Slavery Lessons the Anti-White Establishment Will Not Teach Our Children
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British National Party News, September 1, 2008
| Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 By Robert Davis Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 284 pp.; $29.95 (soft cover) |
In the anti-white mania which has gripped modern Britain, the Atlantic Slave Trade is to be given wide prominence in schools from this term onwards—but the million Europeans who were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa between 1530 and 1780 will be ignored.
The untold story of the million whites enslaved by non-whites is covered in a new book by Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University. He 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 travelled 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.
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 was 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.
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 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 that 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, 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 were black or white, and whether they suffered in America or North Africa.”
(Posted on September 3, 2008)
Comments
Let us also remember the 1 million boys, mainly from Serbia, abducted by the Turks, converted to Islam, told their father was the Sultan and trained to fight in the brutal Janissary Corp, the back-bone of the Ottoman army.
Let us also remeber the 1 million plus Christian Armenians murdered in 1915 by Turks, Chechens and Kurds.
A good documentary: One Third Of The Holocaust (google videos)
Posted by at 5:39 PM on September 3
Wow….we’ve been supporting these countries for decades when it really should have been the other way around…I want my reparations Africa!
Posted by at 6:07 PM on September 3
“How many white Christians were enslaved along the Barbary Coast?”
A better question would be how many are enslaved by a perverse anti-white ideology in the here and now? It would seem nearly all of them.
Posted by Dinosaur Hatchling at 6:13 PM on September 3
Giles Milton also wrote a 2004 book on this subject “White Gold”. Milton’s book concentrates especially on a Cornish slave called Thomas Pellow who later fought the corsairs as a Royal Navy Admiral.
Posted by Dougie (Edinburgh) at 6:18 PM on September 3
Britain is as far gone as the rest of the West.White slavery in the late Great Britain and America is blotted out as well.Real history has to go down the memory hole or the Marxist multicult would implode upon itself.The Brits are just as spineless as the rest of the sheeple aiding in their demise.Nothing can be done to wake people up,save for the coming global economic crash and police state[regardless of the wars increasing and possibility of ww3],which will prod all freedom lovers into action.Sadly,while fending off the gestapo,there will be racial chaos to deal with as well.At that point the facade of multi-hued bliss will drop,and the diversity crowd will know they’ve been hoodwinked,although that knowledge will be useless.It has been planned all too well.The fight needed to be waged when the PC agenda went from college campuses in the 60s to the mainstream in the 80s…..Maranatha!
Posted by JIm at 6:21 PM on September 3
It is a matter of record, that the United States’ first brush with Islamic terrorism goes all the way back to 1784 when two American merchant vessels, the Marie of Boston and the Dauphin of Philadelphia were captured by Algerian corsairs and their crews held for ransom. When Thomas Jefferson, then U.S. Minister to the Court of France asked the Ottoman ambassador why they were hostile to the United States, this was the reply: “That it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
E. David Litvak
Posted by E. David Litvak at 6:28 PM on September 3
This story reminds me of the Story Robinson Crusoe.If you read the whole story Robinson Crusoe was held as a slave by Barbary pirates before was stranded on that island.Oh his guy friday was a cannibal.He did his best to discourage Fridays taste for human flesh.
Posted by Tony Soprano. at 6:51 PM on September 3
I have written in response to this matter before; I read a book authored by Hilaire Belloc (1874 - 1953). In this text, he stated that as a child (that is circa 1882 - 1884), he had spoken with old men, in Southern France, presumably (Belloc himself was born in the town of «Celle St. Cloud» in central France), who could remember the lateen sails of the Barbary Corsairs «in the offing» that is, just at the edge of the horizon. And, perhaps, they were even closer than that.
Belloc died in 1953. My parents were born and grew up while Belloc was still alive. Therefore, there must be many people in Europe, today, who might have known, and spoken to someone of Belloc’s generation who had also spoken to an elderly relative or friend, or someone who lived in their village, who had also seen these sinister sails cutting the horizon, just off shore. That is how close those days are to us stiil. Even to this day.
Also, I tend to believe that the numbers of persons who were lost and taken to Barbary (presently Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, are still very conservative. Especially with regard to Tunisia. I believe that the Tunisians were slaving into Europe at least until the second decade of the 19th century. And one of the last «strongholds» of this traffic was «Sfax» (sic). Otherwise, Tunisia’s «second city,» along her south - east coast.
