slave trade on a scale to rival the Atlantic trade
not really. we don't have good records but it was probably less than a million people, a proportion of whom were simply ransomed through state/private intervention. europeans made a really big deal about it because it was whites being enslaved by who they saw as an inferior race, but it wasn't on a very large scale and the period of 'unrestricted' piracy, inasmuch as it ever existed was quite brief and tied to a general state of warfare between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs (controlling Spain, Italy, & the land border with the Ottomans), after which it normalized and was conducted in state-based fashion. in the 18th century most states simply paid for free passage, and the USA even signed such treaties before Thomas Jefferson decided to send gunboats instead
not really. we don't have good records but it was probably less than a million people, a proportion of whom were simply ransomed through state/private intervention. europeans made a really big deal about it because it was whites being enslaved by who they saw as an inferior race, but it wasn't on a very large scale and the period of 'unrestricted' piracy, inasmuch as it ever existed was quite brief and tied to a general state of warfare between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs (controlling Spain, Italy, & the land border with the Ottomans), after which it normalized and was conducted in state-based fashion. in the 18th century most states simply paid for free passage, and the USA even signed such treaties before Thomas Jefferson decided to send gunboats instead