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The History of Slavery, Part 3: Christian Slaves and Muslim Masters—Barbary Pirates in the Mediterranean, 1500-1800
As the trans-Atlantic slave trade from sub-Saharan Africa to the Americas began to grow in the 1500s, there was another slave trade that operated on an even larger scale in the same time period. It was the capture of Europeans by north-African Muslims. Barbary Pirates enslaved an estimated 1 million Europeans in the period from 1500 to 1800.
Enslavement was a real possibility for anyone who traveled 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. In 1632, pirates captured the Irish city of…
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