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

inhabitants to European slavery, nothing, or almost, was said about their fate. 51
Indeed, Algerian captives—contrary to Christian ones—were condemned to an
everlasting slavery and hard labor on Christian galleys without any prospect of
future liberty. 52 This partly explains the absence of Muslim captivity accounts;
but despite this handicap, hundreds of archival documents, testimony,
correspondence of the Deys with the sovereigns of Europe, and bilateral
treaties mention the tragedies endured by Algerian captives in European
slavery. 53
In fact, during the period (1519-1830) enslavement of captives was
widely practiced on both sides of the Mediterranean Basin. However, the most
striking feature about that practice is not its existence—indeed, slavery had
always existed—but it was its amplitude, sophistication of statutes,
conventions, and peace treaties regulating it, and the numerous wars it
generated. In the many conflicts that opposed Algiers to the European
countries, slavery came second only to religion; in the case of the United
States, it came second to American national interest and concerns about
(London: W. Hone, 1816); Royall Tyler, The Algerine Captive: Six Years a Prisoner among the
Algerines (Hartford, CT: Peter B. Gleason & Co, 1816); Sumner, Charles. White Slavery in the
Barbary States, 1853 (Boston: John P. Jewett & Company, 1853); Leon Godard, Corsaires, esclaves et
martyrs de Barbarie : Régnez, seigneur, au milieu de vos ennemis (Tours: A. Mame et Cie, 1857).
51 Since the 1960s, however, research about Mediterranean slavery has seen timid beginnings in the
direction of Algerian captives notably with the works of Salvatore Bono, Daniel Panzac, Michel
Fontenay, Bartolome and Lucile Bennassar, and the Algerian researcher Moulay Belhamissi who form
a small group reflecting a new revisionist tendency.
52 Moulay Belhamissi, Les captifs Algériens et l’Europe chrétienne (1518-1830) (Alger: Enterprise
Nationale du Livre, 1988), pp. 15-18.
53 Moulay Belhamissi, “Course et contre-course en Méditerranée ou comment les Algériens tombaient
en esclavage,” Cahiers de la Méditerranée, vol. 65, L’esclavage en Méditerranée à l’époque moderne,
2002, par. 6. (Accessed 22 March 2008). http://cdlm.revues.org/document36.html; Correspondance of
the Deys seeking liberation of Algerian captives is scattered in Eugène Plantet, ed., Correspondance
des deys d’Alger avec la cour de France, 1579-1833. Recueillie dans les dépôts d’archives des affaires
étrangères, de la marine, des colonies et de la chambre de commerce de Marseille, 2 vol. (Paris: 1889).
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