Ancient historyRebbeca willy · soeotpSrdn881tu7102m8fhugu8g7h2lfm5tagcat1agt4g3u23c878i6gmc · Between the 1600s and 1900s, North African pirates captured and enslaved up to 1.25 million Europeans who came to be known as the white slaves of Barbary.The Barbary slave trade involved the capture and selling of European slaves at slave markets in the largely independent Ottoman Barbary states. European slaves were captured by Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to Ireland, and the southwest of Britain, as far north as Iceland and into the Eastern Mediterranean.The Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean was the scene of intense piracy. As late as the 18th century, piracy continued to be a "consistent threat to maritime traffic in the Aegean".The Barbary slave trade came to an end in the early years of the 19th century, after the United States and Western European allies won the First and Second Barbary Wars against the pirates and the region was conquered by France, putting an end to the trade by the 1830s.The Spanish author of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes, was himself captured in 1575 by Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers. There, he was kept as a slave for five years, before being rescued by family and friends buying him back from his Moor owner.
