- This article discusses systems of slavery within Africa,
the history and effects of the slavery trade upon Africa, and
Maafa. See Atlantic slave trade for the
trans-Atlantic trade, and Arab slave
trade for the Trans-Saharan trade. See Slavery in modern Africa for
contemporary slavery in Africa.
African slaves became part of the
Atlantic slave trade, from which comes
the modern, Western conception of
slavery as
an institution of African-descended slaves and non-African slave
owners. Despite its illegality, slavery
continues in some parts of the
world, including Africa.
Elikia M’bokolo, April 1998,
Le
Monde diplomatique. Quote:"The
African
continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes.
Across the
Sahara, through the Red Sea, from
the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten
centuries of slavery for the benefit of the
Muslim countries (from the ninth to the
nineteenth)."
He continues: "Four million slaves exported
via the Red
Sea
, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean
, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven
to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean
"
Slavery within Africa

13th century Africa – simplified map
of the main states, kingdoms and empires
In most African societies, there was very little difference between
the free peasants and the feudal vassal peasants. Vassals of the
Songhai Empire were used primarily in
agriculture; they paid tribute to their masters in crop and service
but they were slightly restricted in custom and convenience. These
non-free people were more an occupational
caste, as their
bondage
was relative..
There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African
control of segments of the trade.
Several African nations such as the
Ashanti of Ghana
and the
Yoruba of Nigeria
had
economies largely depending on the trade. African peoples such
as the Imbangala of Angola
and the
Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as intermediaries or roving
bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for
export as slaves out of Africa. Extenuating circumstances
demanding exploration are the efforts European and Arab officials
in Africa used to install rulers agreeable to their interests. They
would actively favor one African group against another to
deliberately ignite chaos and continue their slaving
activities..
"Slavery", as it is often referred to by people, in African
cultures was generally more like
indentured servitude: "slaves" were not
made to be chattel of other men, nor enslaved for life. African
"slaves" were paid wages and were able to accumulate property. They
often bought their own freedom and could then achieve social
promotion -just as freedman in
ancient
Rome- some even rose to the status of kings (e.g.
Jaja of Opobo and
Sunni Ali Ber). Similar arguments were used by
Western slave owners during the time of abolition, for example by
John Wedderburn in
Wedderburn
v. Knight, the
case that ended legal recognition of slavery in Scotland
in
1776. Regardless of the legal options open to slave owners,
rational cost-earning calculation and/or voluntary adoption of
moral restraints often tended to mitigate (except with traders, who
preferred to weed out the worthless weak individuals) the actual
fate of slaves throughout history.
In
Senegambia, between 1300
and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In
early
Islamic states of the western Sudan,
including
Ghana (750–1076),
Mali (1235–1645),
Segou (1712–1861), and
Songhai (1275–1591), about a third of the
population were slaves.
In Sierra Leone
in the 19th century about half of the population
consisted of slaves. In the 19th century at least half the
population was enslaved among the Duala
of the Cameroon
, the
Igbo and other peoples of the lower
Niger, the Kongo, and the Kasanje kingdom and Chokwe of Angola
.
Among the
Ashanti and
Yoruba a third of the population consisted of
slaves. The population of the
Kanem
(1600–1800) was about a third-slave. It was perhaps 40% in
Bornu (1580–1890). Between 1750 and 1900 from
one- to two-thirds of the entire population of the
Fulani jihad states consisted of slaves.
The
population of the Sokoto
caliphate
formed by Hausas in the northern
Nigeria
and Cameroon was half-slave in the 19th
century. Between 65% to 90% of the population of
Arab–Swahili
Zanzibar
was enslaved. Roughly half the
population of Madagascar
was enslaved.
When
British rule was first imposed on the Sokoto Caliphate
and the surrounding areas in northern Nigeria at the turn of the 20th
century, approximately 2 million to 2.5 million people there were
slaves. Slavery in northern Nigeria was finally outlawed in
1936.
