Ever wondered why the US marines’ hymn refers to “the shores of Tripoli”? This wasn’t some kind of prescient ode to the Obama-era campaign to turn Libya into a failed state. In fact, it refers to the Battle of Derna in 1805, the first time that the American flag was hoisted in the Old World. But what were US marines doing in Libya, in 1805?
Fighting the Muslim pirates who’d enslaved more than a million Europeans over the past 300 years. When the Ottoman provinces started seizing American sailors, and demanding huge ransoms as a protection racket, the new American nation had enough.
But the Barbary Wars were just the culmination of – and certainly didn’t end – centuries of trade in white flesh. Although the hucksters of critical race theory would have us believe that slavery was only ever about evil whities enslaving blacks, that was very far from the truth (even in the US: most whites in pre-Revolution America arrived in bondage, in conditions every bit as appalling as the mid-Atlantic passage).
Slavery is, in fact, one of the oldest and an almost universal human trades. Aboriginal Australia is perhaps one of the few human societies without a formal tradition of slavery – although the fact that tribes frequently traded women for goods suggests that some idea of humans as chattel existence even there. Until white Europeans stamped it out, slavery was simply taken for granted.
And in few places was it practised as brutally as in Muslim North Africa, which gave even the Ante-Bellum South a run for its money in barbarism.
The raiding of the coastal village of Baltimore on Ireland’s southwest coast is one of the more horrific acts performed by the Barbary corsairs. At 2.00 a.m. on June 20, 1631, over 200 corsairs armed with muskets, iron bars and sticks of burning wood landed on the shore of Baltimore and silently spread out, waiting at the front doors of the cottages along the shoreline and the homes in the main village. When a signal was given, they simultaneously charged into the homes, pulling the sleeping inhabitants from their beds. Men, women and children, 107 in all, were dragged onto ships and began the long voyage back to Algiers.
Upon arrival, the citizens of Baltimore were taken to slave pens before being paraded before prospective buyers, chained and nearly naked. Men were typically used for labor and women as concubines, while children were often raised as Muslims, eventually forming part of the slave corps within the Ottoman army.
The Ottoman slave army is perhaps unique in human history. They were the inspiration for the Unsullied in Game of Thrones. While apologists try to white-wash (pun not intended) Muslim slavery as kind of a multiculturalism-by-force, it is simply untrue that the Barbary slavers were unconcerned about race or religion. White women were at an absolute premium, fetching high prices and destined for the harems. The slave armies were conscripted from captured Christians and Jews, because Islamic law forbids enslaving free-born Muslims.
The slaves captured by the Barbary pirates faced a grim future. Many died on the ships during the long voyage back to North Africa due to disease or lack of food and water. Those who survived were taken to slave markets where they would stand for hours while buyers inspected them before they were sold at auction.
After purchase, slaves would be put to work in various ways. Men were usually assigned to hard manual labour, such as working in quarries or heavy construction, while women were used for housework or in sexual servitude. At night the slaves were put into prisons called bagnios that were often hot and overcrowded.
However, by far the worst fate for a Barbary slave was being assigned to man the oars of galleys. Rowers were shackled where they sat, and never allowed to leave. Sleeping, eating, defecating and urinating took place at the seat. Overseers would crack the whip over the bare backs of any slaves considered not to be working hard enough.
Ancient Origins
Even though the Barbary pirates were largely brought to heel by America’s two Barbary wars, while the British extinguished transatlantic slavery, the old evil was never fully vanquished. In Central Asia, white Russians were regularly captured and enslaved by the Khans, until the khanates were conquered by the Russian and British empires.
In Africa, though, slavery persisted legally until the 1980s. After that, although officially outlawed, slavery has continued in practice, even thriving, until the present day.
