Ottoman Algeria in Western Diplomatic History with ... - Bibliothèque

asis for a variety of programs and shaped the policies of western rulers and
their governments.
1. 3. Slavery and Captivity
No other issue in Algerian-Christian relations has been submitted to
distortions, misrepresentations, and one-sided interpretations than the problem
of slavery. Although slavery was an endemic Mediterranean practice, western
historians conveniently reduced it to the Batistan and Bagno Belique. 48
According to current western scholarly standards, slavery in the Mediterranean
was a deed committed solely by the Muslim corsairs who captured and
enslaved innocent Christians with the aim of making profit by selling or
ransoming them. Allegedly, the Algerian corsairs confined their Christian
captives in horrible conditions and submitted them to the most cruel and
perverse treatments and sufferings. 49
This view is not new; it has already
started developing since the 16 th
century. Travelers, priest, chroniclers,
diplomats, captives, and all sorts of writers had produced quantities of accounts
describing pains and sufferings, real and imaginary, of Christian captives at
Algiers. 50
Yet, despite the fact that Algiers lost tens of thousands of its
48 Those were respectively the slave market and slaves’ main residential area at Algiers.
49 As an example of this view see the following works: Stephen Clissold, “The Ransom Business:
Christian Slaves in North Africa,” History Today, 26: 12 (Dec., 1976), pp. 779-87; Ellen G. Friedman,
“Christian Captives at ‘Hard Labor’ in Algiers, 16 th -18 th Centuries,” The International Journal of
African Historical Studies, 13: 4 (1980), pp. 616-632; Gary E. Wilson, “American Hostages in Moslem
Nations, 1784-1796: The Public Response.” Journal of the Early Republic, 2: 2. (Summer 1982), pp.
123-141; Martha Elena Rojas, “‘Insults Unpunished’: Barbary Captives, American Slaves, and the
Negotiation of Liberty,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 1: 2 (Fall, 2003), pp.
159-186. Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the
Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 123-219.
50 Examples among many others include: Walter Croker, The Cruelties of the Algerine Pirates,
Shewing the Present Dreadful State of the English Slaves, and other Europeans, at Algiers and Tunis
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