Rodrigo Augusto da Silva
Rodrigo Augusto da Silva, nicknamed "the diplomat", was a politician, lawyer and journalist of the Empire of Brazil. He is best known as the minister that authored and countersigned with Princess Isabel Princess Imperial Regent the law that ended slavery in Brazil. Rodrigo was born in São Paulo into a family of wealthy financiers, his father, the Baron of Tietê, was a politician and leader of the conservative party in São Paulo. Rodrigo became a deputy in the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil when he was 24 years old and served a total of seven terms representing the province of São Paulo, he served as President of the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo, cabinet minister in two conservative governments and senator of the empire. Though he died young his career lasted over 30 years. In his first year as a deputy and throughout his career he defended policies to increase immigration from Europe, industrialization of the empire, improvement of infrastructure, modernization of the financial system and access to credit for the agricultural sector.
Rodrigo Augusto da Silva was born on 7 December 1833, in the imperial city of São Paulo, capital of the province of São Paulo. He was the son of Maria Reducinda da Cunha e Silva, he had one older brother named Candido Justiniano and two sisters, named Raphaela and Joaquina Angelica. Rodrigo was the paternal grandson of José da Silva de Carvalho, a municipal judge and commanding officer of the Portuguese ordinances in Santo Amaro. Rodrigo's grandfather was a wealthy land owner and capitalist that acted as a private mortgage lender. Rodrigo's father followed his father's steps and got involved in commerce and finance in the city of São Paulo. In his banking career José Manuel became president of the São Paulo branch of the Bank of Brazil and the Caixa Econômica; as a leader of the moderate party conservative party, José Manuel was part of the government of São Paulo in the years after the Independence of Brazil, serving in different positions in the municipal and provincial governments. Rodrigo attended the Largo de São Francisco Law School where he graduated with a bachelor of laws degree in 1856.
In law school he was a member of a secret society called Brasilica. This society was founded by law students and had as its main objective the strengthening of conservative ideas; the society counted among the initiated political figures connected to Rodrigo and the conservative party, among them Antonio da Silva Prado, Thomas Coelho and Delfino Cintra. According to a biographer, in his academic years Rodrigo "revealed a lucid and easy intelligence, firmness of character, unbreakable dedication, clear vision and noble political ideas." Rodrigo spoke and wrote notoriously well, had a passion for classical literature and knew how to dress with great elegance. These characteristics would afford him the nickname "the diplomat". While still a student in 1856 he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo, he finished his senior year and occupied a seat in the Legislative Assembly at the same time. In 1857 he moved to Rio de Janeiro to occupy a seat in the Chamber of Deputies, Rodrigo was a permanent substitute and represented the 1st district of São Paulo.
In Rio de Janeiro he married Catharina de Queirós Mattoso Ribeiro, daughter of conservative leader Eusébio de Queirós. Catharina would die during the birth of the couple's only child. In 1885 conflict among different interest groups created a crisis in the Liberal government. After months of suffering Rodrigo died surrounded by his friends, among them writer Machado de Assis, his death caused wide commotion in the empire. Rodrigo's funeral was watched by members of the government, the abolitionist movement and leaders of the black community. Official mourning was declared and the Ministry of Agriculture and Public works; the New York Times published the following regarding his death on the 24 November 1889: We have to record the death of another prominent man in Brazilian politics, that of Counselor Rodrigo Augusto da Silva, which took place at his residence in this city, at 8:30 P. M. on the 17th inst. He was a prominent and popular member of the Conservative party, a native of Sao Paulo, which province he represented in the Senate, had twice occupied positions in the Imperial Cabinet.
