WI no slave trade: effects on Africa

[Unconsensual]

So I was doing research on my TL:Romans in the New World (yes once again shameless advertising )

I was wondering the implications of a New World that did not need slaves and hence a much smaller slave trade in Africa. Specifically the demographic development of Africa given the pretense of no European slave trade.

Personally I believe that it would improve African demographics, tribes and kingdoms would not try enslaving people as hard through both warfare and law. I consider the slave trade's and its implications the chief reason the Sub-Saharan population was stagnate for around 2 centuries. European encroachment would be harder with more indigenous population and decolonization would affect fewer areas.

So what are your thoughts?

 

[TapReflex]

There would be slave trade, however not directly to Europe. African states often used Slaves as a form of punishment or as a consequence of raiding a village/city/state.

Since it's a Pre-Medieval Ages TL, things would progress relatively normally, but actions partaken by many African states will be less focused on gaining slaves to sell and more focused on growing normally/being a competent functioning state.

 

[Tripwire]

There would be slave trade, however not directly to Europe. African states often used Slaves as a form of punishment or as a consequence of raiding a village/city/state.

Since it's a Pre-Medieval Ages TL, things would progress relatively normally, but actions partaken by many African states will be less focused on gaining slaves to sell and more focused on growing normally/being a competent functioning state.

I assume that the Arab slave trade in Africa would continue as well. Anyway, yeah, this would be a massive plus for Africa, with far less internecine warfare, not to mention the demographic removal.

Oh, random question I just thought of: Why did the major African slave-selling states collapse? They must have been quite wealthy from the slave trade, weren't they? Were they just not able to translate it into lasting power? Did they decline with the abolition of the trade?

 

[Thespitron 6000]

I assume that the Arab slave trade in Africa would continue as well. Anyway, yeah, this would be a massive plus for Africa, with far less internecine warfare, not to mention the demographic removal.

Oh, random question I just thought of: Why did the major African slave-selling states collapse? They must have been quite wealthy from the slave trade, weren't they? Were they just not able to translate it into lasting power? Did they decline with the abolition of the trade?

They were looting their own people for transient wealth. That's usually not conducive for any kind of real longevity.

 

[Hobelhouse]

Interestingly enough I read a scholarly article on this a while ago, "Shackled to the Past" by Nathan Nunn. He took figures for the numbers of slaves taken to estimate slavery's impact on a geographic region. He found there was a strong negative relationship between slavery and current GDP; he also found that these areas had greater ethnic fractionalization, and suggested they might be related since this has affected stable state formation. He poses that the raids promoted inter-tribal animosities which prevented the formation of larger ethnic groups.

 

[Tripwire]

They were looting their own people for transient wealth. That's usually not conducive for any kind of real longevity.

So what happened to all the money? I can't imagine it just disappeared.

 

[Thespitron 6000]

So what happened to all the money? I can't imagine it just disappeared.

Where does all the money go that gets pumped into the Middle East these days? The same place all the money the slavers made went: into shiny palaces and worthless baubles. Meanwhile the slavers have destabilized their country by conditioning foreigners to think of the locals as nothing more than potential slaves, sold many men who could be soldiers across the sea, alienated numerous villages, and taught their nobles to regard the peasants and villagers as little more than a commodity, worth more for sale to Europeans than working in the fields. I'm surprised some of these states lasted as long as they did, frankly.

 

[eliphas8]

So what happened to all the money? I can't imagine it just disappeared.

Hookers and blow mostly.

 

[Tripwire]

Hookers and blow mostly.

Ah, yes, that makes sense.

 

[Thespitron 6000]

Ah, yes, that makes sense.

Listen: if there's one thing I've learned from watching the first two-thirds of the MC Hammer Behind the Music, it's that the money never runs out.

 

[TapReflex]

I assume that the Arab slave trade in Africa would continue as well. Anyway, yeah, this would be a massive plus for Africa, with far less internecine warfare, not to mention the demographic removal.

Oh, random question I just thought of: Why did the major African slave-selling states collapse? They must have been quite wealthy from the slave trade, weren't they? Were they just not able to translate it into lasting power? Did they decline with the abolition of the trade?

They were looting their own people for transient wealth. That's usually not conducive for any kind of real longevity.

Simply because when the slave trade stopped, there was little else of use to the Europeans to buy. They got timber from either a Temperate colony or from their own neighborhood. African goods came from a multitude of colonial bases all over Africa, and were overall less lucrative. Slavers went broke, and that's always bad for an economy when a lot of people lose their job.

 

[Kooluk Swordsman]

Oh, random question I just thought of: Why did the major African slave-selling states collapse? They must have been quite wealthy from the slave trade, weren't they? Were they just not able to translate it into lasting power? Did they decline with the abolition of the trade?

Simply because when the slave trade stopped, there was little else of use to the Europeans to buy. They got timber from either a Temperate colony or from their own neighborhood. African goods came from a multitude of colonial bases all over Africa, and were overall less lucrative. Slavers went broke, and that's always bad for an economy when a lot of people lose their job.

