[kewrkewm53]

There should be more discussion about these forgotten forms of slave trade. People tend to think about just the transatlantic slavery when they hear the word, but reality the transatlantic slavers just scaled up and spread an existing way of doing business.

Interestingly enough, Crimea used to be a major center of slave trade all the way into 1700s. Christians were sold to Islamic world and vice versa.

https://mikedashhistory.com/2015/01/15/blonde-cargoes-finnis...

[fsloth]

Focusing on the atlantic slave trade is understandable in US as that's very foundational there.

I just hope US people would realize allmost none of their North-American cultural tropes are applicable elsewhere as a foundation for anything, really.

Example: I am a finn. A middle class male in a high income country. What this means is: I am of the indigeneous population in this country (one of the population surges after the ice age). My kin where hunted as slaves and sold to asian slave markets.

Finland never participated in the colonial era except as a dirt poor third world economy to be exploited.

There is xenophobia and racism as elsewhere, but there is no historical past we should be particularly ashamed off.

If I were to come to US I presume I would be categorized based on my skin color in the "population whose ancestors benefitted from an inhuman trade" where as the truth would be "whose ancestors were the oppressed". I don't find it insulting or anything, but I do get the sense that the strength of the US tropes would make it impossible to discuss this in US context without myself being labeled a white power supremacist or something worse.

[hushpuppy]

I am in the USA.

My ancestors escaped from Prussia and immigrated from Sweden in the late 19th century, well after Slavery and the Slave trade was over and lived in hovels dug into the side of hills in the wind-swept and tree-free plains of the mid-west. In a area on the North American continent that was never touched by slavery.

They became farmers and worked the land. My father didn't even have central plumbing for a great deal of his childhood. Had to piss in buckets when it became too cold and too dangerous to go to the outhouse in the winter.

Yet I have plenty of people all over the planet that I should be ashamed to have European heritage living in the USA and that it's my fault there are a lot of poor black people. And that I owe them money and should "check my privilege" because of it.

[bozosunited]

Similar story, my grandparents immigrated from Hungary and faced significant challenges assimilating. They changed their name and their religious affiliation to avoid negative biases. They were never really successful and my parent on that side describes a “dirt poor” upbringing.

While there are systemic (and observable in aggregate, though often not individually) benefits to having white skin in the US, the idea that there’s a uniform “White” experience and that it is universally one of privilege is obviously wrong, and it’s also needlessly divisive.

[alsaaro]

If you can imagine that you were a pre-Civil rights era black, under constant attack from the government, and from the majority population as a matter of social custom -- you may conclude whites are privileged.

The term white privilege is an accusatory polemic -- from a certain white perspective. Likewise a fish may not have the perspective to understand water, some whites may not understand they live in a social milieu that privileges them by disadvantaging everyone else.

The term white privilege is an inversion of the indubitable reality of anti-black discrimination, probably an unnecessary inversion.

[boomboomsubban]

> In a area on the North American continent that was never touched by slavery

Ignoring that slavery touched the entirety of the continent, I'm going to guess that means your German ancestors ended up in the Midwest. Probably on Native American lands.

To this day, Native Americans are 20 times more likely to lack indoor plumbing than Whites. Roughly fifteen percent of the Oglala Lakota County, containing the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in South Dakota lack indoor plumbing. Meaning this year they likely had to piss in buckets as the outhouse was too dangerous.

[hushpuppy]

> Ignoring that slavery touched the entirety of the continent, I'm going to guess that means your German ancestors ended up in the Midwest. Probably on Native American lands.

By that logic there isn't a square inch anywhere on the planet that wasn't "touched by slavery".

Which renders the whole notion pretty much irrelevant and diminishes the role of slavery in USA history.

[boomboomsubban]

If you only look at a one sentence statement it can seem to diminish things. There's never a need to only look at one sentence though.

[Fomorian]

You're accusing this guy of only reading one sentence, when you "guessed" that the ancestors of the guy you replied to settled in the Midwest.

He explicitly stated in his comment that they settled in the Midwest.

Might be everybody on all sides of this conversation needs to calm down a bit.

[300bps]

How many European peoples were subjugated and annihilated to get the current population we have today?

