Little or no African slave trade

[sunsurf]

Arabs supply more guns to Africa, so they later form larger power blocs to resist European encroachments a little more effectively.
Vikings in N. America go further south and spread smallpox more and the native Americans develop a little more immunity earlier
pandemics which occur later, are less severe
more competent Byzantine Emperor strengthens empire a little more.
Ottoman civil war limits Ottoman expansion, fewer competent rulers limit its influence.
Fall of Constantinople happens two centuries later.
Since the Byzantine empire survives longer trade routes to the east open remain open longer, so there is more incentive to explore east not west across the Atlantic.
The first effort to sail west across the Atlantic fails, the ships sink.
Successful attempts to cross Atlantic delayed.
Chinese explorers to Africa bring back an African pandemic
Chinese civilization collapses long enough for Thailand to expand northward.
A group in S. China, the Zhuang, who are related to the Thai, fill the power vacuum.
European influence in East Asia much greater.

Contact with Japan and Polynesians much earlier, and the Polynesians, influenced by Europeans, discover America first by landing in California.

In this timeline the main power blocs are Hawaii Australia Thailand Armenia, and France. At least any two African groups and two Native American groups would be significant, but which ones might be rather random.
Citing the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans seems a bit cliched and obvious.

I suppose the main reason to bring in Thailand is to have somebody other than China as a major power, which seems overly familiar.

Could Constantinople survive as a microstate? After all, we have the Vatican Monaco Andorra and others.

 

[Tripledot]

The colonization of most of Africa happened after Europeans abolished slavery, and the slave trade was facilitated by Africans- the slave traders were middlemen, not invaders making slave raids. Arabs (who also traded in slaves) giving Africans (more) guns will not stop the slave trade (and may actually accelerate it).

 

[sunsurf]

I was really thinking of the transatlantic slave trade. When the Africans resist more effectively against the Europeans, that makes it more expensive for the Europeans and the Europeans might look to other options instead to some extent.

I wasn't specifying when or how much the Europeans colonize Africa.

Africans with guns might be able to establish larger political units which can resist European encroachments a little bit more effectively.

Actually the main point of interest I had was the idea of the Polynesians discovering North America colonizing or at least exploring north and south America eventually sailing to Europe.

In our timeline the slave trade got started around the same time as the Protestant Reformation got started. In the other timeline if the Protestant Reformation had been going on for 200 years that might have a significant effect.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

Africans had guns and effective defenses to resist any encroachments. What do you think slaves were traded for? Guns, which the African kingdoms used to capture more slaves. Your question is flawed from the start.

As well, Africa was almost waiting for a reason to sell on its west coast just as it had waited for trade from the Mid East. Slavery in Africa likely has roots far surpassing any timeframe discussed in before 1900.

 

[Lusitania]

Europeans did not capture coastal Africans when they reached Guinea / Gold Coast. The Africans and Arabs had been practicing slavery for centuries by the 15th century when the first Portuguese ship reached the Guinea coast. Europeans traded goods, guns with the coastal tribes for African slaves, thus creating a new market for these tribes to raid inland for slaves to sell the Europeans. Europeans brought the first slaves to Europe (Medieval Europe has serfs and gladly accepted these new workers)

Slavery and slave trade started the moment Europeans arrived off Africa. arabs, ottomans all practiced slavery even after Europeans stopped.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

Europeans did not capture coastal Africans when they reached Guinea / Gold Coast. The Africans and Arabs had been practicing slavery for centuries by the 15th century when the first Portuguese ship reached the Guinea coast. Europeans traded goods, guns with the coastal tribes for African slaves, thus creating a new market for these tribes to raid inland for slaves to sell the Europeans. Europeans brought the first slaves to Europe (Medieval Europe has serfs and gladly accepted these new workers)

Slavery and slave trade started the moment Europeans arrived off Africa. arabs, ottomans all practiced slavery even after Europeans stopped.

