The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam
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By the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066 Bristol was already an international centre for quite another kind of slave trade; that of exporting English slaves to Ireland and, from there, to Africa and Scandinavia.
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Slavery was a well-established institution in Anglo-Saxon England and it continued to flourish even after the coming of the Normans. According to the Domesday Book, based on information collected in 1086, about a tenth of the English population were slaves (Trevelyn, 1942). Slaves were at that time acquired by traders across the whole of England and then transported to Bristol to be sold at the market there for export to other countries, principally Ireland (Rodgers, 2007). A contemporary writer described the scene at the Bristol slave market in the early eleventh century; You could see and ...more
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Bristol was popular with slave traders because it was a handy English port from which to sail to Dublin. Dublin, Ireland’s first town, was founded in 841 by Viking slavers (Haywood, 2008) and its prosperity and growth were closely bound up with the slave trade (Cunliffe et al, 2001). Some of the slaves brought to Dublin from Bristol were sold to buyers in Ireland, but others ended up in different parts of the world. It will perhaps come as a surprise to some modern readers to lea...
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The lack of awareness of the slaving raids on England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been described by Professor Esra of the University of Exeter as ‘cultural erasure’ (Daily Telegraph, 2017). Although Professor Esra was referring specifically to the slave raids against Cornwall by ships sailing from Africa, this concept of cultural erasure applies more generally to the whole idea of slavery in the British Isles. At one time, the very concepts of ‘Irishness’ and ‘Englishness’ were inextricably bound up with the memory of the trade in English slaves. Dublin, the capital city ...more
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We need to consider this strange state of affairs a little, otherwise it will be quite impossible to understand why the European experience of slavery has been almost entirely forgotten today.
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Part of the answer lies in the changing complexion of the European continent since the end of the Second World War. At that time, the nations of Europe were ethnically homogenous, which is to say that, with rare exceptions, only white people lived there. The altered demography of the twenty-first century, with waves of immigration from Africa and Asia, has caused us to treat with sensitivity, and attempt to share the perspective of, the various minorities who suffered under colonial systems and to try and see the world from their point of view, rather than merely our own. In the process ...more
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What about a European man being kidnapped and sold into slavery in Africa though? This does not accord at all with our present-day notions about slavery and so is most unlikely to be made into an Oscar-winning film. How many readers even know that Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, spent five years as a slave in Africa? A film about Cervantes’ life called Five Years a Slave would just be confusing! How could one of the most famous European authors of all time have been a slave in Africa? It sounds ridiculous.
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Mention of 12 Years a Slave reminds us incidentally how little we really know about black people’s experience of slavery. Almost all that we read about the subject has been written by white people and most of it has been exaggerated for various reasons, either to justify or condemn the practice. Of course, we know that the authors of books such as Gone With the Wind and Uncle Tom’s Cabin were white, but the same applies to memoirs like Twelve Years a Slave. Although the film was allegedly based on the autobiography of a black man who had been enslaved, the book itself was actually written by a ...more
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Urging the removal of some Victorian statue or supporting a scheme to pay compensation to Caribbean countries for the suffering of their distant ancestors makes us feel both ethically virtuous and politically progressive. In the United States, guilt about the past treatment of African-Americans, not only during the days of the southern plantations but up to the institutional racism of the mid-twentieth century and later, serves the same function; to cause those white people with any pretension to being thought humane and liberal to keep constantly to the forefront of their minds the past ...more
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Apart from guilt about the British Empire and its role in the transatlantic slave trade, there is today another very powerful reason for wishing to expunge Britain’s own experience of slavery from history and to pretend that it never happened. There are currently attempts to create a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ (The Guardian, 2019), it being undeniably true that there exists prejudice against Muslims in Britain. Almost all the slaves seized in Britain and the rest of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were captured by Muslims and were specifically targeted because they came ...more
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The actions of the Barbary slave traders are more than merely an historical curiosity. They are the missing factor which enables us to make sense of much of the world’s history, and understanding where this period of history fits in will enable us to understand both the present and the past more easily. From the origin of the British constitution to the tendency of the American armed forces to operate in the Middle East, the anxieties over immigration from Muslim countries to the savage wars which took place between the ethnic groups which went to make up the former country of Yugoslavia, an ...more
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Fifty years ago, the idea that any discussion of slavery should be inextricably linked to the transportation of black Africans across the Atlantic to the New World would have struck most people as bizarre. Mention of slavery would, in the 1960s, have been as likely to evoke thoughts of Joseph being sold into slavery by his brothers or the ancient Israelites labouring in Egypt as it would the so-called ‘triangular trade’. Illustration 5 shows the sort of scene which the word ‘slavery’ might have conjured up for a British schoolchild in the 1960s, with ancient Israelites in bondage before they ...more
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That slavery had been widely practised in Britain in the past was also common knowledge at one time, although awareness of this has faded in recent decades. Glancing through books of popular history written and published in Britain before 1970 reveals many references to slavery in the country before the Norman Conquest, but these have tended to diminish with time. G.M. Trevelyan’s History of England, published in 1942, contains ten references to slavery as practised in Britain. By the time that Kenneth Morgan’s The Oxford History of Britain was published in 1984, slavery in the countries which ...more
