MC_A Concise History of Africa

A Concise History of Africa

European Slavery in North Africa Barbary or the Barbary Coast, the name having been derived from the Berber people of North Africa, was the term used by Europeans to describe the western and middle coastal regions of North Africa during the 16th–19th centuries. Today, the name evokes the pirates and slave traders based on that coast, who attacked ships and coastal settlements around the Mediterranean and North Atlantic, and captured and traded slaves taken from Europe and sub- Saharan Africa. The four Barbary nations of North Africa – Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli (Libya) – had been plundering merchant shipping for

RIGHT : A Barbary Pirate by Pier Francesco Mola ca.1650. BELOW: The Bombardment of Algiers, August 27, 1816 by George Chambers Sr. In 1816 a squadron under Admiral Sir Edward Pellew was fitted out and sent to Algiers where they arrived, in company with a small Dutch squadron, on August 27, 1816. They sought the release of the British Consul, who had been detained, and over 1,000 Christian slaves, many being seamen taken by the Algerines. When they received no reply the fleet bombarded Algiers in the most spectacular of several similar punitive actions of this period that finally broke the power of the “Barbary pirates,” who had been a plague on European commerce in the Mediterranean for centuries.

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