White Slavery in the Barbary States E-Book

Charles Sumner

• Herausgeber: Enhanced Media Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

This controversial, oft-suppressed work is a fascinating glimpse into the practice of white slavery. In  White Slavery in the Barbary States captivity expert Charles Sumner takes a detailed look at the white slave markets which flourished on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, which included the Ottoman provinces of Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania and the independent sultanate of Morocco, between the 16th and middle of the 18th century.

Leseprobe

White Slavery in the Barbary States

By Charles Sumner

Table of Contents

Title Page

White Slavery in the Barbary States

Introduction

I

II

III

Further Reading: Slave Narrative Six Pack 7

White Slavery in the Barbary States by Charles Sumner. First published in 1853. This edition published 2017 by Enhanced Media. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-365-89565-4

Image: British captain witnessing the miseries of Christian slaves in Algiers, 1815.

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Image: The redemption (buying back) of Christian captives by Mercedarian monks in the Barbary states.

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Introduction

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History has been sometimes called a gallery, where, in living forms, are preserved the scenes, the incidents, and the characters of the past. It may also be called the world's great charnel house, where are gathered coffins, dead men's bones, and all the uncleanness of the years that have fled. As we walk among its pictures, radiant with the inspiration of virtue and of freedom, we confess a new impulse to beneficent exertion. As we grope amidst the unsightly shapes that have been left without an epitaph, we may at least derive a fresh aversion to all their living representatives.

In this mighty gallery, amidst a heavenly light, are the images of the benefactors of mankind—the poets who have sung the praise of virtue, the historians who have recorded its achievements, and the good men of all time, who, by word or deed, have striven for the welfare of others. Here are depicted those scenes where the divinity of man has been made manifest in trial and danger. Here also are those grand incidents which attended the establishment of the free institutions of the world; the signing of Magna Charta, with its priceless privileges of freedom, by a reluctant monarch; and the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the annunciation of the inalienable rights of man, by the fathers of our republic.

On the other hand, in ignominious confusion, far down in this dark, dreary charnel house is tumbled all that now remains of the tyrants, the persecutors, the selfish men, under whom mankind have groaned. Here also, in festering, loathsome decay, are the monstrous institutions or customs, which the earth, weary of their infamy and injustice, has refused to sustain—the Helotism of Sparta, the Serfdom of Christian Europe, the Ordeal by Battle, and Algerine Slavery.

From this charnel house let me to-night draw forth one of these. It may not be without profit to dwell on the origin, the history, and the character of a custom, which, after being for a long time a byword and a hissing among the nations, has at last been driven from the world. The easy, instinctive, positive reprobation, which it will receive from all, must necessarily direct our judgment of other institutions, yet tolerated in equal defiance of justice and humanity. I propose to consider the subject of White Slavery in Algiers, or perhaps it might be more appropriately called White Slavery in the Barbary States. As Algiers was its chief seat, it seems to have acquired a current name from that place. This I shall not disturb; though I shall speak of White Slavery, or the Slavery of Christians, throughout the Barbary States.

If this subject should fail in interest, it cannot fail in novelty. I am not aware of any previous attempt to combine its scattered materials in a connected essay.

The territory now known as the Barbary States is memorable in history. Classical inscriptions, broken arches, and ancient tombs—the memorials of various ages—still bear instructive witness to the revolutions which it has encountered. Early Greek legend made it the home of terror and of happiness. Here was the retreat of the Gorgon, with snaky tresses, turning all she looked upon into stone; and here also the garden of the Hesperides, with its apples of gold. It was the scene of adventure and mythology. Here Hercules wrestled with Antæus, and Atlas sustained, with weary shoulders, the overarching sky. Phoenician fugitives early transported the spirit of commerce to its coasts; and Carthage, which these wanderers here planted, became the mistress of the seas, the explorer of distant regions, the rival and the victim of Rome. The energy and subtlety of Jugurtha here baffled for a while the Roman power, till at last the whole country, from Egypt to the Pillars of Hercules, underwent the process of "annexation" to the cormorant republic of ancient times. A thriving population and fertile soil rendered it an immense granary. It was filled with famous cities, one of which was the refuge and the grave of Cato, fleeing from the usurpations of Caesar. At a later day, Christianity was here preached by some of her most saintly bishops. The torrent of the Vandals, first wasting Italy, next passed over this territory; and the arms of Belisarius here obtained their most signal triumphs. The Saracens, with the Koran and the sword, potent ministers of conversion, next broke from Arabia, as the messengers of a new religion, and, pouring along these shores, diffused the faith and doctrines of Mohammed. Their empire was not confined even by these expansive limits; but, under Musa, entered Spain, and afterwards at Roncesvalles, in "dolorous rout," overthrew the embattled chivalry of the Christian world led by Charlemagne.

