White Slavery

[difleha]

COLUMBUS, Ohio ? A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 ? a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.
Robert Davis

In a new book, Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University, developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white Christians who were enslaved along Africa?s Barbary Coast, arriving at much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had found.

Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary coast didn?t try to estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in particular cities, Davis said. Most previously estimated slave counts have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries.

Davis?s new estimates appear in the book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800.

?Much of what has been written gives the impression that there were not many slaves and minimizes the impact that slavery had on Europe,? Davis said. ?Most accounts only look at slavery in one place, or only for a short period of time. But when you take a broader, longer view, the massive scope of this slavery and its powerful impact become clear.?

Davis said it is useful to compare this Mediterranean slavery to the Atlantic slave trade that brought black Africans to the Americas. Over the course of four centuries, the Atlantic slave trade was much larger ? about 10 to 12 million black Africans were brought to the Americas. But from 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slaves to the Americas, according to Davis.

?One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature ? that only blacks have been slaves. But that is not true,? Davis said. ?We cannot think of slavery as something that only white people did to black people.?

During the time period Davis studied, it was religion and ethnicity, as much as race, that determined who became slaves.

?Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland,? he said.

Pirates (called corsairs) from cities along the Barbary Coast in north Africa ? cities such as Tunis and Algiers ? would raid ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as well as seaside villages to capture men, women and children. The impact of these attacks were devastating ? France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. At its peak, the destruction and depopulation of some areas probably exceeded what European slavers would later inflict on the African interior.

Although hundreds of thousands of Christian slaves were taken from Mediterranean countries, Davis noted, the effects of Muslim slave raids was felt much further away: it appears, for example, that through most of the 17th century the English lost at least 400 sailors a year to the slavers.

Even Americans were not immune. For example, one American slave reported that 130 other American seamen had been enslaved by the Algerians in the Mediterranean and Atlantic just between 1785 and 1793.

Davis said the vast scope of slavery in North Africa has been ignored and minimized, in large part because it is on no one?s agenda to discuss what happened.

The enslavement of Europeans doesn?t fit the general theme of European world conquest and colonialism that is central to scholarship on the early modern era, he said. Many of the countries that were victims of slavery, such as France and Spain, would later conquer and colonize the areas of North Africa where their citizens were once held as slaves. Maybe because of this history, Western scholars have thought of the Europeans primarily as ?evil colonialists? and not as the victims they sometimes were, Davis said.

Davis said another reason that Mediterranean slavery has been ignored or minimized has been that there have not been good estimates of the total number of people enslaved. People of the time ? both Europeans and the Barbary Coast slave owners ? did not keep detailed, trustworthy records of the number of slaves. In contrast, there are extensive records that document the number of Africans brought to the Americas as slaves.

So Davis developed a new methodology to come up with reasonable estimates of the number of slaves along the Barbary Coast. Davis found the best records available indicating how many slaves were at a particular location at a single time. He then estimated how many new slaves it would take to replace slaves as they died, escaped or were ransomed.

?The only way I could come up with hard numbers is to turn the whole problem upside down ? figure out how many slaves they would have to capture to maintain a certain level,? he said. ?It is not the best way to make population estimates, but it is the only way with the limited records available.?

Putting together such sources of attrition as deaths, escapes, ransomings, and conversions, Davis calculated that about one-fourth of slaves had to be replaced each year to keep the slave population stable, as it apparently was between 1580 and 1680. That meant about 8,500 new slaves had to be captured each year. Overall, this suggests nearly a million slaves would have been taken captive during this period. Using the same methodology, Davis has estimated as many as 475,000 additional slaves were taken in the previous and following centuries.

The result is that between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.

Davis said his research into the treatment of these slaves suggests that, for most of them, their lives were every bit as difficult as that of slaves in America.

?As far as daily living conditions, the Mediterranean slaves certainly didn?t have it better,? he said.

While African slaves did grueling labor on sugar and cotton plantations in the Americas, European Christian slaves were often worked just as hard and as lethally ? in quarries, in heavy construction, and above all rowing the corsair galleys themselves.

Davis said his findings suggest that this invisible slavery of European Christians deserves more attention from scholars.

?We have lost the sense of how large enslavement could loom for those who lived around the Mediterranean and the threat they were under,? he said. ?Slaves were still slaves, whether they are black or white, and whether they suffered in America or North Africa.?

How come I've never heard of this?

[fuckin crazy]

I don't know, but it is widely known. Slavery was a common practise all over the world until the late 18th/early 19th century. It still is happening, to this day, in parts of Europe, Africa, Africa, and even the Americas.

[Verse Chorus Verse]

Yet us white people don't bitch about it every day.

[SLCPUNK]

Yet us white people don't bitch about it every day.

Ho hum....so what are you implying? 

[Axl_owns_dexter]

Isn't this all common knowledge?

Besides, is there a group of people that haven't been enslaved?

No really, is there?

