Part of a series on
Slavery
Contemporary Child labour Child soldiers Conscription Debt Forced marriage Bride buying Child marriage Wife selling Forced prostitution Human trafficking Peonage Penal labour Contemporary Africa 21st-century jihadism Sexual slavery Wage slavery
Historical Antiquity Egypt Babylonia Greece Rome Medieval Europe Ancillae Balkan slave trade Byzantine Empire Kholop Serfs History In Russia Emancipation Thrall Muslim world Contract of manumission Crimean slave trade Ottoman Empire Avret Esir Pazarları Barbary Coast slave trade pirates Sack of Baltimore Slave raid of Suðuroy Turkish Abductions Concubinage history Ma malakat aymanukum Avret Esir Pazarları Harem Abbasid harem Ottoman Imperial Harem Jarya/Cariye Odalisque Qiyan Umm walad Circassian slave trade 21st century Atlantic slave trade Bristol Brazil Database Dutch Middle Passage Nantes New France Panyarring Spanish Empire Slave Coast Thirteen colonies Topics and practice Conscription Ghilman Mamluk Devshirme Blackbirding Coolie Corvée labor Field slaves in the United States Treatment House slaves Saqaliba Slave market Slave raiding Child soldiers White slavery Naval Galley slave Impressment Pirates Shanghaiing Slave ship
By country or region Sub-Saharan Africa Contemporary Africa Trans-Saharan slave trade Red Sea slave trade Indian Ocean slave trade Zanzibar slave trade Angola Chad Comoros Ethiopia Mali Mauritania Niger Nigeria Seychelles Somalia Somali slave trade South Africa Sudan Zanzibar North and South America Americas indigenous U.S. Natives Aztec United States Field slaves female Contemporary maps partus prison labor Slave codes Treatment interregional Human trafficking The Bahamas Canada Caribbean Barbados British Virgin Islands Trinidad Code Noir Latin America Brazil Lei Áurea Colombia Cuba Haiti revolt Restavek (Encomienda) Puerto Rico East, Southeast, and South Asia Human trafficking in Southeast Asia Bhutan China Booi Aha Laogai penal system India Debt bondage Chukri System Japan comfort women Korea Kwalliso Maldives Thailand Yankee princess Vietnam Australia and Oceania Australia Human trafficking Blackbirding Slave raiding in Easter Island Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea Blackbirding in Polynesia Europe and North Asia Sex trafficking in Europe Britain Denmark Dutch Republic Germany in World War II Malta Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Spain Sweden North Africa and West Asia Afghanistan Algeria Bahrain Egypt Human trafficking in the Middle East Iran Iraq Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco Oman Palestine Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Qatar Yemen United Arab Emirates
Religion Bible Christianity Catholicism Mormonism Islam Judaism Baháʼí Faith
Opposition and resistance 1926 Slavery Convention Abolitionism U.K. U.S. Abolitionists Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention Anti-Slavery International Blockade of Africa U.K. U.S. Colonization Liberia Sierra Leone Compensated emancipation Freedman manumission Freedom suit Slave Power Underground Railroad songs Slave rebellion Slave Trade Acts International law Third Servile War 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom Abolition of slave trade in Persian gulf [fa]
Related Common law Indentured servitude Unfree labour Fugitive slaves laws Great Dismal Swamp maroons List of slaves owners last survivors of American slavery Marriage of enslaved people (United States) Slave narrative films songs Slave name Slave catcher Slave patrol Slave Route Project breeding court cases Washington Jefferson J.Q. Adams Lincoln Emancipation Proclamation 40 acres Freedmen's Bureau Iron bit Emancipation Day
v t e

The Balkan slave trade, was the trade in slaves from the Balkans via Venetian slave traders across the Adriatic Sea and the Aegean Sea to Italy, Spain and the Islamic Middle East, between the 7th-century during the early Middle Ages until the mid 15th-century.

History

The slave trade was founded upon the fact that the Balkans was a religious border zone between first Pagan and Christian lands, and then between Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. Since the custom at the time did not approve of enslaving people of the same religion, in combination with the fact that the Balkans was for a long time politically decentralized and instable, made it a fertile target for slave trade, when war captives were sold by their enemies to Venetian slave traders at the coasts.

The most targeted category of the slave trade were the Bosnians, since the Bosnians were adherents of Bogomilism, a faith which was not acknowledged as Christianity and therefore made them legitimate targets of slavery in Catholic as well as Orthodox Europe.^[1]

Slave market

The Balkan slave trade was, alongside the Black Sea slave trade, also one the two main slave supply sources of future Mamluk soldiers to the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt.^[2] A smaller amount of the slaves were sold in Italy and Spain as enslaved domestic servants, Ancillae.

The end

The Venetian slave trade from the Balkans gradually during the 15th-century ended in parallell with the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottoman Empire. The slave trade from the Balkans was ended as a separate slave trade and was overtook by the Ottomans and incorporated in to the Ottoman slave trade,^[3] which on the Balkans was connected to the Crimean slave trade. The Venetian slave traders were not able to compeet with Ottoman-Crimean competition. After this, the Venetian slave traders acquired a smaller amount of slaves from Ottoman slave traders via the Trans-Saharan slave trade.