Slavery in Ethiopia and Eritrea
Ethiopian
/Eritrean slavery was
essentially domestic. Slaves thus served in the houses of
their masters or mistresses, and were not employed to any
significant extent for productive purpose. Slaves were thus
regarded as second-class members of their owners' family, and were
fed, clothed and protected. Women were taken as
sex slaves. They generally roamed around freely
and conducted business as free people. They had complete freedom of
religion and culture. The first attempt to abolish slavery in
Ethiopia was made by Emperor
Tewodros II (r. 1855–1868), although
the slave trade was not abolished completely until 1923 with
Ethiopia's ascension to the
League of
Nations. Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2,000,000
slaves in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of between
8 and 16 million. Slavery continued in Ethiopia until the Italian
invasion in October 1935, when the institution was abolished by
order of the Italian occupying forces. In response to pressure by
Western
Allies of World War
II, Ethiopia officially abolished slavery and involuntary
servitude after having regained its independence in 1942. On
August 26, 1942
Haile Selassie issued a proclamation
outlawing slavery.
Slavery in Somalia
The
Bantus are the descendants of people
from various ethnic groups in what is modern-day Tanzania, Malawi
and Mozambique
who were brought to Somalia
as slaves in the 19th century. It is estimated that
the Bantu in Somalia number around 80,000 (1970 estimate) out of a
total population of over 11 million, with most concentrated between
the Juba
and Shabelle
rivers in the south. Contrary to the
Somali, who are for the most part
nomadic herders, the Bantu are mainly
sedentary farmers. Bantus are also ethnically, physically, and
culturally distinct from Somalis, and have remained marginalized
ever since their arrival in Somalia. During the recent
civil war in Somalia, many Bantu were
evicted from their farms by various armed factions of Somali
clans.
Slavery in North Africa
The
medieval slave trade in
Europe was mainly to the East and South:
Byzantine Empire and the
Muslim World were the destinations,
Central and
Eastern
Europe an important source.
Slavery in medieval Europe was so
common that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it—or
at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was
prohibited at, for example, the
Council of Koblenz in 922, the
Council of London in 1102, and the
Council of Armagh in 1171.
Because
of religious constraints, the slave
trade was monopolised in parts of Europe by Iberian Jews (known as Radhanites) who
were able to transfer the slaves from pagan Central Europe through Christian Western Europe to Muslim countries in
Al-Andalus
and Africa. So many
Slavs were enslaved for so many centuries that
word '
Slav' became synonymous with slavery. The
derivation of the word slave encapsulates a bit of European history
and explains why the two words (
slaves and
Slavs) are so similar; they are, in fact,
historically identical.
Mamluks were
slave
soldiers who converted to
Islam and served the
Muslim
caliphs and the
Ayyubid sultans during the
Middle Ages.
The first mamluks served the Abbasid caliphs in 9th century Baghdad
. Over time they became a powerful military
caste, and on more than one occasion they
seized power for themselves, for example, ruling Egypt
from
1250–1517. From 1250 Egypt
had been
ruled by the Bahri dynasty of Kipchak Turk origin. White slaves from the
Caucasus served in the army and
formed an elite corp of troops eventually revolting in Egypt to
form the
Burgi dynasty.
According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million
Europeans were captured by
Barbary
pirates and sold as
slaves to
North Africa and the
Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th
centuries.
The coastal villages and towns of Italy
, Portugal
, Spain
and Mediterranean islands
were frequently attacked by them and long stretches of the Italian
and Spanish coasts were almost completely abandoned by its
inhabitants; after 1600 Barbary pirates occasionally entered the
Atlantic and struck as far north as Iceland
. The most famous corsairs were the Ottoman
Barbarossa ("Redbeard"), and
his older brother
Oruç,
Turgut Reis (known as
Dragut in the West),
Kurtoğlu (known as
Curtogoli in the West),
Kemal Reis,
Salih
Reis and
Koca Murat
Reis.
