African Slave Trades

?BCE to ?CE
Point 1: Slavery Still Happens
Point 2: African Slavery not the only form of Exploitive Labor you
need to know about in Period 4
Other significant forms include . . .

Russian Encomienda / Indentured Asian Migrant

Serfdom Mita Servitude Laborers
 Point 3: It’s An Old Institution
Slavery is as old as recorded human history and represents an enduring feature of civilization (see John Green’s Discussion in Crash
Course)
• Almost every human society since the rise of urban + state-based civilization has had some form of slave system in which people are
exploited and often brutalized in the name of extracting labor.
– Amerindian civs practiced slavery and other forms of exploitative labor systems (mit’a); Amerindian slavery by Iberians in New
World partly built on these pre-existing institutions, which means Europeans did not introduce “slavery” to the new world as a
concept. However, they did racialize it, dehumanize it, and introduce African slaves.
– African societies both prior to and after this period practiced prolific slavery (and in some states, human sacrifice as well)
– Even cash crop, plantation style slavery not wholly new; Roman latifundia being a case in point.
• For most of history, slavery did not have the same negative ethical and moral connotations as today. Actually reflected status, wealth,
and power.

Historical Characteristics
• Most slaves were captured in war or sold for debts
• Most slaves (male) ended up in agriculture or mining = the jobs that suck!!!!!
• Many female slaves and some men and children were used for sexual exploitation. (harem; concubines; etc.) Slavery for sexual
exploitation is surprisingly common even today throughout the world.
• To a lesser degree some slaves became domestic servants
• To a lesser degree some slaves became highly skilled soldiers, administrators, or artisans (think of Zheng He, Janissaries, etc.)
• Historically, slaves were usually defined as a legal status and had some legal protection by law (think of Hammurabi’s Code; Leviticus;
Roman Lex, etc.), and even had legal means of gaining manumission (i.e. freedom).
• Bondage was often not based on racism although often involved enslaving people seen as “other” to the dominant group.
• Didn’t always follow generations; children of slaves often freed at birth.
As we talk about the Atlantic Slave Trade, note what stays the same and is different from the above!
Point 4: “Atlantic Slave Trade” Not the Only African Slave Trade
 Stop and Check:
Of these initial points which do you find the
most significant and/or surprising + why
Now to the Atlantic Slave Trade
 Why Africa?
• Already a tradition in Africa
– Typically war captives, criminals, outcasts
– Most slaves worked as cultivators; some used as administrators, soldiers
– Were a measure of power, wealth
– Assimilated into masters' kinship groups
– Could earn freedom
– Children of slaves were generally born free

• Political changes fostered growth of the trade

– Rise of radical African Muslim States in North and West Africa
• Rulers + religious leaders called for purified Islam
• Began to launch Jihad wars to purify belief (much of slave supply came from
POWs of these conflicts)
– Slave Coast Kingdoms began to consolidate
• Local monarchs/chiefs used war to expand and consolidate their states.
• Selling POWs to Portuguese “factory” ports in exchange for gunpowder weapons
gave them a competitive military advantage and source of revenue

• Columbian Exchanges and American food crops, ironically, grew the population of Africa
and thus the supply
– Population growth in sub-Sahara enabled the supply to exist.
– From 35 million in 1500 to 60 million in 1800
 Iberians generally had more “awareness” of the slave option because of cultural ties to Muslims, proximity to North
Africa, and Portuguese explorations down the West African coast
• Ties to Muslims

