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Special Bibliographical Note
By far the most enlightened and readable background study for the autobiographical
chapters of the True Travels is Fernand Braudel's great work on
the Mediterranean.
developments, events, and struggles of the Mediterranean world. Not one
of the comparatively lilliputian adventures recounted in the True Travels
fails to fall into place in the bewildering kaleidoscope of international activity
revealed in Braudel's narrative: the Dutch struggle for independence; the
French religious upheaval and war with Spain; French (and other) trade
and piracy in the Levant; the Italy of Pope Clement VIII; the "Long War"
between the Holy Roman emperor and the Turkish sultan in which Smith
and Zsigmond Bathory took part; the exploits of the Turkish raiders
(akinci); the timars (from one of which Smith escaped); and the origins of
the Moroccan civil strife, in which Smith took no part at all. Anyone who
reads Braudel's Mediterranean World will soon admit that the truth of what
happened is far stranger than any fiction Smith is reputed to have woven
into the True Travels.
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