I'm reading a book called The History of Black Business In America which goes into depth about African business practices during the slave trade (1st Chapter)

As it turns out, Africa is host to a great deal of resources (iron, gold, ivory, palm oil, foodstuffs, salt, etc). So it's not that Europe had nothing else to buy. The problem is that the slave trade was so profitable that it completely consumed the other industries. There was an example in the book of an African nation (I'll get the name later) that was rich in iron and had very good iron mines. Said nation got involved in the slave trade and grew rich. But eventually, the demographic situation was so poor that there weren't enough miners, so the iron mines fell apart. The slave trade became to Africa what oil is to Saudi Arabia; an all-consuming industry that kills the others.

As stated earlier, the slave trade wrecked Africa's demographics and killed or gravely weakened the other industries. In the book I previously stated, it was worked out that Africa lost, in terms of direct (sold as slaves) and indirect (loss of labor, opportunity cost, slave raids, etc) ways, somewhere between 21 to 50 MILLION people to the slave trade.

Had the slave trade not occurred or at least been greatly limited, Africa would be FAR FAR FAR FAR better off today. I have no doubt many of its states would be major or great powers.

 

[Daztur]

The slave trade also screwed up gender relations quite a bit. During the (West African) slave trade mostly male slaves were bought which skewed gender ratios female which lead to more polygamy (which is bad for a whole host of reasons) and generally destabilized things. Then when the slave trade ended the gender ratios were yanked back to parity which lead to stuff like lots of men who would never have much chance at marrying and being pissed about that and other fun things like that.

The East African slave trade, on the other hand, took more females than males so you had other effects that weren't very nice either.

 

[Socrates]

I was wondering the implications of a New World that did not need slaves and hence a much smaller slave trade in Africa. Specifically the demographic development of Africa given the pretense of no European slave trade.

Personally I believe that it would improve African demographics, tribes and kingdoms would not try enslaving people as hard through both warfare and law. I consider the slave trade's and its implications the chief reason the Sub-Saharan population was stagnate for around 2 centuries. European encroachment would be harder with more indigenous population and decolonization would affect fewer areas.

So what are your thoughts?

I actually know a fair amount about this as I've studied African Economics. In addition to the very good points others mention here, there are a few further that stand out. One is the obvious population issue: by about 1900 the African population would have been about 50% bigger than it was in our timeline.

This leads to the second point: in African history, state formation was rare, and when states did form, they tended to be weak relative to elsewhere, mainly because people who did not want to be under the rule of the state (of which there were plenty) could easily migrate beyond its borders. With more population density, more states would have formed, making it difficult to migrate beyond, which would have allowed stronger government structures.

The third is that larger states would have caused larger identities beyond the tribal level, due to the spread of languages and common experiences, which is a frequent problem for Africa's strife today.

A fourth is that the combination of more population density, and larger and more powerful states, would have been a boon for the growth of urban centres. This is a critical element in mankind's development: once you reach the critical mass of population to form cities, those cities benefit from economies of scale. The wealth from that can support a larger population, and soon you're on an upward development spiral. Africa never reached this critical mass into well into the 20th century.

So, in short, the slave trade ####ed up Africa properly, including a whole bunch of ways most people don't realise.

Where does all the money go that gets pumped into the Middle East these days? The same place all the money the slavers made went: into shiny palaces and worthless baubles.

Hookers and blow mostly.

From society's perspective, even if the money does go on shiny palaces, prostitutes and intoxicants, that's not a problem in terms of losing the money, because that money will usually go to other members of the local society. The problem is that it was mainly spend on stuff from the West, particularly guns.

 

[Orry]

I always thought the triangle was

low grade manufactured goods to Africa
slaves to America
Raw materials to the UK

Most of the cash profit being made on the Cotton etc so people in the UK could ignore the slave link - they dispatched manufactured goods and imported raw materials they did not trade in slaves.....

 

[wietze]

there is also another aspect of the eastern slave raids that was rather destructive. Sometimes instead of buying slaves from the locals, an entire area would emptied of people. With the resulting big consequences.

 

[yourworstnightmare]

There were slave trade from Africa to Iberia and Italy through the Barbary States in the 13-1500s, so there would be slave trade to Europe. And the thing with the slave trade is that it all started with the Portuguese plantations on Sao Tomé, and how the Portuguese realized they could finally make America profitable if they only expanded the system to Brazil. Of course the Spaniards quickly copied it and it really started to flourish in the Caribbean.

The Europeans were looking for ways to make money out of their American possessions. The problem they had was labor. The natives tended to either die or escape. They even tried using European labour, but they tended to escape too. It was the idea of importing African slaves that saved the labour crisis in the American colonies.

 

[whitecrow]

I actually know a fair amount about this as I've studied African Economics. In addition to the very good points others mention here, there are a few further that stand out. One is the obvious population issue: by about 1900 the African population would have been about 50% bigger than it was in our timeline.

Aren't areas of Africa suffering from overpopulation OTL?

 

[Socrates]

Aren't areas of Africa suffering from overpopulation OTL?

It all depends on how "overpopulation" is defined, and we should always be careful about generalising about an entire continent. But you can compare its population density with the centres of civilisation in Eurasia here:

http://www.ethiojps.org/popdensity.jpg

It certainly doesn't have overpopulation the way, say, India suffers from it.

 

[Socrates]

There were slave trade from Africa to Iberia and Italy through the Barbary States in the 13-1500s, so there would be slave trade to Europe.

Yes, but you wouldn't have the huge demand for slaves the way the New World plantations consumed them. Slavery is always and everywhere a moral evil, but it has to be on a massive scale to screw up societies the way the Atlantic trade did.