It goes back even further than modern humans that likely directly caused or at least aided the extinction of the Neanderthal.

[native_samples]

He explicitly says his ancestors ended up in the mid west in his comment.

[manuelabeledo]

> Yet I have plenty of people all over the planet that I should be ashamed to have European heritage living in the USA and that it's my fault there are a lot of poor black people.

Do the "plenty" of people have an issue with you having a German ethnicity? How so?

> And that I owe them money and should "check my privilege" because of it.

You are conflating different things here.

"Reparations" aren't a way to funnel money from "you" to "black people". That's another oversimplification, akin to saying that Medicare is about taking from richer people to put money into poor people's pockets.

"Privilege" has more to do with the colour of your skin, than your ethnic background.

[lolinder]

> "Privilege" has more to do with the colour of your skin, than your ethnic background.

This is a ridiculous and racist statement. This places the children of Bill Gates on the same "privilege" footing as a newly arrived Mexican immigrant who happens to have enough European ancestry to have white skin.

There are a huge number of factors that may or may not give someone a foot up in life and their external appearance is just one relatively small contributing factor.

[manuelabeledo]

> This is a ridiculous and racist statement.

Is it "racist" to point out that a racist will not look at someone's background, and will focus on evident skin features to make a character judgement? Really?

It's called prejudice for a reason.

> This places the children of Bill Gates on the same "privilege" footing as a newly arrived Mexican immigrant who happens to have enough European ancestry to have white skin.

This is a ridiculous comparison, because you are adding a new component, which is loads of money.

I myself am a hispanic white living in the US. I'm not rich by any means. But even I can tell how differently people look at me, compared to other hispanics with darker skin.

[lolinder]

I'm not arguing that people don't treat people differently based on the color of their skin, it's obvious that they do. I'm arguing that that differential treatment cannot be more significant than the vast array of other socioeconomic factors that contribute to privilege, and defining privilege as being primarily about skin color is racist.

[bitxbitxbitcoin]

It depends on what kind of privilege we are talking about. Lumping privileges together is just as blurring as lumping experiences together based on external appearance.

One example I can think of where your two disparate examples may experience the same privilege in many parts of the USA is in a pulled over by police but prior to a driver’s license being shown scenario.

[lolinder]

Agreed! That's exactly what I'm arguing: privilege is extremely complicated and has tons of different facets. Your ethnic background will have a much stronger influence on most of those facets than your skin color will.

That's not to say that there aren't some important aspects of privilege that are influenced by skin color. It's simply that those are overshadowed by other aspects of your background.

[hushpuppy]

> You are conflating different things here.

No I am not.

Race is a political grift. It has been a political grift since the beginning. It's a way for some individuals to exploit social divides for personal profit. It's a political gamesmanship.

It was a grift when "white" was first legally defined during the colonial era. It is a grift now.

The greater wedge they can drive between people the greater the potential for personal profit and political power. If you want to eliminate racism in the USA then the worst possible way you can do it is by trying to force some idiotic and unrealistic notion of "equity" on the american people in the name of racial injustice.

[manuelabeledo]

> The greater wedge they can drive between people the greater the potential for personal profit and political power.

And I agree with that. Also, I would say that the main issue here is money, not skin colour. Poor people are basically getting screwed so billionaires like Musk or Bezos add a couple more zeroes to their bank accounts.

But I cannot ignore the fact that there is racism embedded in the system, and that it is a massive problem.

I see this a bit like gender inequality back in the 70s and 80s. Are we going to ignore it, like our grandparents and parents did, or will be acknowledging it?

[lolinder]

The problem that I see with the "check your privilege" approach to solving racism is that it's similar to PETA's approach to fighting for animal rights. If your rhetoric makes everyone into the enemy, then how do you expect them to turn around and support your cause? You've already "othered" the majority of the population.

There are huge numbers of white people who don't like the status quo but see the "check your privilege" rhetoric as arguing that they haven't earned anything in their lives. If you come from a working-class white family like OP's, that's a slap in the face.

The answer isn't to say that people like OP are just misunderstanding what you mean and should listen better. The answer is to change the rhetoric so that it actually reaches the target audience.

[Mikeb85]

> "Privilege" has more to do with the colour of your skin, than your ethnic background.

