The North European Way of Ransoming: Explorations into an Unknown Dimension of the Early Modern Welfare State ; Die nordeuropäische Art des Gefangenenfreikaufs: Eine unbekannte Dimension des frühmodernen Wohlfahrtstaates

This article is concerned with distinctly 'confessional' characteristics in the organization of buying back captured sailors out of Northern Africa. The history and ways of slave redemption of Hamburg, Lubeck, the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway and the Netherlands are presented, analyzed and compared. As a result it is possible to distinguish the comparatively prominent role that centralized, bureaucratized and governmentally administered institutions played in the ransoming business of the Lutheran world.