Black History Moth In December 2014 ___________________ Slavery in Africa, the institution of slavery as it existed in Africa, and the effects of world slave-trade systems on African people and societies. As in most of the world, slavery, or involuntary human servitude, was practiced across Africa from prehistoric times to the modern era. When people today think of slavery, many envision the form in which it existed in the United States before the American Civil War (1861-1865): one racially identifiable group owning and exploiting another. However, in other parts of the world, slavery has taken many different forms. In Africa, many societies recognized slaves merely as property, but others saw them as dependents who eventually might be integrated into the families of slave owners. Still other societies allowed slaves to attain positions of military or administrative power. Most often, both slave owners and slaves were black Africans, although they were frequently of different ethnic groups. Traditionally, African slaves were bought to perform menial or domestic labor, to serve as wives or concubines, or to enhance the status of the slave owner. Traditional African practices of slavery were altered to some extent beginning in the 7th century by two non-African groups of slave traders: Arab Muslims and Europeans. From the 7th to the 20th century, Arab Muslims raided and traded for black African slaves in West, Central, and East Africa, sending thousands of slaves each year to North Africa and parts of Asia. From the 15th to the 19th century, Europeans bought millions of slaves in West, Central, and East Africa and sent them to Europe; the Caribbean; and North, Central, and South America. These two overlapping waves of transcontinental slave trading made the slave trade central to the economies of many African states and threatened many more Africans with enslavement. II. Traditions of Slavery Within Africa Slavery existed in some of Africas earliest organized societies. More than 3,500 years ago, ancient Egyptians raided neighboring societies for slaves, and the buying and selling of slaves were regular activities in cities along the Nile River. However, whereas the Egyptians left behind written records of their activities, most other early African states and societies did not. Therefore, our understanding of most early African practices of slavery is based on much more recent observations of African traditions regarding slavery and kinship and on oral histories. A. Origins In Africa, as in many places around the world, early slavery likely resulted from warring groups taking captives. Such captives were of little use, and often some bother, when kept close to their homes because of the ease of escape. Therefore, they were often sold and transported to more distant places. Warfare was not the only reason for the practice of slavery in Africa, however. In many African societies, slavery represented one of the few methods of producing wealth available to common people. Throughout the African continent there was little recognition of rights to private landholding until colonial officials began imposing European law in the 19th century. Land was typically held communally by villages or large clans and was allotted to families according to their need. The amount of land a family needed was determined by the number of laborers that family could marshal to work the land. To increase production, a family had to invest in more laborers and thus increase their share of land. The simplest and quickest way to do this was to invest in slaves. To help service this demand, many early African societies conducted slave raids on distant villages. B. Slaves Roles Women constituted the majority of early African slaves. In addition to agricultural work, female slaves carried out other economic functions, such as trading and cotton spinning and dyeing. They also performed domestic chores, such as preparing food, washing clothes, and cleaning. Powerful African men kept female slaves as wives or concubines, and in many societies these women stood as symbols of male wealth. Male slaves typically farmed and herded animals. Those who belonged to wealthy families and especially of ruling lineages of states also worked as porters and rowers, and learned crafts such as weaving, construction, and metalwork. New slaves were sometimes given menial tasks while experienced slaves did the more difficult and dangerous work, such as mining and quarrying. Some male, and fewer female, slaves held positions of high status and trust within their societies. In precolonial states in the interior of West and Central Africa, slaves often served as soldiers and confidants of high officials. With their necessarily limited ambitions and dependence on their masters, slaves were considered the ideal persons to be close to men in power. In a few cases, female slaves assumed power and influence as well. For example, in the 19th century in the West African Kingdom of Dahomey (now southern Benin), women served in the royal palace and formed the kingdoms soldier elite. C. Slavery and Kinship Kinship (connection to a family by blood or marriage) has always been extremely important in Africa as an essential component of a persons identity and ability to survive in society. Traditionally, those without kin were essentially lost–not considered real persons by society. Slaves, taken in battle or in slave raids, were cut off from their kin. In some societies, however, slaves were viewed as dependents, and could, over time, become identified as members of their owners extended families. Many African societies decreed that children of slave owners by their slaves could not be sold or killed. Also, after three or four generations, descendants of slaves could often shed their slave status. Thus slavery, on one hand, cut people off from their kin but, on the other hand, provided them with the possibility of becoming attached to other families and, after several generations, reintegrated