The Atlantic Slave Trade has a more direct effect on US history and present than the Barbary Slave Trade, and the American education system and American discourse in general tends to focus on things that most affect Americans rather than things that affect other parts of the world.

Mainstream history tends to skim over anything before 1500, and most things after 1500 that don't have direct noticeable impacts on the modern day.

The atlantic slave trade has directly and memorably impacted the families of a solid 50% of my country's population (America having an enormous influence on popular culture and education). People to this day, en masse, try to pretend it was a good thing. It is clear that education has been insufficient.

Define mainstream history.

The Barbary Slave Trade is absolutelty discussed in mainstream history. Just not pop history (i.e the History channel).

The Atlantic Slave Trade is likely more talked about because its impact is felt more in the present day, especially in North America where much pop history programming comes from. The Atlantic Slave Trade lead to hundreds of years of societal impact that is still very much present today.

barbary slave trade has had an impact on millions of people in my country yet no one talks about it nowadays

What country? When? How big is your country? What are the lasting cultural impacts?

> The Atlantic Slave Trade lead to hundreds of years of societal impact that is still very much present today.

The Barbary Slave Trade lead to hundreds of years of societal impact that is still very much present today in parts of Europe

The Primary reason is because the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the resulting institution of racial slavery had a profound and dramatic effect on the governments, cultures, institutions, and people of the Americas that continue to this day. If your media is coming from the point of view of people in North and South America, then the Trans-Atlantic slave trade is much more relevant.

Sure. But like I said, much pop history comes out of North America where it is felt much more than the Barbary Slave Trade.

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Greece. My great grand parents were hunted even when they were going to get water. Many of their relatives were caught and sold in the empire.

My country and my people would have turned differently if their ancestors did not live in fear of being kidnapped. There is quite a lot of emotional abuse that was being passed down to generations because of the actions of the ottoman empire.

A cousin of mine told me about one of his grandparents who was kidnapped from his own home, while his family was watching. He fought back and was killed by the muslims who wanted to capture him

I think this is the most important reason. Thanks. I am not in the US and it is strange to me that in my country we do not talk about enslaving of our ancestors like it is talked about in the US

I think the reason number two is probably the main one. Thanks.

I now see the difference between "mainstream" history and "pop" history.

The Barbary Slave trade was thought to have peaked at 1.25 million… the transatlantic slave trade at 15 million.

I think its easy to forget just how enormous the cultural influence of the US is. I live in the country next door so we obviously get it big time. But there's no escaping it anywhere in the world. Seems like almost everywhere you go, people know at least something about US history. Its kind of crazy.

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I know little to nothing about greek education. I don't even know if it is public. My best guess would be the heavy influence that America has had on your history curriculums, but this sounds like a question that would best be posed somewhere a little bit more specific to your part of the world.

It sounds like it should be in your history education but isn't.

The Atlantic Slave trade had a huge impact on the course of the Americas. Entire populations were displaced, entire wars were fought, large portions of empires rose and fell on its fortunes. It was a large endeavor and it impacted the history of the United States greatly, which has gone on to impact the history of the world greatly. So it is studied in great detail because those who influence media and culture have a vested interest in it, more so than they have an interest in some other episodes of history.

Because the only slave trade that exists to people nowadays is the Atlantic slave trade, everything else is overshadowed by this. Which is a shame, as this isn't even taught properly.

I'm not a historian but my impression is the Atlantic slave trade was heavily skewed towards transport to Brazil and the Caribbean with less than 10% being to America

Edit America being the US.

The Atlantic Slave trade is directly reflected in the Caribbean Islands, Brazil, the U.S., ets. It was a foundational event for the fabric of many nations in the western hemisphere. So it has elevated importance in the histories of nations in the Americas. The Barbary slave trade comes up in U.S. history when discussing Thomas Jefferson’s management of the U.S.’s first foreign military conflict. It also is taught in World History courses.

Some pirates kidnapping Europeans and selling them into slavery is very, very different from Europeans kidnapping and transporting African slaves thousands of miles away to work on colonial plantations.

No one is downplaying the Barbary slave trade. But it's incomporable to the trans-Atlantic trade.

Maybe one million Europeans were kidnapped and sold into slavery . Many European states waged war or paid tribute to free those slaves.

Contrast that with 15 million African slaves who were moved across the ocean and had almost no chance of being freed. Add onto that, the transition from the trans-oceanic slave trade to the system of slaves being born into slavery generation after generation.

They're completely different.