In 1544,
Khair ad Din captured the Ischia
, taking
4,000 prisoners in the process, and deported to slavery some 9,000 inhabitants of Lipari
, almost the
entire population. In 1551, Dragut enslaved the entire
population of the Maltese island Gozo
, between
5,000 and 6,000, sending them to Libya
.
When
pirates sacked Vieste
in southern
Italy in 1554 they took an 7,000 slaves. In 1555, Turgut Reis
sailed to Corsica
and ransacked Bastia
, taking 6000
prisoners. In 1558 Barbary corsairs captured the town
of Ciutadella
, destroyed it, slaughtered
the inhabitants and carried off 3,000 survivors to Istanbul
as slaves. In 1563 Turgut Reis landed at the shores
of the province of Granada
, Spain, and captured the coastal settlements in the
area like Almuñécar
, along with 4,000 prisoners. Barbary pirates
frequently attacked the Balearic islands
, resulting in many coastal watchtowers and
fortified churches being erected. The threat was so
severe that Formentera
became uninhabited.
Sahrawi-Moorish society in
Northwest
Africa was traditionally (and still is, to some extent)
stratified into several tribal castes, with the
Hassane warrior tribes ruling and extracting tribute
–
horma – from the subservient
Berber-descended
znaga
tribes. The so-called
Haratin lower class,
largely sedentary
oasis-dwelling
black people>
Slaves taken from Africa
Trans-Saharan trade
- Main article Arab slave
trade
The very earliest external
slave trade was
the
trans-Saharan slave
trade. Although there had long been some trading up the
Nile River and very limited trading
across the western desert, the transportation of large numbers of
slaves did not become viable until
camels were
introduced from
Arabia in the 10th century.
By this point, a
trans-Saharan
trading network came into being to transport slaves north.
Zanzibar
was once East Africa's
main slave-trading port, and under Omani
Arabs in
the 19th century as many as 50,000 slaves were passing through the
city each year. Most historians estimate that between 11 and
18 million black African slaves crossed the Red Sea
, Indian Ocean
, and Sahara Desert from 650
AD to 1900 AD, Frequent intermarriages meant that the slaves were
assimilated in North
Africa. Unlike in the
Americas,
slaves in North Africa were mainly
servant and soldiers rather than
labour, and a greater number of females than
males were taken, who were often employed as servants, forced into
prostitution or to become the women of
harems.
It was also not uncommon to turn male slaves, both African and
European, into
eunuchs via
castration to serve as guardians to the
harems. The Moroccan Sultan
Moulay Ismail "the Bloodthirsty" (1672–1727)
raised a corps of 150,000 black slaves, called his
Black Guard, who coerced the country into
submission.
Slavery in Morocco
was finally outlawed in the 1930s.
Pacific Ocean trade
The trade
of slaves across the Pacific Ocean
also has a long history beginning with the control
of sea routes by Afro-Arab traders in the
ninth century. It is estimated that only a few thousand
slaves were taken each year from the Red Sea and Pacific Ocean
coast. They were sold throughout the
Middle
East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more
trade and greater demand for labour on
plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of
thousands per year were being taken.. In east Africa the main slave
trade involved arabized east Africans
David Livingstone wrote of the
slave trade: "
To overdraw its evils is a simple impossibility
... We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the
body and lying on the path. [Onlookers] said an Arab who
passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price
he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any
longer. We passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and
dead ... We came upon a man dead from starvation ...
The strangest disease I have seen in this country seems really
to be broken heartedness, and it attacks free men who have been
captured and made slaves." Livingstone estimated that 80,000 Africans
died each year before ever reaching the slave markets of Zanzibar
. Zanzibar was once East Africa's main
slave-trading port, and under Omani Arabs in the 19th century as
many as 50,000 slaves were passing through the city each
year.
