AHC: Avoid Black Slavery

Slavery has existed throughout history, but African slavery is unique. Previously incarnations of slavery were based simply on whatever tribe or nation had been conquered and subjugated, regardless of whatever they were. African slavery targeted only a select group of people based on their skin, and based on the racisms and bigotries their slavers and the slave societies had about them. African slavery played a very great role in the history and civilization every nation that had it and every area from which the slaves were taken. It is therefore a monumental part of human history

The challenge is to avoid Black slavery.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Hard, consider this:

a) Both Spain and Portugal had slaves before colonialism

b) Some of these slaves were Africans

c) Both powers had enormous labour shortage problems in New World colonies during early colonialism

d) The African kingdoms saw no problems with selling Labour to the Europeans

e) Portugal tested the plantation system on Sao Tomé and someone got the bright idea to test that system in Brazil

f) Labour shortage cured, plantations economic success, all Europeans want a part of it.
 
Another reason black slaves were used, was that white slaves often died from new world diseases and the natives would often die of old world diseases. Black slaves had the advantage of being fairly resistant to both.
 

Esopo

Banned
Previously incarnations of slavery were based simply on whatever tribe or nation had been conquered and subjugated, regardless of whatever they were.

Not really, slavery in the mediterranean and in the balkans in the modern age had different features than just "we conquer a nation, we enslave its people".
 

elkarlo

Banned
Hard, consider this:

a) Both Spain and Portugal had slaves before colonialism

b) Some of these slaves were Africans

c) Both powers had enormous labour shortage problems in New World colonies during early colonialism

d) The African kingdoms saw no problems with selling Labour to the Europeans

e) Portugal tested the plantation system on Sao Tomé and someone got the bright idea to test that system in Brazil

f) Labour shortage cured, plantations economic success, all Europeans want a part of it.


Have to add, that Africans were less susceptible to the malaria and yellow fever that was brought to the new world. White or NA workers perished alot in those tropicalconditions, so they used blacks.

I am sure, if England could have, they would have preferred to use the Irish for free, than have to pay from blacks.
 
Don't forget the Arabs also traded blacks into slavery. So to complete the challenge you would also have to stop that as well.
 

scholar

Banned
Which homeland? You mean the European metropoles, right? Because the slaves' Homeland didn't do so great out of slavery.
Actually considerable amounts of African warlords sprang up and profited greatly from it. Tippu Tip comes to mind as a particularly famous one, though perhaps being a poor example.

Very few slaves were forcefully taken by the Europeans. In fact, early attempts at this failed spectacularly. Instead, European slave traders relied almost entirely upon people there willingly selling the slaves to them. This, at first, wasn't that bad. In time, however, the entire society of Africa was changed so that many tribes along the coast would make a living taking slaves from people further inland and bringing them to the coast for goods such as firearms, horses, and trinkets. The Europeans were definitely the facillitator of this trade in that if they weren't there then no african slaves would be shipped off to the new world with a life expectancy in some places not exceeding 5-7 years. However, the Europeans were merchants shuffling goods. They needed someone to sell them a product or else they wouldn't be able to obtain it.

Its not something we like to think about, or something that is well known, but the Atlantic (and even Pacific) slave trade was a complex network of trading relations between African societies living on the coasts and European slave merchants. It was not a European making land fall and capturing whatever person of dark skin they came across, that would come much later and mostly in the form of folk tales rather than actually based in fact. Also, while immense demographic problems ensued the population of Africa actually skyrocketed.

The really strange thing is that Europeans didn't even establish the racist justification for the slave trade until almost a century after it reached its biggest boom. The Catholic Church in particular gave the "Okay" signal for enslaving heathens, but was adamantly against the enslavement of Christians in the new world. There are some interesting tales of the colonial governments taking place in Latin America trying to keep priests away from slaves and forced laborers, the Catholic Church also was not happy with the final dissolution and killing off of the Inca Empire as they had converted and were recognized as an independent kingdom [at least de jure].

