International Relations of the Slave Trade

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

The presence of trans-Atlantic slave trade in International Political Economy literature is small

Population density and nation-building 

Trans-Atlantic slave trade: slaves sent from Africa to the Americas → plantation crops sent from the Americas to Europe → consumed crops and manufactured goods sent from Europe to Africa 

Representations of slave ships: goal to carry as many people as possible

• Each trip is as profitable as possible

Herbst (trans-atlantic slave trade)

the primacy of exit (Europeans had less land for higher population density) 

• People could just move away from oppressive ruling in one nation, due to the large territory 

• This has to do with the violence thinning out of the population across centuries (overlooked by scholars) 

Nunn (trans-atlantic slave trade)

1400-1900

Statistical analysis over 500 year period for impacts of trans-Atlantic slave trade

• Slave trade impacted virtually the entire continent (coastal and inland regions)

  • Myth: only impacted people on the coasts, from Angola to Guinea

  • No independent state today out of the 50 that exist today  

• 12M people exported, 6M during 3 others (on the voyage, in slavery)

  • Life expectancy was 7 years, and working conditions were  bad

  • This meant the slaves had to be continuously replaced

• Untold others were killed during slave raids or died on the way to the coast

• By 1850: the African population was half of what it would have been without slavery 

Calculating slavery’s impact on African societies

Nunn: finds that the number of slaves exported from an African country was an important determinant of economic performance in the second half of the 20th century

• The more slaves were taken from a current African state = the more negative economic performance of the country 

  • African countries that are the poorest today are the one form which the most slaves were taken 

Corruption (impact of slavery, Nunn)

involved theft, bribery, ruses, and exercise of brute force

• Prec-colonial origins of modern corruption 

• Procurement of slaves through internal warfare, raiding, and kidnapping resulted in subsequent state collapse and ethnic fractionalization 

domestic impacts (impacts of slavery, Nunn)

Members of the same ethnicities and regions enslaved one another, causing fear, and ethnic fractionalization

Insecurity confined people within ethnic boundaries constructing spheres of interaction (Kusimba cited in Nunn) 

• The threat of slave trades looming over the countries stopped the possibility of more prosperous political units (immediate survival) 

Complex state systems disintegrated (ex. Joloff confederation in Senegambia) 

• The Berlin Conference happened after the TAST eroded the community

• Joloff Confederation: function state institution, well-established trade patterns in Africa → Under the pressure of the slave trade, it disintegrated 

Entire communities degenerated into predatory societies

Warlords and slave raiders became the new leaders (altered previously existing institutions to facilitate their needs) 

• Ex. political institutions that represented people/communities 

Kongo

Overlaps with modern-day DRC (Kingdom of Kongo) 

• Kongo River was used in the slave trade 

• Other kingdoms in the pre-colonial era surrounded it

Kidnappings of people for the slave trade undermined social order, royal authority 

• The kingdom was unable to uphold its sovereignty on its borders

Slavers bring ruin to the country (letter from King to Portugal) 

• Pleaded to Portugal who used to trade with Kongo but was not in the slave trade (more profitable) 

The slave trade was a key factor in weakening and eventually bringing down the kingdom 

Pre-colonial African political units were often similarly weakened or dissolved  

What if the societies that were already economically and politically weakest selected into the slave trade, and remained weak today? (Nunn)

Causal arrows go the other way

Finds that the most developed societies pre-slavery were the ones hardest hit by the slave trade 

• Most centralized political authority (rested within a certain set of leaders within a capital and the most effectively projected across the territory) 

• The pre-existing infrastructure made slave raiding easier (communities were linked through trade patterns/roads/rivers)  

modern slave-trade legacies (Nunn)

More slave exports correlate with lower per capita GDP in 2000

Correlation between slave exports and current ethnic fractionalization