Some sources estimate that between 11 and 17 million slaves crossed
the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to
1900.
Atlantic Ocean trade
- Main article Atlantic slave
trade
The first
Europeans to arrive on the coast of Guinea were the Portuguese
; the first European to actually buy African slaves
in the region of Guinea was Antão Gonçalves, a Portuguese
explorer. Originally interested in trading mainly for
gold and spices, they set
up colonies on the uninhabited islands of São
Tomé
. In the 16th century the Portuguese settlers
found that these volcanic islands were ideal for growing
sugar. Sugar growing is a labour-intensive undertaking
and Portuguese settlers were difficult to attract due to the heat,
lack of infrastructure, and hard life. To cultivate the sugar the
Portuguese turned to large numbers of African slaves.
Elmina Castle
on the Gold
Coast, originally built by African labor for the Portuguese in
1482 to control the gold trade, became an important depot for
slaves that were to be transported to the New
World.
The first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World were the
Spaniards who sought auxiliaries for their conquest expeditions and
laborers on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola, where the alarming
death rate in the native population had spurred the first royal
laws protecting the native population (Laws of Burgos, 1512–1513).
The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.
In 1452,
Pope Nicholas V issued the
papal bull Dum
Diversas, granting
Afonso V of
Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any
other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery. This approval of slavery
was reaffirmed and extended in his
Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. These papal
bulls came to serve as a justification for the subsequent era of
slave trade and European colonialism.
However Pope Eugene IV in his bull, Sicut Dudum of 1435 had condemned the
enslavement of the black inhabitants of the Canary
Islands
. Pope Paul III
in 1537 issued an additional Bull,
Sublimis Deus, declaring that all peoples,
even those outside the faith should not be deprived of their
liberty. The followers of the church of England and Protestants did
not use the papal bulls as a justification for their involvement in
slavery.
Increasing penetration into the Americas by
the Portuguese created more demand for labour in Brazil
--primarily
for farming and mining. Slave-based economies quickly spread to the
Caribbean and the southern portion of what is today the United States
, where Dutch traders brought the first African
slaves in 1619. These areas all developed an insatiable
demand for slaves.
As European nations grew more powerful,
especially Portugal
, Spain
, France
, Great Britain
and the Netherlands
, they began vying for control of the African slave
trade, with little effect on the local African and Arab
trading. Great Britain's existing colonies in the Lesser
Antilles and their effective naval control of the Mid Atlantic
forced other countries to abandon their enterprises due to
inefficiency in cost. The English crown provided a charter giving
the
Royal African Company
monopoly over the African slave routes until 1712.
The
Atlantic slave trade peaked
in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were
captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa.
These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms
against weaker African tribes and peoples. These mass slavers
included the
Oyo empire (
Yoruba),
Kong
Empire,
Kingdom of Benin,
Kingdom of Fouta Djallon,
Kingdom of Fouta Tooro,
Kingdom of Koya,
Kingdom of Khasso,
Kingdom of Kaabu,
Fante
Confederacy,
Ashanti Confederacy, and
the kingdom of
Dahomey. Europeans rarely
entered the interior of Africa, due to fear of
disease and moreover fierce African
resistance.
Before the arrival of the
Portuguese, slavery had already existed in
Kingdom of Kongo. Despite its
establishment within his kingdom,
Afonso I of Kongo believed that the slave
trade should be subject to Kongo law. When he suspected the
Portuguese of receiving illegally enslaved persons to sell, he
wrote letters to the King
João III of
Portugal in 1526 imploring him to put a stop to the practice.
The kings of
Dahomey sold their
war captives into transatlantic slavery, who otherwise
would have been killed in a ceremony known as the
Annual Customs. As one of West
Africa's principal slave states, Dahomey became extremely unpopular
with neighbouring peoples. Like the
Bambara Empire to the east, the
Khasso kingdoms depended heavily on the
slave trade for their economy. A family's status
was indicated by the number of slaves it owned, leading to
wars for the sole purpose of taking more captives.
