Response the below in detail::
Make brief comments shown directly referencing/addressing the statements in college level written relevant/competent content, not a generalization? Keep it in "realtime"?
Part 1- Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters
Between the 1500's and the 1800's, white slavery was going on but there were consequences as millions of victims from France, Spain, Holland, Italy, Great Britain, Portugal, Ireland the Americas, and even Iceland, were caught up during those times as the slave trade and raiding affected Italy's social, economic, political, and military development. There were hundreds of towns that were raided Spain was hit hard since they evicted the Islamic Moors and they did not like being kicked out so there were retaliating raids against the Spanish peninsula. The Muslims never really got over losing Cordoba, which represented the pinnacle of Islamic power. The women and boys was used for the sex market and as a result were damaged for the rest of their life.
The impact was devastating because people vanished at the hands of captured, violence, or exploitation which deprived infidel communities of useful and productive citizens to acquire valuable goods. He stated that "the worst kind of Muslim bondage was galley slavery because they worked themselves to death to help their masters try and get more slaves." According to Davis, "the entire existence of the town was based on piracy and slave running, and some communities became ghost towns. The slave raids caused long-term and significant economic distress. It was stated that although this horrific situation started in the Muslim world, there was no real call for the abolition of slavery and in countries such as Mali, Sudan, and Chad slavery still exists!"
Part 2 - Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters
"Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800", gives an insight perspective on drastic changes that occurred due to the slave trade and raids. Davis includes geographical factors that helped the slave trade and raids run as smoothly as possible, as well as some political and social efforts.
In terms of the social and economic factors, the attacks or raids seemed to be limited to merchant shipping and narrow coastal zones of the states that were, which caused the damaged that might strike more than visual and fleeting, according to the author. In result, the African Kingdoms had no opportunity to freedom. However, the only remains left from slave labor are the buildings, wagons, palaces, fortifications, or streets, if it has not been destroyed due to more recent expansions and buildings. The Middle Passage also created further inland for slaves in which it met the markets for requirements for labor on the plantations and developed the transit traffic itself. Also, it is important to note that successful voyages resulted from ships full of goods and slaves made all the parties wealthy. When raids took place, it normally left the area abandoned or uninhabited, which resulted in an extreme loss of population. The negative impact of the raids may have been enhanced by the large number of women the corsairs took. (Davis, 2003)
Politically, the power increased in Italy due to the numerous amounts of the slave trade, specifically the Barbary slave trade. As for the claves, they were completely abandoned by the government, as the government felt it was not their responsibility and would ignore the threats for a long period of time.
The military had its way of impacting the slave trade by destroying important settlements, demolishing buildings, and burning down food stores to deny them to the enemy. These were normal practices of invading armies and very much central activity of full-scale naval invasions of the sort that Barbarossa and Dragut carried out on the Italian and Spanish coast. (Davis, 2003)
The slave trade had both positive and negative results. Positive in that it helped the wealthy stay rich, expand upon slavery, expand upon trade and different routes to ensure slaves always worked. The slave trade and the labor was the reason why the economy flourished as it did. Negative in which thousands of people lost their lives and their family due to enslavement and that their hard work was taken for granted.
Part 3- Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters
The slave trade in the Mediterranean (and Italy in particular) certainly affected the social, economic, political and military development. The impact of the slave trade and slave raiding seem much greater than I previously considered before taking this class. The author notes that Muslim slaving raids, although decreasing in scope over time, continued to be a part of life in southern Italy until the early 19th century.
Maritime areas were some of the main targets for the Barbary areas and the Turks. The economic impact on the region and how it affected the development of Italy's city-states during this time is very large. The human capital needed to promote growth in the south of Italy were taken from families and land, thus stagnating the economy. The ransoms placed on individuals by Muslim masters for redemption were almost impossible for many of the poor to pay in the southern part of Italy. The poor might try to get loans for ransom money, or they might cash in their possessions such as cattle or property. The Venetians were constantly the target of the Muslim raiders because of their location, their reliance on maritime trade, and their constant wars with the Ottomans.
