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 Network of christian slaves in Algiers

Slavemarket at Algiers, 1684

Introduction

When people think of slaves, they mostly think of black people with a chain around their ankle who do heavy labour. This stereotype has, just like every stereotype, exceptions. There were also white slaves if we look at the history of human kind, and they were there as long as there has been black slaves. For example, the Romans kept white Greek slaves next to their black slaves from the northern part of Africa. It seems that the stereotype of what most people now see as a slave comes from the trade triangle which connected America, Africa and Europe with each other. During this period black slaves where shipped to America by Europeans including the Dutch under terrible living conditions to work there on plantations. Because this slave trade had so much effect on the spread of the world population and because there remains a lot of source material from that period the black slave became the stereotypical slave. I wanted to turn the roles around and see how white slaves were living.

Slave stereotypes

Discussion

Henri Pirenne is the founding father of the idea of a united Mediterranean based on economic interactions. In the early twentieth century he was popular with his thesis on the connecting power of economics. Since the new millennium it is popular again to see the Mediterranean as a unity. This is because the division of the area, which happened during the Cold War, is gone. Horden and Purcell think it is the social ties which are the main connectors and less the economic ties. In their work The corrupting sea they say that the Mediterranean is a collection of micro regions which are created by ecological borders. The fragmented landscape creates a lot of room for extortion. At the same time it is an unpredictable environment which contains disasters at any moment, climatic disasters that is. Because of the dangers of disasters people are forced to remain in contact with each other to help one another when the situation demands it. When one area is the victim of a disaster, the other helps the one with the idea that when the helpers have a disaster themselves, they will be helped. The unique unity of the Mediterranean has been formed thanks to ''fragmentation'' and ''connectivity'' according to Horden and Purcell.  The connection between the different regions has also been called ''fuzzy boundaries'' because the regions overlap each other to a certain extent. Reciprocity is the main reason why the Mediterranean works like it does. Not one region is the same as an  other, but together they help each other survive. 

Network Cornelis Stout Legend: - Pink: family - Light blue: Dutch - Green: Turkish - Dark blue: Russian - Red: British - Purple: Greek - Very light blue: Portugese

Network Emanuel d'Aranda: Orange: Algerian, Green: Turkish, Light green: Flemish, Yellow: Spanish, Red: Norse, Purple: Maltese, Pink: Italian

Research

For the research I created the network of two former Christian slaves who both came from the lowland countries and who were captive in roughly the same timespan, these are Cornelis Stout and Emanuel d'Aranda . I went through the primary sources searching for contacts that the two individuals had made with people, and as it happens to be, they made a lot of international contacts as well. 

Conclusion

Both Stout and d'Aranda show a network of equal form. Both networks connect North-Africa, Turkey and Europe and contribute to the bigger Mediterranean network. The thesis of Horden and Purcell, that this network primarily is built on social relations, is not completely acceptable because economic ties also play a role. The relation between a patron and a slave is for example not very personal. It is more of a business transaction even though contact is in person. Still, there is truth to be found in the thesis of Horden and Purcell in the fact that personal relations certainly play a huge role in the Mediterranean network and in thesis that the ecology plays a huge role. If there wasn't a Mediterranean sea, the connection would go in a whole other way. The network would form itself in a completely different way.