Breaking the chains : the Royal Navy's war against white slavery / by Tom Pocock.

"The Royal Navy's war on white slavery" -- Cover subtitle.

Includes index, bibliography and reference notes.

After the Napoleonic warsNapoleonic Wars, 1803{u2013}15, the wars waged by or against France under Napoleon I. For a discussion of them see under Napoleon I. Napoleonic Wars (1799{u2013}1815) Series of wars that ranged France against shifting alliances of European powers. ended, Western naval forces began a concerted effort to combat the high seashigh seas In maritime law, the waters lying outside the territorial waters of any and all states. In the Middle Ages, a number of maritime states asserted sovereignty over large portions of the high seas. piracy and coastal slave raidingSlave raiding is a crime sometimes seen as a normal part of warfare. It is possibly as old as human civilization itself, as it is attested to in some of the earliest surviving written records, from Sumer in Iraq and Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistan. that had been practiced for centuries by the independent rulers of the Barbary States of North Africa. In this text, Pocock presents an account of the Royal Navy's role in that conflict, which was viewed by the Islamic world as a revival of the crusades. The focus is on the 1827 sea battle at Navarino, in which British forces and their allies defeated the Ottoman-Egyptian navy and assured the independence of Greece. Journalist Pocock is the author of ten books on naval history.