Atlantic Slave Trade: History and Impact

• Slavery is a historically emotive issue, but it has been a constant in human history
• Slavery is a vile institution and a degrading situation for the enslaved
• The effects of slavery persist today, impacting the distribution of peoples and debates over racism
• This impact is notable in multiracial societies increased by the slave trade
• History is how people account for the past today; it relates to present-day concerns

Focus on the Atlantic Slave Trade

• The Atlantic slave trade significantly impacted the composition and culture of the USA, the West Indies, parts of Latin America, and Africa
• The Atlantic slave trade was crucial to the economies of the Atlantic world between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, and was crucial to power and social dynamics
• Land has meaning and value because people settle and work it
• The slave trade was a traumatic activity that showed the methods and ethos of major European powers, especially eighteenth-century Britain
• The slave trade provides a way to consider Western imperialism, power, culture, and civilization, particularly for Britain and the USA
• About 12 million slaves were embarked from Africa to the Americas, but deaths during passage reduced the number that arrived to approximately 10.7 million
• The terminology used is important to reflect the reality of being treated as goods
• "Deaths in passage" does not describe the horror of what happened, nor the degree to which the slave trade was responsible for the deaths
• The use of force to despoil and overawe native peoples was a factor in European conduct in the Americas from the outset
• The African slave trade and slavery added a new dimension of coercion on a great scale and a new economic and racial geography
• Slavery cannot be separated from the geopolitics of the New World and the Atlantic
• Slavery played a role in divisions within the USA, which helped foster the sense of a separate Southern identity and gave the South an expansionist dynamic
• The Atlantic slave trade significantly factored into the fate of the American state until the 1860s and played a role in American politics into the twenty-first century

Understanding the Atlantic Slave Trade

• Focusing only on the Atlantic slave trade can lead to a neglect of other slave trades
• It is important to focus on these other trades before considering the genesis of the Atlantic slave trade
• Multiple slave trades existed rather than one single essential character of the trade in slaves
• What the slave trade means for the history of East Africa or the Mediterranean lands is different from what it means for the Atlantic world

Defining Slavery

• Varied definitions of slavery are significant for accounts of the slave trade
• Slavery is similar to war; enforced servitude is easy to define in one light
• Discussion of war overlaps with other aspects of conflict and violence
• Similar to war, force and servitude are open to varying definitions regarding the concept of slavery
• The International Convention with the Object of Securing the Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade was ratified in 1926 by the League of Nations
• Slavery is defined as "the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership" are exercised
• In practice, the definition of slavery only emerged after debate and political bargaining designed to protect vested interests and cultural practices
• Bargaining led to the exclusion from the definition of slavery of forced labor and concubinage, both of which involved many people in conditions of slavery
• The process of negotiation calls into question any attempt to present a definition of slavery as of universal use
• In 2000, the International Association Against Slavery decided to include debt bondage, forced work, forced prostitution, and forced marriage in the scope of slavery
• This definition was a major extension to that of 1926, notably in the case of forced marriage

Further Considerations of Slavery

• It is not necessary to draw attention to the modern term "wage slave" to note that many who are not formally seen as slaves have had little or no choice about work
• Work conditions related to subservience and remuneration should also be considered when defining "slave conditions"
• In the nineteenth century comparisons were drawn between black slaves in the American South and white workers in many Northern company towns
• Critics viewed workers subservient to employers by various means, including being paid in tokens redeemable only in company shops
• Legal freedom thus appeared less important than economic freedom
• Both Marxists criticizing industrial capitalism and Southern apologists defending slavery found pertinence in this issue
• Employment practices involving a marked degree of control could be referred to as slavery. Examples include the contracts under which Hollywood stars were bound to work at the behest of the studios in the mid-twentieth century
• There was a major difference between legal and economic freedom, in that free laborers generally did not have to face the threats of physical abuse and separation from family that slaves frequently confronted
• Slavery can, more readily, be compared not to work in nineteenth-century industrial cities, but to the serfdom seen in medieval Europe and also with many East European peasants in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries
• The character of Russian serfdom was bitterly criticized in Alexander Radishchev's book Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow (1790)
• Radishchev denounced arduous work, poor living conditions, and the right of lords to sell and flog serfs, themes also taken up in Abolitionist literature in Britain and the USA in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
• The slave trade might appear to open up an important distinction between slavery and serfdom-namely, the compulsory movement for work seen with slaves
• Those who were not slaves included many people subject to such movement- transported convicts, others sent to colonies or into internal exile against their will, and even, in one light, the indentured servants and others traveling for economic opportunity
• The English army under Oliver Cromwell suppressed large-scale opposition in Ireland in 1649-52 with prisoners dispatched to sugar plantations of Barbados
• Royalist conspirators in England in the 1650s were sent to work in Barbados. Moreover, Britain went on transporting convicts to Australia until 1868, long after it had ended the British slave trade in 1807
• These convicts were put to work building roads, bridges, and public buildings
• Convicts who were not transported abroad could also be used for labor gangs. Other Western states followed similar policies
• In Spain's major Caribbean colony, Cuba, in the 1830s, those working on the railways included convicts transported from Spain, as well as captured Carlist rebels