He was Minister of Agriculture in the Joao Alfredo Cabinet which passed the abolition law of 1888, was still in the prime of life. Privy Councillor of His Majesty the Emperor. President of the Auxiliary Association for the Progress of the Province of São Paulo. Counselor of the Irmandade de Nossa Senhora da Consolação e S. João Baptista, Steward in 1878. Grand Cross of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great. Grand Cross of the Portuguese Order of Christ. Grand Cross of the Portuguese Order of the Immaculate Conception of Vila Viçosa. Grand Cross of the French Légion d'honneur. Grand Cross of the Spanish Order of Isabella the Catholic
Mamluk
Mamluk is an Arabic designation for slaves. The term is most used to refer to non-muslimslave soldiers and Muslim rulers of slave origin. More it refers to: Ghaznavids of Greater Khorasan Khwarazmian dynasty in Transoxiana Mamluk dynasty Mamluk Sultanate Bahri dynasty Burji dynasty Mamluk dynasty The most enduring Mamluk realm was the knightly military caste in Egypt in the Middle Ages, which developed from the ranks of slave soldiers; these were enslaved Turkic peoples, Egyptian Copts, Circassians and Georgians. Many Mamluks were of Balkan origin; the "mamluk phenomenon", as David Ayalon dubbed the creation of the specific warrior class, was of great political importance. Over time, Mamluks became a powerful military knightly caste in various societies that were controlled by Muslim rulers. In Egypt, but in the Levant and India, mamluks held political and military power. In some cases, they attained the rank of sultan, while in others they held regional power as emirs or beys. Most notably, mamluk factions seized the sultanate centered on Egypt and Syria, controlled it as the Mamluk Sultanate.
The Mamluk Sultanate famously defeated the Ilkhanate at the Battle of Ain Jalut. They had earlier fought the western European Christian Crusaders in 1154–1169 and 1213–1221 driving them out of Egypt and the Levant. In 1302 the mamluks formally expelled the last Crusaders from the Levant, ending the era of the Crusades. While mamluks were purchased as property, their status was above ordinary slaves but they were not allowed to carry weapons or perform certain tasks. In places such as Egypt, from the Ayyubid dynasty to the time of Muhammad Ali of Egypt, mamluks were considered to be "true lords" and "true warriors", with social status above the general population in Egypt and the Levant. In a sense they were like enslaved mercenaries; the origins of the mamluk system are disputed. Historians agree that an entrenched military caste such as the mamluks appeared to develop in Islamic societies beginning with the ninth-century Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad; when in the ninth century has not been determined.
Up until the 1990s, it was believed that the earliest mamluks were known as Ghilman and were bought by the Abbasid caliphs al-Mu'tasim. By the end of the 9th century, such warrior slaves had become the dominant element in the military. Conflict between these ghilman and the population of Baghdad prompted the caliph al-Mu'tasim to move his capital to the city of Samarra, but this did not succeed in calming tensions; the caliph al-Mutawakkil was assassinated by some of these slave-soldiers in 861. Since the early 21st century, historians suggest that there was a distinction between the mamluk system and the ghilman system, in Samarra, which did not have specialized training and was based on pre-existing Central Asian hierarchies. Adult slaves and freemen both served as warriors in the ghilman system; the mamluk system developed after the return of the caliphate to Baghdad in the 870's. It included the systematic training of young slaves in military and martial skills; the Mamluk system is considered to have been a small-scale experiment of al-Muwaffaq, to combine the slaves' efficiency as warriors with improved reliability.
This recent interpretation seems to have been accepted. After the fragmentation of the Abbasid Empire, military slaves, known as either mamluks or ghilman, were used throughout the Islamic world as the basis of military power; the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt had forcibly taken adolescent male Armenians, Turks and Copts from their families in order to be trained as slave soldiers. They formed the bulk of their military, the rulers selected prized slaves to serve in their administration; the powerful vizier Badr al-Jamali, for example, was a mamluk from Armenia. In Iran and Iraq, the Buyid dynasty used Turkic slaves throughout their empire; the rebel al-Basasiri was a mamluk who ushered in Seljuq dynastic rule in Baghdad after attempting a failed rebellion. When the Abbasids regained military control over Iraq, they relied on the ghilman as their warriors. Under Saladin and the Ayyubids of Egypt, the power of the mamluks increased and they claimed the sultanate in 1250, ruling as the Mamluk Sultanate.
