The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam

by (Historian) Simon Webb

During most of that time, slaves were traded to and from the Continent, being taken across the English Channel by boat. Some found their way as far as Rome, but almost without exception, British slaves remained in Europe. It was not until the coming of the Vikings, some centuries after the Romans left, that slaves from Britain began to be taken further afield, to Africa and the Middle East. Slavery was a well-established custom throughout the whole of Europe from the earliest times. The slaves were, almost without exception, European and when they were bought, sold or transported from place to place, they remained in Europe. This situation changed dramatically in the seventh and eighth centuries AD, when the Vikings began spreading out from their ancestral homelands in Scandinavia. The Vikings not only kept domestic slaves for their own use, but traded them to the rest of the world as valuable commodities. It was at this time that white slaves from Europe began to be sold to buyers in Africa. In keeping with the common practice which we have observed from the earliest records of slavery, the Vikings preferred to enslave and sell those from cultures other than their own. As they began to explore the world and loot it of whatever riches took their fancy, it was not perhaps surprising that they came to be aware of the potential profits to be made from seizing captives from one country and then selling them to another.