ok, be honest - how many of you know that north african pirates used to plunder the atlantic coast of europe in order to capture slaves, women and money? that there was a "european slave trade"? that cities like lisbon, london and amsterdam were victims of attacks?

how many of you know that there was a "slavic slave trade" across eastern europe? well, maybe you've realized that slave is etymologically the same as 'slav'. that is to say that the english word for slave is identical to an ethnic term that means 'slavic speaking'. slavery, in english, is etymologically a white concept; slavic speakers live in eastern europe: czechs, poles, slovaks, serbs, modern macedonians and bulgarians, ukrainians, russians...not romanians and hungarians but most other people around there...

but, how many of you know that the mongols used to capture slavic slaves in the areas around russia, poland, the ukraine and transport them either across asia or across the black sea (to the turks) to work as slaves? that there were polish slaves working under the yuan dynasty? that slavs were slaves because they were enslaved by east asian peoples - turks and mongols?

beyond the muslim turkish colonization and enslavement of the white slavic eastern european peoples, how many of you know about the janissary system? this was a particularly brutal type of turkish colonialism. they would go from village to village in eastern europe, kidnap the kids and then raise them to be soldiers - that they would send out towards the next set of villages. each generation of captured children would be the next generation of imperial soldiers, to carry on the crescent's reign of terror. they were finally stopped in vienna. austria. check out a map. that's western europe. on the other side, they were stopped (much earlier) near tours by charlemagne's grandfather. tours. check a map. that's fucking northern france!

so, something that happened during the middle ages was that europe was in the process of being colonized by imperialist muslims and mongols. first by arabs on the west coast, then by turks (with the help of capitalist venetians, mind you) in the east. after the colonization period stagnated, there were still slave raids along the coasts until as late as the early 1800s.

the only point i'm trying to make is about *knowledge*. how many of you had any idea of these things? remotely?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_pirates