The white slave trade in the Mediterranean in the 17th century
Translated from French by Google
Many convictions were brought on the tragedy of the African slave trade, which took place between the XVI th and XIX th century. However, another equally despicable human trade took place around the same time in the Mediterranean. It is estimated that 1.25 million Europeans have been enslaved by so-called barbarian corsairs, and their lives were just as dismal as those of their African counterparts. They came to be known as white Barbary slaves.
Slavery is one of the oldest trades known to man. We can find the first known mentions of the slave trade in the Code of Hammurabi in Babylon in the XVIII th century BC. The peoples of practically all major civilizations and cultures have had slaves between them and enslaved other peoples. However, less attention was paid to the prolific slave trade that had been carried on by pirates or privateers along the Barbary coast (as it was called by Europeans at the time) around 1600 AD. AD, in what is now Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.
Anyone traveling on the Mediterranean at the time ran the real risk of being captured by privateers, and taken to the towns on the Barbary coast to be sold as a slave.
Not satisfied with attacking ships and sailors, the corsairs also attacked coastal establishments in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, England, Ireland, and even to the Netherlands and Iceland . They landed on unguarded beaches, and stormed villages at night to capture their victims. Almost all the inhabitants of the village of Baltimore in Ireland were kidnapped in this way in 1631. Because of this threat, many coastal villages of the Mediterranean were practically abandoned by their inhabitants until the XIX E century.
In the XIII th and XIV th centuries, the seas were dominated by Christian pirates mainly from Catalonia and Sicily, posing a constant threat to the merchants. Only with the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in the XV th century the Barbary pirates have started to become a threat to the Christian ships.
Around 1600, European pirates brought advanced navigation and shipbuilding techniques to the Barbary coast. This allowed the pirates to expand their operations in the Atlantic Ocean, and the impact of barbarian raids peaked early half of the XVII th century.
While the slave trade by Barbarians is typically represented by Muslim privateers capturing Christian victims, this is far too simplistic. In reality, the corsairs did not really care about the race or religious orientation of those they captured. Barbarian slaves could be black, swarthy or white; Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish or Muslim. And the corsairs were not only Muslim: English corsairs and Turkish captains also exploited the changing loyalties of an era when enemies could become friends and vice versa.
The Barbarian slave trade is typically represented by Muslim privateers capturing white Christians, as in the image above, but this does not fully reflect reality.
"One of the things that both the public and academics seem to take for granted is that slavery was always racial in nature, " said historian Robert Davis, author of "Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: The white slavery in the Mediterranean (1500-1800) ”. "But it is not true, " he added.
In comments that could lead to controversy, Davis says that white slavery was downplayed or ignored because the Academicians preferred to treat Europeans as wicked colonialists rather than victims.
Life as a barbarian slave
The slaves captured by the Barbary pirates faced a sad fate. Many would die during the long journey back to North Africa due to illness or lack of food and water. Those who survived were taken to the slave markets where they had to stand for hours while buyers inspected them before they were auctioned off.
After the purchase, the slaves were put to work in different ways. Men were generally assigned to hard manual labor, such as quarrying and heavy construction. Women were used for household chores or sexual slavery. At night, the slaves were put in prisons called "bagnios" which were often suffocating and overcrowded. By far, the most terrible fate for a barbarian slave was to be assigned to the galleys. The rowers were put in irons when they sat down, and were never allowed to leave. Sleeping, eating, urinating and defecating was all done on the spot on their bench. The supervisors dropped the whip on the bare backs of the slaves considered not to be working hard enough.
Privateer activity began to decline towards the end of the 18th century, as the most powerful European navies began to force pirates to stop attacking their fleet. It was not until the first years of the 19th century, however, that certain European nations and the United States of America began to fight the Barbary pirates more seriously.
Algiers was bombed several times by the French, the Spanish and the Americans in the early 19th century. It was only after an Anglo-Dutch raid on Algiers in 1816 that the corsairs were forced to accept terms including an end to the practice of Christian slavery, while the non-slave trade Europeans was allowed to continue.
Occasional incidents continued until another British raid on Algiers in 1824. It was eventually followed by the French invasion of Algiers in 1830, which first occupied it as a colony and then as a department of France. Tunis was similarly invaded by France in 1881. Tripoli returned to direct Ottoman control in 1835, before finally falling to the Italians during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911. The slave trade finally ended on the barbaric coast when European governments passed laws offering emancipation to slaves.
Courtesy of Ancient Origins: The White Slaves of Barbary
Barbary Coast 1590
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