Further Considerations

• People smuggling is not the same as trafficking because the latter creates a dependency on the part of those trafficked
• Those trafficked have to work to repay this dependency, and this is usually in onerous conditions
• In 1776, the Scottish economist Adam Smith saw serfdom as a "milder kind" of slavery, but many serfs would not have appreciated his distinction
• Complex issues of definition, with the problems of judgment that thereby follow, are not only pertinent for the Western world, but also arise for non-Western societies
• The China of the Shang dynasty (1766-1122 BCE) has been called a slave society, but the contrary has also been argued on the grounds that most of the population were not bought or sold, nor were they deprived of their personal freedom, although they were subject to coercive work
• Similar points could be made about collective farms under Joseph Stalin, the Communist dictator in the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1953
• In the Soviet gulags or labor camps, the situation was much more similar to slavery
• Discussion of how far serfdom, or other forms of labor or life, constitute slavery has to take note of the extent to which slavery itself was, and is, not a fixed category
• Slavery is open to a variety of definitions
• It is possible to differentiate between societies with slaves, in which slavery was largely domestic, and slave societies, in which slavery was the mode of production on which the dominant group depended for its position
• It is also possible to focus on two types of the latter: slavery at the disposal of the state, and slavery within a private enterprise system
• There was an overlap, not least because individual slaves could move from one to the other
• In the Roman world, the state created slaves from defeated peoples, noncombatants and serving troops, who could then be moved into the domestic sphere of usage within the empire
• There could also be significant differences in the condition and treatment of slaves
• Slavery at the disposal of the state tends to receive less attention than slavery within a private enterprise system, largely because the latter was the dominant type in the Atlantic world
• State slaves of various types were important in many pre-modern countries
• There are numerous examples, from Antiquity to the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, where a defeated nation or side could be obliged to provide troops for the victor as part of the peace settlement, in effect producing slave army units
• In some cases, state slaves were key elements in the governmental system, most obviously with the janissary units in the Ottoman (Turkish) army
• The Ottomans' "slaves of the Sublime Porte," the term used for the government, were maintained by a system of devsirme (collection) from non-Christian households, a slave system of considerable sophistication, with boys conscripted in the empire
• Boys were regarded as easier to train and subdue than men. The best-looking were allocated to the palace to receive an education and serve the person of the sultan, while the physically strong were chosen to work in the palace gardens, but most were destined for the military
• Turkish farmers in Anatolia accustom the boys to hardship and physical labor, and to teach them some basics of Islam and Turkish
• Recalled after about seven or eight years, the novices were used for palace and imperial tasks or working on construction projects
• The circumcision of the boys was designed to assert their Muslim future and was a clear instance of symbolic power over the slave soldiers-to-be
• The galleys of Mediterranean navies depended on slaves, and they were frequently shackled to the oars
• When galleys sank, as many Ottoman ones did in the battle of Lepanto in 1571, the slaves drowned
• As a sign of their position, Ottoman galley slaves wore an iron ring on one foot
• Ottoman galley slaves were kept in bagni quarters where, as in slave plantations in the New World, they were both under discipline and able to pursue opportunities to earn money
• Some slaves were promoted to positions of authority, while others faced sexual exploitation, in this case homosexual rape
• Slave soldiers were important in other Islamic societies-for example, Morocco, Persia (Iran), the sultanate of Delhi in northern India, Achin in Sumatra, and the Islamic states of sub-Saharan Africa and Spain
• The Mamluks, who ran an Egyptian-based empire from 1250 to 1517 that extended to include modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and western Saudi Arabia, were largely Circassians from the Caucasus, captured in childhood, enslaved, and trained as slave soldiers
• The original source of many of the slaves was the wide-ranging Mongol conquests of the early thirteenth century, as their campaigning ensured the availability of large numbers of slaves who were shipped to the affluent market of Egypt
• There was subsequently a racial hierarchy among the slaves there, with an elite of slaves from the Caucasus, while the bulk of manual slave work was carried out by slaves from sub-Saharan Africa
• There was a religious dimension to slavery in the Islamic world-for example, in the eagerness with which Sunnis, both from Central Asia and from the Middle East, enslaved Shi'ites

