Empire and Holy War in the Mediterranean: The Galley and Maritime Conflict between the Habsburgs and Ottomans

In the century after 1530 the empires of the Habsburgs of Spain and the Ottoman Turks fought a maritime war that seemed destined to lead nowhere:: lasting peace was as unlikely as final triumph, in part because the salient feature of this conflict was a violent form of piracy practiced by the 'corsairs' of North African and Malta. It was fundamentally a war of unequal means, since the Habsburgs of Spain had too few good warships and the Ottomans too many bad ones. Christendom and Islam enga...