And what's the upside to having white skin but not having the generational wealth that supposedly comes from colonialism? There's many "white" countries that never colonised anyone, are still poor and certainly don't benefit from their "whiteness" today...

You're seeing it through both a Mexican and American lens. White Mexicans look down on indigenous Mexicans and there's definitely racism in the US, but how should someone from Czech Republic, Ukraine or Finland feel about their "privilege" today?

Edit - it's also been pointed out but should be again that the word 'slave' comes from the word for Slavs who unfortunately were frequently enslaved...

[at_a_remove]

Reparations are very much that.

Where does the money start? Him. Where does the money go? Them. So, reparations are a way to funnel money from him to them. You can do all kinds of wordplay and commentary and invention of new terminologies, but those are all distractions from "reparations funnel money from him to them."

[jhgb]

> Do the "plenty" of people have an issue with you having a German ethnicity? How so?

But he doesn't have German ethnicity...? His ancestors moved to the US in the 19th century.

[manuelabeledo]

I guess I should have said German "genes"?

[hef19898]

I know the US is somewhat obsessed with ancestry and that it can be figured by genes. Being German myself I can tell you there is nothing like German genes. Or French genes, or any other European nation as far as that is concerned.

[_-david-_]

Privilege has nothing to do with skin color. Do you think an average white person from Appalachia is more privileged than a child of LeBron James?

[Thorentis]

Unfortunately, along with Hollywood and other culture, the US thanks to the Internet also exports its political and social issues to the world. It has reached the point that "white people" are now considered the oppressors of every country, regardless of whether those people are indeed the indigenous population of the country.

It is even more absurd in the UK, where in fact multiple groups of white people were successively displaced by conquest (Celts, Angles, Saxons, Normans, etc), and yet collectively, "Anglo Saxons" are perceived as oppressors, even if many decend from a group of people who were themselves oppressed.

[thriftwy]

It is not incompetence but obvious malice: the granny of all SJW movements, the early Soviet regime, openly declared that Russians are oppressors and have to make up for centuries of oppression, even as the majority of Russian population were direct descendants of serfs, who were sold and bought at some periods of time; and that most of higher-class Russians were either expelled or outright killed at this point.

Russia did not really recover from that outbreak, and some other countries may still have it ahead.

[golergka]

And still most of current Russian territory is colonian expansion, with subjugation of native cultures and people continuing well into present day.

Have you tried renting an apartment in Moscow without “Slavic” looks?

[thriftwy]

You seem to assume that in some fashion, the minorities would be the winners of totalitarian cult's actions. They would not. The minorities would be better off living in a stable, lawful and democratic society, even if it does not try to declare war on the majority.

Russians do not run their country for a century, but yeah, they may respond by not renting you their crappy and overpriced flat.

[krzyk]

Oh, so some other nation is ruling Russians?

[unmole]

> Russians are oppressors and have to make up for centuries of oppression

Do you have a source for that?

[thriftwy]

http://library.maoism.ru/Lenin/Lenin-autonomisation.htm

Поэтому интернационализм со стороны угнетающей или так называемой «великой» нации (хотя великой только своими насилиями, великой только так, как велик держиморда) должен состоять не только в соблюдении формального равенства наций, но и в таком неравенстве, которое возмещало бы со стороны нации угнетающей, нации большой, то неравенство, которое складывается в жизни фактически.

Lenin

[gunfighthacksaw]

Not that I understand Russian all that well, but I don’t see ‘Rossiya’ or any of its declensions in that passage, therefore I don’t think that passage refers to Russia specifically, whatever it’s getting at.

[acjohnson55]

I think you're misunderstanding the concepts of white supremacy and white privilege. Most white Americans do not trace their ancestry to slave owners, even those whose ancestors were in the US before emancipation. Likewise, not all Black Americans are descendants of slaves in the US or the broader Americas.

Nonetheless, we're a country where Black Americans are subject to all sorts of disadvantages. My parents experienced the segregated South. It wasn't that long ago. The attitudes that allowed for de jure segregation to persist didn't simply disappear in the 60s. No reparations were made for 350 years of de jure oppression. This casts a long shadow materially and societally.

