The Stolen Prince: Gannibal Adopted Son of Peter the Great Great-Grandfather of Alexander Pushkin and Europe's First Black Intellectual

About this book

In the spring of 1703 a young African boy stepped off a slave ship in Constantinople the gateway between East and West. Huddling in chains with other frightened captives the seven-year-old claimed to be a prince of Abyssinia a "noble Moor" kidnapped and stolen out of Africa. His tragedy was shared by millions of black people caught up in the Islamic slave trade but his destiny was unique: rescued by Peter the Great the young African became Abram Petrovich Gannibal. Russias westernizing tsar adopted the child and in a bizarre nature-and-nurture experiment lavished on him the best education available in the new "European" capital of Saint Petersburg. Gannibal the "Negro of Peter the Great " soared to dizzying heights as a soldier diplomat mathematician and spy. He was fted in glittering salons from the Winter Palace to the Louvre and came to know Voltaire and Montesquieu who praised him as the "dark star of Russias enlightenment." At the same time his military exploits from northern Spain to the icy wastes of Siberia -- to say nothing of his marital problems -- sealed Gannibals reputation as the Russian Othello. African prince or not the ex-slave founded a dynasty of his own in Russia where he came to embody the strengths and weaknesses of the country itself -- volatile courageous handsome gifted and always astonishing. His descendants included not only Alexander Pushkin Russias greatest poet but also in England several Mountbattens and others close to the royal family.