Even deeper roots though, than the Arabs. The Arabs simply tapped into what had likely existed for thousands of years.

 

[sunsurf]

You seem to imply that Europeans did not colonize Africa, since the Africans resisted Europeans so effectively. I wonder if you could clarify.
It seems to me they could not resist what happened later. I'm no expert, obviously, but...?

And I was wondering specifically about bringing slaves to the Americas.

 

[John7755 يوحنا]

You seem to imply that Europeans did not colonize Africa, since the Africans resisted Europeans so effectively. I wonder if you could clarify.
It seems to me they could not resist what happened later. I'm no expert, obviously, but...?

And I was wondering specifically about bringing slaves to the Americas.

Europeans colonized far later into Africa with much much greater technology. Africa had no chance, not even China could stand to the new empires of Europe.

However, before the 1800s, Africa was far too strong for any conquest by any power. The issue it seems is that, the African kingdoms did little with the wealth and weapons they gained from the Europeans.

 

[PhilippeO]

I was really thinking of the transatlantic slave trade.

Africans with guns might be able to establish larger political units which can resist European encroachments a little bit more effectively.

as Lusitania and Tripledot said, Europe did not need to encroachment to have Atlantic slave trade running. They buy African slave from other African.

larger African Empire with guns would more successfully practice slave trade, they could conquer larger areas and more people, launch more long ranged expeditions and have more enemy nations and rebellious subject to sell.

to reduce slave trade among Africans, going religious route might be better option, if there are successful prophet that convert whole of West Africa to single religion that oppose life-long slavery and selling co-religionist to heathen, then West Africa might not become supply for Atlantic Slave Trade.

 

[Lusitania]

eliminating the Atlantic slave trade will not solve anything. African have to stop the practice of slavery (which still exists today's in some parts) as well asattacking each other and selling slaves to Arabs and Europeans. Stop that and slavey evaporates overnight. Arabs and Europeans did not and could not mount slave raids if all Africans opposed them.

 

[Jared]

Europeans colonized far later into Africa with much much greater technology. Africa had no chance, not even China could stand to the new empires of Europe.

However, before the 1800s, Africa was far too strong for any conquest by any power. The issue it seems is that, the African kingdoms did little with the wealth and weapons they gained from the Europeans.

To add to that, in most of sub-Saharan Africa, the disease environment was so hostile that even suitably powerful European armies would have been defeated by General Malaria (and its many allies).

As the old rhyme went:
Beware, beware, the Bight of Benin:
One comes out, where fifty went in!

 

[RogueTraderEnthusiast]

I can't help but feel we had a thread on this topic a few days back

Ok, not exactly the same topic, but worth a read anyway (here)

IMO, the best way to get your goal of less slavery (The rest seems a bit here, there, and everywhere) in West Africa is the aforementioned prophet, or political movement. I'd say have a successful slave rebellion that includes people from a few (otherwise unaligned, but not hostile) tribes. They go out of their way to protect other small tribes to essentially create an anti-slave coalition or polity (ideally a polity) that makes it publicly known that they'll provide amnesty to anyone who escapes slavery in West Africa.

The main outside force you need is that they don't piss off any larger slaver state or group of them - perhaps by agreeing to pay to 'buy' the slave in order to free them. But that requires major moolah (but less than the cost of going to war).

An option might be to go with the Kanembu founding theory of the Kanem - and have all this happen when the Kanembu invade the Sao. Having these principles survive a great state might be easy to do, especially if the state was prosperous.

 

[sunsurf]

Thanks for your help, I'd like to use your advice.

 

[Revachah]

One of the things people repeatedly on here and elsewhere don't seem to get is the proliferation of White and Portuguese identity in African polities that facilitated the beginning slave trade.

Our notions of race do no coincide with West African ideas of it, the formation of West African and Central African slavery on an international level derives in great part from an Africanized European identity and lifestyle that could not be stopped without the complete Erasure of European people who went "bush" or made alliance.

