The demand of the Turks in the Levant and the
Moors in Spain was met by exportations from the various Barbary ports. Part
of this Mediterranean trade was conducted in Turkish and Moorish vessels,
and part of it in the ships of the Italian cities and Marseilles and
Barcelona. Venice for example had treaties with certain Saracen rulers at
the beginning of the fourteenth century authorizing her merchants not only
to frequent the African ports, but to go in caravans to interior points and
stay at will. The principal commodities procured were ivory, gold, honey
and negro slaves.[6]
[Footnote 6: The leading authority upon slavery and the slave-trade in the
Mediterranean countries of Europe is J.A. Saco, _Historia de la Esclavitud
desde los Tiempas mas remotas hasta nuestros Dias_ (Barcelona, 1877), vol.
III.]
The states of Christian Europe, though little acquainted with negroes,
had still some trace of slavery as an inheritance from imperial Rome
and barbaric Teutondom. The chattel form of bondage, however, had quite
generally given place to serfdom; and even serfdom was disappearing in
many districts by reason of the growth of towns and the increase of rural
population to the point at which abundant labor could be had at wages
little above the cost of sustaining life.
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