Slave raiding is a militaryraid for the purpose of capturing people and bringing them from the raid area to serve asslaves. Once seen as a normal part ofwarfare, it is nowadays widely considered awar crime.[citation needed] Slave raiding has occurred since antiquity. Some of the earliest surviving written records of slave raiding come fromSumer (in present-dayIraq). Kidnapping and prisoners of war were the most common sources ofAfrican slaves, althoughindentured servitude or punishment also resulted in slavery.[1][2]
The many alternative methods of obtaining human beings to work inindentured or otherinvoluntary conditions, as well as technological and cultural changes, have made slave raiding rarer.[citation needed]
Slave raiding was a large and lucrative trade on the coasts ofAfrica, inEurope,Mesoamerica, and in medievalAsia. TheCrimean–Nogai slave raids in Eastern Europe provided some two or three million slaves to theOttoman Empire via theCrimean slave trade over the course of four centuries. TheBarbary pirates from the 16th century onwards through 1830 engaged inrazzias in Africa and the European coastal areas as far away as Iceland, capturing slaves for the Muslim slavery market in North Africa and West Asia. TheAtlantic slave trade was predicated on European countries endorsing and supporting slave raiding between African tribes to supply the workforce of agriculturalplantations in the Americas.
The act of slave raiding involves an organised and concerted attack on asettlement with the purpose of taking the area's people. The collected new slaves are often kept in some form ofslave pen or depot. From there, the slave takers will transport them to a distant place by means such as aslave ship orcamel caravan. When conquered people are enslaved and remain in their place, it is not raiding.[citation needed]
During the Middle ages,Saracen Andalusian pirates established themselves in bases in southern France,the Baleares, Southern Italy and Sicily, from which they raided the coasts of the Christian Mediterranean and exported their prisoners as Saqaliba slaves to theslave markets of the Muslim West Asia.[3]
TheAghlabids ofIfriqiya was a base for Saracen attacks along the Spanish East coast as well as against Southern Italy from the early 9th century; they attackedRome in 845,Comacchio in 875-876,Monte Cassino in 882-83, and established theEmirate of Bari (847–871), theEmirate of Sicily (831–1091) and a base inGarigliano (882-906), which became bases of slave trade.[4]During the warfare between Rome and theByzantine Empire in Southern Italy in the 9th century the Saracens made Southern Italy a supply source for a slave trade toMaghreb by the mid-9th century; the Western EmperorLouis II complained in a letter to the Byzantine Emperor that the Byzantines inNaples guided the Saracens in their raids toward South Italy and aided them in their slave trade with Italians to North Africa, an accusation noted also by the Lombard ChroniclerErchempert.[5]
MoorishSaracen pirates fromal-Andalus attackedMarseille andArles and established a base inCamargue,Fraxinetum or La Garde-Freinet-Les Mautes (888–972), from which they made slave raids in to France;[4] the population fled in fear of the slave raids, which made it difficult for the Frankish to secure their Southern coast,[4] and the Saracens of Fraxinetum exported the Frankisk prisoners they captured as slaves to theslave market of the Muslim Middle East.[6]
The Saracens capturedthe Baleares in 903, and made slave raids also from this base toward the coasts of the Christian Mediterranean and Sicily.[4]
While the Saracen bases in France was eliminated in 972, this did not prevent the Saracen piracy slave trade of the Mediterranean; bothAlmoravid dynasty (1040–1147) and theAlmohad Caliphate (1121–1269) approved of the slave raiding of Saracen pirates toward non-Muslim ships in Gibraltar and the Mediterranean for the purpose of slave raiding.[7]
A major supply source to theSamanid slave trade was the non-MuslimTurkic peoples ofCentral Asian steppe, which were both bought as well as regularly kidnapped in slave raids by the thousands to supply the Bukhara slave trade.[8]
The slave trade with Turkic people was the biggest slave supply for the Samanid Empire. Until the 13th century, the majority of Turkic peoples were not Muslims but adherents ofTengrism,Buddhism, and various forms ofanimism andshamanism, which made them infidels and as such legitimate targets for enslavement by Islamic law. Many slaves in the medieval Islamic world referred to as "white" were of Turkic origin.