The Saracenic power did not long retain its unity or importance; and, as we view this territory, in the dawn of modern history, when the countries of Europe are appearing in their new nationalities, we discern five different communities or states,—Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Barca,—the latter of little moment, and often included in Tripoli, the whole constituting what was then, and is still, called the Barbary States. This name has sometimes been referred to the Berbers, or Berebbers, constituting a part of the inhabitants; but I delight to follow the classic authority of Gibbon, who thinks that the term, first applied by Greek pride to all strangers, and finally reserved for those only who were savage or hostile, has justly settled, as a local denomination, along the northern coast of Africa. The Barbary States, then, bear their past character in their name.

They occupy an important space on the earth's surface; on the north, washed by the Mediterranean Sea, furnishing such opportunities of prompt intercourse with Southern Europe, that Cato was able to exhibit in the Roman Senate figs freshly plucked in the gardens of Carthage; bounded on the east by Egypt, on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the south by the vast, indefinite, sandy, flinty wastes of Sahara, separating them from Soudan or Negroland. In the advantages of position they surpass every other part of Africa,—unless we except Egypt,—communicating easily with the Christian nations, and thus, as it were, touching the very hem and border of civilization.

Climate adds its attractions to this region, which is removed from the cold of the north and the burning heats of the tropics, while it is enriched with oranges, citrons, olives, figs, pomegranates, and luxuriant flowers. Its position and character invite a singular and suggestive comparison. It is placed between the twenty-ninth and thirty-eighth degrees of north latitude, occupying nearly the same parallels with the Slave States of our Union. It extends over nearly the same number of degrees of longitude with our Slave States, which seem now, alas! to stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rio Grande. It is supposed to embrace about 700,000 square miles, which cannot be far from the space comprehended by what may be called the Barbary States of America. Nor does the comparison end here. Algiers, for a long time the most obnoxious place in the Barbary States of Africa, the chief seat of Christian slavery, and once branded by an indignant chronicler as "the wall of the barbarian world," is situated near the parallel of 36° 30' north latitude, being the line of what is termed the Missouri Compromise, marking the "wall" of Christian slavery, in our country, west of the Mississippi.

Other less important points of likeness between the two territories may be observed. They are each washed, to the same extent, by ocean and sea; with this difference, that the two regions are thus exposed on directly opposite coasts—the African Barbary being bounded in this way on the north and west, and our American Barbary on the south and east. But there are no two spaces, on the surface of the globe, of equal extent, (and an examination of the map will verify what I am about to state,) which present so many distinctive features of resemblance; whether we consider the parallels of latitude on which they lie, the nature of their boundaries, their productions, their climate, or the "peculiar domestic institution" which has sought shelter in both.

I introduce these comparisons in order to bring home to your minds, as near as possible, the precise position and character of the territory which was the seat of the evil I am about to describe. It might be worthy of inquiry, why Christian slavery, banished at last from Europe, banished also from that part of this hemisphere which corresponds in latitude to Europe, should have intrenched itself, in both hemispheres, between the same parallels of latitude; so that Virginia, Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas should be the American complement to Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis. Perhaps the common peculiarities of climate, breeding indolence, lassitude, and selfishness, may account for the insensibility to the claims of justice and humanity which have characterized both regions.