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Some actions and activities have been universally condemned throughout the whole of recorded history. We know of no society where theft and murder by individuals were regarded as acceptable. In the same way, the cheating of customers by merchants has always been viewed as reprehensible. Telling lies and having sexual relations with somebody else’s husband or wife have also been the subject of both legal prohibition and social disapproval throughout history. By contrast slavery, the ownership of human beings and their purchase and sale as though they were no more than domestic animals, has ...more
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To understand the subject of this book, which is of course slavery, properly it will be necessary to bear in mind that across the world slavery has been an accepted and unremarkable institution for thousands of years. It has been widely practised throughout the whole of human history, right up to the present day. According to the United Nations, there are currently somewhere in the region of 25 million slaves in the world (UN News, 2019). It is notable that even in the earliest mentions of slavery, dating back 4,000 years, there is no suggestion of novelty about the practice, which indicates ...more
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The ancient Hebrews both kept slaves of their own and were themselves enslaved. On occasion, the entire nation was reduced in status to that of slaves, first in Egypt and later in Babylon. Despite the laments about the subject, at no point in the Bible is the principle of slavery condemned. Even St Paul, that staunch evangelist for Christ’s teaching, did not see anything wrong with humans being bought and sold. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul said, ‘Slaves, obey your human masters with fear and trembling’ (Eph. 6:5).
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Neither Judaism or Christianity viewed the institution of slavery as wicked or unjust, and although there were prohibitions on cruel behaviour towards slaves, the idea of treating human beings as objects to be owned is nowhere condemned. The same applies to the other great monotheistic religion of Islam. The Qur’an and the Hadith, a collection of stories about Mohammed which also details some of his teachings, both set strict limitations upon the practice, but there is no condemnation of slavery qua slavery. It is treated as just another unremarkable part of everyday life.
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Slavery was a universal custom in the Middle East from the very earliest civilizations, which explains its ready acceptance in the major religions to arise in that region. The same was true of other parts of the world. In India, slavery was certainly common by the beginning of the Common Era and probably at the time of the Buddha, in the sixth century BC (Singh, 2009). There is reason to suppose that slavery was widespread in the earliest Chinese culture, the Shang dynasty, which flourished for about 700 years from the seventeenth century BC onward (Cotterell, 1980). In both India and China, ...more
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On the other side of the world, in North and South America, the same general principle was followed, that captured enemies from other countries or cultural groups were seen as being natural candidates for slavery. The Maya followed this rule (Coe & Houston, 2015), as did the Aztecs and also the tribes of North America. In Alaska there lived two tribes who were very energetic and enthusiastic slave traders, whose raids extended all the way along the Pacific coast as far south as California. The Haida and Tlingit tribes both had fearsome reputations and routinely carried off men and women, ...more
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So widespread was the idea of enslaving prisoners of war and conquered peoples, among all cultures and historical periods, that it almost appears to be a natural law in the practice of slavery. It is also very noticeable that no religion seems to forbid slavery. Even those which hedge it around with restrictions and safeguards make it clear that there ...
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The Qur’an, which is of course the holy book of Islam and had its origins in Arabia in the seventh century AD, both explicitly endorses slavery and at the same time imposes conditions upon its practice. The first of these limitations is one which we have already encountered, which is that only outsiders may be enslaved. This prohibition had serious implications, for it meant that when Muslim societies were hunting for slaves, they were compelled to look far afield, which explains why the raids on Europe took place. Much of the Qur’an is based upon the...
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One reason that Muslims well into the twentieth century saw no objection to slavery, whatever anybody belonging to other cultures might think or say about it, was that the Qur’an is traditionally regarded as being God’s own words, delivered to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel. Only the staunchest of Protestant fundamentalists would claim that the entire Bible consists solely of the Lord’s words, with no human error having crept in over the millennia; in Islam, this is the orthodox and mainstream view. If the Qur’an accepts and endorses slavery, then this is God’s view on the matter and there is ...more
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Slavery was widely practised in Arabia before the arrival of Islam and it continued to be an important part of the economy despite the conversion of most of those living there to the new religion. The Qur’an is rather coy on the subject of slavery, using such euphemisms as ‘those whom your right hand possesses’ rather than referring outright to slaves. Nevertheless, it is obvious that slavery was not being abolished with the new religion, merely modified a little. We shall be looking in greater detail at the new perception of slavery which was introduced by Islam, but one point is especially ...more
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slavery is a custom which is found from the very beginning of recorded history. It appears to be a universal practice; the default setting, if you like, for civilizations. Because in the last couple of centuries slavery has been frowned on in some quarters and its abolition urged, it is easy to forget how widespread and accepted it was in almost every culture we study. The modern repugnance for slavery can lead us to take a jaundiced and distorted view of history. So terrible was the Atlantic slave trade that we might be tempted to regard is as a wicked aberration on the part of Europeans, ...more
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Slavery was every bit as common in Europe in ancient times as it was in the Middle East.
