White slavery
White slavery refers to the enslavement of any of the world's European ethnic groups throughout human history, whether perpetrated by non-Europeans or by other Europeans. Slavery in ancient Rome was frequently dependent on a person's socio-economic status and national affiliation, and thus included European slaves. It was also common for European people to be enslaved and traded in the Muslim world; European women, in particular, were highly sought-after to be concubines in the harems of many Muslim rulers. Examples of such slavery conducted in Islamic empires include the Trans-Saharan slave trade, the Barbary slave trade, the Ottoman slave trade, and the Black Sea slave trade, among others.
During the Arab slave trade, Europeans were among those traded by the Arabs. The term Saqaliba was often used in medieval Arabic sources to refer specifically to Slavs being traded by the Arabs, but it could also refer more broadly to Central, Southern, and Eastern Europeans who were also traded by the Arabs, as well as all European slaves in some Muslim-controlled regions like Spain, including those abducted from raids on Spanish Christian kingdoms. During the era of the Fatimid Caliphate, the majority of slaves were Europeans taken from European coasts and during conflicts. Similarly, the Ottoman slave trade that included European captives was often fueled by raids into European territories or were taken as children in the form of a blood tax from the families of citizens of conquered territories to serve the empire for a variety of functions. In the mid-19th century, the term 'white slavery' was used to describe the Christian slaves that were sold into the Barbary slave trade in North Africa.
In the late 19th-century, the term "white slave trade" became associated with sex trafficking of primarily women and girls for sexual exploitation. This term was in use also for the first half of the 20th century, when it was gradually replaced with the more modern term trafficking.
History
The phrase "white slavery" was used by Charles Sumner in 1847 to describe the slavery of Christians throughout the Barbary States and primarily in Algiers, the capital of Ottoman Algeria. It also encompassed many forms of slavery, including the European concubines often found in Turkish harem.In the Muslim world, sexual slavery was legitimate by Islamic law in the form of concubinage in Islam, and there was an ongoing traffick in slave girls for the purpose of sexual exploitation to the harems.
The term was also used by Clifford G. Roe from the beginning of the twentieth century to campaign against the forced prostitution and sexual slavery of girls who worked in Chicago brothels.
Similarly, countries of Europe campaigned against the sex trafficking of women and girls in both Europe as well as brothels in Asia from the late 19th century.
European countries signed in Paris in 1904 an International Agreement for the suppression of the White Slave Traffic aimed at combating the sale of women who were forced into prostitution in the countries of continental Europe as well as Asia.
The use of the term "white slavery" in this sense was considered racist and replaced by "traffic" by The League of Nations in 1921.
White slave trade
Slavic slaves
The Volga trade route was established by the Varangians who settled in Northwestern Russia in the early 9th century. About south of the Volkhov River entry into Lake Ladoga, they established a settlement called Ladoga. It connected Northern Europe and Northwestern Russia with the Caspian Sea, via the Volga River. The Rus used this route to trade with Muslim countries on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, sometimes penetrating as far as Baghdad. The route functioned concurrently with the Dnieper trade route, better known as the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks, and lost its importance in the 11th century.Saqaliba originally was used to denote Slavic people, however later it came to denote all European slaves in some Muslim regions like Spain including those abducted from raids on Christian kingdoms of Spain. The Franks started buying slaves from the Slavs and Avar Khaganate while Muslims also came across slaves in the form of mercenaries serving the Byzantine Empire and settlers in addition to among the Khazars. Most Slavic slaves were imported to the Muslim world through the border between Christian and Islamic kingdoms where castration centres were also located instead of the direct route. From there they were sent into Islamic Spain and other Muslim-ruled regions especially North Africa. The saqaliba gained popularity in Umayyad Spain especially as warriors. After the collapse of the Umayyads, they also came to rule over many of the taifas. With the conversion of Eastern Europe, the trade declined and there isn't much textual information on saqaliba after 11th century.
