The Slaves of Africa

Visiting the 500 year old Portuguese slave trading fort of Elmina on the coast of Ghana, a country through which 10% of the Atlantic slave trade took place, and visiting its hot and oppressive holding cells brought the history of slavery front and center, a legacy whose impact the world still grapples with today.

The African continent in the last half-millenium had 3 primary slave markets:

1) Africa itself. It is estimated that between one-third and one-half of the populations of African countries lived as slaves to other tribes, an endemic practice throughout the tribe-dominated continent, both before, during and after the European-run Atlantic slave trade. While clearly greatly diminished, there are still remnants of this practice today. In Niger, for example, it is estimated that 8% of the current population remains enslaved.

2) The Arab slave trade. Dominated by North African slave raiders, up to 20 million sub-Saharan Africans were captured and funneled up and sold off in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire.

Interestingly, even Europe was not immune to the North African slave trade: over 1 million Europeans from coastal towns in Italy, Portugal and Spain were captured and sold as slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries. Between 1609 and 1616, England alone lost 466 ships to Arab slave traders, and by the end of the 19th century even the United States found some of its ships captured and crew sold off, prompting one of the first wars the U.S. would ever engage in: the two Barbary Wars of the 19th century to combat the slave raiders of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya (the phrase “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli…” in the US Marines hymn refers to Marine action during the Barbary Wars in Tripoli, Libya).

3) The Atlantic slave trade. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, some 10 million African slaves were shipped off from Africa’s Atlantic coast to the New World. Pioneered by the Portuguese and later by Dutch, Spanish, British and French ocean traders, the vast majority of these slaves (39%) went to Brazil or to British (18%), Spanish (18%) and French (14%) colonies in the Americas. 6.5% went to the United States.

Unlike the Arab slavers, who ventured south to personally raid sub-Saharan African tribal villages, the Europeans for the most part remained confined entirely to a handful of forts dotted along West Africa’s Atlantic coast and relied on an exchange of goods with dominant African coastal tribes to trade for slaves. It was far too dangerous for Europeans to venture inland themselves, both because the tribes that dominated Western Africa would not allow it and also because of the various health hazards (malaria, etc.) for which they were ill-equipped.

Another substantial difference between the Arab and European slave trade is that the Arabs largely favored the export of female slaves, whereas the Europeans were primarily interested in male slaves for farm work on their New World colonies. 70% of slaves to European colonies went to work on sugar plantations, with the rest primarily to the farming of coffee, cotton and tobacco.

Britain was one of the first countries in the world to ban trading in slavery in 1807, largely thanks to the efforts of Quakers and other evangelical Christian groups. The Royal Navy was deployed and tasked around the world to treat slave ships flying under any country’s flag as pirate ships. Between 1807 and 1860, the British West Africa Squadron intercepted over 1,600 slave ships, freeing some 150,000 African slaves.

Britain’s stance was not popular with the dominant tribal kingdoms of West Africa. King Dezo of Dahomey (now Benin) said in the 1840s:

“The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth…the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery…”

And the King of Bonny (Nigeria) upon hearing that Britain had outlawed the slave trade:

“We think this trade must go on. That is the verdict of our oracle and the priests. They say that your country, however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God himself.”

While both Britain (and a year later in 1808 the United States) banned the slave trade, it would take several decades for the colonial powers to end the practice itself.

France was the first country to do so, although not from any kind of moral standpoint. France was unable to quell the massive slave revolt in 1791 in its New World colonies and was forced to offer a general emancipation. Napoleon tried to reinstall slavery in 1802, but the French armies were defeated by the former slaves and as a result Haiti became in 1804 the world’s first independent black republic.

Britain outlawed slavery in all of its colonies in 1833, and the United States via the 13th Amendment at the end of the Civil War in 1865 (although it would take another century or so to put an end to systemic discrimination).

In 1847, the West African country of Liberia (for “liberty”) was founded by freed former slaves from the United States. The capital city is Monrovia (named after James Monroe), and its main university is Lincoln University. The flag of Liberia is like the American flag but with one star, and its founding government was modeled after the U.S. Constitution.

Although largely officially abolished both in word and deed throughout the world, racial slavery persists in many places to this day, most notably in certain regions of Africa. Additionally, human trafficking (largely of women and children) has emerged as the new face of slavery and is a serious issue worldwide, with millions forced into either prostitution or as domestic servants.