The other side of colonization: 1.25 million European slaves

The other side of colonization: 1.25 million European slaves

The story of French colonization in North Africa has a B-side that rarely appears in textbooks: during the early modern period, Barbary corsairs captured and sold approximately 1.25 million Europeans in the slave markets of the North African states, according to a figure circulating in the debate. The number, used in historical circles, frames the phenomenon as one of the great human trafficking operations in the Mediterranean, and not in the direction the official narrative usually tells.

The figure is no small matter. The raids were not limited to the coasts of Italy, Spain or Portugal: they reached as far as Iceland and the eastern Mediterranean. The incursions were systematic, with raids on coastal populations that emptied entire villages. That is where the Spanish expression "no hay segarro en la costa" ("no Moors on the coast") comes from, now a set phrase but originally describing a real and recurring threat to the Spanish shoreline.

The fortifications that still remain on the coast

The Spanish coast is dotted with towers and fortifications built specifically to repel those incursions. They were not decorative elements nor defenses against European powers: they responded to a concrete and repeated danger. That defensive infrastructure, still visible, is the physical trace of centuries of attacks that collective memory has gradually blurred.

The debate on French colonization in Algeria usually skips this chapter. When the plundering of monuments is discussed — such as the Djenina Palace in Algiers, demolished in 1856, or the Es-Sayida mosque — the conversation stops at the destruction of Algerian heritage without mentioning the earlier context of piracy and slavery which, according to some interpretations, served as justification for the French military intervention.

The Spanish bombardments of Algiers in the 18th century

The military response was not exclusively French. The Spanish Navy bombarded the city of Algiers in two consecutive campaigns in the late 18th century. The first, in August 1783, under the command of Admiral Antonio Barceló, launched eight attacks in just one week. The second, in July 1784, was an international operation with Naples, Portugal and the Order of Malta that kept up continuous bombardment for ten days.

The episode shows that military pressure on the Barbary states was not an isolated colonial whim, but a sustained response over time to corsair activity that affected trade and the security of coastal populations. Historiography most critical of the colonial narrative tends to present these operations as unilateral aggressions, omitting the cycle of captures and ransoms that preceded them.

Hypocrisy as a mutual accusation

Beneath the issue lies an accusation of double standards: the slavery practiced by European powers is denounced vehemently while that practiced by the North African states themselves is silenced. Some argue that this selectivity responds to a narrative that needs clear-cut victims and perpetrators, and that any nuance breaking that scheme is dismissed out of hand.

The figure of 1.25 million enslaved Europeans is not a recent invention or a pamphlet: it comes from academic estimates on the Barbary slave trade. Its inclusion in the debate does not exempt France from historical responsibility, but it complicates the version of a one-way relationship between aggressor and victim. History is rarely that clean.

It remains to be seen whether this factual counterweight will gain ground in the public discussion or remain an inconvenient fact that people prefer to ignore. For now, the conversation remains stuck in the same trench.