"Barbary Pirates": Politics, Faith, and Violence on the Mediterranean

Speaker: Maximilian Owre

Americans have always had a fascination with what we are told was our first foreign war, the action against the “Barbary Pirates.” We all know “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli,” but just who were we fighting? This presentation will place these people in the long history of seaborne violence on the Mediterranean Sea. Owre will explore how politics and religion made theft, murder, and enslavement on fast ships an act of statecraft, and learn who benefited from the continued existence of the Corsairs for over three centuries. We may even question whether they were pirates at all.


Max Owre started working with Carolina Public Humanities in 2009 when it was the “Program in the Humanities and Human Values.” He served as Associate Director (2010-13) and Interim Director (2013-14) before assuming the position of Executive Director in July 2014. A graduate of the University of Vermont, Dr. Owre obtained his PhD in Modern European History from UNC-CH in 2008. He is a lecturer in the History Department at Carolina, where he teaches courses in European, world, and French colonial history. Max is a principal organizer, and frequent host and moderator, of CPH Events. He also lectures frequently for CPH on various topics in French and European history.

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