Central Europe was the most favoured destination for importation of slaves alongside Central Asia and Bilad as-Sudan, though slaves from Northwestern Europe were also valued. This slave trade was controlled mostly by European slave traders. France and Venice were the routes used to send Slavic slaves to Muslim lands and Prague served as a major centre for castration of Slavic captives. The Emirate of Bari also served as an important port for this trade. Due to the Byzantine Empire and Venice blocking Arab merchants from European ports, they later started importing in slaves from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea.
The Saqaliba were also imported as eunuchs and concubines to Muslim states. The slavery of eunuchs in the Muslim world however was expensive and they thus were given as gifts by rulers. The Saqaliba eunuchs were prominent at the court of Aghlabids and later Fatimids who imported them from Spain. The Fatimids also used other Saqaliba slaves for military purposes.
Crimean Khanate
In the time of the Crimean Khanate, Crimeans engaged in frequent raids into the Danubian principalities, Poland–Lithuania, and Muscovy. For each captive, the khan received a fixed share of 10 percent or 20 percent. The campaigns by Crimean forces categorize into sefers, declared military operations led by the khans themselves, and çapuls, raids undertaken by groups of noblemen, sometimes illegally because they contravened treaties concluded by the khans with neighbouring rulers. For a long time, until the early 18th century, the khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. Caffa was one of the best known and significant trading ports and slave markets. Crimean Tatar raiders enslaved between 1 and 2 million slaves from Russia and Poland–Lithuania over the period 1500–1700. Caffa was one of the best known and significant trading ports and slave markets. In 1769, a last major Tatar raid resulted in the capture of 20,000 Russian and Ruthenian slaves.Barbary slave trade
Slave markets flourished on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, in what is modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and western Libya, between the 15th and middle of the 19th century.These markets prospered while the states were nominally under Ottoman suzerainty, though, in reality, they were mostly autonomous. The North African slave markets traded in European slaves which were acquired by Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to Spain, Portugal, France, England, the Netherlands, and as far afield as the Turkish Abductions in Iceland. Men, women, and children were captured to such a devastating extent that vast numbers of sea coast towns were abandoned.
According to Robert Davis, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries. However, to extrapolate his numbers, Davis assumes the number of European slaves captured by Barbary pirates was constant for a 250-year period, stating:
Davis's numbers have been challenged by other historians, such as David Earle, who cautions that the true picture of European slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe and black people from west Africa. A second book by Davis, Holy War and Human Bondage: Tales of Christian–Muslim Slavery in the Early-Modern Mediterranean, widened its focus to related slavery. Middle East expert John Wright cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation.
Such observations, across the late 1500s and early 1600s observers, account for around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli and Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors, taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers. However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy.
From bases on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, the Barbary pirates raided ships traveling through the Mediterranean and along the northern and western coasts of Africa, plundering their cargo and enslaving the people they captured. From at least 1500, the pirates also conducted raids along seaside towns of Italy, Spain, France, England, the Netherlands and as far away as Iceland, capturing men, women and children. On some occasions, settlements such as Baltimore, Ireland, were abandoned following the raid, only being resettled many years later. Between 1609 and 1616, England alone had 466 merchant ships lost to Barbary pirates.
While Barbary corsairs looted the cargo of ships they captured, their primary goal was to capture people for sale as slaves or for ransom. Those who had family or friends who might ransom them were held captive, but not obliged to work; the most famous of these was the author Miguel de Cervantes, who was held for almost five years. Others were sold into various types of servitude. Attractive women or boys could be used as sex slaves. Captives who converted to Islam were generally freed, since enslavement of Muslims was prohibited; but this meant that they could never return to their native countries. Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail Ben Sharif controlled a fleet of corsairs based at Salé-le-Vieux and Salé-le-Neuf, which supplied him with Christian slaves and weapons through their raids in the Mediterranean and all the way to the Black Sea. Moulay Ismail was nicknamed the 'bloody king' by the Europeans due to his extreme cruelty and exaction of summary justice upon his Christian slaves. He is also known in his native country as the "Warrior King".
16th- and 17th-century customs statistics suggest that Istanbul's additional slave import from the Black Sea may have totaled around 2.5 million from 1450 to 1700. The markets declined after the loss of the Barbary Wars and ended in the 1830s, when the region was conquered by France.