Sack of Madeira | |||||||
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Slaves captured by Barbary pirates | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
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Strength | |||||||
Unknown | 8 vessels [1] 800 men [1] | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
1,200 enslaved | Unknown |
The sack of Madeira occurred in 1617 when Algerian pirates known as Barbary Corsairs sacked the Island and took 1,200 inhabitants as slaves. [1] [2] The attack occurred during the height of slavery on the Barbary coast. Madeira was at that time a part of the Iberian Union headed by the Monarchy of Spain.
The Algerians had established a base on the islands of Cape Verde from which they operated against ships in the Atlantic. [3]
In 1617 the Algerians arrived in Madeira with 8 vessels and 800 men. [1] They plundered the island and enslaved 1,200 inhabitants. [3] During the sack, the Algerians burned the island's archives and sacked much, including church bells. [4] [5] It is also said that they had emptied the island of Porto Santo in the Madeira archipelago enslaving 663 inhabitants. [6] In 1649 the French historian Pierre Dan described the 1617 invasion of Madeira:
"For having left Algiers on the fifteenth of July, with a squadron of eight well-armed vessels, they descended on the Island of Madeira, which depends on the Crown of Spain. When they approached, with eight hundred Turks whom they put to the ground, they ravaged the whole island, pillaged the ornaments and jewels of the Churches; took away the bells, and made slaves twelve hundred people, men, women, and children, whom they took to Algiers. As they were a league away, they discharged all the artillery of their ships as a sign of rejoicing; so that by this signal, those of the City, informed of their return, came to see them arrive". [7]
The activity of the Algerian pirates only seemed to increase later sacking Baltimore in Ireland as well as the famous raid in Iceland. [3]
The Barbary Wars were a series of two wars fought by the United States, Sweden, and the Kingdom of Sicily against the Barbary states and Morocco of North Africa in the early 19th century. Sweden had been at war with the Tripolitans since 1800 and was joined by the newly independent US. The First Barbary War extended from 10 May 1801 to 10 June 1805, with the Second Barbary War lasting only three days, ending on 19 June 1815. The Barbary Wars were the first major American war fought entirely outside the New World, and in the Arab World.
The Second Barbary War, also known as the U.S.–Algerian War and the Algerine War, was a brief military conflict between the United States and the North African state of Algiers in 1815.
The Barbary Coast was the name given to the coastal regions of central and western North Africa or more specifically the Maghreb and the Ottoman borderlands consisting of the regencies in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, as well as the Sultanate of Morocco from the 16th to 19th centuries. The term originates from an exonym for the Berbers.
The Barbary pirates, Barbary corsairs, Ottoman corsairs, or naval mujahideen were mainly Muslim pirates and privateers who operated from the largely independent Ottoman Barbary states. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, in reference to the Berbers. Slaves in Barbary could be of many ethnicities, and of many different religions, such as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. 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 primarily operated in the western Mediterranean. In addition to seizing merchant ships, they engaged in razzias, raids on European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in the British Isles, the Netherlands, and Iceland.
The sack of Baltimore took place on 20 June 1631, when the village of Baltimore in West Cork, Ireland, was attacked by pirates from the Barbary Coast of North Africa – the raiders included Dutchmen, Algerians, and Ottoman Turks. The attack was the largest by Barbary slave traders on Ireland.
The Regency of Algiers was a largely independent early modern Ottoman tributary state on the Barbary Coast of North Africa between 1516 and 1830. Founded by the privateer brothers Aruj and Hayreddin Barbarossa also known as Oruç and Khayr ad-Din. The Regency began as an infamous and formidable pirate base that plundered and waged maritime holy war on European Christian powers. Ottoman regents ruled as heads of a military oligarchy of janissaries and corsairs.
Aruj Barbarossa, known as Oruç Reis to the Turks, was an Ottoman corsair who became Sultan of Algiers. The elder brother of the famous Ottoman admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa, he was born on the Ottoman island of Midilli and died in battle against the Spanish at Tlemcen.
Jan Janszoon van Haarlem, commonly known as Reis Mourad the Younger, was a Dutch pirate who later became a Barbary corsair in Ottoman Algeria and the Republic of Salé. After being captured by Algerian corsairs off Lanzarote in 1618, he converted to Islam and changed his name to Mourad. He became one of the most famous of the 17th-century Barbary corsairs. Together with other corsairs, he helped establish the independent Republic of Salé at the city of that name, serving as the first President and Commander. He also served as Governor of Oualidia.
Salah Rais was the 7th King of Algiers, an Ottoman privateer and admiral. He is alternatively referred to as Sala Reis, Salih Rais, Salek Rais and Cale Arraez in several European sources, particularly in Spain, France and Italy.
The Turkish Abductions were a series of slave raids by pirates from Algier and Salé that took place in Iceland in the summer of 1627.
This timeline of the history of piracy in the 1640s is a chronological list of key events involving pirates between 1640 and 1649.
The Barbary slave trade involved the capture and selling of European slaves at slave markets in the largely independent Ottoman Barbary states. European slaves were captured by Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to the Netherlands, Ireland, and the southwest of Britain, as far north as Iceland and into the Eastern Mediterranean.
The Republic of Salé, also known as the Bou Regreg Republic and the Republic of the Two Banks, was a city-state maritime corsair republic based at Salé in Morocco during the 17th century, located at the mouth of the Bou Regreg river. It was founded by Moriscos from the town of Hornachos, in western Spain. The Moriscos were the descendants of Muslims who were nominally converted to Christianity, and were subject to mass deportation during Philip III's reign, following the expulsion of the Moriscos decrees. The republic's main commercial activities were the Barbary slave trade and piracy during its brief existence in the 17th century.
Anglo-Turkish piracy or the Anglo-Barbary piracy was the collaboration between Barbary pirates and English pirates against Catholic shipping during the 17th century.
Slavery on the Barbary Coast refers to the enslavement of people taken captive by the Barbary corsairs of North Africa.
Until 1815 the Beylik of Tunis maintained a corsair navy to attack European shipping, raid coastal towns on the northern shores of the Mediterranean and defend against incursions from Algiers or Tripoli. After 1815 Tunis tried, with limited success, to create a modern navy, which fought in the Greek War of Independence and the Crimean War.
The French-Algerian War of 1681–1688 was part of a wider campaign by France against the Barbary Pirates in the 1680s.
Slavery is noted in the area later known as Algeria since antiquity. Algeria was a center of the Trans-Saharan slave trade route of enslaved Black Africans from sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a center of the slave trade of Barbary slave trade of Europeans captured by the barbary pirates.
The ta'ifa of raïs or the Raïs for short, were Barbary pirates based in Ottoman Algeria who were involved in piracy and the slave trade in the Mediterranean Sea from the 16th to the 19th century. They were an ethnically mixed group of seafarers, including mostly "renegades" from European provinces of the Mediterranean and the North Sea, along with a minority of Turks and Moors. Such crews were experienced in naval combat, making Algiers a formidable pirate base. Its activity was directed against the Spanish empire, but it did not neglect the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia, Naples or Provence. It was the taifa which, through its seizures, maintained the prosperity of Algiers and its finances.
History of the Regency of Algiers includes political, economic and military events in the Regency of Algiers from its founding in 1516 to the French invasion of 1830. The Regency of Algiers was a largely independent tributary state of the Ottoman Empire. Founded by the corsair brothers Aruj and Khayr ad-Din Barbarossa, it became involved in numerous armed conflicts with European powers, and was an important pirate base notorious for Barbary corsairs.