I have met Tunisians, they are the most European of all the «Arab(ic)» peoples who live along the Mediterranean’s southern littoral. I have met an Tunisian, a young man, who looks like a character out of a novel by Proust. He must be at least 90% ethnic European. I have met a young Tunisian woman, - from Sfax, in fact, who looks like a young Isabella Rossalini. With the exception that her skin is just slightly «tinctured» a shade of brown not (often) seen in Southern Europe. «Le peau juste un peu bien foncé» as the French would put it. And I have known French women from Northern France, who are darker in terms of their hair and skin than this girl.
In fact, I tend to believe that her ethno - geographic origins are not to be found in «al Maghreb» at all. I have often thought that, in terms of her height and build that she looks as if her ancestors came (but not, of course of their own free will), from the Balkans, the Dalmatian coast. She reminded me very much of another young woman I knew from Serbia. While their physionomy differed, their musculature and skelature (apparently), as far as I was concerned, made them twins.
I may also remark that, for the people of the Maghreb, history, and indeed, any interest in one’s antecedents, is an matter of complete indifference for these people. Perhaps the matter of how their great - great great - uncles and aunts and great - great - grand fathers came to frequent what Cyril Connolly described (in his introduction to «L’Étrangère»), the last great novel, perhaps even the greatest work, by Albert Camus (dec’d, 1960), as «an sultry corner of Latin civilization» would prove rather distressing, upsetting perhaps.
Or, perhaps not. The curious aspect of Islamic culture and civilization may be found in that fact that it destroys competing cultures and civilizations, not by conquest; but by simply ignoring them. Something to ponder, the next time one walks by an building site, in Metropolitan London, or Frankfurt, or Nice, or Nancy, or Toulon, or Berlin, or, even Seattle or suburban Los Angeles. Where yet another Mosque is going up.
The ghosts of our ancestors, «our» ancestors, not those who are so curiously estranged from us to this very day, along the coast of Barbary, or, even, just over our back fence, whose bones and memories lie beneath the desert sands from Tangiers to Tripoli call out to us from their forgotton graves : «It is us today; it is you tomorrow.» Perhaps Haile Selassie said it first; but the sentiment is purely of the Western Occident.
Posted by at 7:35 PM on September 3
“The impact of these attacks was 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.”
And of course, this:
“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.”
Thus, taking these two paragraphs in tandem, we have an example of the utterly abject evil of multiculturalism and its vile lies only purpose, the destruction of the entire white race. In these retrospective terms, we see that the march of our European ancestors toward domination in Africa and the Middle East were fully justified as defensive measures and the correcting of past wrongs. There can be no other conclusions drawn, and any who are stupid enough to contest such a position are not even fit to be responded to with anything other than undiluted contempt!
Indeed, if anything the only fault that whites today should hold against the “imperialist” white conquers of the past, is that they did not exact a far greater revenge upon these former pirates and rapists under their control at that time, for the outrages described above. In short, they should have butchered them like the animals they were and remain to this day.
Moreover, as we are endlessly told by both white and nonwhite Reds and other idiots to this day, the evils of past wrongs such as slavery and invasions of territory can never be forgiven; such past wrongs allow the victims carte blanche, to do as the please in retribution for those wrongs without question. That includes all members of both the geographic, religious, and ethnic considerations in question for those wrongs; thus, all Africans, Muslims, and Arabs are guilty here and deserve nothing but harsh and uncompromising treatment today and forever by whites.
The only creatures that deserve worse, are the worthless white traitors who champion the nonwhite and “multicultural” cause.
Enough said!
Posted by John PM at 8:17 PM on September 3
I have been telling people about this sort of thing for years with various amounts of success. Most people will ask me to give sources and a few have called me a straight up racist for even mentioning that Europeans were enslaved. Go Figure!
Posted by Spartan24 at 9:08 PM on September 3
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, heavy construction, and above all rowing the corsair galleys themselves.
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.
— — — — — —
In point of fact, I’m sure Christian slaves were MUCH worse off than black slaves in America.
Black slaves here were an expensive investment and were not worked to death. More importantly, blacks here were not thought of as enemies, hated, viewed as infidels, evil, worthless in God’s eyes, incapable of attaining heaven.
And you can’t compare the life of a worker on a cotton plantation to that of a galley slave. I read somewhere that the life expectancy of a galley slave was about two years. By contrast,look at how the blacks have multiplied in America! I’d rather pick cotton any day, than row a galley ship. No comparison!
