I did a comparative slavery project on slave narratives and one of the narratives I examined was the narrative of an Irish-born American by the name of James Leander Cathcart who was enslaved in Algiers from 1785-1796. He was captured in route to Cadiz Spain on a trading mission.

Upon arrival, Cathcart was bought by a member of the Dey's (or ruler of Algiers') inner circle. Cathcart worked both in gardens of the Dey and as a port gang slave, repairing the docks and piers in the port of Algiers. Cathcart rarely had enough food or water and was frequently beaten with a technique called the bastinado or severely beating the soles of the feet.

Cathcart lived in a slave prison or a sort of jail/dormitory for slaves. These were filthy places where disease ran rampant. Many of Cathcart's friends were victims of plague over the years.

Cathcart learned to speak Arabic and Turkish and was sold to the Dey. While working for the Dey, Cathcart was able to buy taverns that Jewish traders and Christian slaves would drink in. Cathcart used part of his wealth to attempt to buy more food for his fellow American slaves.

This combination of wealth and influence gave Cathcart the opportunity to become the chief clerk to the Dey (the highest position a Christian slave could obtain) and he became a mediator between the US and the Dey in the American effort to secure the return of it's citizens that had been captured and enslaved. These negotiations eventually ended with the return of the majority of the American slaves including Cathcart as part of the Treaty of Algiers of 1796.

During this time period, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli or the Barbary states were all heavily dependent on both piracy and slavery. These two institutions were the main modes of economic production in these states. Even though all these countries signed treaties with the US, they eventually broke them which resulted in the Barbary wars which concluded in 1815 with the shelling of Algiers by the British. This marked the end of the Barbary piracy and the Barbary states themselves.

Allison, Robert J. The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World 1776-1815. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Baepler, Paul. “White Slaves, African Masters.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 588, (July, 2003): 90-111. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1049856 (accessed June 5, 2012)

Cathcart, James Leander. Eleven Years a Prisoner in Algiers. 1899. In White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity and Narratives. Edited by Paul Baepler, 105-146. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Davis, Robert C. Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Johnson, David E. “Of Pirates, Captives, Barbarians, and the Limits of Culture.” American Literary History 14, no. 2 (2002): 358-375. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_literary_history/v014/14.2johnson.html (accessed June 12, 2012)

Rojas, Martha Elena. “‘Insults Unpunished’: Barbary Captives, American Slaves, and the Negotiation of Liberty.” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1, no. 2 (2003): 159-186. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/early_american_studies_an_interdisciplinary_journal/v001/1.2rojas.html (accessed June 11, 2012)