Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800 (Early Modern History) [Paperback]

Robert C. Davis (Author)

Book Description

Series: Early Modern History | Publication Date: November 4, 2004

This is a study that digs deeply into this "other" slavery, the bondage of Europeans by north-African Muslims that flourished during the same centuries as the heyday of the trans-Atlantic trade from sub-Saharan Africa to the Americas. Here are explored--perhaps for the first time--the actual extent of Barbary Coast slavery, the dynamic relationship between master and slave, and the effects of this slaving on Italy, one of the slave takers' primary targets and victims.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters is about a subject of immense importance, which has been strangely neglected...It is very well researched, and... at a time of unprecedented interest in racial slavery in America, it is interesting to read a crucial and informative preview to that subject.' - David Brion Davis, Yale University --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Robert C. Davis is in the Department of History, Ohio State University, Columbus.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (November 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403945519
• ISBN-13: 978-1403945518
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #572,034 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Davis is a professor of Italian Renaissance and pre-modern Mediterranean history at Ohio State University. He studies Naples, Rome, Palermo, Venice, the Vatican, and Perugia, and mostly works on the lives of ordinary people and the values they cherished. His subjects have ranged from shipbuilders, bull fighters, and amateur boxers in Venice to the corsairs who terrorized the Mediterranean everywhere else. He has also recently co-authored a study of Venice, as the world's most touristed city, and after reading this, no one can ever look at Romantic Venice in quite the same way. He has been in a number of television documentaries, on shipbuilding, Carnival, and the Mediterranean slave trade.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

86 of 88 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating book on a little known subject, April 5, 2004

By 

Kurt A. Johnson (North-Central Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800 (Early Modern History) (Hardcover)

Many people are aware of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but not many are aware of the trans-Mediterranean slave trade, in which Christians and Muslims took each other as slaves. By far, the most successful of these slavers were the Barbary corsairs, who probably succeeded in capturing at least one million Christian Europeans from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth. In this fascinating book, author and historian Robert C. Davis, Profess of History at Ohio State University, looks at these Muslim slavers, at who and how many slaves were taken, at how they were used after capture, and the effect this slave-taking had (primarily in Italy).

I found this to be an absolutely fascinating book on a little known subject. When reading a biography of Jeffrey Hudson, Queen Henrietta Maria (1609-69) of England's favorite dwarf ("Lord Minimus" by Nick Page), I was surprised to find out that he was captured by Barbary corsairs, while crossing from France to England(!), and spent years as a slave in North Africa. This was far from an isolated event. Indeed, far-off Iceland was subject to corsair slave-raiding.

Now, as the author fully admits, unlike with the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the North African slavers did not produce much in the way of documents from which to draw numbers of slaves taken and so forth. As such, Professor Davis did need to draw his conclusions based on limited information, but I did find his conclusions to be well reasoned and quite convincing. Also, he was at pains to point out that these slaving activities went on in both directions, and that it was not a purely Muslim activity.

So, are you interested in reading about a fascinating, and yet little known facet of European and Middle Eastern history? If so, then I highly recommend this book to you. It has a great deal to say, and is already sparking debate across the world. Buy this book!

67 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Little known history, January 5, 2006

By 

Ronald T. Jones (Chicago, Il) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800 (Early Modern History) (Paperback)

Mass slavery in the popular imagination had always been associated with the capture and subsequent enslavement of Africans. With good reason. The sheer scale of the African slave trade stretched the limits of imagination. Enslaved Africans were ubiquitous from Brazil to the Carribbean to the plantations in the Southern United States. Slavery undergirded economies, dehumanized victims and victimizers alike and generated profits for those who benefited from this egregious institution. In the Western world, especially the United States, the history of slavery bares a black face. There is no denying the suffering of Africans in bondage. Robert C. Davis, author of Chritian Slaves, Muslim Masters,however, presents us with another picture of bondage, one no less brutal, repressive and disheartening. This bondage was experienced by Europeans at the hands of North African Muslims. Between 1500 and 1800, dates in the subtitle, corsairs sanctioned by the North African govenments of Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers and Morrocco attacked European ships in the Medditeranean and raided European shores. These plundering expeditions netted hundreds of thousands of captives. As many as a million and a quarter Europeans, according to the author, were enslaved by North Africans. A small figure compared to the estimated twelve million Africans carried off to the new world over a span of centuries, but not an inconsiderable one by itself. The author channels a prodigious research effort into a detailed anaylsis of slave life, how they were captured, their national origins, the types of labor they were consigned to and their physical and mental states. Muslims raids reached as far afield as Iceland, but the proximity of Italy to the North African coast made it a convenient and frequent target for Muslim slaving activities. For that reson, the author devotes a considerable amount of space to how Italians coped with constant raids along their shores. The parallels the reader can draw between European and African slavery during this period are undeniable. Captured human beings in both cases came from all walks of life. Their traumatic experience of capture was compounded by the humiliation of being displayed to prospective buyers like merchandise. As there was no plantation system in North Africa, Europeans did not toil in the midst of sugar canes or cotton fields. Many, however, were put to work in galleys, others hauling rocks at construction sites, working in mines or cutting timber. Whatever their labor, Davis decribes horrendous conditions to which European slaves were subjected; disease, unabated hunger, all manner of cruelty inflicted upon them by their masters and the general despair of captivity. Of course, a European slave had a higher chance of seeing his homeland again than an African slave. North Africans were more keen on ransoming their captives than Europeans and Americans in possession of African slaves. Still, lifelong captivity was the sad fate of a myriad of Europeans caught by Barbary corsairs. The tone of this book is purely scholastic. Facts and figures are prominant, but anecdotal accounts from primary sources add a human element to this work. The author does more than reveal this little known history of slavery in all its sordid detail. He delves into some historiograhpy, offering his theory on why European slavery has been downplayed in the annals. His take on this matter is a fitting conclusion to a well researched, remarkably informative book.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Review, December 20, 2008

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Air Cdre A. Lambert - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800 (Early Modern History) (Paperback)

This book makes a very good attempt of analysing the scale and effect of Muslim slavery practised against the Europeans in the XV to XIX centuries. Although, as the author would be the first to accept, the data are culled from a variety of sources and are derived by correlating information, nevertheless it is more than enough to convince.

This is an important work as it rolls back the shutters of political correctness and gives an objective analysis of an important determinant of European history. Although Muslim slavery was relatively small compared to the wholesale transport of Africans to the New World (12 million), Davis has shown that approximately 1.25 million to 1.5 million Europeans were captured and enslaved by the Arabs and Ottomans. Most were men bound for the galleys; fewer were the women bound for the harems. Unlike the Pirates of the Caribbean whose aim was to steal treasure, Muslim piracy was targeted against people. Whole villages of Southern Europe were depopulated and trade and fishing became risky occupations.
This is a well written book and any student of Southern Europeaninternational relations would be well advised to read it.Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800 (Early Modern History)