Bride kidnapping
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Bride kidnapping, also known as marriage by abduction or marriage by capture, is a practice in which a man or boy abducts the woman or girl he wishes to marry.
A depiction of Vikings kidnapping a woman. Viking men would often kidnap foreign women for marriage or concubinage from lands that they had pillaged. Illustrated by French painter Évariste Vital Luminais in the 19th century.
Abduction of an American woman by Shawnee warriors in 1776
The painting depicts a Chilean woman being kidnapped during a malón.
L'enlèvement des Sabines (1637–38) by Nicolas Poussin: the mythological rape of the Sabine women has been a theme in Western art
Raptio
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Raptio is a Latin term for, among several other meanings for senses of "taking", the large-scale abduction of women: kidnapping for marriage, concubinage or sexual slavery. The equivalent German term
Bride kidnapping
…wealth paid by the groom and his family to the bride's parents, and the inability or unwillingness to pay it. Bride kidnapping is distinguished from raptio in that the former refers to the abduction of one woman or girl by one man (and his friends and relatives), and is still a widespread practice, whereas…
Rape of the Sabine Women, by Nicolas Poussin, Rome, 1637–38 (Louvre Museum)
Mapuches kidnapping a woman during a malón raid as shown in La vuelta del malón (The return of the raiders) by Ángel Della Valle (1892).