Inconvenient History; The Barbary Coast Muslim slave trade and the founding of the US Marine Corps, by Professor Robert Davis.

1 million to 1.25 million white Christian Europeans were enslaved in North Africa, from the beginning of the 16th century to the middle of the 18th, by [Muslim] slave traders from Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli alone…

The Barbary Muslim pirates kidnapped Europeans from ships in North Africa’s coastal waters (Barbary Coast). They also attacked and pillaged the Atlantic coastal fishing villages and town in Europe, enslaving the inhabitants. Villages and towns on the coast of Italy, Spain, Portugal and France were the hardest hit. Muslim slave-raiders also seized people as far afield as Britain, Ireland and Iceland. …

In 1625, Barbary pirates captured the Lund Island in the Bristol Channel [40 km SW of Swansea] and planted the standard of Islam. From this base, they went ransacking and pillaging surrounding villages and towns, causing a stunning spectacle of mayhem, slaughter and plunder. According to Milton, ‘Day after day, they struck at unarmed fishing communities, seizing the inhabitants, and burning their homes. By the end of the dreadful summer of 1625, the mayor of Plymouth reckoned that 1,000 skiffs had been destroyed and similar number of villagers carried off into slavery. Between 1609 and 1616, the Barbary pirates ‘captured a staggering 466 English trading ships.’

This isn’t taught at schools any more, and hardly anyone knows now. Why? Who benefits?

hat-tip Stephen Neil