At most 20 million when more accurate estimates put it at 11-15 million. At 20 million over a thousand years you get an average of about 20,000 per year. Most of these people casually blended into the wider population which leaves the small genetic trace in the Middle East and the larger trace that already exists in North Africa. There are literally hundreds of thousands “visibly” African people across the middle east from Turkey down to Saudi Arabia. Even then these black Arabs have ancestry from the people around them as well. These communities did not stay in complete isolation.
AHQ: Economic consequences of no Trans-Atlantic slavery?
- Thread starter The Anglo-Dutch Union
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I mean, i'm not from MENA, sure but I don't see those kind of people in the current affairs except when specifically looking for them, kinda like Lebanese West Africans and as such, they have to be similarly rare or rarer.
20 million seems far too much, I think there's a revision that drops it to as far low as a few 1 digit millions because the numbers used to get to even 10 million were probably high end numbers.
They would have a accumulating admixture effect and annual influx make little sense, you should look at generational influx, which would be half a million per generation.
Indeed.
With lower prices for Slaves and less incentive for local wars to capture slaves.
How would that be an economic negative when you have the population manpower back home instead?.
Like at best you'll have a bit more warfare during the little ice age but that'll probably end with more efficiently organized governments after that.
But given slavery won't be a factor, population resource wars would probably be canceled out by slave wars, maybe even to the extent of less war there.
it would be a change in Africa. good or bad depends on your point of view. bad for slave catchers in Africa, good for their victims
Also good for the slave catchers in the long term, as their societies would be more stable.
And good for the generals society cuz their human labour, the most valuable of all resources is at home producing value.
Even if you assumed that 5 million people came over 1000 years into a MENA population of 50 milliion, which means a "immigration" rate of about 0.01% yearly, the modern average Subsaharan Admixture should be around 10% and in my knowledge that is just not the case outside of maybe the Maghreb where you could make the argument that the post-antique Subsaharan admixture is around 5% for many places with some exceptions being way higher(on the Sahara) and others being lower(even lower than ancient levels).
The assumptions I made were extremely favourable and even then the African admixture in the modern middle East at least around the bulk of the population is lower, you have to posit the existence of sizeable African minorities, which I've seen claims of but not actual solid proof of their supposed size, I doubt most of these populations stem from very long ago, this basically would mean that there was a huge caste system in the middle East that kept these people isolated from the rest of the population.
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What's the source? I've seen 1 million or figure around the millions being thrown around for the Barbary slave trade and the Eastern European one, I'd be surprised if the Arab slave trade in Africa was just 1 million people over a millennia.
The sugar culture of the Caribbean probably just wouldn't develop in the absence of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Working in sugar can fields in an endemic yellow fever region was just too brutal. The mortality rates among African slaves were far too high for any free population to tolerate, particularly when one remembers that Africans often had some inherited immunity to yellow fever that Europeans lacked.
The Spanish colonies were not such an exception, first because they were settled before yellow fever arrived from Africa and the populations were able to slowly build immunity in ways that new arrivals from Spain lacked, and second because the Spaniards in question weren't working in sugar cane fields. The Spanish territories in fact produced very little sugar until late in the day, when African slavery became more prevalent.
The American South, on the other hand, could absolutely be settled by free Europeans. Both the coastal colonies, with their tobacco cultures, and the later Mississippi Valley territories, with cotton culture, were inhabited by plenty of European farmers, along with the African slaves. The slaves were needed to enable the reproduction of a gentry lifestyle by the elites who established and governed the colonies. Free farmers could have grown the cash crops but would have wanted their own land and a decent share of the profits of the work.
The Spanish colonies were not such an exception, first because they were settled before yellow fever arrived from Africa and the populations were able to slowly build immunity in ways that new arrivals from Spain lacked, and second because the Spaniards in question weren't working in sugar cane fields. The Spanish territories in fact produced very little sugar until late in the day, when African slavery became more prevalent.
The American South, on the other hand, could absolutely be settled by free Europeans. Both the coastal colonies, with their tobacco cultures, and the later Mississippi Valley territories, with cotton culture, were inhabited by plenty of European farmers, along with the African slaves. The slaves were needed to enable the reproduction of a gentry lifestyle by the elites who established and governed the colonies. Free farmers could have grown the cash crops but would have wanted their own land and a decent share of the profits of the work.
19th century Cuba had both large scale slavery, Chinese imported workforce and also a lot of Spanish immigration. I'm not sure if they focused on sugar though.
They did focus on sugar at that point, but that's what I meant by late in the day. Sorry for the imprecision of the term. There was a large increase in the Cuban slave population during the British occupation in the later part of the Seven Years War and things continued from there.
All have you to do is look up the Afro Saudi Arabians, Afro Syrians, Afro turks etc etc. All together there a few hundred thousand in the entire Middle East. They do in fact exist.
Can you not strawman me? I didn't say they don't exist, my point is that they don't bridge the gap, even making favorable assumptions it's clear that most African slaves left no descendants.