Posted by browser at 10:13 PM on September 3
One of the sultans of Morocco was born to an Irish mother, of aristocratic family, who had been captured at sea as a girl, enslaved, and was sold to the sultan’s harem, ultimately bearing him his first-born son. As the next sultan’s mother, she ended up being the most powerful woman in Morocco. But still just a woman.
Posted by ghw at 10:27 PM on September 3
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.
In other words, it doesn’t fit into the politics of victimism that are so currently popular.
According to that matrix, whites are hard to see as victims. They don’t fit.
We’re not on the agenda. In this world, nothing is just given to you. Reparations and apologies go to those who demand them. Sympathy goes to those who wail and whine the loudest. You have to beat your own drums to get attention. It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. Whites are not very good at this. Rather than dwell on woes of the past, they buck up, accept their hardships, and get on with their lives.
Posted by at 10:40 PM on September 3
I wonder what the reaction from the general public would be, if a major Hollywood filmmaker, like Steven Spielberg or Oliver Stone, made a movie about the capture and enslavement of Europeans by the corsairs, in North Africa.
For example, why not make a movie about Thomas Pellow? At the beginning of the movie, have a Britsh boy play the part of when he was first captured, sold as a slave, and forced to convert to Islam. Then as a man, the part could be played be Ewan Macgregor, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Elijah Wood, or maybe there is another suggestion of who could play this role.
Posted by Ross at 10:45 PM on September 3
Well, at least the topic of slavery is still alive and kicking, especially in africa. Perhaps the following link (better to read both pages) would be useful to those who study such things although islam is well known not only to condone slavery and to activly promote it, but only if muslims are the masters. Good idea about a movie but I can just imagine the black african protest groups in USA/UK objecting to our respective White governments and yelling ‘racist lies’ while their children happlily stab and shoot one another. I read a very informative book about pirates of the barbary coast many years ago. Sadly I forget the exact title but I recall the narrative describing the capture of American ships and the islamic explanation as quoted above.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200809030882.html
Posted by Yorkshireman at 12:16 AM on September 4
I’ve read two books about haiti. One was ‘Where black rules white’. It was done in the mold of de tocqueville’s ‘Democracy in America’. It had a bit of an AmRen, race realist, air to it, pointing out that Haiti wasn’t doing so well.
The other was about a semi-famous figure from the 1700’s - can’t remember his name, that was more of a true history book. The thing is, the guy was sent to the new world by the catholic church to document and report on evidence of colonial abuses and then report back to the Church. He was a lawyer, an advocate for the natives and the lower class.
You can guess which work is hard to find now, and which version is woven into history. What was simply a one sided, advocate-minded report of tales from the new world, was turned into true history.
There is a third version of events though. That told by the Haitians themselves. I believe the general in charge at the time declared that Haitian brutality against whites, killing all the white prisoners on the island in gruesome fashion, it was righteously justified being it was just a return of the brutality that had been visited upon blacks.
It is interesting that, on the island of Haiti, the extinction of the aboriginals there, came about faster and was finished more completely than on any island in the Caribbean. All at the hands of the white man, of course.
Posted by my favorite color is not in the rainbow at 12:25 AM on September 4
“or maybe there is another suggestion of who could play this role.”
Russell Crowe?
Posted by at 12:26 AM on September 4
“By contrast,look at how the blacks have multiplied in America! I’d rather pick cotton any day, than row a galley ship. No comparison!”
Another point is that work on cotton and sugar plantations was seasonal. People didn’t pick cotton all year round! There was plenty of free fime between the harvesting seasons. But work on a galley ship went on EVERY day … until you dropped.
Posted by at 12:31 AM on September 4
There is an old joke, that in the world of business, no one lies to you. They just don’t give you all the information!
This applies to this is issue. In the standard history, europeans are looked on as mad because they start conquering peaceful lands. The issue looks different when you realize the europeans are conquering ports and cities where moslem slavers are based. The european expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries looks different when you realize that protection from slavers not wealth was the prime motive for european expansion.
Hopefully, that will be taught in the schools after the Hmung feel good class.
Posted by flyingtiger at 1:30 AM on September 4
7.35pm that was a beautifully constructed and heartfelt message - I for one will answer the calls of our ancestors and ensure that their tragic story is heard by as many peple as possible.
I have read part of the White Gold book and found it both interesting and harrowing. More whites deserve to hear this unhappy story - and it may even act as a cure for the white guilt complex the Left prays upon.
Posted by James Y at 2:31 AM on September 4
“In point of fact, I’m sure Christian slaves were MUCH worse off than black slaves in America.”
