Africa and the Intensification of the Atlantic Trade in Enslaved People

How many Africans were enslaved between the 16-18th Century?

12.5 million

The nature and scale of American slavery?

Expansion of plantation system = higher demand for enslaved labour

Relationship between slavery in Africa and the trade from Africa

• Diverse political institutions, economies and cultures

• Slavery established in parts of Africa prior to European involvement via the Atlantic BUT NOT the case for the whole continent

Slavery in Saharan West Africa

Enslaved people worked in salt and copper mines

• They were carriers of goods, trades goods and domestic workers in wealthy merchant households

• Served in the armies of kings that wanted to expand their empires

• Kings held enslaved women as concubines and promoted enslaved men to administrative positions

• Bought and sold along trade routes

Askyia Muhammed and Songhai

• Askyia Muhammad challenged the son of former Songhai ruler, Sonni Ali, asserting his legitimate politically authority to maintain Songhay’s adherence to Islam

• AM sought to spread Islamic influence over neighbouring ‘pagan‘ territories - the dar al-Kufr

• Hajj pilgrimage in 1497 - AM questions Islamic scholar Al-Maghili about the practice of slavery

• Al-Maghili justified slavery, stating that ‘born unbelievers‘, their offspring and wives could be captured and their property divided among their captors

• Another Islamic scholar, Ahmad Baba, reaffirmed Al-Maghili’s justification

Slavery in the Mediterranean and the Near/Middle East

• According to Al-Maghili and Ahmad Baba, slavery NOT based on skin colour but on ‘UNBELIEF‘

• When we look at slavery in the Mediterranean and the Middle East from the 7th-14th C, we can see that although enslaved Africans from the Sahara had a variety of roles there was NO DOMINANT GROUP among enslaved people

Societies with slavery VS slave societies (HISTORIOGRAPHY)

• Some historians argue that slavery was unknown to Africa prior to European involvement e.g. Walter Rodney in the Upper Guinea Coast

• Other historians have suggested that although slavery were somewhat familiar in many societies it WAS NOT practised in large scale along the Atlantic coastline

• Others follow Moses Finlay’s distinction between ‘societies with slavery’ and ‘slave societies’ and conclude that regions along the Atlantic coastline were NOT SLAVE SOCIETIES

What are the two exceptional cases where Europeans tapped into the existing demand for enslaved labour?

1. The Senegambia region - European ships arrived along the coastline which lay close to long-established trans-Saharan trade routes, where enslaved people were bought and sold

2. The Gold Coast - longstanding demand for enslaved labour to work in the gold mines - this is why Portuguese traders brought enslaved people from other regions of West/West Central Africa, and could SELL THEM TO AFRICAN BUYERS

Significant changes to slavery

• Numbers of enslaved people being exported across the Atlantic in the 17th and 18th C were out of proportion to the evidence of prior practices to slavery in Afrca

• The trans-Atlantic trade to the Americas must therefore have entailed SIGNIFICANT CHANGE to concept of slavery & new dynamics of enslavement (large-scale ‘procurement‘ of ‘slaves‘ from among people who were initially ‘free‘)

Sao Tome

• Explored by the Portuguese in the late 15th C

• Quickly established sugar plantations initially using forced labour from natives and later enslaved Africans

• Slave economy - enslaved people made up most of labour force

• Overtook Madeira and the Azores as the main sugar producer in the 16th C

Cabo Verde Islands

• Toby Green - older Iberian religious beliefs about ‘purity of blood‘ intersected with the profit motive behind importing enslaved Africans

• Settlements encourages by the Portuguese crown in the 1460s allowed Cabo Verdean settelers to trade along the African coast, producing goods locally for trade and bringing back enslaved people

• Enslaved Africans brought to Portugal were dispersed among households and possibly integrated through conversion to Christianity

• 1600s = ideas about eligibility for enslavement and the treatment of enslaved people were increasingly imbued with the notions of ‘blackness’.

• Despite the unsuitability of Cabo Verde's climate for sugar plantations, enslaved Africans were increasingly dehumanised and treated as chattel, forming intensive work environments like weaving workshops.