“Se Conciertan con Sus Señores”: Rescate and Ransom in the 16th-Century Canary Islands

Rescate, the practice of captive exchange or ransoming, was a standard set of practices amongst the interfaith Mediterranean throughout the medieval and early modern periods. As the terrain of Atlantic slavery was actively constructed by slaveowners, merchants, colonial officials, and enslaved peoples themselves, this paper will examine the central role of rescate in the 16th century Canary Islands. From the earliest European voyages to the islands, raids to the African coast were a central mechanism of accumulating profit which was then funneled directly into furthering the colonization of the islands. While those captured in the Mediterranean were often the result of battles at sea, boats launched by Iberian landowners and European merchants from the Canary Islands were organized raids launched against the northwest African coastline. Through analyzing the tension between the interests of merchants and elite families, which sought to gather profit from the raids against the “tierra de moros”, and colonial authorities in policing movements between the Canaries and Africa due to the proximity of the islands to the African coastline, this paper will foreground the role that rescate held in defining the contours of slavery, captivity, and freedom in the early Atlantic world.