View Full Version : Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters (Review by John Derbyshire)
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTRiMzYxMzhlMjUyM2UwMmNlZWVhNWU1Yzk2NGM3OTA=
September 13, 2006 4:55 AM
Fear of the Horizon
Barbary brutality.
By John Derbyshire
Presented with the word “slavery,” what comes to your mind? If you are an American, it is surely the race slavery that was a feature of life here for 250 years, that continued through the early decades of the Republic in some states, and that caused divisions that led to the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in our history.
That is as it should be. We naturally think of our own country first. Slavery, however, has been a feature of life in many societies all over the world, from the most ancient times down to the present day. There is hardly a place that has not been touched by it; hardly an ethny* that has not been subjected to this greatest of all indignities at one time or other. It was the memory of seeing English children in the slave market at Rome that inspired Gregory the Great to set about the conversion of the English; and I used to tease my Irish Republican friends — back when such things were still relevant, I mean, before they all got jobs trading financial futures — with the historical fact that in early-medieval Ireland, “British slave girl” was a unit of currency, equivalent to three cows.
We all sort of know this stuff in a piecemeal way, but now and then you read something that makes it vivid to you. I’ve had just that experience the last couple of days, reading Robert Davis’s 2003 book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters. The book is an account of the enslavement of untold numbers of European Christians by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast, that stretch of the North African shoreline currently under the sovereignty of Algeria, Tunisia, and western Libya. The phenomenon had its greatest flourishing in the 16th and 17th centuries, but it continued down to the early 19th century. American sailors were captured and enslaved in the early years of the Republic — a contributing cause of the Barbary Wars. That was very nearly the last gasp of the Barbary slavers, though.
We have accustomed ourselves to think of the race slavery of the Americas as being worse than the indiscriminate slavery of the ancient world. The slaves of old Rome looked no different from free citizens. In fact, when one of the emperors had the idea to make slaves wear some kind of distinctive dress, his advisers dissuaded him by pointing out that it might not be a good idea to let the slaves see plainly how numerous they were... Under race slavery, by contrast, what you were — the color of your skin — marked you out as suitable for slavery.
The Mediterranean slavery of the 16th and 17th centuries fell somewhere between those two. It was not race slavery, but nor was it indiscriminate. It was religious slavery. The human beings kidnapped and sold by the Barbary pirates were fair game because they were Christian. A Christian slave on the Barbary Coast could attain his freedom by converting to Islam, and many did so.
There was in fact, says Prof. Davis, something of religious revenge in the depredations of the Muslim slavers. The slave trade really got going after 1492, the year the last Muslims were expelled from Spain — what Osama bin Laden calls “the tragedy of Andalusia.” Says the author: “In Barbary, those who hunted and traded slaves certainly hoped to make a profit, but in their traffic in Christians there was also always an element of revenge, almost of jihad — for the wrongs of 1492, for the centuries of crusading violence that had preceded them, and for the ongoing religious struggle between Christian and Muslim that has continued to roil the Mediterranean world well into modern times.”
One of the most impressive parts of Prof. Davis’s book is his computation of the numbers of Europeans enslaved by these Muslim raiders. Combing through the historical sources, he concludes that there were about 35,000 enslaved Christians on the Barbary Coast at any one time. He then sets about estimating attrition rates. Slave numbers declined through four causes: death, escape, redemption (i.e. by ransom), and conversion to Islam. Davis gets annual rates from these causes of 17 percent, 1 percent, 2-3 percent, and 4 percent, respectively. This implies a total number of slaves, from the early 1500s to the late 1700s, of one to one and a quarter million. This is an astonishing number, implying that well into the 17th century, the Mediterranean slave trade was out-producing the Atlantic one. Numbers fell off thereafter, while the transatlantic trade increased; but in its time, the enslavement of European Christians by Muslim North Africans was the main kind of enslavement going on in the world.
Christians were captured by two methods. First, there was the seizing of ships by straightforward piracy. The ship itself became a prize along with its crew and passengers. Second, there were raids on the coasts of European countries. Spain, France, and Italy were worst affected, but the pirates sometimes ventured further afield. In 1627 they kidnapped 400 men and women from Iceland.
The victims in either case would be taken back to one of the Barbary ports — the main ones were Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli — and sold in a slave market, by auction. They ended up either as the domestic slaves of private persons, or as slaves owned by the state, to be put to work rowing galleys, or constructing public works. The first of these two fates was usually preferable, as there was some chance of humanity from a private owner. Prof. Davis’s account of the lives of galley slaves is hard to read, and state slaves employed on public works were not much better off. There was no large-scale private-enterprise slavery as in the plantations of the Old South. The North African states had little commercial culture.
The effect on the European coastal populations was dramatic. Entire areas were depopulated. The author even sketches out an argument that the culture of baroque Italy was determined in part by a turning inward from the terrors of coastal life — from the “fear of the horizon” that afflicted all the regions subject to slave raiding. He tells us (he is professor of Italian Social History at Ohio State University, by the way) that to this day there is an idiom in Sicilian dialect to express the general idea of being caught by surprise: pigliato dai turchi — “taken by the Turks.” The distress of those left behind, deprived of a husband of father, is painful to read about.
A side benefit of their work, for the slavers, was the opportunity to extract a ransom from the family of a well-born captive. Many European families beggared themselves to pay ransom for a family member taken by the slavers. The novelist Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, unfortunately had a letter from the Duke of Alba on him when he was captured at sea by slavers in 1575. This caused his captors to think his family must be very rich, and they demanded a hefty ransom that Cervantes’s family could not pay. The novelist was ransomed at last, after five years’ captivity, by the Trinitarians, one of the religious orders that made the ransoming of Christian slaves a part of their mission.
There was in fact an entire Mediterranean sub-economy based around the ransoming of slaves, which Europeans felt to be their Christian duty, and a proper object of charity, and which orders like the Trinitarians and Mercedarians made their main business. This sometimes had unintended consequences. Willingness to pay ransom on the part of nations, for example, encouraged the slavers to ask higher ransom prices for citizens of those nations: “By 1700 there is the clear beginning of an inflation spiral that would lead to ransoms more than doubling by the 1760s. Moreover, nations that let it be known that they were disposed to buy back their enslaved citizens more or less promptly ran the further risk of making prime targets out of their own ships and citizens — as the United States would find to its immense cost in the 1790s.” No wonder economics is called “the dismal science.”
It is an astonishing story, much too little known. I shall never feel the same about Rossini’s opera L’Italiana in Algeri. Prof. Davis’s book is full of all sorts of odd little sidebar facts and stories. Having been captured and sold at the slave market in Algiers, for example, a European might then be “sold on” to one of the trans-Sahara caravans, to end up the slave of a black African master. It may have happened — I am speculating; Davis does not discuss this — that such a slave might then have been swept up in one of the intra-African slave raids and ended up on the West African coast in a batch offered to European slavers...
There is a sex angle, too. Though only 5-10 percent of enslaved Christians were female, attractive young men and boys were believed, apparently with justification, to be in danger from the “horrid desires” and “abominable sins” of the Muslims, homosexuality in early-modern Europe being believed to be a particularly Muslim tendency. European religious commentators seem in fact not to have been able to make up their minds which was the greater peril for young male captives: sexual degradation, or religious conversion (i.e. to Islam).
The whole ghastly business has left few traces. There having been so few female slaves, Europeans seem to have contributed little to the North African gene pool, though our author notes that: “By the late 1700s visitors were noting how ‘the inhabitants of Algiers have a rather white complexion’...” The dreadful bagnos — prisons, essentially — where state-owned slaves were confined when not working or out on the galleys, are all gone. Nothing like the barracoons of the West African coast survives in North Africa. Even the great public works the slaves toiled at, like the harbor mole of Algiers, have been replaced by modern structures.