Throughout the Islamic world, rulers continued to use enslaved warriors until the 19th century. The Ottoman Empire's devşirme, or "gathering" of young slaves for the Janissaries, lasted until the 17th century. Regimes based on mamluk power thrived in such Ottoman provinces as the Levant and Egypt until the 19th century. Under the Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo, Mamluks were purchased while still young males, they were raised in the barracks of the Citadel of Cairo. Because of their isolated social status and their austere military training, they were trusted to be loyal to their rulers; when their training was completed, they were discharged, but remained attached to the patron who had purchased them. Mamluks relied on the help of their patron for career advancement, the patron's reputation and power depended on his recruits. A Mamluk was "bound by a strong esprit de corps to his peers in the same household."Mamluks lived within their garrisons and spent their time with each
Pedro II of Brazil
Dom Pedro II, nicknamed "the Magnanimous", was the second and last monarch of the Empire of Brazil, reigning for over 58 years. He was born in Rio de Janeiro, the seventh child of Emperor Dom Pedro I of Brazil and Empress Dona Maria Leopoldina and thus a member of the Brazilian branch of the House of Braganza, his father's abrupt abdication and departure to Europe in 1831 left the five year-old as Emperor and led to a grim and lonely childhood and adolescence, obliged to spend his time studying in preparation for rule. He encountered few friends of his age, his experiences with court intrigues and political disputes during this period affected his character. Pedro II inherited an empire on the verge of disintegration, but he turned Brazil into an emerging power in the international arena; the nation grew to be distinguished from its Hispanic neighbors on account of its political stability, zealously guarded freedom of speech, respect for civil rights, vibrant economic growth, form of government—a functional representative parliamentary monarchy.
Brazil was victorious in the Platine War, the Uruguayan War, the Paraguayan War, as well as prevailing in several other international disputes and domestic tensions. Pedro II steadfastly pushed through the abolition of slavery despite opposition from powerful political and economic interests. A savant in his own right, the Emperor established a reputation as a vigorous sponsor of learning and the sciences, he won the respect and admiration of people such as Charles Darwin, Victor Hugo, Friedrich Nietzsche, was a friend to Richard Wagner, Louis Pasteur, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, among others. There was no desire for a change in the form of government among most Brazilians, but the Emperor was overthrown in a sudden coup d'état that had no support outside a clique of military leaders who desired a form of republic headed by a dictator. Pedro II had become weary of emperorship and despaired over the monarchy's future prospects, despite its overwhelming popular support, he did not support any attempt to restore the monarchy.
He spent the last two years of his life in exile in Europe, living alone on little money. The reign of Pedro II thus came to an unusual end—he was overthrown while regarded by the people and at the pinnacle of his popularity, some of his accomplishments were soon brought to naught as Brazil slipped into a long period of weak governments and constitutional and economic crises; the men who had exiled him soon began to see in him a model for the Brazilian republic. A few decades after his death, his reputation was restored and his remains were returned to Brazil with celebrations nationwide. Historians have regarded the Emperor in an positive light and several have ranked him as the greatest Brazilian. Pedro was born at 02:30 on 2 December 1825 in the Palace of São Cristóvão, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Named after St. Peter of Alcantara, his name in full was Pedro de Alcântara João Carlos Leopoldo Salvador Bibiano Francisco Xavier de Paula Leocádio Miguel Gabriel Rafael Gonzaga. Through his father, Emperor Dom Pedro I, he was a member of the Brazilian branch of the House of Braganza and was referred to using the honorific "Dom" from birth.
He was the grandson of Portuguese King Dom João VI and nephew of Dom Miguel I. His mother was the Archduchess Maria Leopoldina of Austria, daughter of Franz II, the last Holy Roman Emperor. Through his mother, Pedro was a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte and first cousin of Emperors Napoleon II of France, Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary and Don Maximiliano I of Mexico; the only legitimate male child of Pedro I to survive infancy, he was recognized as heir apparent to the Brazilian throne with the title Prince Imperial on 6 August 1826. Empress Maria Leopoldina died on 11 December 1826, a few days after a stillbirth, when Pedro was a year old. Two and a half years his father married Amélie of Leuchtenberg. Prince Pedro developed an affectionate relationship with her. Pedro I's desire to restore his daughter Maria II to her Portuguese throne, usurped by his brother Miguel I, as well as his declining political position at home led to his abrupt abdication on 7 April 1831, he and Amélie departed for Europe, leaving behind the Prince Imperial, who became Emperor Dom Pedro II.
