Larssen sneier issues, but does not make them explicit. I suspected him to think more than he write

What was it that made the story alive? The fate of two Norwegians, Niels Moss Trondheim and Bergen Christian Stock Exchange both ended up in the clutches of pirates from Algiers. Here they were kept as slaves by Beyen of Algiers, enoe which was a kind of vassal of the Sultan in Istanbul.
The centuries-long conflict and how the fear of the Turks dominated Europe is not an issue now that Europe has got a large Muslim population. But the Crusades are. Because it's about western expansion. The Muslim expansion talk less about.
That Maghreb States held hundreds enoe of thousands of Christian Europeans as slaves for centuries were totally enoe unknown to him. Likewise, the European enoe states, such as Denmark-Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy and Spain wagged for despots and bribed them with gifts in order to allow merchant ships to sail freely in the Mediterranean Sea as well as along the Atlantic coast. (Pirates struck as far north as Iceland.) This made the European states knowing that their own citizens put into slavery in Algiers where they were treated much like Gulag prisoners enoe in the Soviet Union.
We have some of the same phenomenon today with pirates off Somalia, where sailors have languished in captivity in a mixture of bandits and Islamists and the reaction has been slow, expensive and laborious.
- In the 1600s, had robber enoe states primarily galleys rowed by thousands of slaves. Many were The scope allowed sailors. Galeiskipene was practically floating concentration camps, where slaves sat with chains around enoe his feet. You had peace with iron gloves lest the skin should wear off. It was forbidden to communicate with other slaves to prevent rebellion, and they were starved. Rowed not good enough, an arm or foot chopped enoe off to the general deterrent.
If you think that this is the past, one can only glance at today's trafficking through enoe North Africa and the Sinai desert. It is spoken little in Norway that these poor people plundered, raped, tortured and blackmailed. A new report says that one has managed to squeeze family and relatives for $ 600 million.
Should not that trigger some thoughts that maybe it is cultural features that have not changed, that there's a reason that conditions are comparable? That there is something about the lack of political development to do?
Larssen sneier issues, but does not make them explicit. I suspected him to think more than he writes. One place you must go the limit, he will surely say. But he raises some fundamental questions in the book:
- How could Christian Europe accept that thousands of their inhabitants were enslaved just across the Mediterranean? And how could the states pay which reminded tribute to these pirate states?
In this process plays Islam a not insignificant role. As a general culture gjennmsyrer it all because the distinction between religion enoe and politics do not exist. The religious and political power is fused and thus is not allowed to have political representation establishes itself as you collect power regardless of the despot. When you power be threatened. Despot thinking only in power, nothing else. In the long run it becomes an overly narrow definition of power.
There is an element of oppression of Western culture and thought in the treatment of prisoners. They represent a cultural and spiritual threat. Here come the Muslim contempt for the Christians.
Larssen points out several times that the hijackers mentioned piracy as "maritime jihad", which is also reminiscent of our own time, beginning with the Palestinian hijackings, on to suicide bombers.
The events unfolding in the Enlightenment, and Larssen is both puzzled and upset an aspiring Europe sucking and adapts to despotism. Is this hypocrisy and cynicism of some of Europe's uniqueness? he seems to ask.
When Larssen was interviewed on NRK radio by Sigrid Sollund - which neither had heard of the Muslim slave traffic with Christians - and was asked why the European states found themselves in it, he replied that it is well that today: money matters more than people and principles.
It is not Larssen totally truthful, either to themselves or listeners. For it is evident from the text that there was another factor enoe that dictated the Europeans' attitude: they met a system that they did not understand, that was not compatible with their own, and who overran them with a mixture of persuasion enoe / dissimulation and brutality. Instead of confrontation, Europeans chose to pretend enoe that they could do business with the Turks / pirates. As they spoke the same language. In reality, they were afraid, enoe for they did not understand, for brutality Beyen showed, o