I’m a European native, currently living in New York City.

Never once was I introduced to this staggering aspect of European history during my high school years. Narrative was invisible in our textbooks.

No government-funded channel, to my knowledge, has ever aired a documentaries shedding light on this aspect of our past.

Never seen an American or European movie ever portrayed these events.

I’m curious – has your experience been similar?

Here’s some historical facts and context:

– Over 1.25 million Europeans were captured in a horrifying spree of enslavement by North African Pirates.

– Europeans slaves were ruthlessly sold into forced labor, with women sold to sexual slavery.

– For 250 years, European enslavement by North African pirates actually coincided with the transatlantic slave trade. ( Happening in the same timeline)

– European slavery ended in 1830 with the French conquest of Algiers

This isn’t fiction or conjecture, but historical fact, referenced from sources such as:

Ohio State University,
Wikipedia,
the William Clements Library, and more.

by Minimum_Compote_3116

30 comments

  1. I think they are holding back because they don’t want to downplay the more known slave trade. Some people will use it to justify.

  2. Yes i knew , turkish raids were frequent where i live therefore some expressions were ingrained into our dialect to signify an impending Pirate assault, our coastline is also full of spotting towers who had to signal the main settlements of islamic raiders coming, also having this heritage of slavery allows me to use the n word

  3. This is as downplayed as the fact that some African countries like Togo were very invested in slavery, which is african people fighting other african people, taking them prisoner and selling them to Europeans.

    Slavery existed regardless of color/race/gender or nation throughout history. Making it a Race vs Race debate is disingenuous.

  4. Objectively these events would actually make a great Hollywood movie. But it’s never been done.

  6. We did not learn about Barbary piracy. We however did learn about people getting captured by Turks and their and Tatar raids in Central and Eastern Europe.

  8. The Barbary pirates are one of the main reasons France and other countries started taking over North Africa. Algerians and their neighbors were constantly raiding the European coasts and stealing their wealth and women for hundreds of years

    North Africans today have no idea that their ancestors were doing this to europeans and think that they were all just living in peace and minding their own business before europeans invaded and occupied North Africa in the 1800s

  9. I know. In fact some European colonialism in Africa started exactly as a need to stop piracy in the Mediterranean.

  10. dİd Ü nÖv DaT eVErY NEYŞIN Did SIleyViRİ

    bro, in history every fkng nation did slavery and this is just the tip, typical American, did you know that peasents in age of absolutism and industrilization had similar level of prosperity with slaves, American moment

  11. Know about it. Whole villages in France and England would be captured and enslaved. The slavers even went as far north as Iceland to get slaves.

    Slavery has been reduced to the Atlantic slave trade and all that went before (and even present day slavery) isn’t talked about.

  12. Heard about it recently. Not something that is common knowledge or taught in schools.

  13. Of course. Quite famously, many of the children participating in the French children‘s crusade ended up as slaves after their ships sunk and the survivors washed up on northern African shores, or they were outright enslaved and sold by the captains they paid for passage. With how well-known the Crusades are in general, I think people know about northern African slavery from this story at least.

    Here in Austria, curriculums briefly mention the enslaving people by the Ottomans, since they were the main rivals to the Austrians up until the end of the Great Turk war in 1699. It comes up briefly when talking about the two sieges of Vienna.

    The Ottomans enslaved millions of mainly Eastern Europeans over the centuries, with even the famous janissaries originating from enslaved Christian (child) soldiers.

    Like, what do you think happened to the prisoners they took from the villages they raided?

    Just because Christians in the Roman Empire decided that slavery was no longer ethical, doesn’t mean everyone else agreed.

  14. I only know the Transatlantic one as a specific slave trade. Slavery in ancient times is sometimes a topic. I didn’t know about this slave trade, but it’s known to me generally that Europeans were enslaved by different civilizations and that Ottomans engaged in it too. Slavs might have a slightly greater awareness of this because slaves are named after them.

