For three centuries the western Mediterranean was a zone of reciprocal captive-taking. Corsairs sailing from the Ottoman regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli and from Moroccan Salé took merchant ships and landed on the coasts of Italy, Spain, the Balearics, Corsica and occasionally as far as Ireland and Iceland, carrying off villagers to be ransomed, put to the oars or set to labour; Christian corsairs from Malta, Livorno and the Spanish presidios raided Muslim shipping and coasts in the same way. Redemptionist religious orders such as the Trinitarians and Mercedarians raised money to ransom Christian captives and kept records that survive; the 1627 raid that took some four hundred people from Iceland and the sacking of Italian coastal villages are among the best-documented episodes. Robert Davis's estimate of a million or more European captives between 1500 and 1800 brought the subject wide attention and is contested on method: it is a model-based reconstruction from estimated standing slave populations, not a count. The trade in both directions collapsed only with European naval dominance in the nineteenth century, and the topic is now frequently mobilised in polemics about the comparative history of slavery.
Corsairs operating from Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and Salé, under Ottoman or Moroccan authority, seized European ships and raided coastal villages, holding captives for ransom or forced labour; European corsairs from Malta, Livorno and Spain did the same to Muslim shipping and coasts
No single denominator exists: captives were taken from the coasts and shipping of Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, Greece, and as far as Ireland and Iceland, over two and a half centuries. Robert Davis's estimate of 1-1.25 million European captives between 1530 and 1780 is itself an extrapolation from replacement rates in the North African slave populations and has been criticised as high; other historians suggest figures a third to a half as large.
No total exists. Captives died in raids, at the oars of galleys, in the bagnios of the North African ports and in Christian galleys and prisons; Davis's model assumes heavy mortality among slaves in order to generate its capture figures, which makes any death estimate derived from it circular.
Galley service and labour in the bagnios, indefinite detention pending ransom, the taking of women and children in coastal raids and their sale into domestic and sexual servitude are documented in ransom and consular records, the archives of the redemptionist orders and captivity narratives from both sides of the sea.
Algeria, Italy, Spain, Morocco, Iceland, Tunisia, Malta