Here’s an interesting thing that comes to you from one of my colleagues who mentioned an event that occurred a couple of hundred years ago.
In 1631 almost all of the inhabitants of Baltimore, Ireland, were captured by African pirates.
The captives were taken back to Africa and sold in to slavery.
Apparently one of my colleagues is related to a survivor.
In the years between 1500 and 1800 the African slavers regularly raided towns and villages from Sicily to Ireland (Devon and Cornwall being particularly regular targets).
How many people were abducted isn’t known but one academic estimates that between 1,000,000 to 1,250,000 might have been taken.
What a story lies here waiting to be unpicked!
If I were a historical novelist I’d be very interested in this; but I’m not, I’m just inquisitive.
B.
Yeah, I heard about this recently… it’s very interesting.