The Barbary Coast, or Barbary, was the term use by Europeans from the 16th until the 19th century to refer to the middle and western coastal regions of North Africa, what is now Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya because of being barbaric. The name is derived from the Berber people of north Africa. In the West, the name commonly evokes the Barbary pirates and slave traders, based on that coast, who attacked ships and coastal settlements in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic and captured and traded slaves from Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.