A History of Ancient Britain

by Neil Oliver

For most people in modern Europe, slavery is an evil associated with Africa. But it happened in Britain and Ireland too. In relatively modern times – at least from the seventeenth century onwards – Barbary pirates preyed on those coastlines. The examples are as numerous as they are heartbreaking. In 1631 the entire population of the village of Baltimore, in County Cork in the south-west of Ireland – 109 men, women and children – were taken by African pirates, loaded onto ships and sold in the slave markets of North Africa. Not one of those souls ever saw the old country again and between 1630 and 1730 it is estimated Barbary pirates took a million Europeans from their homes and sold them into slavery.