John Fredrick Parker
Donor
First point, is it generally agreed that preventing the rise of Islam* would lead to significantly less demand for slaves over the next millenia or so, specifically from Eastern Europe and East (and Central?) Africa? If so, then what would be the dmographic and geopolitical changes to those regions in particular and specifically as a result of said nerfing of slave trade?
Some related discussion in an earlier thread:
*if it helps, let's go with the 570 elephant march as our PoD
Some related discussion in an earlier thread:
We also know that slavery was very, very prevalent in pre Islamic abd most particularly slave trade between Arabs and Africans. This trade decreased at the onset of Christianity in Axum as the main merchants to Arabs now refused to sell Christian slaves. This was remedied however by creating a state of war between the Arab states under various kingdoms upon Axum and its neighbors and eventually trade all across the Swahili world.
This raises an interesting question -- if Islam had never come into existence... that brings us back to the OP topic.
Peter Heather's book Empires and Barbarians argues strongly that the emergence of several Eastern European states (Poland, Bohemia, Rus, Moravia) around the 10th century depended heavily on their participation in slave-trading and their ability to access (by water) Middle Eastern slave markets - which provided regional warlords with the money to recruit bigger warbands and ultimately impose their rule on a large territory. The relevance of that hypothesis here is that the existence of a slave trade may enhance the likelihood of centralised states emerging if other conditions are right. Arguably the emergence of African states like Dahomey is a data point in that direction.
*if it helps, let's go with the 570 elephant march as our PoD