White slavery

White slavery (also white slave trade or white slave trafficking) refers to the enslavement of any of the world's European ethnic groups throughout human history, whether perpetrated by non-Europeans or by other Europeans. Slavery in ancient Rome was frequently dependent on a person's socio-economic status and national affiliation, and thus included European slaves. It was also common for European people to be enslaved and traded in the Muslim world; European women, in particular, were highly sought-after to be concubines in the harems of many Muslim rulers. Examples of such slavery conducted in Islamic empires include the Trans-Saharan slave trade, the Barbary slave trade, the Ottoman slave trade, and the Black Sea slave trade, among others.

During the Arab slave trade, Europeans were among those traded by the Arabs. The term Saqaliba (Arabic: صقالبة) was often used in medieval Arabic sources to refer specifically to Slavs being traded by the Arabs, but it could also refer more broadly to Central, Southern, and Eastern Europeans who were also traded by the Arabs, as well as all European slaves in some Muslim-controlled regions like Spain, including those abducted from raids on Spanish Christian kingdoms. During the era of the Fatimid Caliphate (909–1171), the majority of slaves were Europeans taken from European coasts and during conflicts. Similarly, the Ottoman slave trade that included European captives was often fueled by raids into European territories or were taken as children in the form of a blood tax from the families of citizens of conquered territories to serve the empire for a variety of functions. In the mid-19th century, the term 'white slavery' was used to describe the Christian slaves that were sold into the Barbary slave trade in North Africa.

In the late 19th-century, the term "white slave trade" became associated with sex trafficking of primarily women and girls for sexual exploitation.