I don't know if it was the anniversary of the raid, or what, but my Twitter feed for some reason picked up a link to a story about a large raid by the Barbary Pirates on the coast of Ireland. In 1631 the pirates raided Baltimore, Ireland, in the County of Cork. The town was not large, but between 100 and 300 of its inhabitants were abducted. Only two made it back to Ireland, in part because the English government had just enacted a law which forbid paying ransom, which was often the goal of such raids.
The article that was linked in was scholarly, and noted that what would have occured is that, for the most part, children would have been separated from their parents and everyone sold into slavery when it became obvious that they would not be ransomed. The male slavery would have been of the grueling work variety. Women would have largely been sold as sex slaves, which the articles like to call "concubines".
The reason that I note this here is that the author, again it was a scholarly article, felt compelled to blame the raids on the Spanish expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula. That process has commenced in 1492, and it was completed, effectively, in 1614. The entire period wasn't a peaceful one, and in the Mediterranean various nations raided each other.
The final stages of the story are more complicated, in Spain, than might at first be imagined, as by the 1600s the "Moriscos" weren't actually Muslim, but rather Spanish descendants of Berbers and Arabs who were Catholic, but who retained Berber/Arab ancestry. Some claim they were "crypto Islamic", but more likely they were Catholics who retained some folk connection to their ancestor's prior religion. Indeed, it'd be worth noting that Islam itself has a murky origin connection with Christianity, and this may have been confusing at the street level. Anyhow, the last stages of this seem to be an ethnic spat, but it did have the effect of expelling Moriscos to North Africa, where they were absorbed ultimately into the local population, or to distribute them across Spain where the same thing occured.
Anyhow, blaming the Baltimore, and other Barbary Pirate, raids on this event is stretching it. I suppose you could argue that the general belligerency of the Mediterranean contributed to the raiding atmosphere, and both sides did that, but that traces back to the rise of Islam in the first place, which was spread by the sword. That this process went on, in one fashion or another, for a thousand years, and in some cases to this very day, does not mean that much except that the long arch of history and the fact that events play out over decades or centuries is the rule, and only seems to be odd to us, as we're used to everything occurring rapidly.
Anyhow, the author claimed that the children were treated with "utmost kindness". Really? Separating them from their parents, sending their fathers off to early grueling slave induced deaths and selling their mothers as sex slaves? And then they'd end up slaves themselves, with boys often ending up enslaved soldiers and girls. . . sex slaves.
What BS.
The same author claimed that the women were sold into "concubinage", which is sex slavery in this context, and lived lives of "relative luxury", as if this weird image of the Playboy ethos had the women looking forward to this life of chattel status while they still retained their desirability. The reality of it is that they had value as they were exotic, and bought for their physical attributes alone.
Why this story has to be spun in this fashion is really remarkable. We're supposed to feel some guilt for the story of the kidnappers and slavers, and even look kindly upon some of the grossest examples of slavery that are around.
None of this is to excuse Western conduct, whatever might be sought to be excused. Slavery was common amongst all Mediterranean societies, Christian and Islamic, but what played out with the Barbary pirates was not. They engaged in slave raids, and forced sex slave status of captured women was endorsed by the Koran, although frankly probably not really in the form that was practiced here (it likely applied to women captured as a result of warfare, not that this makes it a lot better). Putting a gloss on any kind of slavery, moreover, is bizarre. When people attempt to do that, as many once did and a few still try to do, in regard to American slavery, we're rightly appalled. This isn't any better.
The West has had a hard time reconciling an imperial past with its democratic values, and one way it tries to cope with it is by making Westerners always be the baddies. The story of empire is a complicated one, but the 100 to 300 inhabitants of Baltimore didn't have much to do with it, and neither, really, did the Barbary pirates. Slavery was always bad and this sort of slavery gross. Kidnapping people is always bad. There are always bad people. The Barbary Pirates don't need to be portrayed as if they're Captain Morocco, or something, in a Marvel movie.