into the web of kinship. None of the above possibilities should suggest that enslaved Africans liked what was happening to them, accepted slavery willingly, or normally rose quickly in status. However, early African traditions of slavery appear more benign when compared to the institutionalized systems of slave trading that would develop later. As African states began providing slaves for export by Arabs or Europeans, slavery became much more central to the economies and politics of those states and more of a threat to Africans in general. III. Effects of Slave Trades on Africa Around the 15th century BC, Egypts New Kingdom enslaved non-Africans, such as Jews from Palestine, through warfare and imported them to the Nile Valley. As an African importer of non-African slaves, however, ancient Egypt is a notable exception to the rule. Africas role in the history of transcontinental slave trading has generally been as a provider or exporter of slaves for use outside of Africa. After the 5th century BC, Greeks and, later, Romans came to dominate the Mediterranean Sea. Both of these slave-owning powers raided North Africa extensively for slaves. This practice of using Africa as a source of slaves would be adopted and expanded first by Arab Muslims and later by Europeans. A. The Trans-Saharan and East African Slave Trades The spread of Islam from Arabia into Africa after the religions founding in the 7th century AD affected the practice of slavery and slave trading in West, Central, and East Africa. Arabs had practiced slave raiding and trading in Arabia for centuries prior to the founding of Islam, and slavery became a component of Islamic traditions. Both the Quran (Koran) (the sacred scripture of Islam) and Islamic religious law served to codify and justify the existence of slavery. As Muslim Arabs conquered their way westward across North Africa in the 7th and 8th centuries, their victorious leaders rewarded themselves with Berber captives, most of whom were eventually enrolled in Muslim armies. Over time, large segments of North Africas Berber population converted to Islam. The religion spread to the camel herders of the Sahara Desert, who were in contact with black Africans south of the Sahara and who traded small numbers of black slaves. Muslim Arabs expanded this trans-Saharan slave trade, buying or seizing increasing numbers of black Africans in West Africa, leading them across the Sahara, and selling them in North Africa. From there, most of these slaves were exported to far-off Asian destinations such as the eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia (in present-day Turkey), Arabia, Persia (present-day Iran), and India. The trans-Saharan slave trade grew significantly from the 10th to the 15th century, as vast African empires such as Ghana, Mali, Songhai, and Kanem-Bornu developed south of the Sahara and marshaled the trade. Arab slave raiders also penetrated south, up the Nile River to present-day Ethiopia, capturing thousands of slaves and sending them down the Nile to Egypt. Over the course of more than a thousand years, the trans-Saharan slave trade saw the movement of at least 10 million enslaved men, women, and children from West and East Africa to North Africa, the Middle East, and India. The slaves and their descendants contributed to the harems, royal households, and armies of the Arab, Turkish, and Persian rulers in those regions. Also, by the 9th century, seafaring Muslims from Arabia and Persia had made their way down the Indian Ocean coast of East Africa, obtaining African slaves in ports from Mogadishu (in present-day Somalia) to Sofala (in present-day Mozambique) and conveying them to western Asian cities to work. The culture of the East African coastal regions was strongly influenced by Arab and Persian traders, many of whom intermarried with Africans, thus producing the Swahili people and culture. Between the 9th and the 13th centuries, this Arab-Persian-Swahili population established cities and city-states along the East African coast. These cities and states captured or purchased slaves from the East African interior for domestic and agricultural tasks. In the 18th and 19th centuries, as plantation agriculture developed in the region, the East African slave trade increased dramatically. Scholars opinions differ on the issue of the long-term effects of Islam on African slavery. Some believe that Islamic law helped regulate slavery, thus limiting its abuses; these scholars often argue that because Islam encouraged the freeing of slaves upon their masters death, it increased instances of emancipation. Other scholars believe that Islam led to the expansion of slavery, arguing that at the time that slavery was growing in the parts of Africa coming under Islamic influence, slavery was declining in most of medieval Europe. Between the 7th and the 15th century, the trans-Saharan and East African slave trades spurred the gradual expansion of slavery within Africa. The slave trades contributed to the development of powerful African states on the southern fringes of the Sahara and in the East African interior. The economies of these states were dependent on slave trading. Neighboring states competed with one another for trade, leading to wars, which in turn led to the capture of more slaves. Slave raiding in West, East, and Central Africa became more common and wide-ranging. When European explorers and traders arrived in West Africa beginning in the 15th century, they found and began using well-established slave-trade networks. While the trans-Saharan and East African slave trades continued until the early 20th century, they were overshadowed by the Atlantic slave trade after the 15th century. The Atlantic slave trade dwarfed the trans-Saharan and East African trades in terms of volume of export, impact on African practices of slavery, and lasting effect on Africa in general.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 01:22:57 +0000
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