The Atlantic Slave Trade came about because of the sheer amount of sense it made economically. There was no qualms with enslaving heathens, the sheer amount of success and wealth it produced made most people fall in love with the idea, and the African societies they were in contact with were more than willing to sell rivals to the Europeans in exchange for goods that they couldn't obtain where they were. The racism only came when it was time to legitimize the trade taking place centuries later. After all, they had no qualms enslaving Russians, Tartars, Arabs, Pagan Scandinavians, Native Americans, Chinese, and so forth. In fact the Baltic Slave Trade was a trade dealing entirely with whites. A racial justification was something unique that evolved with time and mounting pressures against the old way of doing things. You would probably be surprised that Thomas Jefferson had the suspicion only that there was a racial difference with Blacks that would justify them remaining in their state, and this was well after the Atlantic Slave Trade had started to die.

Here's what I'm quoting:
The Indians, with no advantages of this kind, will
often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will crayon out an
animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only
wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their
reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find
that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an
elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites
with accurate ears for tune and time . . . . Whether they will be equal to the composition of a
more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is often
the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. —Among the blacks is misery enough, God
knows, but no poetry.
***
[4] To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our
eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of
natural history. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a
distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the
endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different species
of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications.
http://www.historytools.org/sources/Jefferson-Race.pdf

The way to avoid the concept of racial slavery is actually very easy, but avoiding the Atlantic Slave Trade, which was made up primarily of Africans from the western coasts of central and western Africa, is not easy. A stronger influence of the church might actually be all that's necessary, or simply less numbers of people being brought over from Africa. You cannot avoid it, but perhaps you can partially minimize it. Increased interracial marriages might also due the trick. More slavery of whites could also assist in this. Say a heretical group gains a large amount of popularity in western or northern Europe and the Papacy signs a document saying they could be enslaved, that would almost instantaneously increase the presence of non-black slaves in the new world. Another way to go about doing this is delaying the rise of evolutionary concepts, as it was with this rise that people started applying its concepts within the human species that racism truly sprung. Racism had existed before, especially in China, but Racism did not have a broad appeal on the global stage until after the development of so-called Darwinism.
 
I think the uniqueness of African slavery kind of came about as a intersection of different factors. Let's think about them:

1. The two largest religious groups involved, Muslims and Christians, had religious prohibitions on enslaving their co-coreligionists. Essentially this means Europeans will not sell Europeans and Middle-Easterners will not sell Middle-Easterners.

2. Although Muslims used to enslave millions of Christians, and Christians seem to have occasionally enslaved Muslims, by later than 1500s Christians seem to have not targeted Muslims for enslavement, possibly just due to fear of retribution. This also allows the Muslim and Christian slave trades to be linked together. The end result is that only "Pagans" are fair game for slavery.

3. African non-Muslims do not have any religious prohibitions on selling other Africans.

4. Although American Indians are Pagans and "savages" to Europeans, contact with Old World diseases causes massive declines in their population when in close contact with Europeans, making them unsuitable as a source of slaves.

5. The conquest of the New World puts Europeans in control of tropical territory where slavery turns out to be highly profitable, unlike in Europe.

With the end result of these coincidental factors causing Europeans after hundreds of years to believe that black Africans, and only black Africans, are suitable for slavery.

Thoughts?
 
Don't forget the Arabs also traded blacks into slavery. So to complete the challenge you would also have to stop that as well.

