AHC: Bring sub-saharian african populations to America WITHOUT slave trade.

Which PODs would be required to get rid of slavery/slavetrade of sub-saharian african populations from the Age of Discoveries to the Victorian Era but yet making them prevalent in America during all this period and to the present day? It is estimated, for instance, that half of Brazil's modern day population descends in some degree from sub-saharian african people, not to mention a large portion of black skinned population. Needless to say how influential it was in Brazil's culture and society.

The Caribbean and USA also suffered substantial influence by this African-America people flux. So, how to bring them to America without commiting such a huge crime against humanity as slavery was?

Here's the challenge! Alea jacta est :)
 
how to bring them to America without commiting such a huge crime against humanity as slavery was?

Have some principle banning chattel slavery adopted in Europe before the discovery of America. Explicit slavery was never that big a thing in Europe, AFAIK, at least since Roman times.

The need for tropical-adapted labor in New World colonies will still arise. Instead of slaves, the colonists import black indentured servants. Conditions aren't all that much better, but the blacks are not property and the status is not inherited.
 

Maur

Banned
Have some principle banning chattel slavery adopted in Europe before the discovery of America. Explicit slavery was never that big a thing in Europe, AFAIK, at least since Roman times.

The need for tropical-adapted labor in New World colonies will still arise. Instead of slaves, the colonists import black indentured servants. Conditions aren't all that much better, but the blacks are not property and the status is not inherited.
Thats what happened IOTL. The servitude evolved into slavery in the case of blacks and died out in the case of whites.
 
So how to make servitude/slavery die out to both blacks and whites? How to convince populations from Africa to set sail to the Americas? Integrating them to the atlantic mercantilism somehow as partners to the Europeans?

BTW, I know this is gonna sound as I'm intoxicated by LSD, but is there any (even if the smallest) possibility of perchance triggering a POD that eventually would lead to an Ottoman Islamic crusade in Africa (????? oh lord) during the Renaissance period that would make the sub-saharian peoples run for their lives making the Americas their refuge?

European powers such as Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands could reconquer the lands from muslim hands to those populations in exchange of African laborwork in their overseas colonies in the Americas. After some decades or maybe over than a century of fighting, Africa south of the Sahara would finally be freed from the Ottomans, but the forced departure to the Americas could've created a social/cultural situation in which Europeans/Africans/Amerindians are pacifically integrated and only a few black people are willing to go back to Africa after all.

This is almost Alien Space Bats, I know, but I'd love to check the (unlikely) plausability of this. Any help?
 
The biggest reason indentured servitude died out in favor of slavery was that former indentures had political power(especially after Bacon's Rebellion), leading to laws mandating better treatment of indentures and eventually, goods awarded to them after their service. This, combined with conditions in the UK becoming more stable in the early 1700s, made slavery far more profitable, where before it had existed alongside indentured servitude(and where indentured servitude definitely had the upper hand at first).

Ergo, in order to get rid of slavery that persists on a large scale in America(by which I mean and I assume you mean areas that would become the US) into the 18th century, you would need things in Britain to stay politically unstable throughout the 18th Century, leading to a steady flow of indentures, combined with a more rigid class structure in the colonies and worse treatment of indentures(which is likely if the former condition is met, considering the flood of people and concomitant labor surplus).

For the other half of a coin, how big of a scale are we looking at? I don't think we could get people of African descent to be a lasting minority making up at least 10% of the population without slavery. Maybe just a slow but steady trickle throughout the region's history(although a POD this far back would probably prevent a recognizable US from existing).
 
Until the conquest of Songhai by Morocco, there were strong and prosperous states to trade with in Subsaharan Africa. Perhaps African merchants from these states could immigrate to the americas via a potentially seafaring Morocco (requires earlier POD) or in their own right (via potential stronger coastal states, again requiring early POD) for trade.
 
If we can posit the rise of a strong West African state (or perhaps there is no need of that, as long as there is an economically strong region on the West African coast)--well, Brazil is not very far across the ocean from there. If they have good ships and good Atlantic navigational skills they might well find some routes to and from South America.

