White people enslaved in Africa

Giclee canvas prints, size 30″ x 19″  The original oil painting is available Click Here

How did white slaves in Africa fare?
Similar to their African counterparts in the United States, Africa’s white slaves endured harsh living conditions, hard labor, and meager nutrition. White slaves could, however, frequently free themselves from slavery by converting to Islam and settling in North Africa. Barbary privateers began to seize North American white colonists as early as 1625, Barbary captivity narratives did not begin to flourish until after the American Revolution. During these years, stories of Africans’ captivity forced the U.S. government to pay humiliating tributes to African rulers, and stimulated the drive to create the U.S. Navy according to very available information between 1 million and 1.5 million Europeans were captured by Africans Barbary pirates, and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 19th centuries.

Barbary pirates took slaves from European ships and coastal cities from Italy to the Netherlands, as far north as Iceland, and as far east as the Mediterranean. There was a lot of piracy in the eastern Mediterranean during the Ottoman era.