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It is impossible to say how many slaves there were in Greek city-states 2,500 years ago, at the time of Plato and Aristotle. One estimate is that in the peninsula of Attica, which includes Athens, there were in the fifth century BC around 100,000 slaves, perhaps a quarter of the population (Andrewes, 1971). In Sparta, free men were greatly outnumbered by the helots, who were a particular type of slave.
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So used are we to the subconscious association of the word ‘slave’ with the image of black people, that we might profitably pause at this point and remind ourselves that almost without exception the slaves in Europe were all white.
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Almost without exception, the slaves shown in visual images are white people, ethnically indistinguishable from their masters and mistresses. In Roman society too, almost all of the many millions of slaves came from those parts of the continent which are today Germany, France and Scandinavia and hardly any at all from Africa.
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Among the cultural traditions of the Celts were the language which they spoke, distinctive artistic styles of metalwork and of course slavery. That slavery was an important part of Celtic life is shown by the fact that long after the rest of Europe had abandoned slavery, it lingered on, along with the Celtic language, in that part of Europe which became known as the Celtic Fringe, which consisted essentially of Ireland, Wales, western Scotland and Cornwall. Slavery still flourished in those places in the Middle Ages and it took the Norman Conquest to put an end to it. As with other nations and ...more
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It was in the Roman Empire that slavery reached such vast numbers as to dwarf the Atlantic slave trade and allow us to see it in its proper perspective. In the early years of the Roman Empire there were perhaps 10,000,000 slaves at any one time, which was between one-fifth and one-sixth of the entire population (D’Arms & Kopf, 1980). The same source suggests that more than half a million new slaves would have been needed every single year. If these numbers are accurate, and they are taken from the proceedings from an academic conference on Roman commerce, then the implications are startling. ...more
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In short, the Roman slave trade in Europe and the Middle East was probably more than ten times as extensive as that which was carried out across the Atlantic, between Africa and the New World.
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The idea that the Atlantic slave trade might not have been the greatest or worst trafficking in slaves of which we know is a novel one for most people. Certainly, for a generation which has been raised on horror stories of what has come to be known as the slave trade, it will come as a shock to discover that there was nothing to distinguish that slave trade from any other. Neither the numbers involved nor the treatment of the slaves is remarkable when considered in a wider historical context. Some European slaves were certainly treated more leniently than those in America and the Caribbean, ...more
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Slavery existed in Britain before the coming of the Romans and it certainly lingered on after they left in the fifth century AD. The Celts both traded in slaves and kept them for their own personal use, and so did the Romans.
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The Angles, Saxons and Jutes who arrived after the legions were withdrawn also approved of slavery and practised it after their arrival in England. When they in turn were displaced by Vikings, slavery continued. All the evidence suggests that slavery was a feature of British life from the earliest times until some decades after the Norman Invasion in 1066.
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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 ...more
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The traffic in slaves between the two continents did not begin in earnest until the seventh or eighth century AD and when it did the traffic was in the opposite direction to that which most people would suppose. Rather than African slaves being brought to Europe, it was white Europeans who were taken to Africa to be sold in slave markets.
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So it was that as the centuries passed, the pygmies and the Khoi were pushed from their own lands by the Bantu and often enslaved in the process. While on the subject of slavery in Africa, it is worth remembering that although Europeans and Americans are today wringing their hands and agonizing over the treatment of black African slaves a century or two ago, there are still plenty of black slaves to be found in the world, most of them in Africa itself. In the Republic of Congo, one of the areas conquered by the Bantu, many of the Pygmies who are the descendants of the indigenous inhabitants ...more
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By the time that European explorers and colonizers arrived in Africa, slavery was an accepted way of life across most of the continent. It made perfect sense for African kingdoms to do business with the newcomers, trading slaves which they acquired from neighbouring territories and exchanging them for firearms and manufactured goods.