Not only that, the Africans themselves did so and slavery was itself practiced by sub-saharan Africans as it was.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Depend what you mean by the slaves' homeland. Some African kingdoms actually flourished thanks to the slave trade.
"Flourished" thanks to raiding enemy (and sometimes even their own villages) for "commodities." It was a system of diminishing returns and only served to glut a few noble families and empower them, not so much the kingdom at large. In the long run it did nothing but make things that much easier when the Europeans came a-conquerin'.
scholar said:
Also, while immense demographic problems ensued the population of Africa actually skyrocketed.
The population grew due to New World crops taking off in West Africa (especially maize, cassava, peanuts, avocado pears, tomatoes, potatoes, and cacao), which did have a lot to do with European merchants and adventurers bringing these things across the Atlantic. Nor does it necessarily change the demographic catastrophe of at least 11 million Africans being wrenched across the Atlantic between 1500 and 1800.
scholar said:
The Europeans were definitely the facillitator of this trade in that if they weren't there then no african slaves would be shipped off to the new world with a life expectancy in some places not exceeding 5-7 years
The average life expectancy for African slaves shipped to the New World was generally measured in months, not years. Things were a bit different in North America, but the plantations of the West Indies and Brazil were as much killing fields as they were agricultural ones.
 
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Early Islam is defeated forced to take refuge in Axum, an early protector in OTL.

Islam becomes a solely sub-Saharan African religion. Christianity's position in North Africa is able to rebuild after Berber expansions, since the Muslims don't stop that.

No temporary end of slavery in the Christian world to contrast from Muslim barbary pirates.

No Crusades; no technological advancement resulting from that.

No blocking of the spice trade.

Over time, African Islam mixes with traditionalist beliefs and Christianity and the vast majority, not just a slight majority, of the population follows it.

Eventually, Atlantic travellers buy a minute amount of slaves from the West African states, but they join significant amounts of North African and European slaves.
 

scholar

Banned
"Flourished" thanks to raiding enemy (and sometimes even their own villages) for "commodities." It was a system of diminishing returns and only served to glut a few noble families and empower them, not so much the kingdom at large. In the long run it did nothing but make things that much easier when the Europeans came a-conquerin'.
While a severe disconnect formed between the ruling classes and those below as a result of this raiding economy, it is not a fair marker of a state to say that it did not benefit from it because of diminishing returns [something debatable depending on where the slaves were coming from] or because it only enhanced the wealth of a few. Some of the states that were most able to resist European rule came from West Africa, while others resisted simply by the grace of distance or isolation. These West African states utilized gunpowder weapons and cavalry against Europeans and were for a time quite powerful in their resistance.

The population grew due to New World crops taking off in West Africa (especially maize, cassava, peanuts, avocado pears, tomatoes, potatoes, and cacao), which did have a lot to do with European merchants and adventurers bringing these things across the Atlantic. Nor does it necessarily change the demographic catastrophe of at least 11 million Africans being wrenched across the Atlantic between 1500 and 1800.
True, I did make note of the demographic problems describing them as immense. I just stated that it was offset by population growth in most areas. There are a few exceptions, notably in West Africa and East Africa, some areas in West Africa had most of the population being women having men be 1:2 or 1:3 of the population in relationship to themselves because most of the slaves captured were men. The greatest problem stemmed not from demographics, but rather from the alteration in African economies. I'd also say that 11 million is a bit on the conservative side. As many as 16 million was given by one of my textbooks.

The average life expectancy for African slaves shipped to the New World was generally measured in months, not years. Things were a bit different in North America, but the plantations of the West Indies and Brazil were as much killing fields as they were agricultural ones.
Not quite, a third died within three years inside some tropical plantations in Latin America, while the average was 5-7 years from what I've come across. Now many died in transit, perhaps this is why you have a measurement in months rather than years? Also the life span of the average imported slave increased with time to the point where it became a source of a sustainable population of labor long before slavery was abolished.

----

However, none of this really touches on my major points: The African Slave Trade did not originate from race, but rather economic factors and was actually resisted some by the church if they were converts. That the European Slave trade was only allowed to exist because coastal african states and warlords provided millions of rivals to European merchants after enslaving them themselves. That racism came as a later justification, and that even as late as Thomas Jefferson in the 1780s the idea of racial justification was still in its infancy. There are a number of ways to get around this, most notably a stronger influence of the church, a delayed application of darwinistic style ideals in the new world, or a greater diversity amongst the enslaved people working there. Avoiding the Atlantic Slave Trade is almost impossible, but preventing the rise of racial applications of slavery is not.
 
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