This whole terrible episode in European history has been forgotten. Is there any chance we might persuade the Muslim nations of North Africa to erect modest monuments to the million or so European Christians who suffered and died as slaves of their ancestors? My guess would be: no chance at all.
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*When I used this word in a book recently, my editors grumbled. “Don’t you mean ‘ethnic group’?” they asked. Possibly; but five keystrokes beats twelve in my book (if you see what I mean), and two syllables trumps three. And no, I didn’t make it up. It is the term used by Pierre van den Berghe in his book The Ethnic Phenomenon. Van den Berghe is a very respectable academic sociologist, and if “ethny” is good enough for him, it’s good enough for me
* * *
Many European families beggared themselves to pay ransom for a family member taken by the slavers. The novelist Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, unfortunately had a letter from the Duke of Alba on him when he was captured at sea by slavers in 1575. This caused his captors to think his family must be very rich, and they demanded a hefty ransom that Cervantes’s family could not pay. The novelist was ransomed at last, after five years’ captivity, by the Trinitarians, one of the religious orders that made the ransoming of Christian slaves a part of their mission.
Don Quixote contains a long story-within-a-story about the escape of few Christian slaves from North Africa.
Anyways, besides Cervantes, the most famous literary description of North African slavery is Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
See, before Crusoe gets landed on his deserted island he describes his earlier adventures:
http://www.deadmentellnotales.com/onlinetexts/robinson/crusoe1.shtml
Chapter III
Robinson's Captivity at Sallee—Escape with Xury—
Arrival at the Brazils
I was now set up for a Guiney Trader; and my Friend, to my great Misfortune, dying soon after his Arrival, I resolved to go the same Voyage again, and I embark'd in the same Vessel with one who was his Mate in the former Voyage, and had now got the Command of the Ship. This was the unhappiest Voyage that ever Man made; for tho' I did not carry quite 100 l. of my new gain'd Wealth, so that I had 200 left, and which I lodg'd with my Friend's Widow, who was very just to me, yet I fell into terrible Misfortunes in this Voyage; and the first was this, viz. Our Ship making her Course towards the Canary Islands, or rather between those Islands and the African Shore, was surprised in the Grey of the Morning, by a Turkish Rover of Sallee, who gave Chase to us with all the Sail she could make. We crowded also as much Canvas as our Yards would spread, or our Masts carry, to have got clear; but finding the Pirate gain'd upon us, and would certainly come up with us in a few Hours, we prepar'd to fight; our Ship having 12 Guns, and the Rogue 18. About three in the Afternoon he came up with us, and bringing to by Mistake, just athwart our Quarter, instead of athwart our Stern, as he intended, we brought 8 of our Guns to bear on that Side, and pour'd in a Broadside upon him, which made him sheer off again, after returning our Fire, and pouring in also his small Shot from near 200 Men which he had on Board. However, we had not a Man touch'd, all our Men keeping close. He prepar'd to attack us again, and we to defend our selves; but laying us on Board the next time upon our other Quarter, he entred 60 Men upon our Decks, who immediately fell to cutting and hacking the Decks and Rigging. We ply'd them with Small-shot, Half-Pikes, Powder-Chests, and such like, and clear'd our Deck of them twice. However, to cut short this melancholly Part of our Story, our Ship being disabled, and three of our Men kill'd, and eight wounded, we were obliged to yield, and were carry'd all Prisoners into Sallee, a Port belonging to the Moors.
...
Petr
English article.
I did not know before that the rhyme "Britons shall never be slaves" in "Rule Britannia" was inspired by Barbary Corsairs...
http://www.msbnews.co.uk/pirates06.htm
The Coming Of The Corsairs
by David Stanton
Stand atop Hengistbury Head and look out over the bay and you will be gazing on the scene of countless true-life episodes you can read about in the history books. For you are looking at a stretch of coast that has long stood in the front line of Britain’s history. The history books record men sailing, landing, and fighting battles along the coast here from the Romans onward - the Saxons, the Viking raiders, the Spanish Armada, and later the smugglers and their many battles with the authorities. However one chapter has been omitted so far from the standard histories – that of the Barbary corsairs. The usual reason given for this is that since it deals with slavery, the subject is politically touchy. Yet there is another reason: the sheer scale of the story makes it hard to believe today, for it was not a single event but a drama that lasted two centuries.
‘Britons Never Shall Be Slaves….’
‘Rule, Britannia, Britannia, rule the waves / Britons never shall be slaves’ goes the patriotic song, written in 1745 for a play about Alfred the Great. Alfred’s sea-battles against the invading Danes in The Solent, in Studland Bay and elsewhere along the south coast made him official founder of the Royal Navy, and the song has since become the RN’s instant-recognition ‘signature tune’, used in countless Hollywood films from Mutiny On The Bounty through Pirates of the Caribbean.
However it was not until the 19th century that the Royal Navy in any real sense began to ‘rule the waves’. To quote the online Wikipedia: ‘It is important to note that at the time it appeared, the song - recalling the era when, under Alfred the Great, the British ships outdid the Danish - was not a celebration of an existing state of naval affairs, but a hope and aspiration for the future. Though the Netherlands, which in the 17th Century presented a major challenge to British sea power, were obviously past their peak by 1745, Britain did not yet "rule the waves". The time was still to come when the Royal Navy would be an unchallenged dominant force on the oceans, protecting Britain and her burgeoning Empire from "haughty tyrants" and "foreign strokes".’
In the 18th century the line ‘Britons never shall be slaves’ would be very much a particular hope for the future. For over the preceding century, thousands of Britons had been snatched from the coast, taken to the slave markets of "haughty tyrants" to suffer ‘foreign strokes’ as they spent the rest of their lives under the lash as galley slaves of the Barbary corsairs. It was a situation that would only change in the next century when Britain built herself up into a world-class naval power – partly in response to this threat.
‘The Turks Are Coming!’
In the early 17th Century, the crews of fishing and merchant vessels began to vanish from the south coast. At first the reason for the disappearances was a mystery, for their boats were later found still afloat. But in 1617 the cause became clear. Every year, a Dorset fishing fleet set sail for the rich fishing grounds off Newfoundland. On its way back to Poole, the 1617 fishing fleet was attacked and nearly all the crews captured by a fleet of thirty foreign warships that survivors described as Turkish.
Turkey was indeed a naval power, but these were not official Turkish forces. Their 16th century predecessors had been, but in 1581 the Sultan in Constantinople gave up the idea of occupying Italy, and disbanded his invasion force. The survivors and their descendants were not simply left to survive as pirates, but had the status of corsairs - the Islamic version of the European ‘privateers’. Privateers, although pirates in all but name, operated under the protection of a license to plunder (called a letter of marque) issued by a monarch, Drake being an example of an English privateer (and slave-owner). Essentially they were authorised to operate against the monarch’s enemies, seizing their ships, cargoes and crews, to disrupt their trade and weaken them economically and militarily. The corsairs were authorised to raid all the coasts of Christendom.
To do this, they were allowed their own city-states, ruled by beys or local regents. Known collectively as the Barbary States, these existed along the stretch of North African coast that is now Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. Along this ‘Barbary Coast’ stood a series of well-fortified ports: Derne, Tunis, Tripoli, Tangiers, Salč or Sallee (Rabat), and most powerful, Algiers. From these bases, the corsairs soon ruled the western Mediterranean and routinely took Europeans captive for ransom. In 1585, Dorset’s MP, the Elizabethan courtier and sailor Sir Walter Raleigh, had reported English captives held for ransom on the Barbary Coast.