Upon leaving the country, Emperor Pedro I selected three people to take charge of his son and remaining daughters. The first was José Bonifácio de Andrada, his friend and an influential leader during Brazilian independence, named guardian; the second was Mariana de Verna, who had held the post of aia since the birth of Pedro II. As a child, the then-Prince Imperial called her "Dadama", as he could not pronounce the word dama correctly, he regarded her as his surrogate mother, would continue to call her by her nickname well into adulthood out of affection. The third person was an Afro-Brazilian veteran of the Cisplatine War, he was an employee in the Palace of São Cristóvão whom Pedro I trusted and asked to look after his son—a charge that he carried out for the rest of his life. Bonifácio was replaced by another guardian. Pedro II spent his days studying, with only two hours set aside for amusements. Intelligent, he was able to acquire knowledge with great ease. However, the hours of study were strenuous and the preparation for his role as monarch w
Forced marriage
Forced marriage is a marriage in which one or more of the parties is married without his or her consent or against his or her will. A forced marriage differs from an arranged marriage, in which both parties consent to the assistance of their parents or a third party such as a matchmaker in choosing a spouse. There is a continuum of coercion used to compel a marriage, ranging from outright physical violence to subtle psychological pressure. Forced marriage is still practised in various cultures across the world in parts of South Asia and Africa; some scholars object to use of the term "forced marriage" because it invokes the consensual legitimating language of marriage for an experience, the opposite. A variety of alternative terms exist, including "forced conjugal association" and "conjugal slavery"; the United Nations views forced marriage as a form of human rights abuse, since it violates the principle of the freedom and autonomy of individuals. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that a person's right to choose a spouse and enter into marriage is central to his/her life and dignity, his/her equality as a human being.
The Roman Catholic Church deems forced marriage grounds for granting an annulment — for a marriage to be valid both parties must give their consent freely. The Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery prohibits marriage without right to refuse of herself out of her parents', family's and other persons' will and requires the minimum age for marriage to prevent this. In 1969, the Special Court for Sierra Leone's Appeals Chamber found the abduction and confinement of women for "forced marriage" in war to be a new crime against humanity; the SCSL Trial Chamber in the Charles Taylor decision found that the term'forced marriage' should be avoided and rather described the practice in war as'conjugal slavery'. In 2013, the first United Nations Human Rights Council resolution against child and forced marriages was adopted. Marriages throughout history were arranged between families before the 18th century; the practices varied by culture, but involved the legal transfer of dependency of the woman from her father to the groom.
The emancipation of women in the 19th and 20th centuries changed marriage laws especially in regard to property and economic status. By the mid-20th century, many Western countries had enacted legislation establishing legal equality between spouses in family law; the period of 1975-1979 saw a major overhaul of family laws in countries such as Italy, Austria, West Germany, Portugal. In 1978, the Council of Europe passed the Resolution 37 on equality of spouses in civil law. Among the last European countries to establish full gender equality in marriage were Switzerland, Spain, the Netherlands, France in the 1980s. An arranged marriage is not the same as a forced marriage: in the former, the spouse has the possibility to reject the offer; the line between arranged and forced marriage is however difficult to draw, due to the implied familial and social pressure to accept the marriage and obey one's parents in all respects. In Europe, during the late 18th century and early 19th century, the literary and intellectual movement of romanticism presented new and progressive ideas about love marriage, which started to gain acceptance in society.
In the 19th century, marriage practices varied across Europe, but in general, arranged marriages were more common among the upper class. Arranged marriages were the norm in Russia before early 20th century. Child marriages were common but began to be questioned in the 19th and 20th century. Child marriages are considered to be forced marriages, because children are not able to make a informed choice whether or not to marry, are influenced by their families. In Western countries, during the past decades, the nature of marriage—especially with regard to the importance of marital procreation and the ease of divorce—has changed which has led to less social and familial pressure to get married, providing more freedom of choice in regard to choosing a spouse. Forced marriage was used to require a captive to integrate with the host community, accept his or her fate. One example is the English blacksmith John R. Jewitt, who spent three years as a captive of the Nootka people on the Pacific Northwest Coast in 1802–1805.
