History of Slavery
This essay focuses on three historical points. First, slavery existed and sometimes flourished in Africa before the transatlantic slave trade, but neither the African continent nor persons of African origin were as prominent in the world of slaveholding as they would later become. Second, the capture and sale of slaves across the Atlantic between 1450 and 1850 encouraged expansion and repeated transformation of slavery within Africa, to the point that systems of slavery became central to societies all across the continent. Third, even after the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade (largely accomplished by 1850) and the European conquest of Africa (mostly by 1900), millions of persons remained in slavery in Africa as late as 1930.The three sections of the essay address each of these points, giving particular attention to the last two. While the argument reviews the rise and decline of export slave trades - across the Atlantic, the Sahara, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean - it focuses on the nature and extent of slavery within sub-Saharan Africa. Before the Transatlantic Slave TradeIn ancient Egypt and Nubia slavery existed but not as a dominant institution. The enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt and Babylonia was a si
Slave owners, no longer able to hope for new captives, put higher value on infant and child slaves; both the prices and the level of nourishment of children increased. Slaves could purchase their own freedom. During the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1450-1850 Portuguese and Spanish holdings of African slaves expanded with the maritime voyages of the fifteenth century, then grew moderately until, after 1650, the transatlantic trade exceeded the slave trade across the Sahara and Red Sea. Still another device was the legislation of the emancipation of infants born after a given date; in Sierra Leone, for example, the date was 1928. Further, as Paul Lovejoy and Jan Hogendorn have shown, the institution of concubinage continued beyond the era of slavery. Slaves were now both male and female, and they lived not in the households of their masters but in separate villages. At the turn of the eighteenth century the Bight of Benin was the principal region of slave supply. A large proportion of slaves in Islamic society served as domestics, but slaves also worked as farm laborers and porters. In the states of Ife, Oyo, and Benin in West Africa, Kongo in Central Africa, and Munhumutapa in what is now Zimbabwe, slave populations took form around powerful monarchs. The first development was the growing demand for slaves in the Muslim Mediterranean and the lands bordering the Indian Ocean, beginning in the late eighteenth century. The rise of Islam in the seventh century brought a set of rules that provided protection for those in slave status, but in so doing reinforced the institution of slavery. Their parallel expansion meant that, from the seventeenth century, the number of persons in slavery in Africa roughly equaled the number in the Americas. They were without family except for their owners and their children, and the children were property of their owners. Between 1800 and 1850 two distinct but related developments led to both an increase in the number of persons held in slavery in Africa and the overall transformation of Africa systems of slavery. These and then other African societies developed the means to capture, feed, finance, and transport captives for sale to European buyers.
Common topics in this essay:
Bight Benin,
Congo Angola,
,
Horn Africa,
Africa Americas,
West Africa,
Kongo Senegambia,
Berlin Conference,
North Africa,
War Ethiopia,
slave trade,
transatlantic slave trade,
transatlantic slave,
indian ocean,
slavery africa,
african societies,
slavery existed,
eighteenth century,
export slaves,
slave raiding,
west africa,
european conquest africa,
sahara red sea,
republic congo angola,
africa systems slavery,
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Acceptance Essays