By 1619, they had captured over 300 ships off the south coast. To quote Gerald Norris's West Country Pirates And Buccaneers, after 1620 "often the south-western coast was practically blockaded by them." They halted the local fishing fleets along with the Newfoundland fleet on which Poole depended for its prosperity. The Victoria History Of The County Of Dorset says that in 1622 Weymouth and Lyme complained of economic ruin due to so many of their sailors being held to ransom on the Barbary coast. In 1625 Devon and Cornwall lost a thousand men to the corsairs. The population of England was then only a fraction of its present level, and the Mayor of Poole warned the King that in two years England would have no sailors left. In 1636, Poole, Weymouth and Lyme complained to the king that the coast was "infested" with "Turks" who had recently taken 87 ships and 1,160 men. Dorset historian David Burnett reports that in 1638, the corsairs even pillaged Poole. Altogether, an estimated 20,000 people would be snatched from the south coast - men, women and children. Most simply vanished, with no word as to their fate, but a few were ransomed by missionaries and returned to tell their tales. The men and boys were used mainly as galley slaves, around 200 per ship, chained to their oars till they died. The women and girls met a different fate, as servants or in the harems of the sultans or wealthy merchants.
There was little the government could do, for the early Navy was not equipped to destroy the corsair bases. As early as 1620 an English naval squadron under Sir Robert Mansell had been sent to ransom captives but found this to be impractical – he discovered there were 25,000 of them, with ransoms set at Ł200-300 each. In 1655 Cromwell sent Admiral Blake to bombard Algiers and Tunis, but the naval firepower of the time could make little impact on the Barbary fortresses. England at that time was divided by political schisms that would lead to civil war, and abolition and then restoration of the monarchy. On the one hand, there was no money to maintain a navy; on the other, the political situation led to many young men fleeing England to make a living elsewhere. These exiles or fugitives would prove the missing factor which explained what seems literally far-fetched about this episode - why and how corsair fleets were managing to sail all the way from the Mediterranean, seize entire fleets or even church congregations (as at Penzance), and return.
'Turning Turk' - The Renegadoes
Some of those fleeing England were political exiles willing to offer aid to England’s enemies. They could have been convicted felons sentenced to transportation to the Caribbean as indentured labour – in effect as slaves. After the abortive 1685 Monmouth Rising, dozens of Dorset men against whom Judge Jeffreys could not find evidence to hang them at his Bloody Assizes were sentenced to this type of slavery simply for being – suspiciously - absent from their place of work. Others might be sailors, perhaps seized by navy press gangs to provide years of forced labour aboard His Majesty’s ships, who had managed to desert in some foreign port. These exiles were the answer to the question, how did the corsairs find their way safely here and back? How did they know where to land to obtain water, food and other necessary supplies?
With different tides (and this area has a double tide), hidden rocks and shallows, coastal navigation is always treacherous, so that foreign vessels usually employ a local pilot to steer the ship. This is where the exiles came in. They had one marketable asset to sell: they knew where there were rich pickings to be had on an unguarded coast, and they knew the coast’s landmarks, its tides, its hazards, its bays and anchorages. These men who allied with the corsairs became known as renegadoes – the original of our word renegade. The BBC History article ‘British Slaves on the Barbary Coast’) estimates the number of renegadoes by 1680 at 15,000 - including half the corsair captains.
The Victoria History Of The County Of Dorset adds that "they found Swanage and Studland convenient haunts." This suggests the English renegades and their Moorish associates were not just guiding the corsairs here but bringing them ashore – and getting a friendly welcome ashore at local inns. The area had a history of ‘victualling’ pirates, and associated lawlessness. (An interesting historical footnote is that in the 19th century, Poole residents would refer to Swanage residents ‘Turks,’ commenting on their suspiciously ‘swarthy’ looks.) The Victoria History Of The County Of Dorset adds "The inability to deal with these human vermin was only one indication of the general rottenness of administration."
Others made captive by the Barbary corsairs could escape life as a galley slave by “turning Turke”. This involved learning the Koran, converting to Islam, being circumcised, adopting a Muslim name, and working with the corsairs. Whether willing or not, the renegadoes were instrumental in the rise of the corsairs, for they assisted them not only as pilots but as ship-builders. Corsair vessels were originally old-style oared galleys, rowed by slaves, and not designed for Atlantic voyages. Many of the original renegadoes were from Holland, a rival mercantile power with whom England was then at war. In 1617, when the first major raid was mounted, the admiral of the Algerian corsair fleet had the Islamic-Dutch name of Süleyman Reis De Veenboer (reis meaning admiral). They also used small sailing vessels called xebecs, the remains of one sunk in the 1630s being found 600 yards off Salcombe in the 1990s. The 7-year underwater excavation of its remains (cannons and gold pieces) was the subject of the 2003 BBC-TV ‘TimeWatch’ documentary White Slaves, Pirate Gold ( ), the archaeologists’ conclusion being it had been captained by a Dutch renegado.
The earliest notable English renegado on record was Captain John Ward (c.1553-1623?), alias ‘Issouf Reis’, an ex-Navy petty officer who became the equivalent of a millionaire as the "arch-pirate of Tunis." After his fleet was attacked at Tunis by a joint French-Spanish force and his offer of Ł40,000 in exchange for a pardon from James I was refused, he “turned Turke.” It was this conversion to Islam that ballads and plays about him focussed on, but his real importance to history is indicated by his Dictionary Of National Biography entry. It comments it was he who “introduced the Barbary corsairs to the advantages for piracy of the berton or heavily armed square-rigged ship.” It was the use of these larger seagoing vessels that now allowed the corsairs to sail as far as northern Europe.
‘White Slavery’
The July 2000 Radio 4 documentary “Turks On The Coast” put the number of captives between 1600 and 1800 at over 100,000, but a more recent estimate by an American historian has put the number of Europeans enslaved 1530-1780 at 1.25 million. Pressure grew on politicians to act as ‘captivity narratives’ and other accounts began to circulate, of suffering, degradation, enforced conversion of Christians by ‘heathen’ Moors, circumcision and even castration. (In 1808, a group of soldiers who had been captured by the Turks visited Dorset exhibiting how they had been castrated, Dorset historian Rodney Legg’s theory being this was an outcome of England’s disastrous 1807 attempt to land troops at Constantinople.)
The response of England and other European powers to the corsair depredations was a mixture of negotiation, bribery, and naval threat. A search of the online version of The Dictionary Of National Biography using the keyword ‘Barbary’ turns up a hundred references to English naval officers and diplomats of the era involved in some aspect of the problem. These evidence an endless cycle of diplomatic meetings, treaties, ransoming captives, paying annual tributes, and when the treaties broke down, sending naval squadrons down to launch futile bombardments of heavily-fortified Barbary ports.
Despite the Christian horror at the idea of ‘white slavery’, slavery itself was an established part of British history. Britain’s recorded history had begun with the Romans arriving and enslaving the Celtic Britons, something traditionally been regarded by English historians as a beneficial civilising event on the grounds the Celts were then ‘only’ natives. And now, in the 18th Century, the English aristocracy were beginning to trade in slaves themselves on an even larger scale. The first of what would become a total, between 1500 and 1800, of over twelve million slaves from West Africa were already being shipped westward as forced labour for the new colonial plantations in the Caribbean and America, to harvest crops of rum, tobacco, and sugar. The leading journalist of the day, William Cobbett, once said he never partook of these three commodities as all were the products of slave labour. Along the local seafront, the land-owning Rose family whose family seaside villa was ‘Sandhills’ (now HQ of the caravan park on Mudeford seafront) had interests in a Caribbean plantation, as did Captain Marryat, the naval hero and writer of nautical fiction who stayed at his brother’s house along the coast at Chewton Glen.