Generally, few people think of white people as being hardcore white supremacists simply for being white. Although I would say that Black people do want to see white people be actively anti-white supremacy, not just neutral, because white people are still the demographic majority and wield overwhelming political and economic power. So basically, there can be no justice to be found for Black Americans without the active participation of white people.

[rajin444]

> No reparations were made for 350 years of de jure oppression

This is what all the other posters are saying. Nearly everyone has some ancestry that was oppressed for an extended period of time and they are not receiving reparations for it. Why should black Americans be different?

When you consider how small changes made early amplify over time, there’s other groups of people with orders of magnitude greater claims to reparations.

[dvngnt_]

http://www.mnchurches.org/blog/2021/02/18/holocaust-survivor...

[rajin444]

Yes, people who were wronged and are still alive should be compensated.

Punishing the son for the sins of the father is not healthy for society nor fair.

[alsaaro]

I think one of the presumptions for reparations is that any form of compensation would come from government, not any sole specific race.

[acjohnson55]

People who are oppressed should receive reparations, and there are many examples of this actually happening and many ongoing movements in cases where it hasn't:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reparations_(transitional_just...

I'm not here to play Oppression Olympics and say that Black people deserve reparations more than anybody else. This push to compare and contrast often is used to deflect, delay, and ultimately disrupt the solidarity of marginalized people. So I only ask that people just understand the plight of Black folks in America in and of itself, and ask themselves what feels just.

This piece makes a compelling summary of the situation of Black folks in the US:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-cas...

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if reparations never happen for Black Americans within my lifetime. But that doesn't mean it's not justified. At the very least, what most Black people demand is a fair shake at jobs, wealth, security, and dignity. It is violations of these basic human rights and justice that get us out in the streets.

[badpun]

> No reparations were made for 350 years of de jure oppression.

Most history books are filled with stories of gross injustices, exploitations or just plain horrors. Hardly any of those are ever later compensated by any reparations - that’s just how the world goes.

[klyrs]

Except for the plantation owners. They got paid reparations for their "loss" of slaves who were freed. The rich get richer, fuck the poor; that's just how the world goes. Why in the world would anybody strive for better?

[kasey_junk]

The vast majority of white Americans can trace their heritage to oppressed people in one form or another and do not have heritage that participated in the transatlantic slave trade.

That’s not the basis for conversations around white privilege (at least not to anyone whose spent even the barest amount of time reading about it).

The issue is that all that history has created a systematically biased culture, one where a Finnish immigrant in 2022 will be treated better than a black person who can trace their American heritage back 300 years to forcible bondage, based purely on the color of their skin.

As a middle American born in the latter part of the 20th century I’ve participated in no more colonialism or slavery than you have. I’m not personally responsible for that history. But I’m cognizant that being white gets me a leg up in many places including Finland.

[badpun]

A Black American will be treated way better than white Moldovian in most places, at least in countries which are not hostile to the US. American passport is treated seriously by local authorities and such person is less likely to be e.g. detained without cause.

[hef19898]

That is most likely true. And it tells a lot about everyday racism in the US that a black US citizen is most likely better treated by police abroad than at home.

But that was a problem during WW2 as well between US forces and their host countries, e.g. the UK or New Zealand where litteral fights were caused by white GIs insisting in racial segregation be implemented by Scotish pub owners and shops. The locals sided with the black GIs.

[brigandish]

> The issue is that all that history has created a systematically biased culture, one where a Finnish immigrant in 2022 will be treated better than a black person who can trace their American heritage back 300 years to forcible bondage, based purely on the color of their skin.

But would a Finn be treated better or worse than a black immigrant? Thomas Sowell has pointed out the difference in outcomes between black Americans and black immigrants to a small, similar area (New York, if I recall correctly). As they are impossible to tell apart for a stranger it makes for an interesting comparison.

