“Arab speculators,” states, and ransom slavery in the Western Sahara

Scholars have described the state-regulated, urban captivity of Europeans in Algiers, but few focused on Western-Saharan ransom slavery. Unlike Algiers, states did not regulate ransom slavery in the Western Sahara. Instead, individual Arab and Berber merchants forged trading relationships with the few European government agents in the area in order to ransom enslaved Europeans and Americans. This essay investigates how these Arab and Berber speculators, who operated outside of state control, managed the business of ransom slavery, and highlights how local conditions shaped slavery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.