Barbary slave trade

The authorities of Ottoman and pre-Ottoman times kept no relevant official records, but observers estimated that around 35,000 European slaves were held throughout the 17th century on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli and Tunis, but mostly in Algiers.

From at least 1500, the pirates also conducted raids on seaside towns of Italy, Spain, France, England, Ireland, and as far away as Iceland, capturing men, women and children.

The same British fleet, joined by some Dutch warships, returned and delivered a nine-hour bombardment of Algiers in 1816, leading to the Dey accepting a new agreement in which he promised to end his slavery operations.

It gained a political significance during the 16th century, mainly through Barbarossa (Khayr al-Dīn), who united Algeria and Tunisia as military states under the Ottoman sultanate and maintained his revenues by piracy.

With the arrival of powerful Moorish bands in Rabat and Tétouan (1609), Morocco became a new center for the pirates and for the ʿAlawī sultans, who quickly gained control of the two republics and encouraged piracy as a valuable source of revenue.

[21] The towns on the North African coast were recorded in Roman times for their slave markets, and this trend continued into the medieval age.

[23] After a revolt in the mid-17th century reduced the ruling Ottoman Pashas to little more than figureheads in the region, the towns of Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and others became independent in all but name.

Reports of Barbary raids and kidnappings of those in Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and as far north as Iceland exist from between the 16th to the 19th centuries.

Robert Davis estimated that between 1 and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by pirates and sold as slaves in Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli during this time period.

However, other historians such as David Earle have questioned Robert Davis' estimates: “His figures sound a bit dodgy and I think he may be exaggerating.”[24] Famous accounts of Barbary slave raids include a mention in the diary of Samuel Pepys and a raid on the coastal village of Baltimore, Ireland, during which pirates left with the entire populace of the settlement.

[31] An account of the later phase of the trade was published in 1740 by Englishman Thomas Pellow, who had escaped from Morocco after 21 years of slavery, having been captured from a ship in 1716 as an 11-year-old boy.

[33] In the summer of 1625, the Barbary corsairs attacked ships in the Bristol Channel, which was followed by slave raids in Mount's Bay, from which around sixty men, women and children were abducted into slavery.

[36][37] A couple of years after the sack of Baltimore of 1631, the Irish village of Dungarvan was also attacked by a slave raid resulting in around fifty captives.

[40] Among the British victims of the Barbary slave trade were Helen Gloag, Lalla Balqis, Elizabeth Marsh and Thomas Pellow.

In contrast to other European nations France could complain over the corsairs to the Ottoman sultan, who would be obligated to take action because of the Franco-Ottoman alliance.

During the 1550s, the French provinces of Provence and Languedoc were devastated by slave razzias by the corsairs, which resulted in French complaints to the Ottoman sultan, and the city of Marseilles petitioned regent Catherine de' Medici as well as taking separate measures to liberate enslaved natives and protect their commerce vessels, and reported to have lost twelve galleons aside from a large number of smaller boats.

[51] In 1544, Hayreddin Barbarossa captured Ischia, taking 4,000 prisoners in the process, and deported to slavery some 9,000 inhabitants of Lipari, almost the entire population.

In 1558 Barbary corsairs captured the town of Ciutadella, destroyed it, slaughtered the inhabitants, and carried off 3,000 survivors to Istanbul as slaves.

In 1563 Turgut Reis landed at the shores of the province of Granada, Spain, and captured the coastal settlements in the area like Almuñécar, along with 4,000 prisoners.

In 1617, the Barbary Corsairs from Algeria conducted the sack of Madeira, during which they attacked the Portuguese Island and abducted 1,200 of its inhabitants as slaves.

[63] The slave raids grew particularly severe during the 17th century, when the corsairs abducted the population of entire villages along the Mediterranean coast of Spain, leaving large coastal areas depopulated.

[64] When the coastal villages depopulated, the Spanish crown was forced to raise the taxes of fish, meat, cattle and silk to finance the construction of fortresses to protect the coast and prevent people from leaving the areas for safer settlements in the interior of the country.

On 20 November 1662, the Lord High Treasurer of Sweden, Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie received a letter of appeal from eight Swedish sailors who had been abducted by corsairs at sea and were being held in slavery in Algiers.

[67] Sweden attempted to protect their ships by use of insurance against slavery, convoys, international treaties, and by maintaining friendly contact with the corsairs.

[68] Maria Olssdotter had no funds to buy his freedom, but appealed to the king via the governor of Gävle for money to be gathered in the churches for the purchase of her enslaved husband, and her application was approved; this was not an unusual case, as many poor women are known to have done the same.

Already in 1661, a chronicler wrote "for a long time previous the commerce of Massachusetts was annoyed by Barbary corsairs and that many of its seamen were held in bondage.

As the United States had disbanded its Continental Navy and had no seagoing military force, its government agreed in 1786 to pay tribute to stop the attacks.

[75] On March 20, 1794, at the urging of President George Washington, Congress voted to authorize the building of six heavy frigates and establish the United States Navy, in order to stop these attacks and demands for more and more money.

The wars were a direct response of the American, British, French and the Dutch states to the raids and the slave trade by the Barbary pirates against them, which ended in the 1830s, when the region was conquered by France.

[20] The Barbary pirates refused to cease their slaving operations, resulting in another bombardment by a Royal Navy fleet against Algiers in 1824.