African slave trade
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- This article discusses the history of the slave trade of Africa, and its effect upon the continent. Please see Atlantic slave trade for the trans-Atlantic trade, and History of slavery in the United States.
Slavery in Africa, as with other continents, has a long history, with internal slavery being common to many societies. However, due to lack of historical records we can only discuss the early history of the African slave trade through its external manifestation, whereby slaves were supplied across the Sahara and the Red Sea.
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Routes
The earliest external slave trade was that across the Sahara. 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. At this point, a trans-Saharan trading network came into being to transport slaves north. There is little hard evidence of numbers, but it has been estimated that from the 10th to the 19th century some 6,000 to 7,000 slaves were transported north each year. Over time this added up to several million people moving north, however the annual numbers were small enough that it had relatively little demographic impact on either West Africa or the Maghreb. Frequent intermarriages meant that the black slaves were quickly assimilated in North Africa. Unlike in the Americas, slaves in North Africa were mainly servants rather than labourers, and an equal or greater number of females than males were taken, who were often employed as chambermaids to women of harems. It was also not uncommon to turn male slaves into eunuchs.
African slaves taken from the West African regions known as the Slave Coast, Gold Coast, and Ivory Coast were sold into slavery as a result of a defeat in warfare. Mighty kings in the Bight of Biafra near modern-day Senegal and Benin sold their captives to European slave traders for such things as metal cookware, rum, and livestock. Also during this time, the European powers namely Portugal, Spain, France and England, were vying for absolute control of the African slave trade. England'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. Thus the English crown provided a carter giving the Royal African Company monopoly over the African slave routes until 1712.
The trade in slaves across the Indian Ocean also has a long history beginning with the control of sea routes by Arab traders in the ninth century. It is estimated that only a few thousand slaves were taken each year from the Red Sea and Indian Ocean coast. They were sold throughout the Middle East and India. 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.
The Atlantic slave trade developed far later, but it would eventually be by far the largest and have the greatest impact. The first Europeans to arrive on the coast of Guinea were the Portuguese; the first European to actually take slaves in the region was Antão Gonçalves, a Portuguese explorer. Originally interested in trading mainly for gold and spices, they set up colonies on the uninhabited islands of Sao Tome. In the 16th century the Portuguese settlers found that these volcanic islands were ideal for growing sugar. Sugar growing is a labourious undertaking and Portuguese settlers were difficult to attract. To cultivate the sugar the Portuguese thus turned to large numbers of African slaves. Elmina Castle on the Gold Coast, originally built by the Portuguese in 1482 to control the gold trade, became an important depot for slaves that were to be transported to the New World.
Increasing penetration of the Americas by the Portuguese created another huge demand for labour in Brazil, for farming, mining, and other tasks. To meet this, a trans-Atlantic slave trade soon developed. Slave-based economies quickly spread to the Caribbean and the southern portion of what is today the United States. These areas all developed an insatiable demand for slaves. From its beginning it is estimated that some 12 million slaves left Africa for the Americas, of which 10.5 million arrived alive. The result of this trade is one of the largest migrations in history. These numbers are hotly disputed by scholars, and precision is quite difficult, yet today the general consensus is that these numbers are fairly reliable. A small number of slaves were also shipped to Europe while some were also transported to other areas of Africa, mostly to South Africa.
Effects
While no one disputes the horrific harm done to the slaves themselves, the effects of the trade on African societies are much debated. In the 19th century, abolitionists saw slavery as an unmitigated evil. This view continued with scholars into the 1960s and 70s such as Basil Davidson, who conceded it may have had some benefits while still acknowledging its largely negative impact on Africa. Today, however, many scholars believe slavery had a neutral, or even somewhat positive effect on those left behind in Africa.
The numbers of slaves exported were large, but so was the population from which they were drawn. At its peak, the Atlantic slave trade took about 90,000 slaves per year out of a total population of around 25 million in Guinea, where the vast majority originated. This number was significant, yet only a moderate annual growth rate in population was enough to sustain it by replacement. Therefore, the slave trade is unlikely to have caused a decrease in the population of West Africa, even as it may have reduced or even halted population growth in some regions.
All three slave trades tapped into local trading patterns. Europeans or Arabs in Africa occasionally mounted expeditions to capture slaves, however these were rare. It was far easier and more common to make use of exisiting African middlemen. Slavery had long been present in Africa, though some historians prefer to describe African slavery as feudalism, arguing it was more like the system that controlled the peasantry of Western Europe during the Middle Ages or Russia into the 19th century than slavery as it was practiced in the Americas.
The slaves came from many different sources. About half came from the societies that sold them. These might be criminals, heretics, the mentally ill, the indebted and any others that had fallen out of favour with the rulers. Little is known about 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 and human sacrifice 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, but it is very hard to find any evidence to prove this; warfare was certainly common even before slave hunting had added such an extra inducement.
Slaves were an expensive commodity, and the traders and rulers of the African states received a great deal in exchange for condemning some of their population into slavery. At the peak of the slave trade, hundreds of thousands of muskets, vast quantities of cloth, gunpowder and metals were being shipped to Guinea. Guinea's 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, was about 14 million pounds per year over this same period of the late 18th century. Thus, for those left behind in Africa the standard of living increased substantially and the region became divided into highly centralized and powerful nation states, such as Dahomey and the Ashanti Confederacy. It also created a class of very wealthy and highly Europeanized traders who began to send their children to European universities.
Abolition
Beginning in the late 18th century, reaction against the barbarities of the slave trade led to it being outlawed, first in the United Kingdom and then in the rest of Europe. 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 early by in the 19th century. The Saharan and Indian Ocean trades continued, however, and even increased as new sources of slaves became available. According to Mordechai Abir, with the Russian conquest of the Caucasus, Ethiopia became the primary source of slaves for the Muslim world. 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 important motivator, and excuse, for the European penetration and conquest of the African continent. In the late 19th century, the Scramble for Africa saw the continent rapidly divided between Europeans, and an early 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, and slavery had largely been abolished as Africa was moved to a wage economy. Independent nations attempting to westernize 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 completely eradicated in Africa, and it sometimes reappears in states, such as Sudan, in places where law and order have collapsed.