England’s Protestant Reformation, her colonial wars with its European rivals, the American and French revolutions, and the wars with Napoleon had kept the Navy preoccupied with other threats from the time of the Armada though to Waterloo in 1815. These conflicts had also forced England into a naval arms race, and after 1815 the Royal Navy was finally freed from other European wars to tackle the long-standing issue of the corsairs.
The corsairs were then still very much in the public mind. In 1814, when Byron published his poem "The Corsair", all 10,000 copies sold out in a day. Coast raids had become less common in the 18th century (the last recorded is in 1760), but the problem of men being seized at sea remained, and was of local concern, Dorset having a strong sea-faring tradition. Poole was the commercial ‘capital’ of Newfoundland colony, and a number of senior Navy men were from Dorset: three of Nelson’s captains at Trafalgar were Dorset men, including his flag-captain Hardy. Prime Minister Pitt’s advisor Sir George Rose, Christchurch’s chief landowner and MP, was a former Royal Navy midshipman who had been wounded in action. It was Rose that Nelson dined with the evening before he sailed for Trafalgar. Pitt also came down to visit Rose, and there is little doubt one of the issues they would have discussed here was the possibility of the Navy tackling the corsair bases.
At the time, America had also opted for a naval solution to the corsairs issue. It had already been forced to pay over $2 million in tributes since 1783 (when it had ceased to be under British protection). With ransoms running at several thousand dollars a head, President Jefferson determined in 1798 to form a proper Navy to besiege the corsairs. While the European powers battled Napoleon, the new US Navy went into action, blockading Tripoli from 1803 to 1805. Their new Marine Corps would also acquire battle honours in this campaign, referred to in the US Marine Corps hymn, “…to the shores of Tripoli,” when in 1804 they sent a force overland to seize it commando-style. The US Navy also besieged the other chief Barbary stronghold of Algiers in 1812.
Some US historians have since claimed this 1804 raid and 1812 siege put a permanent end to the Barbary slave trade. They have also claimed Algiers was a British puppet state, incited by British “perfidy” to only seize the ships of Britain’s enemy, America (in the War of 1812). The US claim however is somewhat overstated, as any warning sent out by the 1804 military intervention was undermined by a political decision to continue paying tributes. And in 1812, on payment of a legal settlement of compensation and the return of some captives, the US Navy left Algiers intact enough to carry on as a slave port, capturing slaves from around the Mediterranean states. America would continue paying tributes to other Barbary states until 1816.
Naval Engagement
That same year, almost two centuries after the first raid on the Dorset coast, the Royal Navy finally took decisive action, with the two Algiers expeditions of Captain Pellew, Lord Exmouth. If on July 25th, 1816 you had been able to stand atop Hengistbury Head, you would have seen passing along the horizon the Royal Navy task force that would end this threat to the south coast, headed for the Mediterranean, finally with a clear mandate to destroy, as an example to the others, what Lord Exmouth called ‘the most violent’ Barbary state.
This task force was a specially-formed squadron of 19 ships, manned by nearly a thousand volunteers, including local smugglers. There were three heavy frigates, two light frigates, five ‘gun-brigs,’ four of the new ‘bomb’ vessels carrying Royal Marine artillery, and carried on board the ships were a flotilla of launches fitted out as gun-, rocket-, and mortar-firing auxiliaries. Last came five great ‘line-of-battle’ ships, including two of the new three-deckers – the dreadnoughts of their day, of which Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory is a surviving example. Nelson himself had said 25 of these wooden battle-cruisers would be needed against Algiers, and the Admiralty had offered unlimited resources. But Exmouth insisted that this smaller and more manoeuvrable force of mixed-armament vessels was what he need to fulfil his plan.
For this was actually the sequel to his diplomatic and reconnaissance mission to Algiers earlier that year. Then, he had conducted diplomatic negotiations and received concessions including the release of many prisoners, at Algiers and Tunis. But he had been unable to obtain a treaty putting an end to the practice of enslaving Christians, and he himself had been threatened with death. He had no authorisation to mount an attack at that time, but knew that reconnaissance was seldom wasted. He had thus ordered a secret survey plan be made of the Algiers fortifications, to plan what fire-power would be needed for an effective bombardment – hence the specialised force he now brought back with him.
The great Moorish fortress of Algiers was defended by over 500 fixed cannon, with a resident corsair squadron in its harbour of nine frigates and corvettes and three dozen gunboats, and a garrison of 40,000 men. Exmouth had his 19 ships, plus 5 Dutch Navy frigates which had joined him at Gibraltar. Using his intelligence sketches of the fortifications, he stationed his 24 ships where the enemy’s fixed cannon were least effective. His own cannon, artillery, rockets and mortars were thus able to rain destruction on the port for nine hours until it was in ruins and ablaze. HMS Impregnable, Albion, Superb, Glasgow, Diana and the other men-of-war fired over 50,000 rounds of cannon shot while the Royal Marines on-board artillery bombarded the harbour with nearly a thousand shells, rockets and bombs.
Out of a naval force of a thousand men, over a hundred were killed and most of the rest wounded, but when they made ready to begin a second day’s bombardment, the enemy surrendered unconditionally, having already lost some 7,000 men. It was then an unparalleled bombardment, his biographer noting the Battle Of Algiers was still recognised, in the 1850s, as “the most memorable occasion on which men-of-war have attacked fortifications.” Altogether, Exmouth’s two expeditions freed over 3,000 slaves, for he was commissioned to act on behalf of other European states, and the treaty he now imposed permanently abolished the seizing and ransoming of any Christians.
Epilogue
The long campaign against the Barbary corsairs is today largely a forgotten episode. The corsairs' final appearance on English soil in 1760, as captives themselves (the result of a shipwreck off Penzance) would be turned in 1880 into a famous comic operetta by Gilbert & Sullivan, with the story sanitized so that the ‘pirates’ became noblemen in disguise. But the corsairs are about to return to the spotlight. Hollywood is making a $100 million adventure film, starring Keanu Reaves, dramatising how the war against the corsairs was really won by America, marking its emergence as a world power via its new Navy and Marine Corps. Tripoli will dramatise the US Marine Corps’ pioneering 1804 overland mission. For there is an obvious modern parallel here with events in the mid-East since the 1970s Iran and Iraq hostage-taking episodes, and with America’s current military presence in the region. The Marines’ land attack on the Libyan capital was indeed the precedent for now-familiar American global strategy. It represented the debut of a newly ascendant military power determined to pursue a strategy of invading other countries when diplomatic solutions fail to produce the desired result.
In the end, the war with the corsairs would mark the beginning of a new world order.
Here's a more detailed description of the most far-ranging Saracen raid of the all, to Iceland.
Notice how only about one-tenth of these hundreds of captives came back...
http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/search/news/Default.asp?ew_0_a_id=238745
10/21/2006 | 00:00
Walking in the footsteps of pirating “Turks”
An information post about Tyrkjarániđ, the infamous slave taking of 1627 will be unveiled in Grindavík, in southwest Iceland, today.
Afterwards, visitors can take a guided historical tour around the area and walk in the footsteps of the pirating “Turks,” who actually came from North Africa, Morgunbladid reports.
In the summer of 1627 a band of pirates sailed to Iceland and raided the settlements on the southwest coast of Iceland and in the Westman Islands.
