Barbary slave trade
slave markets in North Africa
The Barbary slave trade involved the capture of an estimated 1.25 million Europeans and selling them at slave markets in the largely independent Ottoman Barbary states of North Africa during the early modern period. European civilians were captured by Barbary corsairs in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to Ireland, coasts of Spain and Portugal, as far north as Iceland and into the Eastern Mediterranean.
The Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean was the scene of intense piracy. As late as the 18th century, piracy continued to be a "consistent threat to maritime traffic in the Aegean".
The Barbary slave trade came to an end in the early years of the 19th century. Frustrated at the continuing costs of tribute and ransom payments, the United States and Western European allies won the First and Second Barbary Wars against the pirates, but this did not end the practice. In 1816, Britain pressured the Beylik of Tunis and the Regency of Tripoli to agree to cease the enslaving of European Christians. When it became clear that the Deylik of Algiers would not comply, a British-Dutch fleet responded by decimating the Algerian navy at Algiers. A definitive end did not come until the 1830s, when the region was conquered by France.
Most of the captives were seamen and crews who were taken with their ships, but there were also many fishermen and coastal villagers who were captured.
“Barbary slave trade” enters the record as slave markets in North Africa. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Barbary, slave and trade can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Barbary slave trade” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.