When Europeans Were Slaves of North Africa

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WHEN EUROPEANS WERE SLAVES: RESEARCH SUGGESTS WHITE SLAVERY WAS MUCH MORE COMMON THAN PREVIOUSLY BELIEVED

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study suggests that a million or more European Christians were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 – a far greater number than had ever been estimated before.

In a new book, Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University, developed a unique methodology to calculate the number of white Christians who were enslaved along Africa’s Barbary Coast, arriving at much higher slave population estimates than any previous studies had found.

Most other accounts of slavery along the Barbary coast didn’t try to estimate the number of slaves, or only looked at the number of slaves in particular cities, Davis said. Most previously estimated slave counts have thus tended to be in the thousands, or at most in the tens of thousands. Davis, by contrast, has calculated that between 1 million and 1.25 million European Christians were captured and forced to work in North Africa from the 16th to 18th centuries. Davis’s new estimates appear in the book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan).

“Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland.”

“Much of what has been written gives the impression that there were not many slaves and minimizes the impact that slavery had on Europe,” Davis said. “Most accounts only look at slavery in one place, or only for a short period of time. But when you take a broader, longer view, the massive scope of this slavery and its powerful impact become clear.”

Davis said it is useful to compare this Mediterranean slavery to the Atlantic slave trade that brought black Africans to the Americas. Over the course of four centuries, the Atlantic slave trade was much larger – about 10 to 12 million black Africans were brought to the Americas. But from 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slaves to the Americas, according to Davis.

“One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature – that only blacks have been slaves. But that is not true,” Davis said. “We cannot think of slavery as something that only white people did to black people.”During the time period Davis studied, it was religion and ethnicity, as much as race, that determined who became slaves.

“Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland,” he said.

Pirates (called corsairs) from cities along the Barbary Coast in north Africa – cities such as Tunis and Algiers – would raid ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as well as seaside villages to capture men, women and children. The impact of these attacks were devastating – France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. At its peak, the destruction and depopulation of some areas probably exceeded what European slavers would later inflict on the African interior.

Although hundreds of thousands of Christian slaves were taken from Mediterranean countries, Davis noted, the effects of Muslim slave raids was felt much further away: it appears, for example, that through most of the 17th century the English lost at least 400 sailors a year to the slavers.

Even Americans were not immune. For example, one American slave reported that 130 other American seamen had been enslaved by the Algerians in the Mediterranean and Atlantic just between 1785 and 1793.
Davis said the vast scope of slavery in North Africa has been ignored and minimized, in large part because it is on no one’s agenda to discuss what happened.

The enslavement of Europeans doesn’t fit the general theme of European world conquest and colonialism that is central to scholarship on the early modern era, he said. Many of the countries that were victims of slavery, such as France and Spain, would later conquer and colonize the areas of North Africa where their citizens were once held as slaves. Maybe because of this history, Western scholars have thought of the Europeans primarily as “evil colonialists” and not as the victims they sometimes were, Davis said.

Davis said another reason that Mediterranean slavery has been ignored or minimized has been that there have not been good estimates of the total number of people enslaved. People of the time – both Europeans and the Barbary Coast slave owners – did not keep detailed, trustworthy records of the number of slaves. In contrast, there are extensive records that document the number of Africans brought to the Americas as slaves.
So Davis developed a new methodology to come up with reasonable estimates of the number of slaves along the Barbary Coast. Davis found the best records available indicating how many slaves were at a particular location at a single time. He then estimated how many new slaves it would take to replace slaves as they died, escaped or were ransomed.

“The only way I could come up with hard numbers is to turn the whole problem upside down – figure out how many slaves they would have to capture to maintain a certain level,” he said. “It is not the best way to make population estimates, but it is the only way with the limited records available.”

Putting together such sources of attrition as deaths, escapes, ransomings, and conversions, Davis calculated that about one-fourth of slaves had to be replaced each year to keep the slave population stable, as it apparently was between 1580 and 1680. That meant about 8,500 new slaves had to be captured each year. Overall, this suggests nearly a million slaves would have been taken captive during this period. Using the same methodology, Davis has estimated as many as 475,000 additional slaves were taken in the previous and following centuries.

The result is that between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.
Davis said his research into the treatment of these slaves suggests that, for most of them, their lives were every bit as difficult as that of slaves in America.

“As far as daily living conditions, the Mediterranean slaves certainly didn’t have it better,” he said. While African slaves did grueling labor on sugar and cotton plantations in the Americas, European Christian slaves were often worked just as hard and as lethally – in quarries, in heavy construction, and above all rowing the corsair galleys themselves. Davis said his findings suggest that this invisible slavery of European Christians deserves more attention from scholars.

