competence but also intercultural competence. It is also clear that intercultural competence can be developed through related subjects such as geography, history, mother tongue teaching. This book takes this as a given and provides practical help for teachers who wish to help their learners acquire intercultural competence in the ordinary classroom. It contains descriptions of lessons and materials from a wide range of classrooms in several countries and for beginners to advanced learners.

It is now widely recognised that learning a language should not just involve linguistic competence but also intercultural competence. It is also clear that intercultural competence can be developed through related subjects such as geography, history, mother tongue teaching. This book takes this as a given and provides practical help for teachers who wish to help their learners acquire intercultural competence in the ordinary classroom. It contains descriptions of lessons and materials from a wide range of classrooms in several countries and for beginners to advanced learners.