My understanding is that Greeks are well aware of their history with Turkey and there isn't really a shortage of (especially right-wing) Greeks who make a big stink about it.

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And I think this is part of the answer. In today's pop culture, the US is king. The Barbary Slave Trade (BST) didn't impact US culture. Sure, it impacted European and likely African and even Western Asian society, with effects still felt today, but the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade (TAST) affected North America, South America, and Africa. Combined with the TAST captive numbering 10 times what the BST trafficked, it makes it a larger impact. Add in also that many textbooks are written in North America by North American publishers, and the topics are going to focus on New World events, particularly US History.

I also checked, and Greece's population is estimated to be about 10 million. The US is approximately 333 million. New York City alone is approximately 8.8 million. Canada has approximately 39 million, Mexico 129 million, and Brazil 217 million. And local impact is always larger than something from further away. Plus, over 13 years of schooling for students in the US and Canada, there's approximately 15,000 hours of school (180 days per year, 13 years, from about 5 (Kindergarten) through 18 (12th grade). That time has to be divided between reading, writing, math, science, social studies, and other curriculum requirements.

Let's say approximately 750 of those hours are spent learning about world history, which is what the BST falls under for anyone in North or South America. Those 750 hours needs to cover all of history, from the stirrings of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the other early civilisations, through to at least post World War II, though that still leaves about 50 years of history untouched. That's approximately 6,000+ years of events covering 7 continents, because we do need to understand how North and South America fit into these, and we reall6only cover our own country in the rest of our history classes, not even really our neighbors. So there are many, many, many events that are left out that still have a major impact on society daily, even centuries later.we don't spend much time talking about Australia's colonization, about the changing political landscape of Europe beyond the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Crusades, and the World Wars. We barely touch on the Moors and Islamic spread through Europe, much less Africa and Asia. There is so much of history that gets culled out of what's taught because it's impossible to include everything. Greek history essentially covers Ancient Greece, through about Alexander, until the Romans dominated the Mediterranean.

I am someone who enjoys learning, including on my own. I've spent a lot of time watching history documentaries, and what I can find generally covers about the same content as the basic school curriculum covers. Ancient Rome, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, snippets of China, snippets of other cultures, but mostly small and not well made. Lots of World War II, lots of the aggressive parts of history. But to understand anything else, there's just not much content for teachers to use to teach about things like BST, and tough choices about what not to teach to include BST, if their local curriculum mandates even allow the flexibility.

It's been said that history is written by the winners, and at this point in time, culturally, that's the US. Hopefully, it becomes more balanced in years to come, but the choices of what to cull to make room become even harder.

(And for reference, I grew up in New England, moved to Indianapolis for about 16 years, and have since moved to Canada.)

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When were your great grand parents born?

It’s mentioned in the US Marine Corps hymn, even if without great context. Google the meaning of “shores of Tripoli.”

There’s also a lot of false narratives surrounding the Atlantic slave trade. Such as the vast majority of slaves being sold to Europeans by African rulers, not “kidnapped” by Europeans. The slave trade to what is now the United States made of a tiny proportion of slaves moved across the Atlantic. Approximately 12.5 millions Africans were transported across the Atlantic between 1525 - 1866, with approximately 10.7 surviving the voyage.

Of those 10.7 million about 388,000 ended up in the North America. The rest ended up in The Caribbean and South America. Over 4 million to Brazil alone. The United States was the only country where the slave population grew. In every other country the population dropped continually due to extreme disregard for their wellbeing and the work they were forced to do (mining, plantation work in areas with high rates of malaria, yellow fever, etc.).

This is in no way a defense of the slave trade or the suffering that was imposed on every individual that was forced to leave everything they’d ever known and robbed of everything. That includes those taken to North America. We need to understand the numbers and full tragedy of what took place, with most of it taking place outside of North America.

Agreed on many points. The fixation on North America in many ways downplays the sheer scale of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. This was a massive movement of people from one hemisphere to another. It's on a different geographic scale from the Barbary slave trade.

It’s less than 4%. Between 380 and 450,000 slaves were transported to the US. Over 12 million were transported from Africa with ~10.5 million surviving the journey.

Side note, more slaves died during the voyage across the Atlantic in the 300 years that route was active than were taken in the Barbary trade.

It’s very true. For scale, more people sold in to slavery died crossing the Atlantic than were involved in the Barbary coast slave trade.

It’s also important to not disregard that trade either. It had a very different impetus and would play a substantial role on Mediterranean trade and politics, ultimately resulting in the French colonization of Algeria. This had a huge impact on all of North Africa and the shaping of the Mediterranean.