This
trade led the Khasso into increasing contact with the European settlements of the west coast, particularly
the French
.
Benin grew increasingly rich during the
16th and 17th centuries on the slave trade with Europe; slaves from
enemy states of the interior were sold, and carried to the Americas
in Dutch and Portuguese ships. The Bight of Benin's shore soon came
to be known as the "Slave Coast".
King Gezo of
Dahomey said in 1840's:
- The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people.
It is the source and the glory of their wealth ... the mother
lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy
reduced to slavery ...
In 1807, the UK Parliament passed the Bill that abolished the
trading of slaves.
The King of Bonny (now in Nigeria
) was
horrified at the conclusion of the practice:
- We think this trade must go on. That is the
verdict of our oracle and the priests. They say that your
country, however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God
himself.
The slaves came from many different sources. About half came from
the societies that sold them. These might be
criminal,
heretic, the
mentally ill, the
indebted and any others that had fallen out of favour
with the rulers. Little is known about the details of theses
practices before the arrival of Europeans, and so it is difficult
to tell if the number of people considered as undesirables was
artificially increased to provide more slaves for export. It is
believed that
capital punishment
in the region nearly disappeared since prisoners became far too
valuable to dispose of in such a way.
Another source of slaves, comprising about half the total, came
from
military conquests of other
states or
tribes. It
has long been contended that the slave trade greatly increased
violence and warfare in the region due to the pursuit of slaves,
endemic warfare was certainly common
even before slave hunting had added such an extra inducement.
For the
Atlantic slave trade, captives purchased from slave dealers in West
African regions known as the Slave
Coast, Gold Coast,
and Côte
d'Ivoire
were sold into slavery as a result of a defeat in
warfare. In the Bight of Biafra
near modern-day Senegal
and Benin
, some
African kings sold their captives locally and later to European
slave traders for goods such as metal cookware, rum, livestock, and
seed grain. Previous to the voyage, the victims were held in
"slave castles" and deep pits where many died from multiple
illnesses and malnutrition. Conditions were even worse in the
Middle Passage across the Atlantic
where up to a third of the slaves died en route.
Effects
Effect on the economy of Africa
Most scholars find that the trade in slave had a detrimental effect
on long-term economic growth and development. It ultimately
undermined local economies and political stability as villages'
vital labor forces were shipped overseas as slave raids and civil
wars became commonplace. With the rise of a large commercial slave
trade, driven by European needs, enslaving your enemy became less a
consequence of war, and more and more a reason to go to war. The
slave trade impeded the formation of larger ethnic groups, causing
ethnic fractionalisation and weakening the formation for stable
political structures. It also reduced the mental health and social
development of African people and created a situation where
In contrast, J.D. Fage assert that slavery did not have a wholly
disastrous effect on those left behind in Africa. Slaves were an
expensive commodity, and traders received a great deal in exchange
for each slave. At the peak of the slave trade, it is said that
hundreds of thousands of muskets, vast quantities of cloth,
gunpowder and metals were being shipped to Guinea. Most of this
money was spent on British-made firearms (of very poor quality) and
industrial-grade alcohol. trade with Europe at the peak of the
slave trade—which also included significant exports of gold and
ivory—was some 3.5 million pounds Sterling per year.
By contrast, the
trade of the United
Kingdom
, the economic superpower of the time, was about 14
million pounds per year over this same period of the late 18th
century. As
Patrick
Manning has pointed out, the vast majority of items traded for
slaves were common rather than luxury goods. Textiles, iron ore,
currency, and salt were some of the most important commodities
imported as a result of the slave trade, and these goods were
spread within the entire society raising the general standard of
living.