It was not merely "Africans selling Africans" that's placing western ideas of race and people on a people who had no collective consciousness of color or Continent.

 

[Achaemenid Rome]

eliminating the Atlantic slave trade will not solve anything. African have to stop the practice of slavery (which still exists today's in some parts) as well asattacking each other and selling slaves to Arabs and Europeans. Stop that and slavey evaporates overnight. Arabs and Europeans did not and could not mount slave raids if all Africans opposed them.

The Kingdom of Nri did abolish slavery. Perhaps if they expand over hundreds of years to encompass West Africa or create a series of "abolitionist" client states, the coast of West Africa could be entirely free. However, Central Africa and East Africa would still have slaves, traded into the Middle East which the Europeans might just buy there.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

eliminating the Atlantic slave trade will not solve anything.

Well, let's not get crazy here -- even if West Africa continues to practice internal slavery en masse, the lack of the massive exports of humanity (a large fraction of which died en route) will have a profound impact on the demographics of the region, to say nothing of the western hemisphere, or the vast, if still relative, reduction in human misery. (Mind you, I was as baffled at the OP as most here, so I'm not sure what "anything" refers to here; apologies if this isn't exactly relevant.)

 

[Czar Kaizer]

A lot of awful misconceptions here
1) While Slavery did exist pre Atlantic slave trade, or existed on a much smaller scale. If you were wealthy or involved in trade you may have purchased a few slaves from abroad, also a type of debt slavery did exist in most societies as well, however slavery in the Western or even Arab sense was very uncommon and percentage of the population which would actually be considered slaves was tiny.
Slavery only became "normalized" when the mass transatlantic slave trade began and even then the vast majority of slaves were traded to Europeans and not internally, as most African societies had little use for slave labour themselves.
Interestingly when slavery was abolished in the colonies the slave trade when through a short period of crisis and the adaptation. Without the external Atlantic slave trade African slavers diverted the market towards internal trade. Thus "slavery" only became "normal" within Africa after the abolition of the slave trade and even then it was very different from European slavery as most Aftican slaves were regularly freed by their masters and could even intergregrate with communities in which they lived.
2) African were not passive victims in the slave trade, they were active participants. Entire slave raiding kingdoms developed on the coast, where they would use imported. Guns, steel and horses to raid the interior for slaves. In particular the main victims of the slave trade where small scale farming communities in the interior who were seen as being heathans and primitive by the slave raider themselves. So I would also ask people to stop this idiotic thing of looking at African societies as being monolithic.

 

[Salvador79]

@John7755 يوحنا
would you care to elaborate just what these very deep roots of African slavery are in your view?

 

[sloreck]

Long before the Europeans got in to the game, the Arabs had been getting slaves from Africa. Do note the Ottomans had contemporaneous slavery which used closer sources such as the Balkans and Southern Russia. The colonies in the New World created a labor demand for crops (indigo, cotton, sugar among others) which were highly labor intensive and involved conditions which were so bad that indentured servitude was simply not saleable. Native Americans were tried as slaves, but were not usually suitable as they were difficult to keep from melting back in to the forest (at least in North America). In South America, the Spanish "used up" the local slave pool in such places as the Potosi silver mines.

As labor intensive and highly profitable crop production increased in the New World, and local indigenes used for slave labor were either unsuitable or exterminated, the African trade grew. As noted, for the Atlantic slave trade it was local African polities that provided the bulk of the captives delivered to entrepots on the coast. "External" slave raiding was rare by Europeans, much more common by Arabs. It is also important to note that not all slaves were war captives, rulers could and would sell their own people to gain guns and other European goods.

 

[sunsurf]

I read somewhere that the African slave owners were more cruel to the slaves than European/New World slave owners, if that's possible. Thoughts?
I wonder what you have to say about the freed slaves sent to Liberia, being cruel to the native Africans in Liberia.
Thanks.