He was ordered to marry, because the council of chiefs thought that a wife and family would reconcile him to staying with his captors for life. Jewitt was given a choice between forced marriage for himself and capital punishment for both him and his "father". "Reduced to this sad extremity, with death on the one side, matrimony on the other, I thought proper to choose what appeared to me the least of the two evils". Forced marriage was practiced by authoritarian governments as a way to meet population targets; the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia systematically forced people into marriages, in order to increase the population and continue the revolution. These marriage
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people to the Americas. The slave trade used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries; the vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from central and western Africa, sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders, who brought them to the Americas. The South Atlantic and Caribbean economies were dependent on the supply of secure labour for the production of commodity crops, making goods and clothing to sell in Europe; this was crucial to those western European countries which, in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas empires. The Portuguese were the first to engage in the Atlantic slave trade in the 16th century. In 1526, they completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil, other European countries soon followed.
Shipowners regarded the slaves as cargo to be transported to the Americas as and cheaply as possible, there to be sold to work on coffee, cocoa and cotton plantations and silver mines, rice fields, construction industry, cutting timber for ships, in skilled labour, as domestic servants. The first Africans imported to the English colonies were classified as "indentured servants", like workers coming from England, as "apprentices for life". By the middle of the 17th century, slavery had hardened as a racial caste, with the slaves and their offspring being the property of their owners, children born to slave mothers were slaves; as property, the people were considered merchandise or units of labour, were sold at markets with other goods and services. The major Atlantic slave trading nations, ordered by trade volume, were: the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Spanish, the Dutch Empires. Several had established outposts on the African coast where they purchased slaves from local African leaders.
These slaves were managed by a factor, established on or near the coast to expedite the shipping of slaves to the New World. Slaves were kept in a factory while awaiting shipment. Current estimates are that about 12 to 12.8 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic over a span of 400 years, although the number purchased by the traders was higher, as the passage had a high death rate. Near the beginning of the 19th century, various governments acted to ban the trade, although illegal smuggling still occurred. In the early 21st century, several governments issued apologies for the transatlantic slave trade; the Atlantic slave trade developed after trade contacts were established between the "Old World" and the "New World". For centuries, tidal currents had made ocean travel difficult and risky for the ships that were available, as such there had been little, if any, maritime contact between the peoples living in these continents. In the 15th century, new European developments in seafaring technologies resulted in ships being better equipped to deal with the tidal currents, could begin traversing the Atlantic Ocean.
Between 1600 and 1800 300,000 sailors engaged in the slave trade visited West Africa. In doing so, they came into contact with societies living along the west African coast and in the Americas which they had never encountered. Historian Pierre Chaunu termed the consequences of European navigation "disenclavement", with it marking an end of isolation for some societies and an increase in inter-societal contact for most others. Historian John Thornton noted, "A number of technical and geographical factors combined to make Europeans the most people to explore the Atlantic and develop its commerce", he identified these as being the drive to find new and profitable commercial opportunities outside Europe as well as the desire to create an alternative trade network to that controlled by the Muslim Empire of the Middle East, viewed as a commercial and religious threat to European Christendom. In particular, European traders wanted to trade for gold, which could be found in western Africa, to find a maritime route to "the Indies", where they could trade for luxury goods such as spices without having to obtain these items from Middle Eastern Islamic traders.
Although many of the initial Atlantic naval explorations were led by Iberians, members of many European nationalities were involved, including sailors from Portugal, the Italian kingdoms, England and the Netherlands. This diversity led Thornton to describe the initial "exploration of the Atlantic" as "a international exercise if many of the dramatic discoveries were made under the sponsorship of the Iberian monarchs"; that leadership gave rise to the myth that "the Iberians were the sole leaders of the exploration". Slavery was prevalent in many parts of Africa for many centuries before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade. There is evidence that enslaved people from some parts of Africa were exported to states in Africa and Asia prior to the European colonization of the Americas; the Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, although it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M'bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique: The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes.
Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries... Fou
Slavery in the Ottoman Empire
Slavery in the Ottoman Empire was a legal and significant part of the Ottoman Empire's economy and society. The main sources of slaves were war captives and organized enslavement expeditions in North and East Africa, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, it has been reported. In Constantinople, the administrative and political center of the Empire, about a fifth of the population consisted of slaves in 1609. Sixteenth- and 17th-century customs statistics suggest that Istanbul's additional slave import from the Black Sea may have totaled around 2.5 million from 1450 to 1700. After several measures to ban slavery in the late 19th century, the practice continued unabated into the early 20th century; as late as 1908, female slaves were still sold in the Ottoman Empire. Sexual slavery was a central part of the Ottoman slave system throughout the history of the institution. A member of the Ottoman slave class, called a kul in Turkish, could achieve high status. Castrated harem guards and janissaries are some of the better known positions a slave could hold, but slaves were often at the forefront of Ottoman politics.
