The Spain That Enslaves and Expels: Moriscos and Muslim Captives (1492 to 1767–1791)

Abstract

In Spain, as in Europe as a whole, Muslims were present in larger numbers from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries than has formerly been realized. As we noted above, the greatest attention has been focused on two specific minority groups, Moriscos and slaves. The first were expelled from Spain between 1609 and 1614, although a certain number managed to evade expulsion or return to the Peninsula later on. The second were almost always a minority among all slaves in Spain in the Early Modern period, except at specific times and places; the vast majority came from the Atlantic coast of subSaharan Africa, although many of those arrived already Islamized. It is also true that the number of slaves on Spanish territory fell drastically from the second half of the seventeenth century and continued its decline through the eighteenth, though there was a slight increase in the late 1700s as Spain joined the slave trade with the American colonies. Most historical works about Muslims in Spain, therefore, concentrate on the Moriscos (more or less Christianized, more or less Islamized) from 1492 to 1614. And the enormous bibliography on slavery concentrates on slaves from subSaharan Africa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, leaving Muslims on the margins. Moriscos and slaves, in short, have captured almost all the interest of historians even though, as we shall see, free Muslims were very numerous.