Views on Slavery

• Certain modern governments, most obviously North Korea, claim so much authority, wield so much power, and deny so many freedoms to the people that their entire population can be regarded as slaves
• Looking back to Classical Greek writers commenting on the Persians and other Asian peoples, European political rhetoric in the early modern period also employed the juxtaposition of liberty and slavery, typecasting the subjects of political systems judged unacceptable as slaves
• Radicals who criticized their own system of government, or even just its position and policies, also repeatedly made reference to slavery
• Slavery had so central a place in British public discourse that it had also been cited by government supporters as a reason not to establish this committee
• Speaking in Parliament, Henry Fox, a Whig, pressed the need for national unity
• The description, and therefore criticism, of undesirable circumstances within Britain in terms of slavery continued into the nineteenth century
• Such rhetoric contributed to Abolitionism by making it seem a goal for radicals and also desirable for liberals
• A characteristic of Western slavery was that it was certainly not within Europe, but, instead, predominantly part of the commercial economy
• Such slavery was overwhelmingly practiced in the Western world in colonies outside Europe, and particularly by the early nineteenth century
• Slavery in the Western world was a system of servitude driven essentially by what is termed, without any irony, free enterprise
• This situation provided the crucial context for the Atlantic slave trade: it was a response to economic need, and a product of the competitive search for economic opportunity and profit

Slavery and Racism

• If the Western world was far from alone in the slave trade, it is also necessary to qualify the commonplace identification of slavery with racism
• Historically, although they were frequently linked, there was no necessary or inevitable relationship between slavery and racism, or, at least, racism as currently defined
• This was seen in the Ancient world with the enslavement of prisoners of war and convicts
• The "pre-history" of slavery is best approached from the perspective of anthropology
• Slavery probably proved a means to structure society and to treat outsiders, ethnic or moral
• Both such structuring and such treatment involved control: control as goal and control as means
• There was likely to have been in some cases an overlap in the treatment of outsiders with that of animals
• Racism was a key element in slavery, which became a response to the "other"
• This process can also be seen in conflict between primates, with the defeated either killed or taken into the community of the victors
• As far as humans were concerned, captives lacked the family ties and connections they had enjoyed, and this powerlessness was a key aspect of their slavery
• Control over people served to forward a variety of purposes, including household service, sex, and other forms of work
• The development of large-scale agricultural systems and of mining for minerals greatly increased labor needs, and slavery was a central element of the Ancient world where it also provided household service
• Egypt, for example, obtained slaves from both warfare and trade, notably from the south in modern Sudan
• Trading for slaves, which the Egyptians certainly did from Punt probably represented obtaining the spoils of war at second-hand
• It is necessary to appreciate that the attempts to create at a global scale separate categories and rights for prisoners of war and for civilians are essentially modern
• Aristotle criticized the practice of Greeks enslaving conquered Greeks
• The scale of the slave trade was considerable, reflecting the large-scale demand for labor
• Conquering Roman general Scipio Africanus turned the working men of the city into slaves in BC 209
• The numbers of slaves passing through the great slave marts was formidable
• Such pirate attacks reflected the variety of forces involved in enslavement. Alongside states there were nonstate actors
• When Alexander the Great captured the major Phoenician port of Tyre in 332 ВСЕ, he enslaved those in the city who were not killed
• As Peter Wilson has discussed, the Romans created "mobile wealth systems" that both facilitated and legitimized slavery through law and warfare
• The enslavement of convicted criminals also produced many slaves
• About 20 percent of the 200,000 strong population of Rome comprised of slaves
• Trade for slaves was another major source
• There was a range of relationships stretching from linking in with existing slave-trade networks, to adapting these networks, to creating new ones
• One was the need to cooperate with African states and American tribes
• Thus, the Roman trade along the Red Sea involved cooperation with the kingdom of Axum in what is now Eritrea. Similarly, the slave trade from the Upper Nile required the cooperation of the kingdom of Cush in what is now Sudan