A large percentage of officials in the Ottoman government were bought slaves raised free, integral to the success of the Ottoman Empire from the 14th century into the 19th. Many officials themselves owned a large number of slaves, although the Sultan himself owned by far the most. By raising and specially training slaves as officials in palace schools such as Enderun, the Ottomans created administrators with intricate knowledge of government and fanatic loyalty. In the mid-14th century, Murad I built an army of slaves, referred to as the Kapıkulu; the new force was based on the Sultan's right to a fifth of the war booty, which he interpreted to include captives taken in battle. The captive slaves trained in the sultan's personal service; the devşirme system could be considered a form of slavery because the Sultans had absolute power over them. However, as the'servant' or'kul' of the Sultan had high status within Ottoman society, they could become the highest officers of state and the military elite, all taken children were well remunerated.
Slaves were traded in special marketplaces called "Esir" or "Yesir" that were located in most towns and cities. It is said that Sultan Mehmed II "the Conqueror" established the first Ottoman slave market in Constantinople in the 1460s where the former Byzantine slave market had stood. According to Nicolas de Nicolay, there were slaves of all ages and both sexes, they were displayed naked to be checked – children and young women – by possible buyers. In the devşirme, which connotes "draft", "blood tax" or "child collection", young Christian boys from the Balkans and Anatolia were taken from their homes and families, converted to Islam, enlisted into the most famous branch of the Kapıkulu, the Janissaries, a special soldier class of the Ottoman army that became a decisive faction in the Ottoman invasions of Europe. Most of the military commanders of the Ottoman forces, imperial administrators, de facto rulers of the Empire, such as Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, were recruited in this way. By 1609, the Sultan's Kapıkulu forces increased to about 100,000.
A Hutterite chronicle reports that in 1605, during the Long Turkish War, some 240 Hutterites were abducted from their homes in Upper Hungary by the Ottoman Turkish army and their Tatar allies, sold into Ottoman slavery. Domestic slavery was not as common as military slavery. On the basis of a list of estates belonging to members of the ruling class kept in Edirne between 1545 and 1659, the following data was collected: out of 93 estates, 41 had slaves; the total number of slaves in the estates was 140. 134 of them bore Muslim names, 5 were not defined, 1 was a Christian woman. Some of these slaves appear to have been employed on farms. In conclusion, the ruling class, because of extensive use of warrior slaves and because of its own high purchasing capacity, was undoubtedly the single major group keeping the slave market alive in the Ottoman Empire. Rural slavery was a phenomenon endemic to the Caucasus region, carried to Anatolia and Rumelia after the Circassian migration in 1864. Conflicts emerged within the immigrant community and the Ottoman Establishment intervened on the side of the slaves at selective times.
The Crimean Khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East until the early eighteenth century. In a series of slave raids euphemistically known as the "harvesting of the steppe", Crimean Tatars enslaved East Slavic peasants; the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia suffered a series of Tatar invasions, the goal of, to loot and capture slaves into "jasyr". The borderland area to the south-east was in a state of semi-permanent warfare until the 18th century, it is estimated that up to 75 % of the Crimean population consisted of freed slaves. A study of the slave market of Ottoman Crete produces details about the prices of slaves. Factors such as age, skin color, virginity etc. influenced prices. The most expensive slaves were those between 10 and 35 years of age, with the highest prices for European virgin girls 13–25 years of age and teenaged boys; the cheaper slaves were those with sub-Saharan Africans. Prices in Crete ranged between 65 and 150 "esedi guruş".