The pirates abducted around 400 people and sold them on slave markets. Many died of diseases during the first few months, others converted to Islam and 40 slaves were set free.
The most famous slave is Gudrídur Símonardóttir, better known as Tyrkja-Gudda, who returned to Iceland after a decade of slavery in Algeria.
After her return, Tyrkja-Gudda was sent to Denmark to relearn her native tongue and the Christian way of life. She spent the winter of 1636-1637 in Copenhagen.
One of her teachers was Hallgrímur Pétursson, an Icelandic theology student. They fell in love, got married and moved back to Iceland.
Later, Pétursson became a priest and one of Iceland’s most treasured poets. Hallgrímskirkja, the main church in Reykjavík, is named after him.
Here's more about Pétursson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallgr%C3%ADmur_P%C3%A9tursson
Tackleberry
09-23-07, 17:30
One more thing for the libs in our would to claim as being false. After all, how can a white be a victim???
History repeats itself. It is happening world-wide.
Pretty little white girls being kidnapped and shipped back to serve in various mulsim harums in the mid-east has been a problem in our modern world as well.
Many soldiers have told of their experiences in Saudi Arabia, being treated like kings around the time of Desert Storm. They would get to go to different palaces, except for ones that had things in them they were not supposed to see. When they asked about them, they were to told not to worry about it. It is my understanding that our government kept some of these things secret to avoid polical problems. They were told of many white skinned, blue and green eyed girls being kept in them by the locals.
Some statistics:
Europe under attack
'When we had arrived [in Cork], I made a request to Lord Inchaquoin to give me a passport for England. 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.'
So wrote the Reverend Devereux Spratt - carried off in April 1641 for several years' bondage in Algiers, while attempting a simple voyage across the Irish Sea from County Cork to England. Spratt's experience has been largely forgotten now, though it was far from unique in his day.
In the first half of the 1600s, Barbary corsairs - pirates from the Barbary Coast of North Africa, authorised by their governments to attack the shipping of Christian countries - ranged all around Britain's shores. In their lanteen-rigged xebecs (a type of ship) and oared galleys, they grabbed ships and sailors, and sold the sailors into slavery. Admiralty records show that during this time the corsairs plundered British shipping pretty much at will, taking no fewer than 466 vessels between 1609 and 1616, and 27 more vessels from near Plymouth in 1625. As 18th-century historian Joseph Morgan put it, 'this I take to be the Time when those Corsairs were in their Zenith'.
Unfortunately, it was hardly the end of them, even then. Morgan also noted that he had a '...List, printed in London in 1682' of 160 British ships captured by Algerians between 1677 and 1680. Considering what the number of sailors who were taken with each ship was likely to have been, these examples translate into a probable 7,000 to 9,000 able-bodied British men and women taken into slavery in those years.
...
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'.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_01.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_02.shtml
Petr
Now, it may claimed that I have been citing biased, "Islamophobic" sources on this thread.
Very well, the following extract comes from a PC academic work, and it cites a Muslim scholar who intentionally tries to make Islam look as nice as possible:
Puritanism and its Discontents, edited by Laura Lunger Knoppers. Newark: University of Delaware Press London: Associated University Presses, 2003
p. 168
In an important recent study, Nabil Matar suggests that English captives enslaved to the Ottomans between 1550 and 1685 numbered in the thousands during any particular year. The threat of violent attack was a dominant reality, not only for traders in the Mediterranean but also for anyone who lived along the British coast. Especially before the strengthening of the English navy under the Commonwealth, raiders could even penetrate along the Thames and the Severn and as far north as Edinburgh. The economic and social effects were substantial: the cost of supporting and ransoming captives; the breakup of families; and the destitution of wives and children that followed the loss of a breadwinner. 8
Captain John Smith of later "Pocahontas" fame was one of the Britons captured during this period, although not by corsairs as most others:
http://www.americanhistory.com/history/CaptainJohnSmith/cjs02.html
These missiles of Smith's invention were flung at midnight, when the alarum was given, and "it was a perfect sight to see the short flaming course of their flight in the air, but presently after their fall, the lamentable noise of the miserable slaughtered Turkes was most wonderful to heare."
http://www.americanhistory.com/history/CaptainJohnSmith/cjs03.html
Smith was promoted to captain while fighting for the Habsburgs in Hungary, in the campaign of Mihai Viteazul in 1600-1601. After the death of Mihai Viteazul, he fought for Radu Şerban in Wallachia against Ieremia Movilă, but, in 1602 he was wounded, captured and sold as a slave. Smith claimed the Turk (presumably hoping Smith would be a tutor in the short term, and a payer of a ransom in the long term) sent him as a gift to his sweetheart, who fell in love with Smith. He then was taken to Crimea, from where he escaped from the Ottoman lands into Muscovy then on to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Smith then traveled through Europe and Northern Africa, returning to England during 1604. Prior to his capture, Smith had defeated and killed three Turkish commanders in three duels, for which he was knighted by the Transylvanian Prince Sigismund Báthory and given a horse. This all happened during the years 1601 and 1604.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smith_of_Jamestown
Petr
Petr,
According to one account I read Smith also rescued an English slave girl, he met while he was a slave in Ottoman Empire and took her back to England.
He first left home at the age of 16, after his father died. By 1602, the future hero of Jamestown was a soldier of fortune in Romania hired by Austria to fight the Ottoman Turks. As the Austrians besieged an Ottoman stronghold, the Muslim commander, Lord Turbashaw, issued a challenge. He would come out and meet any Christian foe in a horseman-vs.-horseman duel, one life against another.
With trumpets sounding and ladies cheering, Smith, 22, donned a knight's armor and accepted the challenge. On the first thrust of his lance, he pierced the Turk's armor at its weakest spot, the facemask visor that allowed the rider to see. For a gift to his general, Smith severed the Ottoman's head—a deed that enraged Turbashaw's friend Grualgo.
The next day, Smith did battle with Grualgo. The Englishman won again, this time with a well-placed pistol ball that unhorsed the Turk. Smith collected Grualgo's head, too.
Smith then challenged any other foe. Hence, a duel with a Turk named Mulgro, using battle-axes. Mulgro's ax hit so hard that Smith was left with only a small sword. But "beyond all mens expectation, by Gods assistance," he dodged the next blow and stabbed the Turk in the back. The Ottoman fell and, in Smith's words, "lost his head, as the rest had done."
As a reward, the young captain received an insignia bearing three Turk heads. He was wearing it when a "dismall battell" a few months later left him wounded and prostrate amid thousands of corpses. Pillagers noticed the insignia, judged Smith a man of esteem thus worth money, and sold him into slavery. He ended up on a Turkish farm where his head was shaved and an iron ring put around his neck. One day as he threshed grain, his master rode by to "beat, spurne, and revile" him. Smith clubbed his oppressor to death with a thresher, donned the man's clothes, and—with iron ring still around his neck—rode his horse to friendly Russia.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070121/29smith.htm
“He could not possibly have written as he did about Hungary without having lived through the events he described,” Dr. Striker has concluded. “It is time we gave him full credit for being not only a valiant fighter, but an acute historian and chronicler as well.”
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1958/6/1958_6_28.shtml
Petr
Braveheart
12-26-07, 13:17
Here's a more detailed description of the most far-ranging Saracen raid of the all, to Iceland.
Notice how only about one-tenth of these hundreds of captives came back...
http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/search/news/Default.asp?ew_0_a_id=238745
10/21/2006 | 00:00
Walking in the footsteps of pirating “Turks”
An information post about Tyrkjarániđ, the infamous slave taking of 1627 will be unveiled in Grindavík, in southwest Iceland, today.