“We have lost the sense of how large enslavement could loom for those who lived around the Mediterranean and the threat they were under,” he said. “Slaves were still slaves, whether they are black or white, and whether they suffered in America or North Africa.”
#
Contact Robert Davis, Davis.711@osu.edu
Written by Jeff Grabmeier, Grabmeier.1@osu.edu
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46 thoughts on “When Europeans Were Slaves of North Africa”

  1. oh yes indeed they were.the first slave trade was the european slave trrade into north africa.one moor who was a sultan owned 25000 european slaves who built his colussus stables as they put it.there never was one european in the america who owned 25000 negroes…the golden age of the moor edited by ivan van sertima will restore knowledge of self on this matter

  2. For the white slave trade ( the first in the new world after “Indians” and before Africans): see

    White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America

    by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh.

    The White slave trade in North Africa was fulfilled by corsairs through raids (razzias) into Southern Europe and also by Venetians Merchants who delivered their “stocks” into North Africa Slave Markets. (See Bernard Lewis : “The Muslim Discovery of Europe” and “Race and Slavery in the Middle East: an Historical Enquiry “)

    I read this book in French (Robert Davis’), but I feel that he wants to say that : ” It didn’t only happen to Africans”….

    I am African (Wolof and Fulani), born and raised in Paris (France).

    Generally speaking, Moroccans don’t feel black, if you say to a moroccan that he is black , he’ll called you names…They feel a special pride when they are blond with blue eyes (only few berbers called rifi).

    Some of them (the educated ones) know that they’re African, one of my berber friend (called Shleukh; ‘kh’ with the arabic tone or ‘J’ in spanish) told me that his ancestors came from Soudan. His family name is SHANGA. He is Dark Skinned with african features.

    Another Moroccan friend ( a girl) , has an african firstname : N’guiyah

    Southern Moroccans are closer to black africans ( African Clothes, Dark Skinned, food etc), they look like fulanis.

    There are many black africans students in Morocco, and it’s hell for them down there specially for non-muslims. They support racist talks and segregation all the times.

    A Moroccan is certainly black according to the “one drop rule” , and it’s clear that at least 2/3 of the Moroccan people is colored or even black. Moroccans do look like Dominicans (from the Dominican Republic)

    Their women use bleaching chemicals for their skin in order to look “whiter” and other products to have “White Hairs” or straight hair

    In North Africa, Moroccans are the darkest (brown and black folks) followed by Libyans. In south Algeria you have lot of blacks and many Black berbers. In south Tunisia you have some blacks too.

    But they all feel “Arab” or even “White”.

    But it’s a general syndrom within the black diaspora. I went many times in the west indies and some guys from the Dominican Republic or Porto Rico feel White or “Mixed”. In Paris, people would called them BLACKS or by the “N” Word

    1. I m moroccan from arab family.
      I have everything from an arab that people always think I am from the Gulf.
      Well I m proud to be arab. My tribe have many similarities than the gulf people (dance, language, …) When I speak to some city people they don’t understand some words and expression I use while when I use them in the Gulf they understand.
      But in the mean while I love a african people and I believe they have a whitter heart full more joyful and less pretentious than many arrogant arabs 🙂

    2. Based on how light, confused and evil many indigenous regions around the world have become, it is obvious that the gun is not the most destructive tool of the European. It is indeed his sex organ!

  3. Nehesy

    The original owners of Morocco and Mauretania are Black Africans. That is why you noticed that southern Moroccans have more affinity for Black people.

    Those Northern ones, are some mixed up Turkish people who came in the wake of the Ottoman Empire. Others are descendants of European slaves. But any true Moroccan originally from Africa is darkbrown like the rest of the continental so called “Black Africans”.

    See: http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/the-appearance-of-the-original-berbers-according-to-european-perceptions-by-dana-marniche/

  4. Jahdey

    My post was not a refutation , Original people (Tassili’s Frescoes) and Berbers in North Africa were blacks and black berbers surely (mostly) came from Ethiopia ( Ethiopia of the ancient, not today’s Ethiopia).

    The French Anthropologist Raymond FURON stated without any doubt that the oldest skulls found in North Algeria ( Constantine) were Dolicocephalic and akin to those in Upper Egypt.

    Martin BERNAL and Christopher EHRET have shown that Berber culture has his roots in Ethiopia.

    The Lebu/ Lebou or Tehenu/Tehenou of ancient Libya were Ethiopians or Black as well. African Scholars like Pr Cheikh Anta DIOP, Pr Babacar SALL or Pr Théophile OBENGA gave very clear statements about this fact.

    I read also “The Golden age of the Moors” by Pr Ivan Van Sertima.

    But these guys (Moroccans or Mauritanians) don’t feel black it’s a fact. Even if most of them are Dark Skinned (Brown) and sometimes Blacks. They preferred to be called : Arabs, Berbers but not Africans or Black.

