Slave trade from West Africa

Valdemar II

Banned
East Africans and West Africans are two different cultural groups. Also, there was the clear idea that the slaves being sold deserved it because they had commited crimes (possibly political or religious ones, but crimes nonetheless). Enslaving innocents (children) is a different kettle of fish. Come to that, I really doubt the Arabs and Ottomans were as brutal as the New World plantation owners; possibly more inventively cruel to the few disobedient ones, but not regarding the apparent 83% fatality rate in the first year (counting the voyage) as a legitimate part of a business or social model.

The sugar plantages of southen Iraq was everybit as bad as the ones on the Caribbian isles. We aren't fully aware of gow many Africans died on the trip or the first years in Arabic slave trade, because they didn't centralise the information in official archieves as the Europeans did, but we can see that the trade was as extensive if not more so as the European ones, and that African slaves left smaller disporas than in America. The Islamic slavery was interesting because it split the slaves into White (everybody not African, mostly Slavs) and Black slaves. Black slaves was mostly used in the more degrading jobs like in plantages, while Whites was mostly used as houseslaves and in more specialised functions (soldiers, adminstrators, skilled worker etc). A interesting aspect are that White slaves which converted to Islam was often freed, while Black slaves whom did so usual wasn't.

And no the slaves wasn't criminal they was captives taken in war or raids
 

Maur

Banned
Slavery in West Africa was something you could be sentenced to, but not born into, and slaves were normally used to build roads (for the good of the state) rather than to farm crops or work at crafts (for the good of a private owner). It was also not terribly likely to be fatal. Making the West Africans understand that the people they sell to Europeans have 1) a very short life exectancy and 2) their children will always be slaves too, would dramatically lessen local participation. But why should the West Africans believe the Vijayanagar over the Europeans on this?
Well, you could be also simply kidnapped in one of the Dahomey's slave raids.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Forced labour, usually indentured slavery, was along the lines of serfdom in the west rather than the slavery of the west. The indebted man and his family were tied to the land which the man originally owned and his creditor would get the major share of the crops (the creditor's share varied from place to place).

Craftsmen and artisans were more of artists who carved and wove for a nobleman or king, rather than those working for a large scale export of the goods. It never developed into an industry.

Only in domestic help did slaves come into the picture. They were not exactly a work force.
That's my point really, since they used free people for the hard work, we can assume they didn't use slaves for it. Howvere we have no real good sources on Indian slavery at all, we just know it existed, and it was probably in the line of domestic slavery.
 
The sugar plantages of southen Iraq was everybit as bad as the ones on the Caribbian isles. We aren't fully aware of gow many Africans died on the trip or the first years in Arabic slave trade, because they didn't centralise the information in official archieves as the Europeans did, but we can see that the trade was as extensive if not more so as the European ones, and that African slaves left smaller disporas than in America. The Islamic slavery was interesting because it split the slaves into White (everybody not African, mostly Slavs) and Black slaves. Black slaves was mostly used in the more degrading jobs like in plantages, while Whites was mostly used as houseslaves and in more specialised functions (soldiers, adminstrators, skilled worker etc). A interesting aspect are that White slaves which converted to Islam was often freed, while Black slaves whom did so usual wasn't.

And no the slaves wasn't criminal they was captives taken in war or raids
Kind of, look at the Zanj for instance. But I don't think it was more extensive. It was about equal or slightly less than the European trade from all the numbers I've seen.
 
It was about equal or slightly less than the European trade from all the numbers I've seen.


So, the numbers were roughly equal and today we see less of an African-descended diaspora in the region.

What things does that suggest to you about the East African slave trade?
 
No taboos against inter-racial coupling.

There's that, along with not allowing slaves to have families.

It also suggests that the various labor activities slaves in the East African trade were destined for was primarily akin to sugar plantation work; i.e. so destructive that a constant "resupply" was needed.

And about the interracial taboo, genetic studies among African-Americans have shown that was something observed more in the breach than in actuality.
 
I don't know that much about east african slave trade among muslims. But one example that comes to mind was when Mehmed Ali tried to create a slave army from the Sudan it went from a force of 30,000 down to 5,000 before reaching a battlefield from diseases the Sudanese were not adapted to.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Also, slaves seldom reproduce. The American continent is here again an aberration of course, but usually slaves tend not to build families (unless it's a female slave and her master).
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Not exactly................there were a few societies, and some minor tribes, who did indeed dabble in such cruelty from time to time, but contrary to what the white supremacists and eugenicists of old liked to claim, it wasn't that widespread, and unless you count Egypt{which was really more Levantine in character anyway}, was not really indigenous to Africa.............

There really has been a lot of misunderstanding, myth, and just plain B.S. thrown around when talking about African slavery, I'm sad to say. :( :(
What do you mean by this? Sure, there weren't any plantations in sub- Saharan Africa, and most slaves were domestic slaves, there was a HELL of a lot enslaving and a very flourishing slave trade even before the Europeans came into the picture. African Slave Trader made huge material gain in gathering slaves to sell to Berber merchants for the Transsaharan slave routes, destined for North Africa (or Europe, since Europeans tended to buy slaves in North African ports). In East Africa there were always a connection over the Red Sea, and African slaves were sold to Arab merchants.

