White Slavery in the Barbary States. Sumner Charles
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Название: White Slavery in the Barbary States
Автор: Sumner Charles
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4057664609625
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The apparent generosity of this undertaking, the magnificence with which it was conducted, and the success with which it was crowned, drew to the Emperor the homage of his age beyond any other event of his reign. Twenty thousand slaves, freed by treaty, or by arms, diffused through Europe the praise of his name. It is probable that, in this expedition, the Emperor was governed by motives little higher than those of vulgar ambition and fame; but the results with which it was crowned, in the emancipation of so many of his fellow-Christians from cruel chains, place him, with Cardinal Ximenes, among the earliest Abolitionists of modern times.
This was in 1535. Only a few short years before, in 1517, he had granted to a Flemish courtier the exclusive privilege of importing four thousand blacks from Africa into the West Indies. It is said that Charles lived long enough to repent what he had thus inconsiderately done.29 Certain it is, no single concession, recorded in history, of king or emperor, has produced such disastrous far-reaching consequences. The Fleming sold his privilege to a company of Genoese merchants, who organized a systematic traffic in slaves between Africa and America. Thus, while levying a mighty force to check the piracies of Barbarossa, and to procure the abolition of Christian slavery in Tunis, the Emperor, with a wretched inconsistency, laid the corner stone of a new system of slavery in America, in comparison with which the enormity that he sought to suppress was trivial and fugitive.
Elated by the conquest of Tunis, filled also with the ambition of subduing all the Barbary States, and of extirpating the custom of Christian slavery, the Emperor, in 1541, directed an expedition of singular grandeur against Algiers. The Pope again joined his influence to the martial array. But nature proved stronger than the Pope and Emperor. Within sight of Algiers, a sudden storm shattered his proud fleet, and he was obliged to return to Spain, discomfited, bearing none of those trophies of emancipation by which his former expedition had been crowned.30
The power of the Barbary States was now at its height. Their corsairs became the scourge of Christendom, while their much-dreaded system of slavery assumed a front of new terrors. Their ravages were not confined to the Mediterranean. They penetrated the ocean, and pressed even to the Straits of Dover and St. George's Channel. From the chalky cliffs of England, and even from the distant western coasts of Ireland, unsuspecting inhabitants were swept into cruel captivity.31 The English government was aroused to efforts to check these atrocities. In 1620, a fleet of eighteen ships, under the command of Sir Robert Mansel, Vice Admiral of England, was despatched against Algiers. It returned without being able, in the language of the times, "to destroy those hellish pirates," though it obtained the liberation of forty "poor captives, which they pretended was all they had in the towne." "The efforts of the English fleet were aided," says Purchas, "by a Christian captive, which did swim from the towne to the ships."32 It is not in this respect only that this expedition recalls that of Charles the Fifth, which received important assistance from rebel slaves; we also observe a similar deplorable inconsistency of conduct in the government which directed it. It was in the year 1620—dear to all the descendants of the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock as an epoch of freedom—while an English fleet was seeking the emancipation of Englishmen held in bondage by Algiers, that African slaves were first introduced into the English colonies of North America—thus beginning that dreadful system, whose long catalogue of humiliation and woes is not yet complete.33
The expedition against Algiers was followed, in 1637, by another, under the command of Captain Rainsborough, against Sallee, in Morocco. At his approach, the Moors desperately transferred a thousand captives, British subjects, to Tunis and Algiers. "Some Christians, that were slaves ashore, stole away out of the towne, and came swimming aboard."34 Intestine feud also aided the fleet, and the cause of emancipation speedily triumphed. Two hundred and ninety British captives were surrendered; and a promise was extorted from the government of Sallee to redeem the wretched captives, sold away to Tunis and Algiers. An ambassador from the King of Morocco shortly afterwards visited England, and, on his way through the streets of London, to his audience at court, was attended "by four Barbary horses led along in rich caparisons, and richer saddles, with bridles set with stones; also some hawks; many of the captives whom he brought over going along afoot clad in white."35
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