Abstract

The enslavement of Europeans and North Americans in North Africa from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century is a contentious area of study. Its nature and extent are the subject of considerable debate. Should the captives even be called slaves? How many fell victim to the trade? Why is it so often examined independently of the wider phenomenon of Mediterranean-based slavery, which led to the enslavement of comparable numbers of North Africans in Europe? What relationship, if any, did Barbary slavery have to the much better known Atlantic slave trade in Africans? The seminar will use an unusual case study of Quaker slaves from England and her colonies in the seventeenth century to shine a light on these and other questions, revealing a surprising link between the origins of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and the enslavement of members of this sect on the Barbary coast.