Slave Raiding in Early Modern Eastern Europe

Grim:

Between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, slave raiders from the Black Sea steppe captured millions of people across Eastern Europe, ravaging the southern borderlands of Poland, Lithuania, and Russia particularly intensely. Most captives were hauled to Crimea and exported to slave markets around the Ottoman Empire—from Constantinople to Cairo to Damascus—via an extensive network of merchants, gatekeepers, and watchmen. The remainder were either ransomed or sold locally, provided that they did not perish during the grueling march to Crimea. The upshot of these activities is a little-known fact: after West Africa, Eastern Europe was the largest source of slaves in the early modern world. . . .

Our dataset, which draws on a rich array of historical sources, reveals that the Black Sea slave trade was fueled by more than 2,500 attacks on 882 locations spanning 13 contemporary countries over 321 years (1453–1774). At a minimum, 3.64 million people were seized in these incursions; using imputation methods to account for missing information on captives, we estimate that the true figure lies in the region of 5 million. This represents more than a quarter of Eastern Europe’s estimated population in 1400, shortly before the onset of the slave trade. Moreover, it is comparable to the proportion of Africa’s preexisting population that was exported in one of its four early modern slave trades (just under one-third).

Volha Charnysh and Ranjit Lall, "Consequences of the Black Sea Slave Trade: Long-Run Development in Eastern Europe"