Afterwards, visitors can take a guided historical tour around the area and walk in the footsteps of the pirating “Turks,” who actually came from North Africa, Morgunbladid reports.
In the summer of 1627 a band of pirates sailed to Iceland and raided the settlements on the southwest coast of Iceland and in the Westman Islands.
The pirates abducted around 400 people and sold them on slave markets. Many died of diseases during the first few months, others converted to Islam and 40 slaves were set free.
Certainly the Icelanders were never expecting such an attack. After centuries of isolation on their island, they lost their warrior spirit, their swords collected dust, and they were easy prey for the African slave traders. Still, it is hard for me to imagine that 400 White Icelanders were taken captive...were they not the descendants of Vikings? Did they not put up significant resistance to the Africans?
How sad to think that on one day, the Icelanders were content and at ease in their homeland, and on the next they were chained inside a slave ship bound for Africa. We can only imagine what kind of abuse the women and children were subjected to at the hands of the Moors. Sad, sad.
Braveheart and Petr,
On a related note:
Guđríđur Símonardóttir (1598 – December 18, 1682) was one of 242 people abducted from the Westman Islands, Iceland in 1627. The attacks, by Barbary Pirates, came to be known as The Turkish abductions and Guđríđur became known as Tyrkja-Gudda.
Guđríđur was the wife of a fisherman and a mother. After her abduction she was sold by the pirates as a slave and concubine in Algeria. She was among the very few who were bought back by king Christian IV of Denmark, returning to Iceland almost a decade later.
She was then sent to Denmark along with some other former slaves to relearn her religion and native tongue. There she was taught by Hallgrímur Pétursson, who was then a theology student. After getting pregnant by him, and finding out that her husband had died, she married Hallgrímur.
The other Icelanders looked down on Guđríđur and saw her as a whore and heathen. She was twice as old as Hallgrímur, which was considered a disgrace.
Braveheart
01-04-08, 20:58
After her abduction she was sold by the pirates as a slave and concubine in Algeria.
Of course. So the lust that non-White men feel for our women is not a new phenomena. I don't know what's more disgusting: how so many White women are freely giving themselves to non-White males, or how nearly all White men are too spineless to do or say anything about it, for fear of being called "racist".
Braveheart,
Yes, it is disgusting, sometimes the idea of honor killing looks good.
As said before, Captain John Smith escaped and then went back to save a blued-eyed blond English girl from Ottoman perverts, he had a spine. I wish I could find the story on line somewhere, I read it in a book a few year back, I would post it.
According to one account I read Smith also rescued an English slave girl, he met while he was a slave in Ottoman Empire and took her back to England.
Another dramatic source - the memoirs of a captured sailor-boy that were very popular in the 18th century England, going through five editions before 1750:
Joseph Pitts (1663–1735?) was, by his own account, around fourteen or fifteen years old when he became a sailor. Only a few short voyages into his career, Pitts and the rest of the crew of his ship, the Speedwell, were captured off the coast of Spain by Algerian pirates in 1678. The Speedwell, heavily laden with fish from Newfoundland, was unable to escape. The Algerians took her crew as their prize, sank her, then repeated this tactic with four other small English ships (each with 5- to 6-man crews) and one Dutch vessel, before sailing on to the city of Algier, where the majority of the captives were sold as slaves at public auction.
Joseph Pitts spent more than fifteen years in captivity. He served three successive Patroons, or owners, with whom he traveled to Cairo and Alexandria, as well as to sacred Islamic sites at Mecca and Medina. Unlike many English captives, Pitts was never ransomed by a British consul. After his escape from Smyrna in 1693, it took Pitts nearly a year to return to England (much of his European travel was done on foot), and his misfortunes did not end with his captivity: first, he was robbed by German soldiers, who accused him of being a French spy; then, on his first night back on English soil, Pitts was captured by an impressment gang, who threw him into prison for refusing to go to sea in the King's Service. It was only through the intervention of an aristocratic patron (Sir William Falkener, of the Smyrna Company) that Pitts was finally freed to return to his beloved Exeter.
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/18century/topic_4/pitts.htm
The above link has some excerpts from Pitts' memoirs - like how one of his owners "persuaded" him to convert to Islam. Muslims are ever so subtle in theological matters...
I spake something before of the Cruelties exercised upon me by the Turks, but now shall give a more particular Account of them; which were so many and so great, that I being then but young too, could no longer endure them, and therefore turn'd Turk to avoid them.
GOD BE MERCIFUL TO ME A SINNER!
* * *
[O]n a certain Day, when my Patroon's Barber came to trim him, I being there to give Attendance, my Patroon bid me kneel down before him, which I did; he then ordered the Barber to cut off my Hair with his Scissers; but I mistrusting somewhat of their Design, strugled with them; but by stronger Force my Hair was cut off, and then the Barber went about to shave my Head, my Patroon all the while holding my Hands: I kept shaking my Head, and my Patroon kept striking me in the Face. After my Head, with much-adoe, was shaved, my Patroon would have me take off my Cloths, and put on the Turkish Habit: I told him plainly I would not. Whereupon I was forthwith hal'd away to another Tent, in which we kept our Provision; where were two Men, viz. the Cook and the Steward; one of the which held me while the other stript me, and put on me the Turkish Garb. I all this while kept crying and weeping; and told my Patroon, that although he had chang'd my Habit, yet he could never change my Heart. The Night following, before he lay down to sleep, he call'd me and bid me kneel down by his Bed-side, & then used Entreaties that I would gratifie him in renouncing my Religion. I told him it was against my Conscience; and withal, desired him to sell me, and buy another Boy, who perhaps might more easily be won; but as for my part, I was afraid I should be everlastingly damn'd if I complied with his Request. He told me, he would pawn his Soul for mine; and many other importunate Expressions did he use. At length I desired him to let me go to bed, and I would pray to God, and if I found any better Reasons suggested to my mind than what I then had, to turn, by the next Morning, I did not know what I might do; but if I continued in the same mind I was, I desired him to say no more to me on that Subject. This he agreed to, and so I went to Bed. But my Patroon (whatever aild him) having not Patience to stay 'till the Morning for my Answer, he awoke me in the Night, and ask'd me what my Sentiments now were. I told him they were the same as before. Then he took me by the Right-hand, and endeavoured to make me hold up the Fore-finger, as thy usually do when they speak those Words, [viz. La illabi illallah Mohammet Resul-allah] which initiates them Turks (as I have related before) but I did with all my might bend it down; so that he saw nothing was to be done with me without Violence; upon which he presently call'd two of his Servants, and commanded them to tye up my Feet with a Rope to the Post of the Tent; and when they had so done, he with a great Cudgel fell a beating of me upon my bare Feet. He being a very strong Man, and full of Passion, his Blows fell heavy indeed; and the more he beat me, the more chafed and enraged he was; and declared, that, in short, if I would not turn, he would beat me to death. I roar'd out to feel the Pain of his cruel Strokes; but the more I cry'd, the more furiously he laid on upon me; and to stop the Noise of my Crying, he would stamp with his Feet on my Mouth; at which I beg'd him to dispatch me out of the way; but he continued beating me. After I had endured this merciless Usage so long, 'till I was ready to faint and die under it, and saw him as mad & implacable as ever, I beg'd him to forbear and I would turn. And breathing a while, but still hanging by the Feet, he urg'd me again to speak the Words; yet loath I was, and held him in suspence a while; and at length told him, that I could not speak the Words. At which he was more enrag'd than before, and fell at me again in a most barbarous manner. After I had received a great many Blows a second time, I beseech'd him agin, to hold his Hand, and gave him fresh hopes of my turning Mohammetan; and after I had taken a little more Breath, I told him as before, I could not do what he desired. And thus I held him in suspence three or four times; but at last, seeing his Cruelty towards me insatiable, unless I did turn Mohammetan, through Terrour I did it, and spake the Words as usual, holding up the Fore-finger of my Right-hand; and presently I was had away to a Fire, and care was taken to heal my Feet (for they were so beaten, that I was not able to go upon them for several Days) and so I was put to Bed.