Effects on Europe’s economy
Eric Williams had
attempted to show the contribution of Africans on the basis of
profits from the slave trade and slavery, and the employment of
those profits to finance Britain’s industrialization process. He
argues that the enslavement of Africans was an essential element to
the Industrial Revolution, and that European wealth is a result of
slavery. However, he argued that by the time of its abolition it
had lost its profitability and it was in Britain's economic
interest to ban it. Seymour Dreshcer and Robert Antsey have both
presented evidence that the slave trade remained profitable until
the end, and that reasons other than economics led to its
cessation. Joseph Inikori has shown elsewhere that the British
slave trade was more profitable than the critics of Williams would
want us to believe.
Nevertheless, the profits of the slave trade
and of West
Indian
plantations amounted to less than 5% of the British
economy at the time of the Industrial Revolution.
A similar debate has taken place about other European nations.
French slave trade was more profitable than alternative domestic
investments and probably encouraged
capital accumulation before the
Industrial Revolution and
Napoleonic
Wars.
Demographics
The demographic effects of the slave trade are some of the most
controversial and debated issues. Tens of millions of people were
removed from Africa via the slave trade, and what effect this had
on Africa is an important question.
Walter
Rodney argued that the export of so many people had been a
demographic disaster and had left Africa permanently disadvantaged
when compared to other parts of the world, and largely explains
that continent's continued poverty. He presents numbers that show
that Africa's population stagnated during this period, while that
of Europe and Asia grew dramatically. According to Rodney all other
areas of the economy were disrupted by the slave trade as the top
merchants abandoned traditional industries to pursue slaving and
the lower levels of the population were disrupted by the slaving
itself.
Others have challenged this view.
J.
D. Fage
compared the number effect on the continent as a whole. David Eltis
has compared the numbers to the rate of
emigration from
Europe
during this period. In the nineteenth century alone over 50 million
people left Europe for the Americas, a far higher rate than were
ever taken from Africa.
Others have challenged this view. Joseph E. Inikori argues the
history of the region shows that the effects were still quite
deleterious. He argues that the African economic model of the
period was very different from the European, and could not sustain
such population losses. Population reductions in certain areas also
led to widespread problems. Inikori also notes that after the
suppression of the slave trade Africa's population almost
immediately began to rapidly increase, even prior to the
introduction of modern medicines. Shahadah also states that the
trade was not only of demographic significance, in aggregate
population losses but also in the profound changes to settlement
patterns, epidemiological exposure and reproductive and social
development potential.
In addition, the majority of the slaves being taken to the Americas
were male. So while the slave trade created an immediate drop in
the population, its long term effects were less drastic..
Elikia M’bokolo, April 1998,
Le
Monde diplomatique. Quote:"The African continent was bled of
its human resources via all possible routes. Across the
Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean
ports and across the Atlantic. " He continues: "Four million slaves
exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the
Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many
as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven
to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic
Ocean"
Legacy of racism
Maulana Karenga states that the
effects of the African slave trade were "the morally monstrous
destruction of human possibility involved redefining African
humanity to the world, poisoning past, present and future relations
with others who only know us through this stereotyping and thus
damaging the truly human relations among people of today". He cites
that it constituted the destruction of culture, language, religion
and human possibility. It's worth noting though that slavery was
and is a crime of opportunity, not just racism. Those who were
enslaved were vulnerable to a more powerful people, and their
vulnerability was their liability, not just their race.
Abolition
Beginning in the late 18th century, France was Europe's first
country to abolish slavery, in 1794, but it was revived by
Napoleon in 1802, and banned for good in 1848. In
1807 the British Parliament passed the
Abolition of the Slave Trade
Act, under which captains of slave ships could be stiffly fined
for each slave transported. This was later superseded by the 1833
Slavery Abolition Act, which freed all slaves in the British
Empire. Abolition was then extended to the rest of Europe. The
1820 U.S. Law on Slave Trade made slave
trading
piracy, punishableby
death. In 1827, Britain declares the
slave trade piracy, punishable by death. The power of the
Royal Navy was subsequently used to suppress the
slave trade, and while some illegal trade, mostly with Brazil,
continued, the Atlantic slave trade would be eradicated by the
middle of the 19th century. The
West Africa Squadron was credited with
capturing 1,600 slave ships between 1808 and 1860 and freeing
150,000 Africans who were aboard these ships. Action was also taken
against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to
outlaw the trade, for example against ‘the usurping King of Lagos’,
deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50
African rulers.