[polluxlm]

Isn't this all common knowledge?

Besides, is there a group of people that haven't been enslaved?

No really, is there?

Rich people.

[Axl_owns_dexter]

I was talking more along the lines of an ethnic group.

But then, the French revolution wasn't too kind to the rich.

[polluxlm]

I was talking more along the lines of an ethnic group.

But then, the French revolution wasn't too kind to the rich.

Well...they paid for it, so I guess you could say for some of the rich.

[fuckin crazy]

I was talking more along the lines of an ethnic group.

But then, the French revolution wasn't too kind to the rich.

Well...they paid for it, so I guess you could say for some of the rich.

That is one example where they didn't get what they paid for, but they got their just deserves.

[polluxlm]

I was talking more along the lines of an ethnic group.

But then, the French revolution wasn't too kind to the rich.

Well...they paid for it, so I guess you could say for some of the rich.

That is one example where they didn't get what they paid for, but they got their just deserves.

Don't be so sure.

[Booker Floyd]

Yet us white people don't bitch about it every day.

Because "us white people" arent living in a state that sanctioned our slavery until 150 years ago.  Perhaps you should temper your knee-jerk implicit racism before posting.

[fuckin crazy]

My brain might not be functioning as well as it normally would, but I think, the rich of that era got everthing they deserved; at least in France.

^Love the avatar and personal. That man is as dangerous Bush.

EDIT: the latter was meant for Polluxlm

[polluxlm]

My brain might not be functioning as well as it normally would, but I think, the rich of that era got everthing they deserved; at least in France.

^Love the avatar and personal. That man is as dangerous Bush.

EDIT: the latter was meant for Polluxlm

According to popular history, that is.

If you look closer however you'll find many ties to Freemasonry, Weishaupt (Bavarian Illuminati) philosophy and of course, the Dukes Of Orleans.

Honre-Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, a leading revolutionary, indeed espoused ideals which were identical with Adam Weishaupt, founder of Bavarian Illuminized Masonry. In personal papers Mirabeau called for the overthrow of all order, all laws, and all power to "leave the people in anarchy." He said the public must be promised "power to the people" and lower taxes but never given real power "for the people as legislators are very dangerous as they only establish laws which coincide with their passions." He said the clergy should be destroyed by "ridiculing religion."

It was the Duke of Orleans, grand master of the Grand Orient Lodge of Freemasons, who reportedly bought all the grain in 1789 and either sold it abroad or hid it away, thus creating near starvation among commoners.

-taken from Jim Marrs' writings.

To me it looks more like a coup d'etat, paid for by the bankers (Rothschild) and planned by the secret societies.

[Izzy]

Yet us white people don't bitch about it every day.

Because "us white people" arent living in a state that sanctioned our slavery until 150 years ago.? Perhaps you should temper your knee-jerk implicit racism before posting.

give him break - you know full well what he meant: there are a great number of people around the world who never suffered slavery, neither did their parents and grandparents and their great-grandparents - and yet they still gripe and moan as if anyone or anything alive today is responsible

Over here in the UK we have groups demanding an apology for actions 300 years old - exactly how were they affected??

Can i ask the French for an apology for 1066?

[fuckin crazy]

Can i ask the French for an apology for 1066?

Hear, hear! Unless one is of noble birth(and not even then), we were all slaves at one point or another.

[Dr. Blutarsky]

I demand reparations !!

[difleha]

I don't know, but it is widely known. Slavery was a common practise all over the world until the late 18th/early 19th century. It still is happening, to this day, in parts of Europe, Africa, Africa, and even the Americas.

It's just that in school, I've never been taught that the whites were enslaved by the blacks. Like yesterday, during the SAT testing, I've seen about 2 out of 4 stories talking about black slavery. I'm getting sick of it.

Never once have I been taught there was a significant white slavery trade going on back in the 1500.

[mrlee]

Yet us white people don't bitch about it every day.

i guess we better harrass them to apologise now and teach history lessons over there on it. 

[The Dog]

Yet us white people don't bitch about it every day.

Because "us white people" arent living in a state that sanctioned our slavery until 150 years ago.  Perhaps you should temper your knee-jerk implicit racism before posting.

Can i ask the French for an apology for 1066?

only if Michael Bay apologizes for Transformers 

[Verse Chorus Verse]

Yet us white people don't bitch about it every day.

Because "us white people" arent living in a state that sanctioned our slavery until 150 years ago.  Perhaps you should temper your knee-jerk implicit racism before posting.

give him break - you know full well what he meant: there are a great number of people around the world who never suffered slavery, neither did their parents and grandparents and their great-grandparents - and yet they still gripe and moan as if anyone or anything alive today is responsible

Over here in the UK we have groups demanding an apology for actions 300 years old - exactly how were they affected??

Can i ask the French for an apology for 1066?

Yeah, that's exactly what I meant - I wasn't trying to imply any racism, so if it came across that way, sorry.