1204: Following the capture of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, Italian merchants from Genoa and Venice established slave-trading ports along the no…

1204: Following the capture of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, Italian merchants from Genoa and Venice established slave-trading ports along the northern coast of the Black Sea. Over the next two and a half centuries, they trafficked thousands of captives, including Armenians, Circassians, Tatars, and Bulgarians. These diverse peoples were grouped under the vague ethnic status of “Slavs,” which became the linguistic origin of the word for an enslaved person in western European languages. These captives were highly prized and utilized in various industries, including the labor-intensive production of sugar in regions like Cyprus and Sicily.