But the lowest prices were affordable to only high income persons. For example, in 1717 a 12-year-old boy with mental disabilities was sold for 27 guruş, an amount that could buy in the same year 462 kg of lamb meat, 933 kg of bread
Barbary pirates
The Barbary pirates, sometimes called Barbary corsairs or Ottoman corsairs, were Ottoman and Maghrebi pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa, based in the ports of Salé, Algiers and Tripoli. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, a term derived from the name of its ethnically Berber inhabitants, their predation extended throughout the Mediterranean, south along West Africa's Atlantic seaboard and into the North Atlantic as far north as Iceland, but they operated in the western Mediterranean. In addition to seizing merchant ships, they engaged in Razzias, raids on European coastal towns and villages in Italy, France and Portugal, but in the British Isles, the Netherlands, as far away as Iceland; the main purpose of their attacks was to capture Christian slaves for the Ottoman slave trade as well as the general Arab slavery market in North Africa and the Middle East. While such raids had occurred since soon after the Muslim conquest of Iberia, the terms "Barbary pirates" and "Barbary corsairs" are applied to the raiders active from the 16th century onwards, when the frequency and range of the slavers' attacks increased.
In that period Algiers and Tripoli came under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire, either as directly administered provinces or as autonomous dependencies known as the Barbary States. Similar raids were undertaken from other ports in Morocco. Barbary corsairs captured thousands of merchant ships and raided coastal towns; as a result, residents abandoned their former villages of long stretches of coast in Spain and Italy. Between 100,000 and 250,000 Iberians were enslaved by these raids; the raids were such a problem coastal settlements were undertaken until the 19th century. Between 1580 and 1680 corsairs were said to have captured about 850,000 people as slaves and from 1530 to 1780 as many as 1,250,000 people were enslaved. However, these numbers have been questioned by the historian David Earle; some of these corsairs were European converts such as John Ward and Zymen Danseker. Hayreddin Barbarossa and Oruç Reis, Turkish Barbarossa Brothers, who took control of Algiers on behalf of the Ottomans in the early 16th century, were notorious corsairs.
The European pirates brought advanced sailing and shipbuilding techniques to the Barbary Coast around 1600, which enabled the corsairs to extend their activities into the Atlantic Ocean. The effects of the Barbary raids peaked in the early to mid-17th century. Long after Europeans had abandoned oar-driven vessels in favor of sailing ships carrying tons of powerful cannon, many Barbary warships were galleys carrying a hundred or more fighting men armed with cutlasses and small arms; the Barbary navies were not battle fleets. When they sighted a European frigate, they fled; the scope of corsair activity began to diminish in the latter part of the 17th century, as the more powerful European navies started to compel the Barbary States to make peace and cease attacking their shipping. However, the ships and coasts of Christian states without such effective protection continued to suffer until the early 19th century. Following the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15, European powers agreed upon the need to suppress the Barbary corsairs and the threat was subdued.
Occasional incidents occurred, including two Barbary wars between the United States and the Barbary States, until terminated by the French conquest of Algiers in 1830. Piracy by Muslim populations had been known in the Mediterranean since at least the 9th century and the short-lived Emirate of Crete. Provence was plagued by Saracen slave raids in the Carolingian era. In 1198 the problem of Berber piracy and slave-taking was so great that a religious order, the Trinitarians, were founded to collect ransoms and to exchange themselves as ransom for those captured and pressed into slavery in North Africa. In the 14th century Tunisian corsairs became enough of a threat to provoke a Franco-Genoese attack on Mahdia in 1390 known as the "Barbary Crusade". Morisco exiles of the Reconquista and Maghreb pirates added to the numbers, but it was not until the expansion of the Ottoman Empire and the arrival of the privateer and admiral Kemal Reis in 1487 that the Barbary corsairs became a true menace to shipping from European Christian nations.
The Barbary pirates had long attacked English and other European shipping along the North Coast of Africa. They had been attacking English merchant and passengers ships since the 1600s. Regular fundraising for ransoms was undertaken by families and local church groups, who raised the ransoms for individuals; the government did not ransom ordinary persons. The English became familiar with captivity narratives written by Barbary pirates' prisoners and ransomed captives, as so many people were taken. After English colonists began to go to North America and be taken captive by Native Americans, both the colonists and people in England had some basis for considering the meaning of captivity for a Christian in an alien society. During the American Revolution the pirates attacked American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean. But, on December 20, 1777, Sultan Mohammed III of Morocco issued a declaration recognizing America as an independent country, that American merchant ships could enjoy safe passage into the Mediterranean and along the coast.
The relations were formalized with the Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship signed in 1786, which stands as the U. S.'s oldest non-broken friendship treaty with a foreign power. As late as 1798, an islet near Sardinia was attacked