When the Europeans arrived, it was not liked they introduced the slave trade. At first slaves weren't even important, since the real riches of Africa the Portuguese merchants wanted to get their hand's on was gold. Soon, however the Portuguese built plantation economies on Sao Tomé and Madeira, and started to buy slaves from West African kings and merchants, who were just as happy to sell. The blueprint from Portugal's Atlantic plantation islands was used when the Brazilian plantation economy was created, and the Brazilian model was used for the Caribbean plantation economy and later the one in the southern US. Here African slaves were needed because any attempts to use the Natives or White Colonists as labour had failed miserably. The African kings and merchants were again happy to sell slaves. It was good business for them, and they HAD traded in slaves many times before. Only the Kingdom of Benin refused to sell slaves to the Europeans. The demand for slaves in America, of course rose so high, that there was a inflation in price, which prompted more African entrepeneurs to get involved in the slave trade, either as raiders, merchants who bought slaves cheap from the raiders, and sold it for a much more expensive prize to merchants closer to the coasts, or as merchants who bought large numbers of slaves and sold them to the Europeans. As the demand kept rising, the raids intensified, and more tribes, merchants, kings etc. saw profit in participating in the trade.
 
There were sugar plantations in Morocco that were part of a trans-Saharan slave trade. Slaves were just as badly treated in Morocco as they would be in the West Indies.
 
And Vijayanagar has a very strong benefit in intervening. Vijayanagar empire is the established sugar and spice producer in Asia, and it controls almost all sugar and spice trade. Their sugar and spice production depends on hired labour, not slave labour. By undercutting their prices with slave labour, Portugal is directly targeting their economy.

I think you are making a crucial error in how decisions are made. Real life is not like a video game where one person makes the all decisions. There are always competing interests in any state that argue over what is to be done. It is not enough to say "Vijayanagar" controls the sugar and spice trade. WHO exactly IN Viyanagar controls this trade? Is it the state? is it local producers? Is it merchant families? Who specifically benefits from the price of sugar? At what point will they become concerned about someone else half way around the world producing sugar for less money? Exactly when do they notice this? What point will they start complaining? Is there a rival faction whose political power being eclipsed by this new sugar money? Won't their interests compel them to argue against all this spending on naval power? Furthermore, how does the government pay for its navy? Who is going to convince the government it needs to expand the navy and creates naval basis in the south Atlantic? Who will the government tax to do this? Will the local producers of sugar want to pay this large tax bill up front? Does the government instead tax someone else for this? Won't they complain?

There are a lot of things which will work to prevent, or at least greatly complicate, this scenario.

They are essentially going to be put out of business if they either don't intervene or else, use slave labour for production in their own country. It is not just spice and sugar trade in Europe at stake, but also spice and sugar trade in non-Vijayanagar Asia and the Middle East. Soon, it might come to cotton textiles as well, and Vijayanagar would have an even more torrid time, since Vijayanagar's textile industry is one of the pillars of their tax base. It may be worth taking that risk for them to try and destroy slave trading in west Africa.

In the mid 1500s, European slave trading was just beginning to be established and had not developed into the behemoth that it turned into in the 17th and 18th centuries.

You are trying to have it both ways. You can't both argue that 1) this is an immediate, obvious threat to the Vijayanagar state, and 2) the Europeans haven't developed the triangle trade to the point where it was important to them. You are assigning a much greater vision and foresight to Vijayanagar than is really plausible as well as the institutional capaibility of it to overcome various domestic objections.

Slavery is indigenous to SOME groups of Africans. There were others who had no particular part in the trade.

I understand your point, but you overstretch in claiming there were "pro-slavery" and "anti-slavery" groups. Africa did not have plantation-style slave economies, but slavery was endemic. I don't know of any organized anti-slavery movement outside the Western abolitionist movement in the 18th and 19th centuries. Rather than "pro-slavery" and "anti-slavery" groups, I think it would be more accurate to state that some West African states were very powerful and was able to increase the slave trade to benefit themselves, while there were weaker powers that were the victims. The Muslim and European slave trade no doubt increased the volume of slaves and changed those socities, but it's important not to make this into too strong a point. Africans were willing collaborators and co-creators in this. The slave trade existed because lots of people benefited from it.

In this case, Vijayanagar is basically subsidizing the losers in the existing West African political system. How much support do they need to give them so they can disrupt the slave trade? How much extra will this cost Vijayanagar? Once in power, do you really think those have-nots will simply let the slave trade end? Isn't the more lilkely scenario that they will simply enslave a lot of the new losers and then trade them to the Europeans?
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Very Few African Americans have large amounts of West African Ancestry, thanks to Miscegenation and the one drop rule, thus what we Call black here is actually fairly white.

The average Black in USA have 18% White ancestry, while that may seem high it isn't for a Creole minority.
 

Maur

Banned
Very Few African Americans have large amounts of West African Ancestry, thanks to Miscegenation and the one drop rule, thus what we Call black here is actually fairly white.
Ah, true, but it only means that the taboo wasn't really applicable for white male master and black female slave intercourse. Or, more accurately, rape.
 
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