Only in British North America would that be true. In Latin America, slaves were worked until they dropped dead and were continuously replaced. For many of them, it was like being in a gulag or concentration camp. There is no point in denying that.
Posted by Joe at 2:55 AM on September 4
Lets not forget the Europeans captured by muslim Turks as children, forced into Islam, brainwashed and sent back, as Janissaries, to slaughter their own people.
Posted by Geoff M at 3:11 AM on September 4
I think I see one major difference between slaves in North Africa and North America and that is families. Did the Muslims allow slaves to “marry” and raise families? Did they have an indigenous slave population that produced future slaves or were they forced to continue to raid to replenish their losses?
In the United States a slave was considered a valuable piece of property and was treated accordingly. The same hardly seems true for North Africa were a ready source of slaves was just a few days sail away. It would be easier to get slaves from across the Mediterranean than across the Atlantic.
Posted by Southern Hoosier at 6:34 AM on September 4
The media and the left will never admit anything that might cast Whites as the victims of non-Whites.
The media and the left would like to see Whites eliminated, and Whites’ money taken and given to non-Whites.
Posted by at 10:46 AM on September 4
Recently an abducted British girl was found in a hotel in Durban, South Africa. There have been many instances reported in the press here of white girls being abducted by Nigerians, who then get them hooked on drugs and working as prostitutes.
Posted by at 3:32 AM on September 5
“Recently an abducted British girl was found in a hotel in Durban, South Africa. There have been many instances reported in the press here of white girls being abducted by Nigerians”
At least she wasn’t eater, which has been a common fate of many adbuctee’s in Africa.
Posted by at 10:37 AM on September 5
The Corasairs and the muslim control of trade routes was the prime motivator for Christopher Columbus. Trade routes wer blocked from the east by muslim domination and from the south by the Corsairs. The only choice was to go west into the unknown.
I teach and this fact is never addressed in any history text I’ve seen.
I have mentioned this fact to my peers (white people) and they get very uncomfortable. They can’t believe it, they have been so indoctrinated into believing they are guilty.
A great movie would be “The Battle of Lepanto”.
Posted by Mikey at 2:41 AM on September 7
“In point of fact, I’m sure Christian slaves were MUCH worse off than black slaves in America.”
Only in British North America would that be true. In Latin America, slaves were worked until they dropped…
Posted by Joe
Very true. But it’s not PC to say so.
Several years ago, when the movie “Amistad” was out and that entire subject was receiving a great deal of media attention, I mentioned to a Puerto Rican colleague that the black slaves aboard the Cuban ship which they had commandeered chose to sail NORTHWARD to New England, distant though it was. Somehow, they must have known that they stood a much better chance there. They did NOT sail for (Spanish) Florida, although it was much closer. Nor south to Venezuela. Nor west to Mexico. They knew better. Instead, they headed straight north to New England (where they were ultimately set free). Their gamble paid off. They knew better than to sail into Spanish hands. They knew what their fate would have been.
The fellow (who had a small touch of Africa in his veins) got very huffy and indignant, and angrily dismissed my statment, implying that I was just spouting some kind of silly white racist nonsense.
Nevertheless, it remains an indisputable fact that they did not choose to go to Mexico or Venezuela; and if they had, they would not have been set free, as they were in Connecticut. Their fate would not have been a happy one.
“The Corasairs and the muslim control of trade routes was the prime motivator for Christopher Columbus. Trade routes were blocked from the east by muslim domination and from the south by the Corsairs. The only choice was to go west into the unknown.
I teach, and this fact is never addressed in any history text I’ve seen.”
You’re exactly right. Venice had been the great emporium for spices from the Orient — (a necessity in Europe, which had long winters, and at a time when there was no canning or refrigeration for food preservation). Venice had grown rich on the spice trade. But Moslem aggression and conquests in the Mideast cut off those trade routes and forced Columbus (and others) to go searching for new ones.
I’m glad you’re teaching that fact. I certainly hope you do.
A great movie would be “The Battle of Lepanto”.
Posted by Mikey
It would indeed! But do you think Hollywood could ever make it? If they did, I’m afraid it would be so utterly distorted that it would be unrecognizable — everything turned upside down.
Just imagine: … a wise, courageous black hero as the central figure (naturally), with wicked whites scheming and conniving against the virtuous, peaceful, highly civilized Turks who only wanted to be left alone to mind their own business.
Hollywood history!
Posted by ghw at 2:02 PM on September 7