Why Iberians? – Muslim World had long slave tradition

• Quran permitted slavery
• Dar al Islam had created two slave routes out of Africa to Southwest Asia: land and sea
– Iberian peninsula had been conquered by the Muslims, as such, slavery persisted even as other areas of Europe
evolved more towards serfdom during Medieval period.
• Interesting side note: Many historians consider 1204 as Europe's first major slave trade (after Classical
Period). In the wake of that crazy 4th Crusade, Italian merchants imported thousands of Armenian,
Circassian, and Georgian slaves to Italy. Most of them were women who worked as household servants,
but many, ironically, worked processing sugar.
– Supply itself always very plentiful in the Peninsula. Why?
• Reconquista= Muslims themselves became slaves of Iberian Crusaders
• Proximity to North Africa
• Proximity to Africa
– Cash crop “plantation” agriculture using slave labor from sub-Saharan Africa big business in North Africa all
throughout the Post-classical period. Business model pioneered there that Iberians will merely appropriate and
transplant to New World.
• Exploration
– During early 15th Century exploration, Portugal + Spain discover islands off the coast of North Africa in the
Atlantic such as the Azores and Canaries. A “mini-New World” unfolds:
• Seek to profit via cash crop agriculture
• Enslave natives for labor but they die because of disease
• Turn to African network and supply to solve labor shortage
– As Iberians, namely Portugal, continued to explore down the west coast of Africa, they built their “trading post”
empire via factory entrepÔts on the African coast.
• Factory ports gave direct access to West African slave supply; no longer had to acquire via North African
“Muslim” states (another example of by-passing a middle man + buying direct)
• New world colonies meant they needed to expand the business and, in turn, had the resources to pay
higher prices
• Built the maritime network that led to “Middle Passage”
• Became the biggest consumer because they developed the largest labor need in New World.
 Some Key Ideas about Europe’s Relationship with Africa at this time
• Europeans not powerful enough to completely control slave trade (or other trade) or “conquer”+ colonize Africa.
– West African and Islamic states too strong at this time period. Europeans had no real ability to project force off the coastal
areas where cannons on ships could support “factories” = fortified, coastal trading post where foreign merchants operated.
– Diseases kept Europeans from interior.

• Europeans had to work cooperatively with most local rulers

– Many mulattoes acted as intermediaries with interior African states.
– System ultimately about economics and commercial trade. Africa grew “slaves” and Europeans consumed them by exchanging
guns, some manufactured items, and some treasure. It was a mutualistic relationship. Not an antagonistic one for the parties
buying AND selling. But . . .
• Europeans would forge alliances and use “diplomacy” to achieve objectives with strong states. With very weak tribes or
kingdoms they would intimidate and use force.
• Europeans did work to keep coastal states weak and “manageable”. Interior Kingdoms grew strongest from slave trade.
• Africa ripped apart by violence and warfare in part to acquire the supply.

• Europeans did try to justify actions in Africa via missionary efforts to spread Christianity and combat Muslim influence. Only limited
success. “shiny veneer on the brutal reality”

• Also, to avoid oversimplification, remember that the reaction in Africa (and Europe) to Atlantic Slave Trade quite mixed. While many
African states grew powerful and endorsed the slave trade, many also attempted to limit its influence. (Alfonso I of Kongo’s Letter)
 What explains the rise of the Atlantic slave trade?
• Massive amounts of cheap land in New World + new landowners looking for cheap labor

• Alternative “labor” solution not available

– Loss of “Slavic” supply
– Loss of Amerindian supply = Great Dying + Amerindians less suited: easier for them to escape; easier for them to fight
back; Church eventually became involved as part of missionary effort and advocated for better treatment, ex. Bartolome
de las Casas)
– Lack of labor supply from Europe via other means such as serfdom, peasants, etc.
• In Latin American regions, European peasants, serfs, etc. had little incentive to migrate; death toll for Europeans in
New World extremely high during 16th Century, particularly in tropical regions.

• Network and “supply” already existed in Africa and Muslim world

– Some Asians were pressed into slavery / indentured servitude, but labor easier to acquire from Africa; supply much larger
in Africa given context. Why?

• Given the goal and economics of the system, it worked!