Coleman Hughes has also pointed out the same kind of analysis using data comparing outcomes for white people[1]:

> Indeed, it is rare to find any two ethnic groups achieving identical outcomes, even when they belong to the same race. A cursory glance at the mean incomes of census-tracked ethnic groups shows Americans of Russian descent out-earning those of Swiss descent, who out-earn those of British descent, who out-earn those of Polish descent, who out-earn those of French descent in turn. If the disparity fallacy were true, then we ought to posit an elaborate system that is biased towards ethnic Russians, then the Swiss, followed by the Brits, the Poles and the French. Yet one never hears progressives make such claims. Moreover, one never hears progressives say, “French-Americans make 79 cents for every Russian-American dollar,” although the facts could easily be framed that way. Similar disparities between blacks and whites are regularly presented in such invidious terms. Rather than defaulting to systemic bias to explain disparities, we should understand that, even in the absence of discrimination, groups still differ in innumerable ways that affect their respective outcomes.

[1] https://americandigest.org/long-read-the-racism-treadmill-by...

[badpun]

Hear hear. I’m Polish, and my ancestors were serfs (like 90%+ of the nation), brutally exploited by Polish nobility and Catholic Church. We have more in common with US Blacks than US Whites, which sometimes shows in our attitudes.

[jowdones]

>> Finland never participated in the colonial era except as a dirt poor third world economy to be exploited.

A lot of this, I think, is the result of geography rather than the Finns (or rather, their leaders) being different / special.

Romania never participated in the colonial era as well but it's not they wouldn't have liked to. Only neighboring Habsburgs, Russia and the Ottomans there was little direction to go. By the sea, they'd have to cross Bosphorus and Gibraltar straits to reach the open ocean so forget it either.

But once the opportunity present, there was no hesitation to jump and snatch. Took Dobrudja from Bulgaria after they got beaten shitless in the Balkan Wars by a coalition of Turkey, Greece and Serbia. Invaded Hungary opportunistically in WW1 after posing neutral for a couple years and managed to shoot a few poor unsuspecting border guards before being pushed back and nearly wiped out by German troops (lead by a young Erwin Rommel), after which sign an armistice with the Central Powers and invade Moldova to "secure" some space. Then 12 hours before the end of WW1 declare war to Central Powers again and be technically on the winning side. Invade Hungary again and "secure" Transylvania.

>> There is xenophobia and racism as elsewhere, but there is no historical past we should be particularly ashamed off.

The past is mostly presented as "special military operation" :P

[prepend]

> A lot of this, I think, is the result of geography rather than the Finns (or rather, their leaders) being different / special. Romania never participated in the colonial era as well but it's not they wouldn't have liked to.

Doesn’t this apply to everywhere though. I’m sure every country would have loved to colonize places but didn’t for various reasons.

I don’t think there are “evil” countries that colonized because they are evil. All countries that could, did.

Fortunately, recently people became more moral and have worked to limit this. Although cynically, I think it’s because the less evil way is no more lucrative.

[badpun]

Poland wasn’t into colonizing. The country wasn’t overpopulated yet and the elites were very rich from grain exports anyway, so why bother competing with other European powers for the New World?

[prepend]

Same reason why Germany didn’t colonize much, they didn’t exist.

[hef19898]

Poland as a nation didn't exist until the end of WW1. Difficult to colonize when you don't exist as a nation.

[badpun]

I’m speaking about Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which existed during the first stages of colonisation, and in which Poland played the dominant role.

[paganel]

Am Romanian, probably shouldn't have entered this conversation, but it's the first such attempt that I see on this website at hitting at the people under which I'm labeled in my passport so I feel like probably I should enter the conversation after all.

First, about the Bulgaria thing. I grew up in a Romanian city just north of the Danube, Bulgaria was 11 km away (12-13, if you include the width of the Danube itself). In my home-town's central park there was (still is, afaik, I left that town ~20 years ago) a monument devoted to the Romanian soldiers who had died in the Second Balkan War, i.e. the war that you mentioned. They died when their boat had sunk while crossing the Danube. The majority of the Romanian deaths in that war (and there were a few) were the result of typhus (if I remember rightly), either way, what I do remember is my dad telling kid-me how stupid it was for us to get into that war whenever we were walking in front of that monument, how stupid our deaths had been. Of course, those deaths and that war were not mentioned in our history books.

What was also not mentioned were the atrocities committed by the Bulgarian soldiers once they invaded back, around 1917. It was really eye-opening to see photos of naked, dead, raped women in a Carnegie-report written just after WW1, a report that was mentioning places a few kilometers away from the village where my grand-parents had lived. I stumbled upon that report in an antiques-shop here in Bucharest a few years ago, again, no mention of those atrocities had been made in our history classes.

