Time for a Memorial to the British Victims of Islamic Slaving
During the period 1530 to 1789 it is estimated that 1.25 million European men, women and children were kidnapped by Islamic pirates from around the coasts of Britain and continental Europe to be sold into slavery in North Africa — yet there is no memorial in Britain recording for posterity the suffering of so many of our forebears.
According to early 17th century observers there were around 35,000 European Christian slaves in the Barbary Coast towns of Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers at any one time.
In the first half of the 17th century, Barbary corsairs from North Africa, authorised by their governments to attack the shipping of Christian countries — ranged all around Britain’s coasts, but the West Country in particular.
During this fifty-year period Admiralty records show that the slavers plundered British shipping pretty much at will, capturing almost 500 vessels between 1609 and 1616, including 27 from around Plymouth alone in 1625.
A list, printed in London in 1682, listed 160 British ships captured by “Algerians” between 1677 and 1680 yielding the Islamic slavers between 7,000 to 9,000 men, women and children for sale in the North African slave markets.
Source:
Time for a Memorial to the British Victims of Islamic Slaving
bnp.org.uk