The nature of your question seems to imply that we don't want to butterfly away the rise of the great maritime empires of the Europeans, whereas if there are West Africans crossing the Atlantic and opening up trading posts and founding settlements in Brazil and possibly north and west along the coasts, that might pre-empt the whole thing, if they can fight off the Portuguese. Then the Portuguese might not be able to reach their goal of circumnavigating Africa and there might not be support for Columbus in Spain. (Strong butterfly theory says that if the West Africans were doing such different things some centuries before the end of the 15th, there will be no Columbus or Ferdinand & Isabella, of course, but other people to take their places more or less. And interactions seem likely between the early Portuguese explorers and the West Africans that could plausibly feed back to Iberia and even the Med as a whole, reinforcing mere chaotic butterfly effects I say we can ignore, with direct cause-and-effect knockons we probably can't ignore.) In particular, if we are calling the western New World "America" we have to somehow preserve the contingent chain of events that led to Amerigo Vespucci somehow getting the credit!:p

Well, anyway if we just assume the land gets named after Vespucci in Europe somehow, a West African power or maritime region is not totally inconsistent with the rise of Portugal and Spain. Perhaps, if the West Africans are not Muslims, they will welcome the help of Portugal, convert at least nominally to Catholicism and become a partner of the Portuguese? Or if the region is fragmented politically the Portuguese will play off rivals against each other, perhaps promoting their best allies to dominate in the region and arriving at the same result that way.

Then if the Africans are already well established in the New World they might remain a major demographic factor in some Portuguese/African alliance, continuing to emigrate along with European adventurers. Perhaps their early association with Portugal might give extra force to European squeamishness against chattel slavery--it was the Catholic, and notably Iberian, colonies that had the stricter rules regulating slavery OTL, so if those norms are more strongly in place during the early conquests, possibly slavery as such might be illegal from the beginning. Which won't stop other modes of exploitation that almost amount to the same thing, but might pre-empt the African slave trade.

I think the above is a plausible path to a strongly Africanized Brazil, but if the slave trade is prevented I don't see why these particular West Africans would want to settle in such numbers as OTL outside of Portuguese/West African allied colonies, whereas Africans from other African realms would have no plausible channel westward, unless the cultural developments that made for West African transAtlantic navigation were widespread, all along the habitable coast in fact, and made for alternate, rival alliances of other European powers and other African ones, or simply opened a niche for the other West African nations to vie for American opportunities on their own hook. Given the ease with which the slave trade arose OTL, I shudder at how unstable that situation would be if our goal is to prevent the slave trade! Perhaps if the Europeans could be relied upon to shame each other into keeping slavery illegal the danger would be averted, even if some African coastal states were offering slaves for sale? If that works then the sale offers would decline and the motives for taking slaves from other peoples would be weakened. But probably not eliminated! So the temptation to purchase slaves rather than manage freer labor would always be there for competitive Europeans to give in to.:(

So while I think some African-American populations could exist without the slave trade, especially if the Africans themselves were crossing the Atlantic on their own, I rather doubt we'd get quite the widespread presence of OTL without slavery accounting for some of it. Of course, with the pattern of Europeans partnering with West African powers, perhaps the voluntary African emigration would not all be to nearby Brazil, but some of it to more distant joint colonial projects. But I don't know what would attract Africans to British North America, for instance, even if a major stretch of African coast were allied to England. It gets cold in winter in North America!:eek: Perhaps the Africans would not realize that before they sailed, but it is hard for me to figure why they'd voluntarily face such an unfamiliar discomfort when considerably warmer lands to settle instead would be appealing to them.
 

Maur

Banned
BTW, I know this is gonna sound as I'm intoxicated by LSD, but is there any (even if the smallest) possibility of perchance triggering a POD that eventually would lead to an Ottoman Islamic crusade in Africa (????? oh lord) during the Renaissance period that would make the sub-saharian peoples run for their lives making the Americas their refuge?
Yes. By that i mean drugs are bad, okay? :D;)

For the other half of a coin, how big of a scale are we looking at? I don't think we could get people of African descent to be a lasting minority making up at least 10% of the population without slavery. Maybe just a slow but steady trickle throughout the region's history(although a POD this far back would probably prevent a recognizable US from existing).
Judging from OP, America in this case mean the continent(s), not the country.
 
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