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According to observers of the late 1500s and early 1600s, there were around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this time on the Barbary Coast - many in Tripoli, Tunis, and various Moroccan towns, but most of all in Algiers. The greatest number were sailors, taken with their ships, but a good many were fishermen and coastal villagers. Out of all these, the British captives were mostly sailors, and although they were numerous there were relatively fewer of them than of people from lands close to Africa, especially Spain and Italy. The unfortunate southerners were sometimes taken by the thousands, by slavers who raided the coasts of Valencia, Andalusia, Calabria and Sicily so often that eventually it was said that 'there was no one left to capture any longer'.

By extension, for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000 - this is only just over a tenth of the Africans taken as slaves to the Americas from 1500 to 1800, but a considerable figure nevertheless. White slaves in Barbary were generally from impoverished families, and had almost as little hope of buying back their freedom as the Africans taken to the Americas: most would end their days as slaves in North Africa, dying of starvation, disease, or maltreatment.

'I took boat to Youghal and then embarked on the vessel John Filmer, which set sail with 120 passengers. `But before we had lost sight of land, we were captured by Algerine pirates, who put all the men in irons.'

The very casualness of the account makes it clear just how commonplace unfortunates like Moontham and Dawes were in 17th-century Britain. Britons in later years have boasted that they 'never will be slaves,' but during these years they were enslaved all too often.

Slaves in Barbary could be black, brown or white, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish or Muslim. Contemporaries were too aware of the sort of people enslaved in North Africa to believe, as many do today, that slavery, whether in Barbary or the Americas, was a matter of race. In the 1600s, no one's racial background or religion automatically destined him or her for enslavement. Preachers in churches from Sicily to Boston spoke of the similar fates of black slaves on American plantations and white slaves in corsair galleys; early abolitionists used Barbary slavery as a way to attack the universal degradation of slavery in all its forms.

bluelovelady wrote:Just tell her "once a slave always a slave." that always makes black girls cry.

DonCorleone wrote:
Somalis are more purer then that but we suffer african american attacks on us because of their jealousy

once a slave always a slave

Vargen wrote:filthy adoons must be butchered

bluelovelady wrote:Just tell her "once a slave always a slave." that always makes black girls cry.

igotkatzngingersnapz wrote:

and various Moroccan towns,

hydrogen wrote:

igotkatzngingersnapz wrote:

and various Moroccan towns,

No wonder Morrocans have rough nigger hair. They raped innocent European girls to make their descendants whiter.

Zeivira wrote:

bluelovelady wrote:Just tell her "once a slave always a slave." that always makes black girls cry.

Dear Lord, did she really say this?!

hydrogen wrote:ima racist troll hear me roar.

igotkatzngingersnapz wrote:

Zeivira wrote:

bluelovelady wrote:Just tell her "once a slave always a slave." that always makes black girls cry.

Dear Lord, did she really say this?!

thissa classy joint

igotkatzngingersnapz wrote:

hydrogen wrote:ima racist troll hear me roar.

I'm a fake quoter, look at me in action.

igotkatzngingersnapz wrote: i haf dyslxya thot y i cont spll 4 sht

grandpakhalif wrote:i would like to admire the beauty of other men in peace