The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam

by (Historian) Simon Webb

Just to remind ourselves of the situation at which we have been looking, for black slaves in America and the islands of the Caribbean, castration was a rare and terrible punishment inflicted in exceptional circumstances. The castration of white children in Europe who were to be sold into slavery in North Africa or the Middle East was, on the other hand, a regular occurrence which took place over a period of centuries.

The continued demand in the Muslim world for large numbers of European slaves was to cause enormous problems on more than one occasion for the countries to which they were exported. Not one but two dynasties of slaves emerged in the Middle East which both toppled their supposed owners from their position of power and actually ended up dominating Egypt and the area which we know today as Iraq. The story of these powerful groups of slaves is a fascinating one and shows the dangers of relying too heavily upon men who are at the very bottom of the social order and have little or nothing to lose. We shall examine these strange societies, which grew to be very powerful in the Muslim world, in the next chapter. First though, let us consider a point which has already been briefly touched upon; the enormous influence which the trade in European slaves in North Africa had upon the subsequent history of the world.

So far, we have covered an aspect of history which is very probably quite unknown to the average reader. Very few people today are aware that Bristol was a centre for the slave trade before the Norman Conquest, nor are they likely to have heard of the white eunuchs and concubines who were taken from Europe to North Africa. The later African raids on Europe in search of slaves have simil...

The French invasion and occupation of Algiers in 1830 was the culmination of a low-level war fought with Algiers over the course of a century and a half. Again, the primary cause was the slavers operating out of Africa.

We are familiar today with the spectacle of warships belonging to the United States sailing the world’s oceans, maintaining and enforcing a particular vision of freedom and democracy. Similarly, the image of American troops operating in the Middle East is one which we have seen a good deal of on television and in newspapers over the last 30 years or so. It is strange to think that the very existence of the United States Navy as an international force owes its existence to the activities of the Barbary corsairs. Over 200 years ago, American marines landed in Libya, because the then president felt that Europe was not capable of sorting out a problem in the Mediterranean. Once again, this all-too-familiar scenario was bound up with the slavers of North Africa.

Hungary was one which took a hard line of this kind. Unless we are aware that Hungary was once invaded and occupied by Muslims streaming from Turkey and that young men from the Balkans and other areas were routinely carried off into slavery by Muslim rulers, we will not be able to understand what motivates the people now living in those parts of Europe.

Until his death in AD 632, the Prophet Mohammed was the acknowledged leader of all Muslims in the world. When he died, somebody was needed to replace him as the religious and political leader of the Muslim world. There was no distinction between temporal and spiritual authority at that time; the Prophet’s successor would both rule Muslims in this world and also guide them as to the requirements and wishes of the Deity. This then is Islamism; a union of religious and political power so firm and indissoluble that the one cannot be separated from the other. Some Muslims today dream of restoring just such a system, first in the Middle East or Africa and then ultimately across the entire planet.

Sometimes, choosing one word or the other to describe an event or series of events can have the inadvertent effect causing us to forget how dreadful something was. Mention the word ‘pirate’, for instance and our thoughts turn perhaps to Long John Silver, Captain Hook from Peter Pan, Captain Pugwash or Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera The Pirates of Penzance. More recently, we have seen Johnny Depp’s character of Captain Jack Sparrow, as portrayed in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Just as with most other fictional pirates, Jack Sparrow is not vicious or depraved, but rather a vaguely humorous creation, more likely to cause amusement than he is terror or disgust. Pirates are picturesque and quaint. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the slavers who once infested the seas around Britain have become forgotten, because they were described as pirates, rather than given their correct name?

Because they were operating on behalf of certain countries, rather than as independent marauders, the Barbary corsairs did not need to operate on a small scale, as pirates generally did, but would combine in huge fleets to take part in coordinated actions. In 1544, as the Ottoman Empire was reaching the peak of its power, the island of Ischia in the Gulf of Naples was attacked and 4,000 of the inhabitants carried off to Africa as slaves. The same year, Lipari, an island off the coast of Sicily, was raided and between 2,000 and 7,000 people taken as slaves to Tripoli (Syed, 2011). These were not pirate raids, but military operations. The logistics of taking thousands of people prisoner and then transporting them to another continent required many ships, a large force of men, careful planning and the willing cooperation of those in charge of the countries to which the captives were taken. These operations were not acts of piracy, but rather combined military actions by an army and navy.