The
Islamic trans-Saharan
and Indian
Ocean
trades continued, however, and even increased as
new sources of slaves became available. In
Caucasus, slavery was abolished
after Russian conquest. The slave trade within Africa also
increased. The British Navy could suppress much of the trade in the
Indian Ocean, but the European powers could do little to affect the
intra-continental trade.
The continuing
anti-slavery movement in
Europe became an excuse and a
casus
belli for the European conquest and colonisation of much of the
African continent. In the late 19th century, the
Scramble for Africa saw the continent
rapidly divided between Imperialistic Europeans, and an early but
secondary focus of all
colonial regimes was the suppression of slavery and the slave
trade. In response to this public pressure, Ethiopia officially
abolished slavery in 1932. By the end of the colonial period they
were mostly successful in this aim, though slavery is still very
active in Africa even though it has gradually moved to a
wage economy. Independent nations attempting to
westernise or impress Europe sometimes cultivated an image of
slavery suppression, even as they, in the case of Egypt, hired
European soldiers like
Samuel White
Baker's expedition up the Nile.
Slavery has never been eradicated in
Africa, and it commonly appears in African states, such as Chad
, Ethiopia
, Mali
, Niger
, and
Sudan
, in places where law and
order have collapsed.. See also
Slavery in modern
Africa.
Although outlawed in nearly all countries today slavery is
practiced
in secret in many parts of the world. There are
an estimated 27 million victims of slavery worldwide.
In Mauritania
alone up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20%
of the population, are enslaved, many of them used as bonded labour. Slavery in Mauritania was finally
criminalized in August 2007. It is estimated that as many as
200,000 black Sudanese children and women have been taken into
slavery in Sudan during the
Second Sudanese Civil War.
In
Niger
, where the practice of slavery was outlawed in
2003, a study found that almost 8% of the population are still
slaves.
See also
Notes
- The impact of the slave trade on Africa
- Welcome to Encyclopædia Britannica's Guide to Black
History
- Slow Death for Slavery – Cambridge University
Press
- Digital History Slavery Fact Sheets
- Tanzania - Stone Town of Zanzibar
- Fulani slave-raids
- Central African Republic: History
- Slow Death for Slavery: The Course of Abolition in
Northern Nigeria, 1897-1936 (review), Project MUSE – Journal of
World History
- The end of slavery, BBC World Service | The
Story of Africa
- Ethiopia - The Interregnum
- Tewodros II
- Kituo cha katiba >> Haile Selassie Profile
- Twentieth Century Solutions of the Abolition of
Slavery
- Abdussamad H. Ahmad, "Trading in
Slaves in Bela-Shangul and Gumuz, Ethiopia: Border Enclaves in
History, 1897-1938", Journal of African History, 40
(1999), pp. 433–446 ( Abstract)
- The slave trade: myths and preconceptions
- Ethiopia
- Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica,
v.20, (Encyclopedia Britannica, inc.: 1970), p.897
- L. Randol Barker et al., Principles of Ambulatory
Medicine, 7 edition, (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins:
2006), p.633
- Africa's Lost Tribe Discovers American Way
- Historical survey > The international slave
trade
- Arabs and Slave Trade
- Slavery, serfdom, and indenture through the Middle
Ages
- Routes of the Jewish Merchants Called
Radanites
- Definition/Word Origin of 'slave' from The Free
Dictionary
- The Mamluk (Slave) Dynasty (Timeline)
- When Europeans were slaves: Research suggests
white slavery was much more common than previously
believed
- BBC – History – British Slaves on the Barbary
Coast
- The mysteries and majesties of the Aeolian
Islands
- History of Menorca
- Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates by Christopher
Hitchens, City Journal Spring 2007
- Davis, Robert. Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White
Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy,
1500-1800.[1]
- Swahili Coast. Nationalgeographic.com
- Remembering East African slave raids, BBC News, March
30, 2007
- Historical survey > Slave-owning societies.