> after which sign an armistice with the Central Powers and invade Moldova to "secure" some space.

That was not an invasion, if you had read something, almost anything, on that subject you would have known that. Granted, I don't fault you for that, even here, in Romania, that event is seen in the wrong light, i.e. as a celebration of Romanians coming together after 100 years of Russian occupation. There was a coming back together of Romanians but there was nothing celebratory about it, as people who were alive back then and who were witnessing the whole thing actually said. It was a thing that the Germans wanted us, Romanians, to have, as compensation for the losses they had been inflicting on us (the union happened in March 1918, the Buftea peace treaty was signed in May 1918).

I will not go into the can of worms you opened about Transylvania because it's just not worth it, but the truth is I had expected better from HN readers/writers in here, no matter their nationality and ideological affinities.

[fsloth]

>>>> Finland never participated in the colonial era except as a dirt poor third world economy to be exploited.

>>A lot of this, I think, is the result of geography rather than the Finns (or rather, their leaders) being different / special.

My intent was not to signal virtue, merely the lack of historical action resulting in a system that could be economically or politically identified as colonization

Why? Geography, demographics and economy. Everyone was dirt poor - no economic elite to speak of. And the population was and is tiny.

[brigandish]

I thought the point of their post was that no society, civilisation, "race" - whatever little circle could be drawn around a group - is special, by providing an obvious counter to the "white people are inherently bad" nonsense going on the US, so I'm not sure what you're attempting to refute.

[chmod600]

Why does it matter whether one's ancestors were indigenous or not?

Either they found some land that was uncontended, or they fought for it. I guess finding and making use of uncontended land has the moral high ground, but I think it's the exception. And if one's ancestors fought for it, I don't see why "I was here first" gives any special moral high ground. Especially because "here first" is not always very clear.

[swayvil]

The victim is the penultimate social power today. The victim's outraged representative is the ultimate.

It's a role with great benefits. Thus the attraction of a narrative that supports that role.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

There wasn't a country prior to 1900 where >97% of the population wasn't dirt poor.

The American South - AFAIK - is unique in the percentage of families that 1) had wealth, and 2) had slaves.

Most of those people were independently wealthy immigrants, or descendents of them.

Beside the American South - you're not going to find any group that can be considered a majority that directly benefited from slavery.

Finland indirectly benefited from slavery - at the very least - by not DIRECTLY being enslaved in the slave trade. Sure, maybe not as indirect as New York City or London, but there were benefits...

[krzyk]

Also slavers from Africa (same color as the slaves) benefitted from the trade.

[dfadsadsf]

You should learn more about both Finnish history and current reality if you think Finland did not participate in oppression or subjugation of neighboring population. Starting with current and past discrimination and oppression of Sami [1] and active attempts to establish Greater Finland during WW2 [2]

I will grant you that Finland was not very successful in establishing empire besides mostly erasing Sami identity and language but that's not for the lack of trying.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Finland

[zeristor]

whilst there were many different slave routes the Atlantic slave trade of 12 million people was larger than the Indian Ocean slave trade of 8 or so million people over a thousand years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_slave_trade

I hadn’t heard of the Zanj Rebellion of the 9th century in Basra:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanj_Rebellion

[robertlagrant]

Indeed. Even the word "slave" comes from Slavs, who were white, and enslaved so much it got named after them.

[seer]

Dan carlin recently made an outstanding [deep dive into this topic](https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-68-blitz-...) one might say a bit too deep, but I personally really enjoy them.

Even as its centered around US perspective, it does a very good job at setting the stage of what slavery meant in europe and throughout the world.

It’s fascinating that one of the main reasons that transatlantic slavery turnout out as something that persisted for sooo much longer in US rather than slowly decline naturally like in the rest of world, was a technological invention made to make the life of slaves better. Talk about unintended consequences.

The only big perspective that was missing I think was the Asian slavery in India, where someone who was a slave could become a legitimate ruler and there have been some examples of those.

Where “slave” could actually turn out to be “forced high education to turn children into high value clerks and scribes”.

[zeristor]

There must be evidence of DNA mixing, so many people being moved so far must have left a genetic trace.