From the 7th century onward, when the first Islamic military campaigns were conducted toward Turkic lands in Caucasus and Central Asia, Turkic people were enslaved as war captives and then trafficked as slaves via slave raids via southern Russia and the Caucasus into Azerbaijan, and through Karazm and Transoxania into Khorasan and Iran;[9] in 706 the Arab governor Qotayba b. Moslem killed all men in Baykand in Sogdia and took all the women and children as slaves in to the Umayyad Empire[10][9] and in 676 eighty Turkic nobles captured from thequeen of Bukhara were abducted to the governor Saʿīd b. ʿOṯmān of Khorasan to Medina as agricultural slaves, where they killed their slaver and then committed suicide.[11][9]
The military campaigns were gradually replaced by pure commercial Muslim slave raids against non-Muslim Turks into "infidel territory" (dār al-ḥarb) in the Central Asian steppe, resulting in a steady flow of Turks to the Muslim slave markets of Bukhara, Darband, Samarkand, Kīš, and Nasaf.[9] Aside from slave raids by Muslim slave traders, Turkic captives were also provided to the slave trade as war captives after warfare among the Turkic peoples themselves in the steppes (as was the case ofSebüktigin), and in some cases sold by their own families.[9]
al-Baladhuri described howCaliph al-Mamun used to write to his governors in Khurasan to raid those peoples of Transoxiana who had not submitted to Islam:
Turkic slaves were the main slave supply of the Samanid slave trade, and regularly formed a part of the land tax sent to the Abbasid capital of Baghdad; the geographerAl-Maqdisi (ca. 375/985) noted that in his time the annual levy (ḵarāj) included 1,020 slaves.[9] The average rate for a Turkic slave in the 9th century was 300 dirhams, but a Turkic slave could be sold for as much as 3,000 dinars.[9]
The Vikings raided the coastlines ofIreland for people, cattle and goods. High status captives were taken back to their community or families to be ransomed—this included bishops and kings. In theAnnals of Ulster it is recorded that in 821 ADHowth, was raided and "a great booty of women was carried away".[13] By the tenth and eleventh centuries the Vikings had established slave markets in Ireland's major ports.[13] However, following political allegiances with the Vikings, the Irish Kings also took local captives to profit from these slave markets.[13] By the late tenth century, the Vikings began to suffer significant military defeats and the Irish Kings now seized captives from the defeated Viking armies and their captured towns, with the justification that the inhabitants were foreigners bearing the sins of their ancestors.[13]
People taken captive during the viking raids in Western Europe, such as Ireland, could be sold toMoorish Spain via theDublin slave trade[14] or transported toHedeby orBrännö and from there via theVolga trade route to present day Russia, where slaves and furs were sold to Muslim merchants in exchange for Arab silverdirham andsilk, which have been found inBirka,Wolin, andDublin;[15] this trade route supplied European slaves (saqaliba) forslavery in the Abbasid Caliphate, first via theKhazar slave trade and, from the 10th-century, via theVolga Bulgarian slave trade.[16]
TheCrimean–Nogai slave raids in Eastern Europe provided some two or three million slaves forslavery in the Ottoman Empire via theCrimean slave trade between the 15th century and the late 18th century. During this period theCrimean Khanate was the destination of theCrimean–Nogai slave raids in Eastern Europe, and European and Circassian slaves were trafficked to the Middle East via the Crimea.[17]
The Kazakh-Russian conflicts of the 17th–18th centuries were a series of armed confrontations between theKazakh Khanate and theTsardom of Russia, later theRussian Empire, as well as their subjects: theCossacks,Bashkirs, andKalmyks. TheKazakh raids into Russia were accompanied by looting and the abduction of people into slavery. The raids began during the reign ofTauke Khan in 1690 and continued intermittently until the end of the 18th century. Isolated raids also occurred in the early and late 19th century.[18] The captives of the Kazakh raids were among the suppliers to theKhivan slave trade and theBukhara slave trade.
Turkmen tribal groups also performed regular slave raids, referred to asalaman.[19] ShiaPersians were considered legitimate targets by Sunni Muslim Turkmens andUzbek slave traders. Many of them were captured duringTurkmen slave raids into the villages of northwestern Iran. A notorious slave market for Persian slaves was located in theKhanate of Khiva from the 17th to the 19th centuries.[20]
European slaves were acquired byBarbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns fromItaly tothe Netherlands,Ireland and thesouthwest of Britain, as far north asIceland and into theEastern Mediterranean. On some occasions, settlements such asBaltimore in Ireland were abandoned following a raid, only being resettled many years later.[21][22]
Raiding villages was also a method of capturing slaves in Africa, and accounted for the overwhelming majority of West African slaves.[23][2][24] While there was some slave raiding along the African coasts by Europeans, much of the raiding that took place was performed by other West Africans powers.[23]Gomes Eannes de Azurara, who witnessed a Portuguese raid noted that some captives drowned themselves, others hid in under their huts, and others hid their children among the seaweed.[23] Portuguese coastal raiders found that raiding was too costly and often ineffective and opted for established commercial relations.[24]
The increase in the demand for slaves due to the expansion of European colonial powers to the New World made the slave trade much more lucrative to the West African powers, leading to the establishment of a number of actualWest African empires thriving on the slave trade.[25] These included theBono State,Oyo empire (Yoruba),Kong Empire,Imamate of Futa Jallon,Imamate of Futa Toro,Kingdom of Koya,Kingdom of Khasso,Kingdom of Kaabu,Fante Confederacy,Ashanti Confederacy, and the kingdom ofDahomey.[26] These kingdoms relied on a militaristic culture of constant warfare to generate the great numbers of human captives required for trade with the Europeans.[27][28]
Bandeirantes were frontiersmen and explorers incolonial Brazil who, from the early 16th century, participated in inland expeditions to find precious metals and enslaveindigenous peoples. They played a major role in expanding Brazil's borders to its approximate modern-day limits, beyond the boundaries demarcated by the 1494Treaty of Tordesillas.[29] Mostbandeirantes hailed fromSão Paulo. Somebandeirantes were descended from Portuguese colonists who settled in São Paulo, but most were ofmameluco descent with both Portuguese and indigenous ancestry.[30]
Although there was a general ban on enslavement of indigenous people by Spanish Crown, the 1598–1604Mapuche uprising that ended with theDestruction of the Seven Cities made the Spanish in 1608 declare slavery legal for those Mapuches caught in war.[31] Mapuches "rebels" were considered Christianapostates and could therefore be enslaved according to the church teachings of the day.[32] In reality these legal changes only formalized Mapuche slavery that was already occurring at the time, with captured Mapuches being treated as property in the way that they were bought and sold among the Spanish. Legalisation made Spanish slave raiding increasingly common in theArauco War.[31] Mapuche slaves were exported north to places such asLa Serena andLima.[33] TheMapuche uprising of 1655 had parts of its background in the slave hunting expeditions ofJuan de Salazar, including hisfailed 1654 expedition.[34][35] Slavery for Mapuches "caught in war" was abolished in 1683 after decades of legal attempts by the Spanish Crown to suppress it.[33]
Slavery in Southeast Asia reached its peak in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when fleets oflanong andgaray warships of theIranun andBanguingui people started engaging inpiracy and coastal raids for slave and plunder throughout Southeast Asia from their territories within theSultanate of Sulu andMaguindanao. It is estimated that from 1770 to 1870, 200,000 to 300,000 people were enslaved by Iranun and Banguingui slavers.[36]
TheHaida andTlingit peoples who lived along thesoutheastern Alaskan coast were traditionally known as fierce warriors and slave-traders, raiding as far as California.[37]
From the early 18th century to the 1870s, theComanche were the dominant tribe of theSouthern Plains. As American settlers encroached on their territory, the Comanche waged war on the settlers and raided their settlements, as well as those of neighboring Native American tribes.[38] They took with them captives from other tribes during warfare, using them asslaves, selling them to the Spanish and (later) toMexican settlers, or adopting them into their tribe.[39]
The practice of slavery and slave raiding also took place along the borders of theSouth African Republic by theBoers up until at least 1870.[40] West Transvaal Boers andothers procured women and children as slaves and used them as domestic servants and plantation workers.[40] Boer slave raids in the South African Republic were regular and the number captured totaled in the thousands.[40] This is despite the prohibition of slavery north of theVaal River under the 1852Sand River Convention.[40]