    In their language black is very pejorative term.

    In Mauritania , they look like Fair or more often dark skinned Indians but they HATE black people. In south Mauritania you have many africans like : Fulanis, Soninkés (Sarakhollés) but it’s hell for them as well.

    Some Mauritanians practise slavery, and it’s fair to say that it’s dark skinned people who are enslaving darker skinned people. They feel “arabs”.

    It’s not their women who show this racism ( many are married with blacks specially Moroccan girls) against black people but mostly the men;

    One thing is sure Mauritanians bear african names (muslim african names ) like us : Amidou ( Instead of Ahmad), Mamadou ( Instead of Mohamed), Fatimatou ( Instead of Fatima) , Aminatou (Instead of Amina) etc.

    They wear African clothes as well, the same we have in West Africa in countries like :Senegal, Guinea, Niger, Nigeria, Mali.

  5. I’m not understanding why anyone would have a problem with a Moroccan not “feeling black” or African. The one drop rule in the United States cannot apply when we are talking of populations because in that case mostly everyone in North Africa and the Middle east and even East Asia and southern Europe would be called “black” which many are not. M

    Modern Moroccans and North Africans who are fair-skinned and speak Berber or Arabic have large amounts of Near Eastern, Central Asian and south European blood UNLIKE the early BERBERS or occupants of North Africa and Arabia who were indeed black or at least near black in color.

    The reason the Fulani look so much like the southern Moroccans and Mauritanians is because it has tribes with the most Berber blood. The Woodabe (Futa-be) Fulani are in fact the only people in Africa still wearing the costumes and designs and hairstyles their ancestors wore depicted in on Old dynasty tombs of the Tehenou as shown in the book, Nomads of the Niger by Carol Beckworth. These ancestral Fulani or Fellata or (Fut) also appear in full color (dark brown) in a book by Nina Davies. I first saw them in a large framed picture above the entrance to the library at the Oriental Museum in the Univ. of Chicago in the 1980s and called to find out from the head librarian there whose name was i think Chuck in the 90s to which text the painting had come from. I was later horrified to discover that these people were still found in Africa and in fact the ancestors of so many millions of African Americans according to Sterling Stuckey and others on the slave trade.

    Never the less it is my belief that the Djehenou-Tehenou Lebou people some of whom later mixed with the non-African peoples of the Sea were also joined in and after the Hyksos dynastic period with a related people whose remnant colonies Josephus (circa 1st century) refers to as Chethim and other Greeks and Romans as Macetae, Ukutameni, (later called Ketama Berbers) who had in fact colonized all of the coasts and isles of the Mediterranean including Syria/Palestine (according to Josephus) and whom according to other early Greek authors were like the “Ethiopians” in complexion. These people were said to have been led by Dharis or Doris (Idris of the Arabs, Atlas of the Greeks) across Africa were responsible for the name Imakitan for the eastern groups of Tuareg.

    Arabian and Biblical tradition refers to the Hyksos as Amalekites and Adites. Cathim (Heth of the Bible) is in fact an Amalekite ruler in Arabian tradition. The lands of the Amalek whom appear to be the Meluhha of Assyrian texts were then extending from the region of Sanaa in Yemen to Mecca and Medina. A geographic area which originally comprised the land of Canaan. The names of some of the “Canaanite” kings such as Anak, Sheshai have been found on Hyksos scarabs as Nakhi and Sheshi. (See David Rohl’s books).

    The clan names among the Tuareg like Kel Inneg (Anak), Imaketan or Ketama (Khethim) and the name for their language Ti’finagh supposedly meaning belonging to the Phoenicians (Ph’anakes of Manetho) probably preserve evidence of their Arabian or “Canaanite” origins. Josephus referred to the Amalekites as the “Phoenician shepherds”. The Ketama Sanhaja, Masmuda, Nafusa, Zenata groups were also closely related tribes of similar origin and complexion.

  6. I didn’t read anybody who have a problem with Moroccans who don’t feel black (it’s their very problem lol), but I’m talking about personal experience (Reading or copying books is not enough sometimes people need to travel in order to see the reality in Africa) : I know Moroccans around me and I went into this country: They hate black people.

    I didn’t refute any time that early berbers in Africa were blacks and early Arabs as well. Godfrey Higgins, François Lenormant (book 6: Ad, Thamoud, First Amalekites etc) or even Bertram Thomas are very clear : The true and first Arabs were blacks. And some are still living in Arabia (I met some of them in London ). Even Pr Malika Hachid from Algeria says that Berbers ancestors are to be find in Africa and with the time they mixed up with white people.

    As I said earlier fhe classic “The Golden age of the Moors” by Pr Ivan Van sertima is an irrefutable proof about the Blackness of early Berbers or even Frank Snowden’s books (Blacks in Antiquity and Before Color Prejudice).