It was a zero-sum game between those that were raiding and those being raided. Merchandise and personnel of merchant vessels were stolen by the raiders, and those lost goods and people directly increased the coffers of the Muslims in North Africa and in the Ottoman Empire. This seems to be best seen in Thomas Baker's journal (pages 48 and 49) which show that a loss to the Italian economy was a gain to the Muslims. Furthermore, the constant loss of people, farms and goods at any point led to more of an emphasis on subsistence farming and people fending for themselves in Italy. Defense of coastal towns seemed more imperative than creating economic opportunity. Local industries suffered - "those who worked on coastal farms, even 10 or 20 miles from the sea, were unsafe from the raiders - harvesters, vine tenders, and olive growers were all regularly surprised" to see these events happen. [1]
Politically, confraternities were created to take funds and disburse them. Albeit with many social issues, public funds were raised in an effort to have coffers available to pay off slave traders. It was hard for city-states to get money from the poor Italian countryside, and it was also unpopular to send money away to try and bail those out who were not from the area the money was being raised in. The Gonfalone in the Papal States attempted to pay off the entire ransom for papal slaves but it was incredibly inefficient. Davis notes that even when the Gonfalone was functioning, it "often managed to ransom only two or three slaves a year, leaving an ever-growing backlog of captives who felt, not surprisingly, that they had been forgotten and abandoned." [2] Furthermore, the author states that there were inefficiencies in the administration of these agencies - these problems got worse as time elapsed because "they lacked dependable funding, reliable information about who was enslaved, and negotiating skills for dealing with slave owners in Barbary." [3] A political (and social) issue stemmed from people in capital cities of city-states where they felt they were far removed from the issue of Muslim slavery. The "central governments tended to ignore the threat for long periods [and] public funds that had been earmarked for redemptive purposes would leak away into other projects and not get paid to designated ransoming boards." [4] In short, a time of divisiveness seemed to be in Italy, separating those who were seeing the action of the raiders and those in more populated areas further away from the Mediterranean coast.
Socially, the Italians had to face the issues of both raising money by confraternities and the forced departure of family, friends and neighbors to Muslim slavers and raiders. In the 17th century, "the business of alms solicitation had become a significant part of the Italian social landscape." [5] These taxes included "piety taxes" that preyed off of the wills of the wealthy and collecting these alms from the public. If a family member, friend or neighbor had been taken by slavers or raiders, these communities would have to pick up the pieces and try to get them out of slavery at any and all costs. I imagine this would have placed quite a social burden on these communities - especially in the areas that were incredibly resource-poor and could not easily afford to send money to the Muslim slave owners.
In terms of the military, city defense became a common theme along the southern towns of Italy. However, the wars between Christians and Muslims continued, and each side enslaved each other as spoils of war. Military issues continued perpetuating the cycle of slavery, such as in the area of intelligence. Christians and former Christians both "seem to have been willing to provide information about the secret [military] approaches to their native villages in exchange for their freedom, even if it meant effectively condemning their former neighbors and even their own families to slavery." [6] The actions of military conflicts between Christians and invading Muslims along the coast caused many people to flee toward bigger population centers along the coast. This appears to be a microcosm for the warfare between the Christian Hapsburgs and the Muslim Ottomans, all playing out in southern Italy. The Turks (and Barbarossa) did not spend much time against Christian forces, but "they were never averse to snapping up enemy merchant ships or ravaging poorly defended coastal areas in an endless pursuit of plunder and, in particular, of slaves." [7]
These events do have a substantial impact of the development of Italy in the Early Modern Era. The author estimates between 1 million and 1.25 million Christian slaves taken between 1530 and 1780. [8] That is a great deal of lost family members, workers for agriculture or developing industries, and payments for slaves to be redeemed. This started political agencies, a further desire to get public funds through various methods of taxation, and caused a social riff between city-states and the countryside (especially in areas with large geographic distances between them).