[hef19898]

There is in Iceland. As Vikings used to be active slavers a lot of women from northern France and the British isles ended up there. Partially due to the fact that Vikings, the raiders from Scandinavia and not all Scandinavians, were male dominated. Up to this day women in Iceland have a large degree of DNA from tjose regions, while men are as close to pure blood Vikings as you can probably be.

One of the things discovered in the grnomr sequencing project that was conductef in Iceland.

[ransom1538]

The Turks loved Iceland for their white "pearls".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Abductions

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51hXkmBB-YL.jpg

https://www.michaelbackmanltd.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12...

[nanis]

From the very same Wikipedia article:

> The label "Turkish" does not refer to Turkey; at the time it was a general term for all Muslims in the Mediterranean region since the majority were a part of the Ottoman Empire. During the 17th century, the majority of those called "Turks" in Algeria, were disowned Christians that had converted to Islam. They were mostly Spanish, Italians, and provençaux (French).

In my experience, most "Western" understanding of European history evolved in the last millennium is completely bereft of the recognition that it was influenced by a heavyweight to their East.

Why did Columbus sail west? Why were the Portuguese going around the horn of Africa to get to Asia?

[hardlianotion]

That seems a little weird to me as a non-specialist. I had the impression that people take DNA in roughly equal mix from both parents, irrespective of sex.

[legolas2412]

Mitochondrial DNA comes from mother only. And Y chromosome only from father

[dudeinjapan]

The Barbary pirates routinely castrated their slaves, precluding them from doing much DNA mixing.

[barry-cotter]

Source? Castration had very high mortality and I’m not aware of any historical slave trade where it was routinely done.

[dudeinjapan]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_the_Musl...

"Castration: A fair proportion of male slaves were imported as eunuchs... in practice, emasculation was frequent"

(and yes, it did also carry a high rate of death.)

[biorach]

that text doesn't appear on that page. and that's a very generalised statement covering a long period of time and wide area.

My understanding was that adults were rarely castrated, rather boys from certain regions were targeted (I believe boys from modern Sudan were preferred by the Ottomans)

[ttyprintk]

It appears on my version of that page.

But, this is such a well-documented aspect of Ottoman slavery that it doesn’t depend on any particular Wikipedia page.

This was known to be full-on castration.

[mda]

This statement is doubtful. There were castrated slaves (Eunuchs) but were they mostly sold by Barbary pirates? Not really.

[zeristor]

Yikes.

But didn’t they also take female slaves too, some being concubines?

[dudeinjapan]

Yes, certainly, they raided European coastal villages. But AFAIK the majority of captives would have come from captured merchant ships, which were exclusively men. The pirates weren't so into keeping accurate records.

[ransom1538]

There are volumes of books on it.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51hXkmBB-YL.jpg

[swayvil]

Do something similar to their brain and you'd have a ... Mentat?

It opens up so much possibility. Modified humans as household/industrial appliances.

Tomorrow's XBox might be your genetically tweaked second cousin.

[sct202]

Jan Janszoon a Dutch born man who was captured by the Barbary pirates and then became one has a fairly well documented life, and at least 2 of his children moved to New Amsterdam. Cornelius Vanderbilt is a descendent. This is one of his son's wikis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Janszoon_van_Salee

[alcover]

Fascinating question.

Wildly speculating, I'd suppose european concubines were very much sought after by slavers and their 'customers'. And even more so blonds and redheads for their 'exotism'.

Now some Algerians look very european. You can even see redheads, though I remember redheadness appeared independantly in Europe and the Levant I think.

[inglor_cz]

The indigenous people of North Africa are Berbers, and many Berbers have lighter complexion and hair.

The same was true about the Guanche, who used to inhabit the Canary Islands before their Spanish conquest. They were "whiter" than the Spanish who conquered them.

[somedude895]

Dan Carlin has a fantastic episode on slavery that I've been listening to for the past week while driving: https://open.spotify.com/episode/76Q5C6lBoYW2TXY6cmQ5n1?si=x...

[prepend]

I just finished listening and also think it’s really informative. I thought I knew a lot about US slave trade and I learned a lot.

Here’s a link to the episode directly for people who use other podcast listeners (or just hate Spotify)… https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-68-blitz-...