[henkster]

Muslim Arabs from what is now Algeria routinely raided southern France for female slaves. Muslim Turks and Tatars did the same in southern Russia. The practice continued well into the 17th and early 18th centuries.

Are the modern French and Russians owed reparations?

[Vigilanteman]

More than just the French were raided for slaves. So was commerce on the high seas. Here is a link to a very interesting story about one such slave taken who led a rebellion. He also happens to be in my family tree-- an honor I share with Zachary Taylor, Rutherford B. Hayes and JFK.

France eventually colonized Algeria to stop this kind of $#*+ and now the Muslims are entitled to colonize France in retribution?

[marktwain]

Taking Europeans into slavery lasted well into the 19th Century if you include the Barbary pirates.

Many Americans were taken as slaves from ships in the Mediterranean.

The slave raiding for Europeans did not end until France conquered Algeria about 1850.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

Not just France and Russia. This from "The Sack of Baltimore" by Edmund Clarence Stedman, a poem about the 1631 raid by Algerian pirates that saw between 100 and 237 people taken as slaves from Baltimore in County Cork, Ireland:

From out their beds and to their doors rush maid and sire and dame,
And meet upon the threshold stone the gleaming sabre’s fall,
And o’er each black and bearded face the white or crimson shawl.
The yell of “Allah!” breaks above the prayer, and shriek, and roar:
O blessed God! the Algerine is lord of Baltimore!

[DPMD]

Thomas Sowell said it best: Africans (and all other slaves) were made slaves not because of their skin color, but because they were available.