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The Lionkeeper of Algiers - How an American Captive Rose to Power in Barbary and Saved His Homeland from War (Hardcover)
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The Lionkeeper of Algiers - How an American Captive Rose to Power in Barbary and Saved His Homeland from War (Hardcover)
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In 1785, just a few years after U.S. Independence, a young American
named James Leander Cathcart is kidnapped at sea and carried as
prisoner to the maverick North African statelet of Algiers, where
he is held as a political hostage along with hundreds of other
seamen captured on the open seas. The piratical corsairs of Algiers
have decided, without any warning, to exploit the vulnerability of
the newborn United States by seizing its mariners and holding them
for ransom while ruthlessly exploiting their free labor. Today, the
name of James Leander Cathcart has been all but forgotten by
history. And yet he was one of the most remarkable figures in the
early story of the fledgling United States. The Lionkeeper of
Algiers reveals the extraordinary and unlikely story of Cathcart,
who, thanks to his flair for languages and his formidable human
intuition, rose steadily up the ranks from lionkeeper at the
Dey’s private zoo to become Chief Clerk at the Palace, along the
way amassing a chain of taverns in Algiers that functioned as safe
houses and food banks for American prisoners. Eleven years later,
just one among more than one hundred US hostages in Algiers,
Cathcart was paroled back to America and charged with delivering a
vital letter to President George Washington, saving a tenuous peace
deal and bringing the other captives home. Remarkably, his sense of
honor compelled him to go back to Algiers – where he had never
formally been made free – to see the peace project through.
Cathcart would go on to become a U.S. diplomat in the lands where
he was held captive for more than a decade. Featuring some of the
most prominent Americans of the era like Thomas Jefferson and John
Adams, as well as ordinary citizens like Hannah Stephens, the wife
of a sea captain who tirelessly lobbied Congress until she was
finally reunited with her husband after more than a decade, author
Des Ekin’s captivating storytelling brings this adventure to
life. This page-turning narrative follows the twists and turns of
Cathcart’s own life upon the international stage of diplomacy,
trade, and maritime statecraft at a time when America’s place in
the world was hanging in the balance.
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