The revolting custom of White Slavery in the Barbary States was, for many years, the shame of modern civilization. The nations of Europe made constant efforts, continued through successive centuries, to procure its abolition, and also to rescue their subjects from its fearful doom. These may be traced in the diversified pages of history, and in the authentic memoirs of the times. Literature also affords illustrations, which must not be neglected. At one period, the French, the Italians, and the Spaniards borrowed the plots of their stories mostly from this source. The adventures of Robinson Crusoe make our childhood familiar with one of its forms. Among his early trials, he was piratically captured by a rover from Salle, a port of Morocco, on the Atlantic Ocean, and reduced to slavery. "At this surprising change of circumstances," he says, "from a merchant to a miserable slave, I was perfectly overwhelmed; and now I looked back upon my father's prophetic discourse to me, that I should be miserable, and have none to relieve me, which I thought was so effectually brought to pass, that I could not be worse." And Cervantes, in the story of Don Quixote, over which so many generations have shaken with laughter, turns aside from its genial current to give the narrative of a Spanish captive who had escaped from Algiers. The author is supposed to have drawn from his own experience; for during five years and a half he endured the horrors of Algerine slavery, from which he was finally liberated by a ransom of about six hundred dollars. This inconsiderable sum of money—less than the price of an intelligent African slave in our own Southern States—gave to freedom, to his country, and to mankind the author of Don Quixote.

In Cervantes freedom gained a champion whose efforts entitle him to grateful mention, on this threshold of our inquiry. Taught in the school of slavery, he knew how to commiserate the slave. The unhappy condition of his fellow-Christians in chains was ever uppermost in his mind. He lost no opportunity of arousing his countrymen to attempts for their emancipation, and for the overthrow of the "peculiar institution"—pardon this returning phrase!—under which they groaned. He became in Spain what, in our day and country, is sometimes called an "Anti-Slavery Agitator"—not by public meetings and addresses, but, according to the genius of the age, mainly through the instrumentality of the theatre. Not from the platform, but from the stage, did this liberated slave speak to the world. In a drama, entitled El Trato de Argel, or Life in Algiers,—which, though not composed according to the rules of art, yet found much favor, probably from its subject,—he pictured, shortly after his return to Spain, the manifold humiliations, pains, and torments of slavery. This was followed by two others in the same spirit—La Gran Sultana Dona Cattalina de Oviedo, The Great Sultana the Lady Cattalina of Oviedo; and Los Banos de Argel, The Galleys of Algiers. The last act of the latter closes with the statement, calculated to enlist the sympathies of an audience, that this play "is not drawn from the imagination, but was born far from the regions of fiction, in the very heart of truth." Not content with this appeal through the theatre, Cervantes, with constant zeal, takes up the same theme, in the tale of the Captive, in Don Quixote, as we have already seen, and also in that of El Liberal Amante, The Liberal Lover, and in some parts of La Espanola Inglesa, The English Spanishwoman. All these may be regarded, not merely as literary labors, but as charitable endeavors in behalf of human freedom.

And this same cause enlisted also a prolific contemporary genius, called by Cervantes "that prodigy," Lopé de Vega, who commended it in a play entitled Los Cautivos de Argel, The Captives of Algiers. At a later day, Calderon, sometimes exalted as the Shakspeare of the Spanish stage, in one of his most remarkable dramas, El Principe Constante, The Constant Prince, cast a poet's glance at Christian slavery in Morocco. To these works—belonging to what may be called the literature of Anti-Slavery, and shedding upon our subject a grateful light—must be added a curious and learned volume, in Spanish, on the Topography and History of Algiers, by Haedo, a father of the Catholic Church,—Topografia y Historia de Argel por Fra Haedo,—published in 1612; and containing also two copious Dialogues—one on Captivity (de la Captiudad), and the other on the Martyrs of Algiers, (de los Martyres de Argel). These Dialogues, besides embodying authentic sketches of the sufferings in Algiers, form a mine of classical and patristic learning on the origin and character of slavery, with arguments and protestations against its iniquity, which may be explored wit [...]