– larger plantations + cheap supply of slave labor + need to keep production costs down = need for more slaves to make
more profit. This was about business!
Bartolome de las Casas
“Protector of the Indians”
 Dates
Portuguese
planters start
1441 first significant
capture of importation of
slaves by First slave to African slaves
Portuguese in America in to Brazil,
Africa 1502 1530s

1452, first African slaves Start of 1607 English

shipped to plantations significant colonists
on Atlantic islands importation of bring first
(Azores, Canaries, etc.) slaves to slaves to
Caribbean, Virginia at
18 June 1452: Pope Nicholas V issues Mexico, Peru, Jamestown.
Dum Diversas, a bull authorizing the
Portuguese to reduce any Central
non-Christians to the status of slaves. America, 1510
- 1520s
Mapping the Height of the
Atlantic Slave Trade
Shipment over Time
 Statistics of the Atlantic Slave Trade
ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE
CARRIERS DESTINATIONS
PORTUGAL 4.7 million BRAZIL 4.0 million
BRITISH NORTH 2.9 million SPANISH 2.5 million
AMERICA INCLUDING EMPIRE
THE USA

SPAIN 1.6 million BRITISH WEST INDIES 2.0 million

FRANCE 1.3 million FRENCH WEST INDIES 1.6 million

NETHERLANDS 0.9 million BRITISH NORTH 500,000

AMERICA INCLUDING
USA
DUTCH WEST INDIES 500,000
DANISH WEST INDIES 28,000

EUROPE AND 200,000

ATLANTIC ISLANDS
SOURCE: “THE SLAVE TRADE” BY HUGH THOMAS
 Slave Trade Profitable
• 8 January 1454: Pope Nicholas V issues Romanus Pontifex, a bull granting the Portuguese a perpetual monopoly in trade with Africa.
Nevertheless, Spanish traders begin to bring slaves from Africa to Spain in the same year. Obviously this was a “paper” monopoly much like the
Treaty of Tordesillas.

• Profitability meant founding of many “African Trading Companies” (Ex. Dutch West Indian Trading Company 1621; Swedish African Company
1647; Royal African Company 1660)

• The West Indian colonies of the European powers were some of their most lucrative possessions the colonial powers owned; they often went to
extremes to protect and retain them.
– Ex. End of the Seven Years' War in 1763, France agreed to cede New France (now Eastern Canada) to Britain in exchange for keeping the
small Antillean island of Guadeloupe. Value of many of the West Indies islands not a function of size but of cash crop production.

• Example of profitability: 18th Century France = returns for investors in plantations averaged around 6-8%; as compared to 4-6% for most
domestic alternatives, this represented a 20% profit advantage.

• Risks—maritime and commercial—were important for individual voyages. Investors mitigated it by buying small shares of many ships at the same
time. In that way, they were able to diversify a large part of the risk away. Between voyages, ship shares could be freely sold and bought creating
a “Slave Exchange” much like the Tulip Exchange for the Dutch (1637) or Stock Exchange today.

• First Portuguese > then Dutch > then British dominate the trade and make vast sums of money. Some say England’s ability to finance early
Industrial Revolution built on profitability of its slave trade + cash crop plantations (however this “thesis” is contested).

• British eventually abolish the trade in 1807; again some argue this occurred only because the trade stopped being economically profitable.
Others still cite moral reasons.
What roles did Europeans and Africans play in the unfolding of
the Atlantic slave trade?
• European demand for slaves was clearly the chief cause of the trade.

• From the point of sale on the African coast to the massive use of slave labor
on American plantations, the entire enterprise was in European hands.

• Europeans tried to exploit African rivalries to obtain slaves at the lowest

possible cost, and the firearms that they funneled into West Africa may well
have increased the warfare from which so many slaves were derived.

• From the point of initial capture to sale on the coast, the slave trade was
normally in African hands. African elites and merchants secured slaves and
brought them to the coast for sale to Europeans waiting on ships or in fortified
settlements.
 What was distinctive about the Atlantic slave trade? What did it share
with other patterns of slave owning and slave trading?
What did it share? What was distinctive?