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The history of slavery in Africa is a fascinating study in itself, for it was as firmly rooted in that continent as anywhere else in the world. Even when the British themselves renounced slavery at the beginning of the nineteenth century, many Africans were determined to continue both keeping and trading slaves. The buying and selling of slaves took place sometimes between different tribes and also with the Arabs who catered for the demand for slaves in places like Zanzibar. It is easy to forget just how established slavery was in all parts of Africa and how it proved impossible to stamp out, ...more
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In practice, every school in the country covers this topic and during Black History Month in October, pupils receive a top-up, to remind them about this type of slavery and ensure that they understand its importance.
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What was known as ‘the slave trade’ was being carried on all over this part of Africa. Men, women and children were captured by fierce savages, and then sold as slaves. Livingstone determined to do what he could to stop this terrible state of things. (Peach, 1960) The illustrations, and also further references to slaves and slave trading, make it quite clear that what is meant here by ‘the slave trade’ is black Africans enslaving other Africans. This is interesting, as it shows how the expression has, over the last few decades, been appropriated by those who are determined that white people ...more
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Things like the Ladybird book which is quoted above, together with a greater familiarity with Old Testament bible stories than is now common, meant that those growing up in the 1960s had no narrow view of what constituted slavery or the slave trade. From David Livingstone’s experiences in the nineteenth century to the selling of the Old Testament character Joseph into slavery by his brothers, slavery was understood to be an ancient custom, practised across the world at different times, that had now fallen into disuse. We see in Illustration 7 some black African slaves and the Africans who have ...more
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In the seventh century AD, the newly-created Arab religion of Islam began to be forcibly spread to the countries contiguous to Arabia, the area roughly equivalent to modern-day Saudi Arabia. Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt adopted the new faith and it was also carried west, along the Mediterranean coast to the Berber tribes which occupied what are today Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya. Between the years 642 and 708, Arab armies conquered the whole of North Africa from Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean and imposed Islam upon the region. The Berbers were crushed and most converted to Islam. In the ...more
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Until the rise of Islam and the contemporaneous Arab conquests, there was a tacit understanding across most of the Europe and the Middle East that while it was quite all right to make slaves of those belonging to other nations, it was not really the thing to enslave one’s fellow countrymen. This distinction was observed in most cultures. With the coming of Islam, nationality was no longer the crucial point, but rather religious faith. Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was not initially opposed to the keeping of slaves. He bought and sold slaves himself.
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Apart from general slaves who would be labourers, domestic servants and so on, three specific kinds of slave were in great demand by Muslims. These were attractive young women, strong, healthy adolescent boys and eunuchs.
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The solution to the difficulties, both practical and religious, which prevented Muslims from making their own eunuchs was to engage slave traders in Europe to provide a ready-made product which could then be purchased, already castrated and in good health. These eunuchs were manufactured in Europe, from pre-pubescent European boys and the history of the vile trade has almost been forgotten today. Whatever other horrors the Atlantic slave trade entailed, routine castration was never one of them. It is true that black slaves in America and the Caribbean were from time to time castrated, but this ...more
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Of course, if one bought a slave and he subsequently died of the effects of castration, then the price paid was simply lost. For this reason, rather than any humanitarian considerations, it was important to do the utmost to ensure that the victims of this barbarity survived their mutilations. It was to cater for this need that enterprising souls set up special centres in Europe where boys could be brought to be castrated. For two or three centuries, this was a flourishing industry in Italy and France.
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There were various routes by which the slaves reached the European cities where the specialized castration centres existed. Since the great majority of the boys operated on were Slavs, they were usually brought down through what is now Russia and into Europe from the north. The Vikings captured prisoners in the Slav lands and then sometimes sold them on to other slavers who would bring them to Europe. Just as there was a prohibition in Islam on the castration of slaves, so too did Christianity frown upon the practice. Indeed, even trading in Christian slaves was unacceptable, which made the ...more
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Jews, not being bound to one side or the other, could often travel and trade more freely. It was accordingly far easier for a Jew to transport slaves to Venice or Verdun and then on to Africa, than it would be for a Christian. As early as the late fifth century AD, a pope gave permission for Jews to bring non-Christian slaves into Italy, from where they were then sent to North Africa. Pope Gelasius was appointed Pontiff in 492 and from the first year of his reign was happy to see Slavs and Germans brought south, en route to Africa. This was the beginning of extensive Jewish involvement in the ...more
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In the later ninth century the Arab writer Ibn Khordadbeh was giving a detailed account of the routes which were being used by those trafficking in slaves. In his work Book of Roads and Kingdoms, he gave a detailed and precise account of who was behind the trade and how they moved their goods to and from Europe. Most of the slaves were bought by Jewish traders in what is now Russia, Ukraine and the Balkans and then taken to Venice or Verdun to be operated upon. As Director of Posts and Police for a province of the Abbasid Caliphate, Ibn Khordadbeh was in the best possible position to know ...more
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