NationMaster - Encyclopedia: African slavery

This article discusses the history of the slave trade of Africa, and its effect upon the continent. History is a term for information about the past. ... This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Africa is the largest of the three great southward projections from the main mass of the Earths surface. ...

Slavery within Africa, as with other continents, has a long history of 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 Desert and the Red Sea. Download high resolution version (924x536, 259 KB)This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons, a repository of free content hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. ... Download high resolution version (924x536, 259 KB)This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons, a repository of free content hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. ... A monument celebrating the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire in 1834, erected in Victoria Tower Gardens, Millbank, Westminster, London Wiktionary has a definition of: Slavery Slavery can mean one or more related conditions which involve control of a person against his or her will, enforced by violence or... The Sahara is the worlds second largest desert (second to Antarctica), over 9,000,000 km² (3,500,000 mi²), located in northern Africa and is 2. ... (Red Sea is also the name of a state in Sudan) Conshelf II in the Red Sea (Sudan) The Red Sea (Arabic البحر الأحمر Baḥr al-Aḥmar, al-Baḥru l-’Aḥmar; Hebrew ים סוף Yam Suf) is a gulf or basin of the Indian Ocean between Africa and Asia. ...

Routes

The earliest external slave trade was that across the Sahara Desert. 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 often became concubines to their owners. It was also not uncommon to turn male slaves into eunuchs. There is also Nile, a death metal band from South Carolina, USA. The Nile in Egypt Length 6 695 km Elevation of the source 1 134 m Average discharge 2 830 m³/s Area watershed 3 400 000 km² Origin Africa Mouth the Mediterranean Basin countries Uganda - Sudan - Egypt The... Species Camelus bactrianus Camelus dromedarius A camel is either of the two species of large even-toed ungulate in the genus Camelus, the Dromedary (Single hump) and the Bactrian Camel (Double hump). ... The term the Middle East sometimes applies to the peninsula alone, but usually refers to the Arabian Peninsula plus the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Iran. ... Djenné, founded in 800, an important trading base, now a World Heritage Site Trans-Saharan trade, between Mediterranean countries and West Africa, was an important trade route from the eighth century until the late sixteenth century. ... West Africa is the region of western Africa generally considered to include these countries: Benin Burkina Faso Cameroon Côte dIvoire (Ivory Coast) Equatorial Guinea Gabon The Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Liberia Mali Niger Nigeria Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) Senegal Sierra Leone Togo Chad, Mauritania, and... (see also North Africa, Tamazgha, Arab Maghreb Union, Mashreq) The Maghreb (or Moghreb), meaning west in Arabic, is the region of the continent of Africa north of the Sahara desert and west of the Nile - specifically, the modern countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and to a lesser extent Libya and... Assimilation, from Latin assimilatio meaning to render similar, is used to describe various phenomena: The process of assimilating new ideas into a schema (cognitive structure). ... The Americas is an alternative name in the English language for the continent of America, to distinguish it from the United States of America, which is often just called America. ... Servant has a number of meaning: A servant is another word for domestic worker, a person who is hired to provide regular household or other duties, and receives compensation. ... Labour (or labor) can mean any one of the following things: Physical or mental work; exertion. ... A eunuch is a castrated human male. ...

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. There are three factors which may assist to varying degrees in determining whether someone is considered Arab or not: Political: whether they live in a country which is a member of the Arab League (or, more vaguely, the Arab world); this definition covers more than 300 million people. ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ... A sugarcane plantation at Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, 2005 A plantation is a large tract of monoculture, as a tree plantation, a cotton plantation, a tea plantation or a tobacco plantation. ...

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 was built for the Slave trade, it is said to be the oldest extant European building south of the Sahara. The Atlantic slave trade was the capture and transport of black Africans into bondage and servitude in the New World. ... World map showing location of Europe A satellite composite image of Europe Europe is geologically and geographically a peninsula, forming the westernmost part of Eurasia. ... Antão Gonçalves was a 15th century Portuguese explorer and slave trader who was the first European to take Africans as slaves. ... General Name, Symbol, Number Gold, Au, 79 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11 (IB), 6, d Density, Hardness 19. ... Screen shot of Spice OPUS, a fork of Berkeley SPICE SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuits Emphasis) is a general purpose analog circuit simulator. ... São Tomé, population 53,300 (in 2003), is the capital of São Tomé and Príncipe. ... A sugar is a form of carbohydrate; the most commonly used sugar is a white crystalline solid, sucrose; used to alter the flavor and properties (mouthfeel, preservation, texture) of beverages and food. ... Elmina Castle was built in 1482 by the Portuguese as the first trading post the Ghana (Gold Coast), in the city of Cape Coast for the use in the slaver-trade. ... This article resolves the various uses of the name Gold Coast. ...

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. Farming, ploughing rice paddy, in Indonesia Agriculture is the process of producing food, feed, fiber and other desired products by cultivation of certain plants and the raising of domesticated animals (livestock). ... The El Chino Mine located near Silver City, New Mexico is an open-pit copper mine Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, usually (but not always) from an ore body, vein, or (coal) seam. ...

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. This article is about the abolition of slavery. ... Basil Davidson is an acclaimed historian of 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. Feudalism refers to a general set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility of Europe during the Middle Ages, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ...

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. for other uses please see Crime (disambiguation) A crime is an act that violates a political or moral law. ... Heretic, meaning literally a person guilty or accused of heresy, is also often used as a title. ... The Scream, the famous painting commonly thought of as depicting the experience of mental illness. ... Debt is that which is owed. ... Death Penalty World Map Color Key: Blue: Abolished for all crimes Green: Abolished for crimes not committed in exceptional circumstances (such as crimes committed in time of war) Orange: Abolitionist in Practice Red: Legal Form of Punishment Capital punishment, also referred to as the death penalty, is the judicially ordered... Human sacrifice was practiced in many ancient cultures. ...

The other source of slaves, adding up to 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. A state is an organized political community occupying a definite territory, having an organized government, and possessing internal and external sovereignty. ... ǎ This article is on the social structure. ...

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. (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ... Dahomey was an African kingdom situated in what is now Benin. ... A shrunken Ashanti Confederacy near the end of its existence in 1896 The Ashanti Confederacy was a powerful state in West Africa in the years prior to European colonization. ... A university is an institution of higher education and of research, which grants academic degrees. ...

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. 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 Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the senior service of the armed services, being the oldest of its three branches. ...

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. 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 Baker White's expedition up the Nile. Slavery has never been completely eradicated in Africa, and it sometimes reappears in states, such as Sudan, where law and order have collapsed. The Scramble for Africa was the period between the 1880s and the start of World War I, when colonial empires in Africa were acquired faster than anywhere else on the globe. ... In politics and in history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a geographically-distinct state (or city, in ancient times). ... A wage is the amount of money paid for some specified quantity of labour. ... Law (a loanword from Old Norse lag), in politics and jurisprudence, is a set of rules or norms of conduct which mandate, proscribe or permit specified relationships among people and organizations, provide methods for ensuring the impartial treatment of such people, and provide punishments for those who do not follow... Order is the opposite of anarchy and chaos. ...

Effects

Abolition

See also