Encyclopædia Britannica.
- Focus on the slave trade, BBC News, September 3,
2001
- Battuta's Trip: Journey to West Africa
(1351-1353)
- Lewis. Race and Slavery in the Middle East. Oxford
Univ Press 1994.
- Amazigh Arts in Morocco
- Fage, J.D. A History of Africa. Routledge, 4th
edition, 2001. pg. 258
- Review: Islam's Black Slaves by Ronald Segal | By
genre | Guardian Unlimited Books
- David Livingstone; Christian History Institute
- The blood of a nation of Slaves in Stone
Town
- BBC Remembering East African slave raids
- Swahili Coast
- The Unknown Slavery: In the Muslim world, that is
-- and it's not over
- John Henrik Clarke. Critical Lessons in Slavery & the
Slavetrade. A & B Book Pub
- HEALTH IN SLAVERY
- The National Archives | Exhibitions & Learning
online | Black presence | Africa and the Caribbean
- The Great Slave Empires Of Africa
- The Transatlantic Slave Trade
- African Political Ethics and the Slave
Trade
- Museum Theme: The Kingdom of Dahomey
- Dahomey (historical kingdom, Africa)
- Benin seeks forgiveness for role in slave
trade
- Le Mali précolonial
- The Story of Africa
- West is master of slave trade guilt
- African Slave Owners
- Fage, J.D. A History of Africa. Routledge, 4th
edition, 2001. pg. 267
- Fage, J.D. A History of Africa. Routledge, 4th
edition, 2001. pg. 261
- Contours of Slavery and Social Change in Africa, by Patrick
Manning
- Digital History
- Guillaume Daudin « Profitability of slave and long distance
trading in context : the case of eighteenth century France »,
Journal of Economic History, vol. 64, n°1, 2004
- Rodney, Walter. How Europe underdeveloped Africa.
London: Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 1972
- David Eltis Economic Growth and the Ending of the
Transatlantic slave trade
- "Ideology versus the Tyranny of Paradigm: Historians and the
Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on African Societies," by Joseph
E. Inikori African Economic History. 1994.
- The legal and diplomatic background to the seizure of
foreign vessels
- 1820 U.S. Law on Slave Trade
- Sailing against slavery
- The West African Squadron and slave trade
- The Story of Africa|BBC World Service
- Human Rights Watch Slavery and Slave Redemption in the
Sudan
- BBC Millions 'forced into slavery'
- UN Chronicle |Slavery in the Twenty-First Century
- The Abolition season on BBC World Service
- Poverty, tradition shackle Mauritania's slaves
- Mauritanian MPs pass slavery law
- War and Genocide in Sudan
- The Lost Children of Sudan
- Born to be a slave in Niger By Hilary
Andersson, BBC Africa Correspondent, Niger
- The Shackles of Slavery in Niger
Further reading
- Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery
- Fage, J.D. A History of Africa (Routledge, 4th
edition, 2001 ISBN 0-415-25247-4)
- Lovejoy, Paul E. Transformations in Slavery 1983
- The Peopling of Africa: A Geographic Interpretation.(Review):
An article from: Population and Development Review [HTML] (Digital)
by Tukufu Zuberi
- Edward Reynolds. Stand the Storm: a history of the Atlantic
slave trade. London: Allison and Busby, 1985.
- Walter Rodney: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
External links