    Gsell a French scholar says that Southern Moroccans are from East Africa (Soudan and Ethiopia) and some Berbers in South Morocco are aware of this fact.

    However some blacks in Morocco were formers slaves kidnapped by the Moroccan Army from Tombouctou when a Moroccan king with the help of Europeans (guns, canons, troops) destroyed this african town. This is how the scholar Ahmed Baba finished in Morocco. See for instance Pr Joseph Ki Zerbo’s books.

    Many white Berbers tribes lived under the protection of Songhai Rulers. Some of the latter had white berbers concubines and even slaves, like in the Ghana Empire.

    Yusuf Ibn Tashfin had a west african mother (Soninké) and had Fulanis and Soninkés troops with him when he conquered Spain ( War Diaby NDIAYE was one of the African king who helped him). Even the Late Hassan II the former Moroccan King had a west African Mother ( from Senegal).

    So we can say that some miscegenation occurred between some Blacks and white berbers.

    Nevertheless the people who are the closest to fulanis in Africa are Somalis and Ethiopians (Family Names, customs , Physically etc).

    Pr Shomarka Keita has prooved in many articles that people in East Africa, like somalis or classified as “Hamitic” (like we fulanis) by Europeans “scholars” were not specially mixed with another people (Fair skinned Berbers or someone else) and were “true” africans:

    http://wysinger.homestead.com/keita.html see article : “Interpreting African Genetic Diversity”

    We Fulanis are from Egypt, (in our tradition, Heli Yoyo), like many west african tribes (wolofs, soninkés etc). According to our ancestors we came from the East. And for Instance the surname Barry , exists for Fulanis in West Africa and Somalis in East Africa. Somalis themselves say (and know) that Fulanis belongs to their group.

    Before Davis, J A Rogers showed in his books that Europeans were slaves in North Africa ( A Moroccan king Mulay Ismael had 25000 white slaves).

    But it must be said that it was generally fair skinned North Africans ( Turks conquerants or White Berbers muslims) who used to enslaved Europeans not Black people.

    And many of them have been freed (by Christian donations to free them)…Even the whites who came along with the Moors back to Africa were mainly Muslims or Jews (few saqalibas followed the moors to africa) not slaves.

    Of course many white slaves were in the population of North Africa and intermingled with them during the time , but come on !!! 1.5 Millions white slaves in North Africa ( many have been Freed see J A Rogers, and some went to the West Indies as Indentured Servants: see Father Jean Baptiste Du Tertre) can’t be compared with the African Slave Trade. And this is why Davis’ book did not enjoy me specially this part:

    “Davis said it is useful to compare this Mediterranean slavery to the Atlantic slave trade that brought black Africans to the Americas. Over the course of four centuries, the Atlantic slave trade was much larger – about 10 to 12 million black Africans were brought to the Americas. But from 1500 to 1650, when trans-Atlantic slaving was still in its infancy, more white Christian slaves were probably taken to Barbary than black African slaves to the Americas, according to Davis”.

    The Portuguese had been destroying Africa (Congo) since the 1440’s…And the first slaves was sent to Portugal and Spain.

    Davis book is not fair because he wants to “mitigate” the African Slave Trade by saying that between 1500 and 1650 , they was more White slaves than Black slaves. SORRY I can buy that !

    Anyone who read books from : Michael Gomez, Eric Williams, or Richard Price knows that at this time slave traders were savagely destroying Africa…

    PEACE

    1. Blacks did to have white slaves, and not a few of them either. The Arabs/Berbers may have been catching them, but sales were made throughout North Africa, and these sales included sales to Blacks. Great comment over all.

  7. hello im a morrocan and my english is very bad so try to understand lol

    ” terrell ali bey Says:

    September 15th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
    oh yes indeed they were.the first slave trade was the european slave trrade into north africa.one moor who was a sultan owned 25000 european slaves who built his colussus stables as they put it.there never was one european in the america who owned 25000 negroes…the golden age of the moor edited by ivan van sertima will restore knowledge of self on this matter

    fasle . because this sultan was not a negro . morroco was not gouverned by any north african dynasty after 1492 therefore this guy was not a black man …..he was arab from the Saadi dynasty or the alaouite dynasty and i can assure you that those people came from the middel east and they were pure arabs …..i don’t know why you call him a “moor ” sultan .it’s a meanless word invented by europeans. north africans never called themselves moors or saracens or something like that this sultan was morrocan and that’s it .

    im really disappointed…… ivan van sertima is glorifying slavery .. the barbarian slave trade make muslim look wicked . savage and barbarian i can’t understand how somebody could be proud of this dark history

    remember that most slave masters were arabs .. and remember also that in this same exact time black african were also brought from the south ( gnawa ) wich means the masters weren’t really black….

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