• Africa had long been a source of • The immense size of the traffic in slaves
slave labor (but mostly because • The centrality of slavery to the economies of colonial America (slavery
they had the economic supply not as common in other colonial economies in Asia, the Pacific, etc.)
that was cheap. Not because of • The prominence of slave labor in plantation agriculture for cash crop
racial reasons) luxuries that were not staple commodities (whereas, say, Roman
• People who were conquered Latifundia often focused on staple food commodities).
and/or considered “outsiders” • Distinctive racial dimension, as Atlantic slavery came to be identified
and “other” became slaves wholly with Africa and with “blackness.”
within African society. • Slaves treated as a form of dehumanized property, lacking any rights in
• Slavery seen as natural and a the society of their owners; and the practice of slave status being
reflection of wealth and status inherited across the generations, with little hope of eventual freedom
continued from the earliest for the vast majority.
civilizations. • Irony in the fact that American slaveholding took place in the only
society, with the possible exception of ancient Greece, that affirmed
values of human freedom and equality while permitting widespread
slavery.
The Process: Middle Passage
 Middle Passage: Acquisition

• Slaves
acquired
inland and
marched to
the coast
 Middle
Passage
Process:
Handoff
• Brought to
factory ports/forts
along the African
coast

• Waited in
warehouses for
ships to America
 Middle Passage Process: Shipping
• Middle Passage and First Year

– Between 15-20% percent died on passage; called “wastage”

• It is said schools of sharks would follow slave ships to feast on
the bodies
• Economics of the trade calculated the death toll of the middle
passage. Slaves had to die or ships would run out of supplies.
• Slaves lived in less than four square feet of space
• Brutal, brutal oppression and logistics of restraint used to
prevent mutinies and revolts on the ship. Few whites relative
to numbers of slaves.

– Another 15-25% percent died first year in new world (statistic

actually lower than the number of whites who died first year.)
Middle Passage: Quarters

Interior of a
Slave Ship,
a woodcut
illustration
from the
publication,
A History of
the Amistad
Captives
Middle Passage
Coffin Position
The Middle Passage
 Middle Passage: Techniques of
Control
• Numbers of slaves versus
number of crew meant
instruments of control
– Chains
– Iron Muzzles

Slave with Iron Muzzle is an illustration from the 1839 publication, Souvenirs d'un aveugle, by Jacques Etienne Victor Arago.
Image Credit: The Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages, Mandeville Special Colections Library, University of California, San
Diego
The purpose of this
clip is to help you
experience and
emotionally resonate
with the reality of the
slave trade. It’s to
take this discussion
back to the human
level before we move
on. If you do not wish
to watch it, you do
not have to. Just let
me know.

from
Amistad
 In what different ways did the Atlantic slave
trade transform African societies?
• Africa became a permanent part of an interacting Atlantic world, both commercially and demographically.
• The Atlantic slave trade slowed Africa’s population growth at a time when the populations of Europe, China, and
other regions were expanding.
– Impact uneven: Some areas had no population growth + total stagnation; others actually increased growth
rates due to Columbian Exchanges.
– Distorted social hierarchies: many leaders, generals, intellectuals, etc. taken. Cut off the proverbial “head”
of many African societies.
– Distorted African sex ratios
• Two-thirds of exported slaves were males
• Polygamy encouraged, often common
• Forced women to take on men's duties
• The slave trade in general stimulated little positive economic change in Africa and led to economic stagnation.
• It also led to considerable political disruption, particularly for small-scale societies with little central authority
that were frequently subject to slave raids.
• Some larger kingdoms, such as Kongo and Oyo, also slowly disintegrated because of the slave trade.
• But in other regions, like Benin and Dahomey, African authorities sought to take advantage of the new
commercial opportunities to manage the slave trade in their own interests
• Cash crops
American Plantation Society
– Introduced to fertile lands of Caribbean: early fifteenth century
– Important cash crops
• Caribbean Coast: Sugar, cocoa, coffee
• Southern States of US: Tobacco, rice, indigo, cotton
• Plantations racially divided
– 100 or more slaves with a few white supervisors
• Whites on top of social pyramid
• Free people of color
• Creole blacks
– Born in Americas of mixed parentage
– House slaves
• Saltwater slaves
– Directly from Africa
– Field slaves, mines
• Fear of Slave Revolts a major aspect of plantation life
• High death rates in the Caribbean and Brazil kept the importation alive for longer, whereas in North
America, slaves “grown” locally
 Making Sugar
So Sweet and So Sinister!

