MC_A Concise History of Africa

North Africa

centuries, blackmailing foreign nations wishing to trade in African ports and sail unmolested through Mediterranean waters. They demanded tribute money, seized ships, and held crews for ransom or sold them into slavery. During the late 1500s and early 1600s, around 35,000 European Christian slaves were held, many in Tripoli, Tunis, and various Moroccan towns, but mostly in Algiers. These were predominantly mariners, taken with their ships, but many were fishermen and villagers taken from coastal areas. Although the British captives were numerous, many more were taken from lands closer to Africa, these being Spain and Italy in particular. It is said that

the coasts of Valencia, Andalusia, Calabria, and Sicily were raided so frequently that there was eventually no one left to capture. Some European coastal areas eventually became depopulated and the people impoverished, and the destruction in some parts of Europe was devastating. Many struggled to get enough money together to pay ransoms and get people home, though payment was frequently not honored. In the 16th–19th centuries it is believed that between 1,000,000 and 1,250,000 Europeans were taken, which although small by comparison with the Atlantic slave

White slaves in Barbary were generally from poor

In the waters off the Devon coast of England, at Salcombe, is the wreck of a pirate ship or xebec , containing the largest haul of Islamic gold discovered in British waters. Some coins had been halved, presumably so that the booty could be divided equally between the crew. families and, like the Africans taken to the Americas, had little hope of buying back their freedom: most would end their days dying of starvation, disease, or maltreatment.

trade to the Americas, was considerable nonetheless.

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