(129–130; 138–140)
Real Midnight Express stuff.
And finally, can you believe this chutzpah: :mad: a Muslim writer in modern leftist English newspaper uses Pitts as an excuse to wax poetic about the beauties of Islamic pilgrimage, without bothering to describe exactly how Pitts was converted:
Roads to God
The 20,000 or so British hajjis making the journey next week will share (Pitts') intentions. Having been over to the other side they will know more than ever before that the service of God is all that matters.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/mar/11/religion
In reality, after gaining his liberty Pitts was free to give his rather unpoetic opinion about Islam:
In another account, Joseph Pitts simply declares that "indeed their whole religion is a miscellany of popery, Judaism, and the gentilism of the Arabs." Being held captive by the Other is not going to win you over to their culture.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/573/bo5.htm
Petr
Pretty little white girls being kidnapped and shipped back to serve in various mulsim harums in the mid-east has been a problem in our modern world as well.
Several years back 20/20 (the TV investigative magazine show) had a segment on how the Sultan of Brunei and his brother kept a harem of Western girls to service themselves and their male guests. They were initially lured with a tempting modeling contract, including a large up-front payment, but once there their passports were confiscated and they were kept essentially as sex slaves. This sort of thing comes very naturally to non-white, non-Western men. We Western women are quite spoiled (and naďve) about such things.
More...
The Secrets of the Speaking Stones
By Matthias Schulz
The graveyard of the "speaking stones" on the North Sea island of Amrum is the final resting place of drowned sailors, whale harpooners and even slave traders. But now this unique burial ground is in danger of falling into decay...
Hark Olufs, a cabin boy who fell into the clutches of “Turkish pirates” in 1724. He was sold on the slave market of Algiers. This was not uncommon. At the time, the Barbary States of North Africa were conducting large-scale raids on the seaborne commerce of Christian nations. “I am beaten black and blue every day,” complained a prisoner from the German town of Lübeck.
Olufs from Amrum did much better. He prayed to Allah and obediently cared for his master’s mulberry tree. And he calmly endured the cutting of his foreskin. Afterwards, he rose from lackey to become the treasurer of the bey of Constantine and commander-in-chief of his cavalry. Twelve years later, Olufs sailed back to his homeland and returned to the Christian faith.1 (http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,565755,00.html)
When Benjamin Franklin started to develop abolitionist sentiments, he found it useful to employ the Barbary Corsairs phenomenon as a rhetorical device in ridiculing pro-slavery mentality:
In the last public act before his death, Benjamin Franklin parodied a proslavery speech in Congress by comparing it to a fictitious proslavery address by a North African Muslim pirate named Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim. Like proslavery southerners, the Algerian argued that he could not accept the end of Christian slavery because it would hurt the interests of the Algerian state, unfairly deprive Muslim slave masters of property, and release dangerous slaves into a vulnerable society. Franklin’s salvo against slavery was published in 1790 in major northern newspapers.1
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8828.html
Here's the whole pseudonymous Franklin article:
http://www.jmu.edu/madison/center/main_pages/madison_archives/era/african/elite/trade.htm
On the Slave-Trade
To the Editor of the Federal Gazette
March 23d, 1790
Sir,
Reading last night in your excellent Paper the speech of Mr. Jackson in Congress against their meddling with the Affair of Slavery, or attempting to mend the Condition of the Slaves, it put me in mind of a similar One made about 100 Years since by Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim, a member of the Divan of Algiers, which may be seen in Martin's Account of his Consulship, anno 1687. It was against granting the Petition of the Sect called Erika, or Purists who pray'd for the Abolition of Piracy and Slavery as being unjust. Mr. Jackson does not quote it; perhaps he has not seen it. If, therefore, some of its Reasonings are to be found in his eloquent Speech, it may only show that men's Interests and Intellects operate and are operated on with surprising similarity in all Countries and Climates, when under similar Circumstances. The African's Speech, as translated, is as follows.
"Allah Bismillah,&c. God is great, and Mahomet is his Prophet."
"Have these Erika considered the Consequences of granting their Petition? If we cease our Cruises against the Christians, how shall we be furnished with the Commodities their Countries produce, and which are so necessary for us? If we forbear to make Slaves of their People, who in this hot Climate are to cultivate our Lands? Who are to perform the common Labours of our City, and in our Families? Must we not then be our own Slaves? And is there not more Compassion and more Favour due to us as Mussulmen, than to these Christian Dogs? We have now about 50,000 Slaves in and near Algiers. This Number, if not kept up by fresh Supplies, will soon diminish, and be gradually annihilated. If we then cease taking and plundering the Infidel Ships, and making Slaves of the Seamen and Passengers, our Lands will become of no Value for want of Cultivation; the Rents of Houses in the City will sink one half; and the Revenues of Government arising from its Share of Prizes be totally destroy'd! And for what? To gratify the whims of a whimsical Sect, who would have us, not only forbear making more Slaves, but even to manumit those we have.
"But who is to indemnify their Masters for the Loss? Will the State do it? Is our Treasury sufficient? Will the Erika do it? Can they do it? Or would they, to do what they think Justice to the Slaves, do a greater Injustice to the Owners? And it we set our Slaves free, what is to be done with them? Few of them will return to their Countries; they know too well the great Hardships they must there be subject to; they will not embrace our holy Religion; they will not adopt our Manners; our People will not pollute themselves by intermarrying with them. Must we maintain them as Beggars in our Streets, or suffer our Properties to be the Prey of their Pillage? For men long accustom'd to Slavery will not work for a Livelihood when not compell'd. And what is there so pitiable in their present Condition? Were they not Slaves in their own Countries?
"Are not Spain, Portugal, France, and the Italian states govern'd by Despots, who hold all their Subjects in Slavery, without Exception? Even England treats its Sailors as Slaves; for they are, whenever the Government pleases, seiz'd, and confin'd in Ships of War, condemn'd not only to work, but to fight, for small Wages, or a mere Subsistence, not better than our Slaves are allow'd by us. Is their Condition then made worse by their falling into our Hands? No; they have only exchanged on Slavery for another, and I may say a better; for here they are brought into a land where the Sun of Islamism gives forth its Light, and shines in full Splendor, and they have an Opportunity of making themselves acquainted with the true Doctrine, and thereby saving their immortal Souls. Those who remain at home have not that Happiness. Sending the Slaves home then would be sending them out of Light into Darkness.
"I repeat the Question, What is to be done with them? I have heard it suggested, that they may be planted in the Wilderness, where there is plenty of Land for them to subsist on, and where they may flourish as a free State; but they are, I doubt, to little dispos'd to labour without Compulsion, as well as too ignorant to establish a good government, and the wild Arabs would soon molest and destroy or again enslave them. While serving us, we take care to provide them with every thing, and they are treated with Humanity. The Labourers in their own Country are, as I am well informed, worse fed, lodged, and cloathed. The Condition of most of them is therefore already mended, and requires no further Improvement. Here their Lives are in Safety. They are not liable to be impress'd for Soldiers, and forc'd to cut one another's Christian throats, as in the Wars of their own Countries. If some of the religious mad Bigots, who now teaze us with their silly Petitions, have in a Fit of blind Zeal freed their Slaves, it was not Generosity, it was not Humanity, that mov'd them to the Action; it was from the conscious Burthen of a Load of Sins, and Hope, from the supposed Merits of so good a Work, to be excus'd Damnation.