In the Caribbean and Brazil, Fertilizing the sugar cane When it came time to harvest and
process the cane, speed was incredibly
most slaves planted, harvested required slaves to carry 80 important because once cut, sugar sap
and processed sugar, working pound baskets of manure on soured within 24 hours. This meant that
ten months out of the year, their heads up and down hilly slaves would often work 48 hours
straight during harvest time, working
dawn until dusk. terrain. without sleep in the sweltering sugar
press houses where the cane would be
crushed in hand rollers and then boiled.
Slaves often caught their hands in the
rollers, and their overseers kept a
hatchet on hand for amputations.
 Mechanisms of Control once in New World =
Part of the horror of the Institution
• Split families and close relations; re-location.
• Lack of literacy and education
• Branding
• Punishment: various forms of decimation;
lashing, lynching, etc.

A Big Point: These images are not trying to be gratuitous.

Trying to impress the humanity or lack of humanity inherent in
the system. To be understood you have to, in part, see the pain.
Slave Master Brands
What happens when
you’re “lashed”
Lynching
Alternatives to Lynching
 AFRICAN TRADITIONS IN THE AMERICAS
• Africans brought their traditions, cultures with them
– Often retained only their traditions
– Most Africans in Americas came from same region in Africa
– Hybrid traditions arose blending with Western traditions
• African and Creole languages
– Slaves from many tribes; lacked a common language
– Developed creole languages
• Blending several African languages
• With the language of the slaveholder Vodun / Vodoo Fetish Market
• Religions also combined different cultures
– African Christianity was a distinctive syncretic practice
– African rituals and beliefs
• Ritual drumming, singing (leads to jazz, rock-n-roll, etc.)
• Pentecostal like behaviors
• Animal sacrifice, magic, and sorcery
• Examples: Obeah, vodun, candomble
• Other cultural traditions
– Hybrid cuisine
– Weaving, pottery
Dance and Singing
 • Resistance to slavery widespread, though dangerous
END OF THE SLAVE TRADE –
–
Slow work, sabotage, and escape
Slave revolts brutally suppressed by plantation owners
& ABOLITION –
•
Maroons: runaway slaves often hid in jungles
17th century: Palmares Slave Republic in Brazil
• New voices and ideas against slavery
– Enlightenment began discussion
– American, French Revolutions: ideals of freedom and equality
– Slave Journals and Narratives greatly influenced debate
• Olaudah Equiano: freed slave, autobiography became best-seller
• Frederick Douglass: bought his own freedom, became abolitionist
• Haitian Revolution: 1793 Slave Rebellion in French colony of Saint-Domingue
– French Revolution abolished slavery
– Black Jacobins stage revolution, end slavocracy
– Resisted repeated French attempts to reconquer
– Established the free state of Haiti
• Slavery became increasingly costly
– Slave revolts made slavery expensive and dangerous
– Decline of sugar price, rising costs of slaves in late 18th century
• British abolished slavery, slave trade
• British navy patrolled Africa and arrested, hung slave traders
– Manufacturing industries rivaled slave industries
• Paid labor was cheaper and often more reliable
• Industry was more profitable; Africa became a market
• End of the Atlantic slave trade
– Most European states abolished slave trade in early 19th century
– The abolition of slavery followed slowly
• Many European states abolished slavery between 1790 and 1810
• 1833 in British colonies, 1848 in French colonies
• 1865 in the United States, 1888 in Brazil
– Trans-Saharan and East African Slave trades existed until 1880s, 1900s