Abstract

Organized with the support and approval of the state, corsairing activity was a real economic enterprise, a financial investment capable of attracting the interest not only of unscrupulous adventurers with nothing to lose, but also of merchants, leading figures of the Sicilian nobility and the city's elite (Cesare Lanza, Pietro Luna, Giovanni d'Aragona, Luigi Osorio, for example). Even the viceroys themselves, such as Maqueda and Ossuna, were not above profiting privately from this lucrative activity. It was a varied universe of actors, each attempting to cut out their own share of the profit, even at the price of death, in a complex web of public and private interests that were often difficult to understand. The business was also relevant for public finances, since the government assigned to itself a part of the profit, applied taxes to the sale of slaves, and scraped together the earnings from the tax on licenses to participate in the raids.