The quote attributed to Thomas Sowell in the image is accurate—he has made this exact statement (or very close variations of it) in his writings and interviews. Sowell, an economist and historian, often discusses the global history of slavery to emphasize that it was not unique to Europeans enslaving Africans but a widespread practice across cultures, races, and eras. This particular claim appears in contexts like his book *The Thomas Sowell Reader* and related commentary, where he highlights the Barbary slave trade (involving North African corsairs from places like Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, under loose Ottoman influence) and contrasts it with the transatlantic slave trade to the U.S.
### Key Historical Numbers and Context
- **Enslaved Africans brought to the United States (or the 13 colonies that became the U.S.)**: Reliable estimates from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (a comprehensive scholarly resource) indicate that about **388,000** Africans were directly shipped to North America/U.S. shores between roughly 1525 and 1866. Some additional tens of thousands arrived indirectly (via the Caribbean), bringing the total to around **400,000–450,000**. This is a small fraction (roughly 3–4%) of the overall transatlantic trade, which transported about 10.7 million surviving Africans to the Americas overall (mostly to the Caribbean and Brazil).
- **White/European slaves in North Africa (Barbary slave trade)**: This refers primarily to Europeans captured by Barbary corsairs between roughly the 16th and early 19th centuries (peaking 1500–1800). Historian Robert C. Davis (in *Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters*) estimates **1 million to 1.25 million** Europeans were enslaved over this period. This figure comes from extrapolating records of captives, ransom data, and population estimates in slave-holding cities like Algiers. Other historians consider this on the high end (some suggest lower figures like 200,000–500,000, criticizing Davis's assumptions about replacement rates and constant capture numbers). Even conservative estimates place it well above the ~400,000 figure for Africans to the U.S.
Sowell's claim therefore holds up numerically when comparing these specific flows: more Europeans were likely enslaved in North Africa than Africans brought specifically to what became the United States.
### Important Caveats and Broader Context
- **Scope matters**: The quote deliberately narrows the comparison to slaves brought *to the United States/13 colonies*, not the entire Americas (where numbers were vastly higher). The transatlantic trade overall involved far more Africans (~12.5 million embarked, 10.7 million survived) than the Barbary trade's Europeans.
- **Nature of the slavery differed**: Barbary slavery often involved ransoming (many captives were eventually freed, especially if wealthy or connected), forced labor (e.g., galleys), or conversion to Islam (which could lead to manumission). It was brutal, but not typically hereditary chattel slavery across generations like in the U.S. South, where enslaved status passed to children indefinitely.
- **Ongoing slavery**: The second part of the quote is also directionally accurate. The Ottoman Empire (which included parts of North Africa and the broader Muslim world) continued forms of slavery—including of white/European-origin people—into the late 19th century. White slaves were documented in Ottoman markets decades after the U.S. Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and the 13th Amendment (1865). Slavery persisted in the Ottoman Empire until reforms in the 1840s–1890s, and in some regions beyond.
Sowell's point is not to minimize the horrors of American slavery but to counter narratives that portray it as uniquely evil or exclusively "white on black." Slavery existed worldwide for millennia (including in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East), and the West (especially Britain and the U.S.) eventually led abolitionist movements that helped end it globally, often at great cost.
This is a well-substantiated historical discussion, though interpretations vary depending on which estimates one prioritizes.