  15. turkish raids in the 15th and 16th century were pretty well covered in my high school ed, along with the barbary states raids of the 16th and the several wars fought over it on the mediterranean – plus the founding of the kingdoms of morocco (specially al-mansur’s wars of cohesion and his invasion of central-west africa ) and algiers. you just had bad luck i guess, or lived far too north for the system to care – am from the mediterranean, so vikings got just a page and half max for example, while i’m sure they are quite important in baltic and anglo countries.

  16. Banned from r/askmiddleeast after I mentioned this lol.

    It is against narrative and of course they will be silent about this because white people = bad other people = good.

  17. If you are from a Mediterranean country is pretty common knowledge.

  19. I believe this is an underestimated number. Unfortunately due to the current political climate, it is perceived that the only slaves that ever existed were in America prior to the Civil War.

    I’m a Bulgarian and I have nothing against the modern Turkish state. In fact the communists did crimes against the Turkish minority in Bulgaria:

    However: Bulgarians were Turkish slaves for almost 5 centuries.

    I don’t want reparations for that, but I think it should be more well-known.

    Edit: Grammar

  20. Wasn’t that very much reason why French got fed up and went and invaded North Africa in order to beat the living shit out of slavers?

  22. Interesting, first time hearing about it as a Eastern European, thanks OP!

  23. This… the European slavery ended with the French conquest of Algiers.

    Now this is little taught but it gives a whole new spin to the story.

    In France however among classics, one necessarily has to study Les Fourberies de Scapin, from Molière, that depicts the threat of slavery, it is a comedy tho.
    Same theme has been more recently adapted to Comic books series called De cape et de Crocs.

  24. Yes, it was also discussed in my history classes at high school (ages 15-16) back in 2006.

    There were also Dutch pirates that raided Iceland and Danish ships and sold captives in Algiers as slaves

    One of the most famous ones is:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Janszoon

  26. The oarsmen for the Ottoman side during the Battle of Lepanto were practically all Christian slaves (around 35,000+).

    Funny story, before the battle the Ottoman commander promised the Christian slaves their freedom if they won. The Christian commander Don Jon only told his men “there is no paradise for cowards.”

  28. Personally I am aware of this, but it is not a big part in the public discussion in germany. Wether or not this should be an important point in the public discussion in any country probably depends on how this discussion is going along in said country.

    Now I can not say that I am universally informed on the debate about this within the US, but I heard that the discussion around slavery there goes to such lengths as to view slavery solely from the viewpoint of the african slave trade. Which is understandable to a degree if you consider US history as a whole, and also expected given how politicised the public discussion is in general. Which is probably the reason why this comes as a surprise to you OP.

    Slavery was always conducted throughout history by every power who had the means to do so. One main difference to the african slave trade is however, that it was done by countries who abolished slavery at one point in their history, but then went on great argumentative lengths to somehow justify this in case of the inhabitants of africa.

    All in all one important underlying lesson from this part of our history is probably that it doesn’t matter how progressive we think of ourselfs, if we are not willing to uphold our belives in spite of economic promises and for people who have less or even no agency.

    This goes both ways along the political spectrum. It means we have to be vigilant in protecting workers rights and the poorest in our society, be open to the idea of welcoming those who are opressed, but also have to be cautios against believes and traditions that go against this progressive convictions.

  29. Yes but not learned at school. This is one reason why we fucked North Africa

  30. European slavery isn’t talked about that much because Europeans don’t make a big deal out of it and the people who pretend to be so vocal about slavery only really care about African slavery as they don’t know better/purposefully leave it out to drive an agenda.

    Slavery was also a problem here in the north. During the “great wrath” (Russian occupation of Finland from 1714 to 1721), estimates state that around 7,5% (almost completely children and women) of the Finnish population at the time was sold to slavery by the blundering Russians. Proportionally that’s more than any African country during the Atlantic slave trade. These slaves were sold to the middle-east, Central-Asia and India.

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