The Barbary Corsairs

 Time period: 700s or 1600s- 1800s AD

If you thought Viking raids were bad back then, let me introduce you to the pirates off the coasts of North Africa consisting of the countries Morocco (Sale, a city-state there, to be exact), Tripoli (Libya) and Tunis (Tunisia) 

-Their sphere of influence was from the Mediterranean near North Africa to the North Atlantic towards Iceland. 

-Those raids on Iceland were named the "Turkish Abductions" 

-They were mainly known for robbing merchant ships 

The Corsairs frequently raided towns in Europe as far as Britain and Ireland in raids that they called "razzias" and captured many people of many races to bring back as slaves. (1)
Some say that they were Muslim privateers (2) and also worked with the Ottoman Empire to take over the territories of North Africa to be under their imperial rule. 

-Famous Barbary pirates: the Barbarossa brothers, an Englishman named John Ward or Sparrow (I have no clue whether Captain Jack Sparrow was based off him but that's a nice name), Oruc Reis (another Barbarossa) and Zymen Dansekar. 

-There were European outcasts and converts who joined their ranks and worked as raiders too. 

-Reports state that they could have started their raids since the capture of Spain in the 700s but the first official Barbary pirate raids started from the 1500s. 

-The raiders used galley ships long after Europeans moved on from ships with oars and had only a hundred men onboard armed with cutlasses which is such a stereotypical pirate weapon.
This was also the reason why they fled when they saw a European frigate armed with cannons. 

-The raids finally ended when the Barbary Wars broke out between the U.S, Sweden and the Kingdom of Sicily against the Barbary states in the 1800s.
Then, the European states met in Vienna and had a huge meeting after Napoleon's defeat and talked about many things including crushing the Barbary pirates once and for all. 

-Then, France invaded Algeria, colonised it and committed several war crimes that was named the "Algerian Genocide" especially during the period from the 1850s to the 1890s, maybe. 
This sparked other European states to be inspired to start their own African campaigns and that's how Africa was colonised. 

-The Houthis are considered by some as the modern-day Barbary pirates due to the fact they also attack ships entering in their waters. And there are still pirates in Somalia who are hostile to foreign ships too. 

(1) Most of them were either Christian, Jewish or Muslim 

(2) Pirates but working for a company or a government with a letter of marque. One Piece fans can understand them better as the pirates who work for the World Government.