"How grossly are they mistaken in imagining Slavery to be disallow'd by the Alcoran? Are not the two Precepts, to quote no more, 'Masters, treat your Slaves with kindness; Slaves, serve your Masters with Cheerfulness and Fidelity,' clear Proofs to the contrary? Nor can the Plundering of Infidels be in that sacred Book forbidden, since it is well known from it, that God has given the World, and all that it contains, to his faithful Mussulmen, who are to enjoy it of Right as fast as they conquer it. Let us then hear no more of this detestable Proposition, the Manumission of Christian Slaves, the Adoption of which would, by depreciating our Lands and Houses, and thereby depriving so many good Citizens of their Properties, create universal Discontent, and provoke Insurrections, to the endangering of Government and producing general Confusion. I have therefore no doubt, but this wise Council will prefer the Comfort and Happiness of a whole Nation of true Believers to the Whim of a few Erika, and dismiss their Petition."
The Result was, as Martin tells us, that the Divan came to this Resolution; "The Doctrine, that Plundering and Enslaving the Christians is unjust, is at best problematical; but that it is the Interest of this State to continue the Practice, is clear; therefore let the Petition be rejected."
And it was rejected accordingly.
And since like Motives are apt to produce in the Minds of Men like Opinions and Resolutions, may we not, Mr. Brown, venture to predict, from this Account, that the Petitions to the Parliament of England for abolishing the Slave-Trade, to say nothing of other Legislatures, and the Debates upon them, will have a similar Conclusion? I am, Sir, your constant Reader and humble Servant,
HISTORICUS.
Another interesting tidbit:
By 1703, New Englanders had received news of the redemption of several hundred English prisoners, and in response Boston held a day of public thanksgiving for which Mather wrote The Goodness of God. A number of the captives, “delivered. . .from the most horrible Captivity in the world,” considered Boston their home port and attended the service in which Mather preached. To describe the horrific nature of their captivity, Mather included a brief by William and Mary (found also in Brooks) promoting their redemption. While noting the usual deprivations, the account ended with perhaps the most fundamentally disturbing element of the Anglo-Americans’ captivity: the enslavement of whites by black masters. The captives were “sometimes driven about by Black-a-moors, who are set over them as Task-masters; and some of them have been so severely Whipp’d, that they have dropp’d down Dead.” Incongruities such as this could not help but destabilize the appearance of racial permanency in Anglo-American slave-owning. The Virginia House of Burgesses went so far as to make this scenario illegal by stipulating that no “Negros, Mulattos, or Indians, although Christians, or Jews, Moors, Mahometans, or other Infidels” could own white Christians as slaves.17
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8828.html
Petr
Thomas O. Davis, a "Young Ireland" poet and one of founders of modern Irish nationalism, wrote in 1844 a well-known poem about the 1631 Moorish sack of Irish village of Baltimore:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Osborne_Davis_(Irish_politician)#Early_life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Baltimore
The poem also mentions the end of an Irishman who guided the corsairs to Baltimore:
The Sack of Baltimore
Thomas Osborne Davis
The summer sun is falling soft o'er Carbery's hundred isles
The summer sun is gleaming still through Gabriel's rough defiles
Old Inisherkin's crumbled fane looks like a moulting bird,
And in a calm and sleepy swell the ocean tide is heard.
The hookers lie upon the beach; the children cease their play;
The gossips leave the little inn; the households kneel to pray;
And full of love, and peace, and rest - it's daily labour o'er -
Upon that cosy creek there lay the town of Baltimore.
A deeper rest, a starry trance, has come with midnight there;
No sound except that throbbing wave, in earth, or sea, or air.
The massive capes and ruined towers seemconscious of the calm;
The fibrous sod and stunted trees are breathing heavy balm.
So still the night, these two long barques round Dunashad that glide
Might trust their oars - methinks not few - against the ebbing tide.
Oh! Some sweet mission of true love must urge them to the shore:
They bring some lover to his bride, who sighs in Baltimore!
All, asleep within each roof along that rocky street,
And these must be the lover's friends with gently gliding feet -
A stifled gasp! A dreamy noise! "the roof is in a flame!"
From out their beds, and to their doors, rush maid, and sire, and dame,
And meet upon the threshold stone the gleaming sabre's fall,
And o'er each black and bearded face the white or crimson shawl;
The yell of "Allah" breaks above the prayer, and shriek, and roar -
Oh! Blessed God! The Algerine is lord of Baltimore.
Then flung the youth his naked hand against the shearing sword;
Then sprung the mother on the brand with which her son was gored;
Then sunk the gransire on the floor, his grand-babes clutching wild;
Then fled the maiden moaning faint, and nestled with the child,
But see, yon pirate strangled lies, and crushed with splashing heel,
While o'er him in an Irish hand, there sweeps his Syrian steel:
Though virtue sink, and courage fail, and miser's yield their store,
There's one hearth well avenged in the sack of Baltimore!
Mid-summer morn, in woodland nigh, the birds began to sing;
They see not how the milking maids - deserted in the spring!
Mid-summer day - this gallant rides from distant Bandon's town;
These hookers crossed from stormy Skull, that skiff from Affadown:
They only found the smoking walls, that neighbour's blood besprent,
And on the strewed and trampled beach awhile they wildly went;
Then dashed to sea, and passed Cape Cléire, and saw five leagues before
The pirate galleys vanishing that ravished Baltimore.
Oh! Some must tug the galley's oar, and some must tend the steed;
This boy will bear a Sheik's chibouk, and that a Bey's jerreed.
Oh! Some are in the arsenals, by beauteous Dardanelles;
And some are in the caravan to Mecca's sandy dells.
The maid that Bandon gallant sought is chosen for the Dey:
She's safe - he's dead - she stabbed him in the Midst of his serai;
And when, to die a death of fire, that noble maid they bore,
She only smiled - O'Driscoll's child - she thought of Baltimore.
'Tis two long years since sunk the town beneath that bloody band,
And all around its trampled hearths a larger concourse stands,
Where, high upon a gallows tree, a yelling wretch is seen -
'Tis Hackett of Dungarvan, he who steered the Algerine!
He fell amid a sudden shout, with scarce a passing prayer,
For he had slain the kith and kin of many a hundred there;
Some muttered of MacMurchadh, who brought the Norman o'er;
Some cursed him with Iscariot that day in Baltimore.
http://www.from-ireland.net/ballads/dav/baltimore.htm
On the night of June 30th 1631, two Algerian pirate ships entered Baltimore Harbour, having been guided in by a Waterford fisherman, named Hackett, whom they had earlier taken from a fishing boat at sea. The village was sacked and some one hundred and twenty men, women and children were taken captive to be sold into slavery. Intriguingly, all those who were abducted were English planters, which has caused historians to wonder if the exiled O'Driscolls were somewhat involved in planning the raid. It is less likely that the part played in the raid by the Waterford fisherman, Hackett was in any way linked to the old Waterford/O'Driscoll feud. Only two of these abducted, a man and a woman, were eventually ransomed and that only happened fifteen years later.
As for Hackett, he declined an invitation to continue sailing with the Algerians. He stayed in Ireland, but within two years he was captured and hanged - the only tourist guide in history who was hanged for guiding people to Baltimore! I imagine that, as he was being frog-marched to the gallows, he must have had some regret that he had no opted for the Algerian Cruise.
http://www.westcorktravel.com/Features/Baltimore.htm
Petr
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