slave raids

Slave raids were organized attacks on communities to capture people for enslavement.

Throughout history, raiding parties targeted villages, often at night or dawn, seizing inhabitants to sell or exploit as forced labor.

The term appears most often in discussions of the Atlantic slave trade, Arab slave trade, and colonial-era conflicts: Slave raids depopulated entire regions of West Africa.

The practice involved not just foreign invaders but often neighboring groups who sold captives to traders.