Nie Trink Wasser
11th March 2004, 09:13 AM
this is very surprising to see printed :
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040310-115506-8528r.htm
REUTERS NEWS AGENCY
An American historian says that more than a million Europeans were enslaved by North African slave traders between 1530 and 1780, a time of vigorous Mediterranean and Atlantic coastal piracy.
The number of white European slaves is only a fraction of the trade that brought 10 million to 12 million black African slaves to the Americas over a 400-year period, historian Robert Davis says, but his research shows the slave trade was more widespread than commonly assumed. The impact on Europe's white population was significant.
"One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature — that only blacks have been slaves. But that is not true," said Mr. Davis, an Ohio State University professor.
"Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland."
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040310-115506-8528r.htm
REUTERS NEWS AGENCY
An American historian says that more than a million Europeans were enslaved by North African slave traders between 1530 and 1780, a time of vigorous Mediterranean and Atlantic coastal piracy.
The number of white European slaves is only a fraction of the trade that brought 10 million to 12 million black African slaves to the Americas over a 400-year period, historian Robert Davis says, but his research shows the slave trade was more widespread than commonly assumed. The impact on Europe's white population was significant.
"One of the things that both the public and many scholars have tended to take as given is that slavery was always racial in nature — that only blacks have been slaves. But that is not true," said Mr. Davis, an Ohio State University professor.
"Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland."