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 of African slaves, although indentured 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 violent method ofeconomic development where aresource shortage was addressed with the acquisition by force of the desired resource, in this case human labor. Other than the element ofslavery being present, such violent seizure of a resource does not differ from similarraids to gainfood or any other desiredcommodity.[citation needed]
Slave raiding was a large and lucrative trade on the coasts ofAfrica, in ancientEurope,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 the Middle East. 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.[citation needed]
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 pirates established themselves in bases in 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 Middle East.[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]
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".[8] By the tenth and eleventh centuries the Vikings had established slave markets in Ireland's major ports.[8] However, following political allegiances with the Vikings, the Irish Kings also took local captives to profit from these slave markets.[8] 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.[8]
People taken captive during the viking raids in Western Europe, such as Ireland, could be sold toMoorish Spain via theDublin slave trade[9] 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;[10] 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.[11]
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 until 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.[12]
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.[13][14]
Raiding villages was also a method of capturing slaves in Africa, and accounted for the overwhelming majority of West African slaves.[15][2][16] 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.[15]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.[15] Portuguese coastal raiders found that raiding was too costly and often ineffective and opted for established commercial relations.[16]
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.[17] 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.[18] These kingdoms relied on a militaristic culture of constant warfare to generate the great numbers of human captives required for trade with the Europeans.[19][20]
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.[21] Mapuches "rebels" were considered Christianapostates and could therefore be enslaved according to the church teachings of the day.[22] 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.[21] Mapuche slaves were exported north to places such asLa Serena andLima.[23] TheMapuche uprising of 1655 had parts of its background in the slave hunting expeditions ofJuan de Salazar, including hisfailed 1654 expedition.[24][25] Slavery for Mapuches "caught in war" was abolished in 1683 after decades of legal attempts by the Spanish Crown to suppress it.[23]
The practice of slavery and slave raiding also took place along the borders of theSouth African Republic by theBoers up until at least 1870.[26] West Transvaal Boers andothers procured women and children as slaves and used them as domestic servants and plantation workers.[26] Boer slave raids in the South African Republic were regular and the number captured totaled in the thousands.[26] This is despite the prohibition of slavery north of theVaal River under the 1852Sand River Convention.[26]
