Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, The Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Early Modern History: Society and Culture) [Paperback]

Mass slavery in the popular imagination had always been associated with the capture and subsequent enslavement of Africans. With good reason. The sheer scale of the African slave trade stretched the limits of imagination. Enslaved Africans were ubiquitous from Brazil to the Carribbean to the plantations in the Southern United States. Slavery undergirded economies, dehumanized victims and victimizers alike and generated profits for those who benefited from this egregious institution. In the Western world, especially the United States, the history of slavery bares a black face. There is no denying the suffering of Africans in bondage. Robert C. Davis, author of Chritian Slaves, Muslim Masters,however, presents us with another picture of bondage, one no less brutal, repressive and disheartening. This bondage was experienced by Europeans at the hands of North African Muslims. Between 1500 and 1800, dates in the subtitle, corsairs sanctioned by the North African govenments of Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers and Morrocco attacked European ships in the Medditeranean and raided European shores. These plundering expeditions netted hundreds of thousands of captives. As many as a million and a quarter Europeans, according to the author, were enslaved by North Africans. A small figure compared to the estimated twelve million Africans carried off to the new world over a span of centuries, but not an inconsiderable one by itself. The author channels a prodigious research effort into a detailed anaylsis of slave life, how they were captured, their national origins, the types of labor they were consigned to and their physical and mental states. Muslims raids reached as far afield as Iceland, but the proximity of Italy to the North African coast made it a convenient and frequent target for Muslim slaving activities. For that reson, the author devotes a considerable amount of space to how Italians coped with constant raids along their shores. The parallels the reader can draw between European and African slavery during this period are undeniable. Captured human beings in both cases came from all walks of life. Their traumatic experience of capture was compounded by the humiliation of being displayed to prospective buyers like merchandise. As there was no plantation system in North Africa, Europeans did not toil in the midst of sugar canes or cotton fields. Many, however, were put to work in galleys, others hauling rocks at construction sites, working in mines or cutting timber. Whatever their labor, Davis decribes horrendous conditions to which European slaves were subjected; disease, unabated hunger, all manner of cruelty inflicted upon them by their masters and the general despair of captivity. Of course, a European slave had a higher chance of seeing his homeland again than an African slave. North Africans were more keen on ransoming their captives than Europeans and Americans in possession of African slaves. Still, lifelong captivity was the sad fate of a myriad of Europeans caught by Barbary corsairs. The tone of this book is purely scholastic. Facts and figures are prominant, but anecdotal accounts from primary sources add a human element to this work. The author does more than reveal this little known history of slavery in all its sordid detail. He delves into some historiograhpy, offering his theory on why European slavery has been downplayed in the annals. His take on this matter is a fitting conclusion to a well researched, remarkably informative book.

This book makes a very good attempt of analysing the scale and effect of Muslim slavery practised against the Europeans in the XV to XIX centuries. Although, as the author would be the first to accept, the data are culled from a variety of sources and are derived by correlating information, nevertheless it is more than enough to convince.

This is an important work as it rolls back the shutters of political correctness and gives an objective analysis of an important determinant of European history. Although Muslim slavery was relatively small compared to the wholesale transport of Africans to the New World (12 million), Davis has shown that approximately 1.25 million to 1.5 million Europeans were captured and enslaved by the Arabs and Ottomans. Most were men bound for the galleys; fewer were the women bound for the harems. Unlike the Pirates of the Caribbean whose aim was to steal treasure, Muslim piracy was targeted against people. Whole villages of Southern Europe were depopulated and trade and fishing became risky occupations.
This is a well written book and any student of Southern Europeaninternational relations would be well advised to read it.Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800 (Early Modern History)

if you want to have a better understanding of what is going on in northern Africa today. You may have learned in American history that President Jefferson sent the Marines to the Mediterranean when American shipping was being attacked by the Barbary pirates. I attended public schools and was never taught that whites as well as blacks were taken by Muslims and sold in the slave markets. Well written and a very interesting book.