Polish Slaves and Captives in the Crimea in the Seventeenth Century

Research Gate ^ | September 14th, 2019 | Mikhail Kizilov

[Cronos]

The Crimean Tatars often carried out predatory raids into Polish territory. Sometimes they did this together with the Ottoman army or Zaporozhian Cossacks. The Polish government paid a high annual tribute to the Tatars to prevent their raids.

Despite these efforts, the early modern Crimea was full of slaves from Poland. Not all of these, however, were of Polish ethnicity: among the enslaved inhabitants of Poland were also the Ruthenians (Ukrainians), Lithuanians, Jews, and Armenians. According to the account of the Dominican friar Francesco Piscopo (the 1660s) Polish was second in importance language of the Crimea after Ottoman Turkish (Turc hesco). He explained it by the abundance of Polish captives in the peninsula and also added that Polish was understood also by the Ruthenians and Muscovites. The third in importance was Latin which could be used for communication with the Germans, Hungarians and Saxons .

The first predatory incursion of the Crimean Tatars into Red Ruthenia (then the part of Poland), which resulted in the seizure of 18,000 captives, took part in 1468; some scholars argue that the first raid took place in 1474

The Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi admiringly described that, in the 1640s and 1650s, the Crimean Khan Islam Giray III invaded Polish lands seventy-one times and captured 200,000 Jews, later selling each for the price of a full tobacco pipe

Having been sold, the slaves could either remain in the Crimea, or be taken to other countries, in most cases to the Ottoman Empire. The worst lot expected those who were sold to work on Ottoman galleys. The slaves’ new owners not necessarily were Muslims. To give an example, seventeenth-century kadiasker records (sicil) provide us names of five Polish slaves that were owned by the Armenian and Jewish (most likely Karaite) slavers.

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TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS:

[Cronos]

This study shows that the UN resolution that the trans-atlantic slave trade was the gravEST crime against humanity is historically blind.

All peoples have been victims of slavery - and as seen here, it was never black and white (pun intended) - the slave owners were different peoples - Tatars, Armenians, Jews as well as Turks, Arabs, Albanians etc.

[Cronos]

nearly 3 million people were enslaved.

Italians, Spaniards, French, English, Irish were also enslaved by the North Africans (who were and are, quite "white" but with Arab and some sub-Saharan mixture - and some key slavers were converted Dutch, English, French etc.)

slavery happened - to nearly every nation - and slave owners have been every skin color under the sun.

No one has a monopoly on being the aggressor nor the victim -- the Tatars themselves are descendants of turkic peoples who were enslaved by Arabs pre-9th century. And the Arabs had been enslaved by Persians, who had been enslaved by others etc. etc.

[OldHarbor]

Have they asked for reparations yet ?

Years ago I had screen saver on my workstation from a Korean drama about slave hunters set around the Manchu War in 1636 .The scene showed three slave hunters on horseback

A black coworker asked the image. I told him it was about slave hunters searching for escaped slaves in Korea and China.

He asked, “They had slaves in Korea and China ?” I told him of course they did.
Not sure he believed me.

[Tell It Right]

Thanks for posting. With the left's constant mantra of past slavery, it's easy to forget the millions of white slaves that was going on at the same time as the trans-Atlantic slave trade. A total of 250K to 500K black slaves taken to the U.S. is dwarfed by the millions of white slaves taken to the Ottoman Empire.

Often forgotten is that the Ottoman Empire still had slaves going into WW1. Ostensibly they had freed slaves before that, but not really. I'm sure to the Europeans war with the OE had special meaning.

[Dr. Franklin]

Historically, Ruthenia referred to the lands of Kievan Rus. Ukraine only referred to the area directly around Kiev. The old maps prove it. So all Ukrainians were Ruthenians, but not all Ruthenians were Ukrainians. Only in the 20th century did the two terms begin to be used interchangeably.

[Dr. Franklin]

Isn’t it interesting that Europeans didn’t want to capture any Muslims to import into Europe, but the Muzzies all wanted European women as slaves? Now what does that say about them?

[rktman]

That’s silly. We all know only black people were ever slaves. Right? Hello? Anyone? Bueller? 🤔

I mentioned this the other day on another post. Even “indegenous” folks in north America took other tribes.

[Mount Athos]

Mostly what is today west ukraine and russia

[Mount Athos]

title of image: “Сrimean Tatar slave raids on the lands of Eastern Europe between 1453 and 1777”

[oldasrocks]

Isn’t this what the new Socialists want? Slaves to do their bidding and work for them.

[Cronos]

well, both terms are anachronistic.

My wife traveled to western Ukraine down to Crimea in the 90s and the vast majority of people she met, when she asked them - what nation are you from?

They answered “tutajsi” - “i am from here”.

The peoples in the area didn’t have a STRONG wide national sense until really Putin created that unity with his invasions.

I would argue that ethnicity and nationality in most cases was fluid until the French revolution, then it hardened. The Ukrainians were late to the game of building “higher culture” and those who are late can get swamped by neighbors who get there earlier (Slovakians are another example). They had what we disparagingly (and probably with prejudice) had “folk culture” and many dropped it in favor of other neighboring cultures.

[Cronos]

Even “indegenous” folks in north America took other tribes.

if you told the Comanche that they were the same group as Wichita - they would have been offended

the same for the enslaving Ashanti - if you told them that they were the "same" as the Adangme and they were all "Africans" they would have looked at you like you were nuts

Or the Goths enslaving Slavs - so what if they were both "white", blue eyed and blonde? They were not the same

Heck, even into the 19th century the English thought the Irish were not quite human

[Fiji Hill]

This can’t be true. Slavery was invented by white Americans in 1619.

[z3n]

Interesting map.

Not all ethnic migration was intentional.

Seems like raiding for slave capture was a historical norm.

"No one would ever know that my lord's people had lived at all. His was a tale of sorrow."

[rktman]

Well..... 😂. My kin folk fought for the north during the (un) civil war so I’m thinking a little payback from the naacp or blm is in order. Yup! As absurd as reparations.

[Cronos]

The problem is that humanity has a short memory.

Look at four examples:
1. The French as “cheese eating surrender monkeys” - this is a stereotype from WWII but forgets about French fighting in WWI, the Napoleonic wars, etc.

2. The Polish sense of “we are always victims to Russia” - forgetting that for much of the fighting from 1400 onwards, Poland was on top - even conquering Moscow in 1610 and ruling there for 2 years.

3. India as a poor country, forgetting that right since Augustus Caesar’s time to the 1800s everyone wanted to get to India for that was where the riches were (that’s why Columbus, Vasco da Gama etc. wanted to get there)

4. The way the Persians in the Sassanid empire (240 to 640 AD) completely forgot about the glorious Achaemenid empire (~500 to ~300 BC) and yet the Greeks remembered it.

[Reily]

plenty of WWII examples where the French weren’t “cheese eating surrender monkeys’! - Free French forces in North Africa, Europe, etc. Most of the French military problems in modern times were caused by a perfidious usually socialist government.

India was broken by the Muslim invasions. Some historians estimate more Hindus killed in these invasions then deaths in WWII.

[Cronos]

you are correct.

My point was that we remember only the “latest thing” and forget about the long history before that.

One which I consider a personal crusade is to convince people that there was no such thing as the Byzantine empire - it was the Roman empire right until 1453

[PIF]

slavery happened - to nearly every nation - and slave owners have been every skin color under the sun.

—
Slavery was big business back then. Most, if not all, of the slave trade was done by muslims.