Although the expression was not coined until the Second World War, the removal of entire populations from islands in the Mediterranean may best be regarded as an instance of ethnic cleansing. Depopulating areas of Christians made perfect sense for a nation intent upon expanding both its territory and religion. The Ottomans were engaged in open warfare with Venice and both sides took any chance they could to disrupt the other’s trade and influence. Physically removing Christians from islands on the Italian coast both demonstrated in a very direct and brutal way that the Mediterranean belonged to the Muslims rather than the Christians and also provided the manpower necessary to propel the galleys of the Muslim ships. This may be seen with great clarity when we look at the events leading up to the siege of Malta in 1565, of which the attack on the island of Gozo was a prelude.

The great mistake in calling the corsairs sailing from the Barbary Coast ‘pirates’ is that this suggests that they were individuals operating for their own profit and advantage. They were not. Like any rational people, they wished to make a living, but they did so as part of a recognized strategic campaign, the object of which was the subjugation of Europe to the forces of militant Islam. This was to be achieved in the first instance by nibbling away at the edges, rather than by launching mighty assaults upon entire countries at a time. Targeting islands was an excellent way of pursuing such a plan. Before the Ottomans turned their eyes west and regarded Europe as the logical next step in the conversion of the known world to Islam, the Arabs had already adopted a similar strategy a thousand years earlier. Cyprus was an early victim of this territorial expansion and Mohammed’s aunt herself took part in an expedition to invade the island in 648. She fell off her mule, broke her neck and was buried where the accident occurred, just outside the modern ci...

Many writers describe the seizure of Gozo and the wholesale deportation of the Christians living there as being carried out by Barbary ‘pirates’, but this is of course absurd. It is difficult to imagine even a sizable company of pirates being able to cope with the problem of moving 6,000 men, women and children across the sea. What really happened was that privateers were working hand-in-glove with the regular Ottoman forces to effect the transfer of an entire population into slavery.

On

The Ottoman Empire was a force to be reckoned with in the sixteenth century and indeed, at one point it looked as though Europe might fall to the forces of militant Islam,

There were probably two chief reasons for the increasing activities of the corsairs. One the one hand, the commanders of such ships had a personal and mercenary interest in what they were doing, much like privateers such as Sir Francis Drake. In short, they were largely in it for the money. For the Ottomans, who encouraged and more or less licensed and taxed the trade in Christian slaves, there was another motive. Showing that their ships could go wherever they wished and land in any country was a good way to demonstrate the power of the Ottoman Empire. The message was clear; they were unstoppable on land or at sea. This notion of the ubiquity and invincibility of Ottoman forces would be of great psychological benefit, or so it was thought, when a move was made to capture another part of Europe.

Apart from the obvious value of the captives who were taken and sold as slaves, there was another financial arrangement which could bring in more money to the owners of European slaves in North Africa. This was that their families might try and ransom them, in effect buy them back from those who had already bought them. Sometimes, collections were held to raise money to ransom captives held in Algiers or other parts of the Barbary Coast.

A religious order called the Trinitarians or, to give it its full name, the Order of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Captives, had been started during the Crusades with the object of freeing prisoners of the Muslims.

The Trinitarians were not the only religious order in the business of ransoming captives and freeing Christians from slavery. In the thirteenth century, as the Crusades were drawing to a close, the order of the Royal, Celestial and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy and the Redemption of the Captives was founded, with the express aim of freeing those held by the Muslims.

For the slaves of the Ottomans though, there was no limit upon their servitude. Once consigned to the galleys, they would labour there until they died. A more dreadful fate it is difficult to imagine.

towns scattered along the edge of the sea could be raided and, if nothing else, there were sure to be men, women and children there who could be taken aboard and shipped to Africa.

It is time to look at the slave raiding expeditions which were mounted against the British Isles in the seventeenth century, years before Britain became involved in the transatlantic slave trade from Africa to America and the Caribbean.

They had not forgotten those decades of neglect by the king and also the suffering at the hands of the Barbary corsairs, with no navy to protect them. For over 50 years, any fisherman setting out on his business was liable to be seized and carried off into slavery and there seemed nothing that their rulers were either willing or able to do about it. It seems almost beyond belief that this terrible period of British history could have been forgotten, but there it is. Let us look at some specific incidents from the time. Between 1609 and 1616, a total of 466 English ships were boarded and the crews taken to North Africa as slaves (Brown, 1970). In April 1625, three ships from Cornwall and one sailing from Dartmouth in Devon were captured by corsairs and their crews taken. The following month, an entry in the Calendar of State Papers lamented that, ‘The Turks are upon our coasts. They take ships only to take the men to make slaves of them.’ Because the Barbary Coast was part of the Ottoman Empire, whose caliph was in Turkey, all Muslims were regularly referred to in England at this time as ‘Turks’. The bold seizure of English vessels was bad enough, but there was worse.