More Details

• As another parallel, notably with the USA in the nineteenth century, the importance of the slave trade from outside the Roman Empire declined with time, as the slave trade was increasingly maintained by reproduction among the slave population
• In post-Roman medieval Europe, slavery was frequent until the twelfth century
• Many slaves were obtained by raiding peoples of a similar racial background, albeit of a different identity
• In Anglo-Saxon England (fifth to eleventh centuries), slavery was linked with nonmembership of the tribe, rather than the racism of the modern time
• Serfdom, instead, was the key form of labor control in England by the twelfth century, which is a reminder of the extent to which slavery was an alternative among a number of forms of labor direction
• It entailed restrictions on personal freedom that, in their most severe form, were akin to slavery
• Serfs were subject to a variety of obligations, principally labor services, and also owed dues on a variety of occasions
• "The status of the slave as "the other" became more important than before
• Enslavement was frequently the response to other peoples (irrespective of their skin color), and other creatures
• The terms "slave" and sclavus recall the origins of many slaves in the Balkans, a source of slaves for both Christian Europe and the Muslim world. Treating conquered peoples and their offspring as slaves seemed as logical to many as treating animals
• Muslim slave raiding at the expense of Christendom was a longstanding pattern of slave-taking
• Slaves were also obtained during the conquests of a range of powers
• The range of African slave trades was not restricted to Europeans
• In the Arab world, the slave trade from Africa, both across the Sahara Desert and by sea, and across the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, was more longstanding than the European trade in the Atlantic world
• This widespread neglect of the non-Western slave trades also cuts across the grain of a world history that should be sensitive to the relative significance of developments in the past
• The Portuguese are the focus of attention for Western activity in Africa and Asia in the sixteenth century
• A Moroccan expeditionary force crossed the Sahara and in 1591, at the battle of Tondibi, used its musketry to defeat the cavalry of Songhai. Instead, the Moroccans created a Moroccan Pashalik of Timbuktu, which helped strengthen a major route for the trans-Saharan slave trade
• The Portuguese ended their attempt to establish a powerful position in Morocco from Western pressure, when they smashed a Portuguese invading force at Alcazarquivir in 1578
• A Portuguese force supported Ethiopia during an attack
• This trade acknowledged the gradients of wealth and influence
• The slave trade across the Sahara was different from that across the Atlantic for a number of reasons, including the role of Islam in the former
• Furthermore, the prime demand in the Americas was generally for male labor to work in the plantations, which ensured a sexual imbalance against women in local societies affected by the trade
• In the case of the trade across the Sahara, the demand was largely for women, particularly for domestic servants and as sex slaves
• In addition to the important slave trades across the Atlantic and the Sahara, there were other significant areas of slaving in Africa.
• East Africa was a major source of slaves. They were traded, by Arabs, across the Red Sea and, further south, across the Indian Ocean, to markets in the Middle East, especially in the Arabian peninsula
• Madagascar, the largest island in the Indian Ocean, was given cohesion by a sacred monarchy, force by firearms, and purpose by warfare for slaves
• The number of Africans traded across the Sahara, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean is difficult to estimate, far more so, for source reasons, than the Atlantic trade

Western Labor Control

• The Atlantic slave trade was an aspect of the quest for labor for a widening Western economy
• It was a quest that was made more necessary by the extent to which labor that could be enslaved or controlled was not obtained in the Americas by Western Europeans in sufficient quantities by conquest, but was bought in Africa and brought from there
• From the perspective of labor availability, Western states and merchants suffered in this quest for labor by the extent to which the norms of Western war did not allow for the enslavement of captives in legitimate warfare between Christian states
• Coterminous with the establishment of Western slavery in the New World and throwing light on it, rural society in Eastern Europe was transformed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries towards a "second serfdom," with heavy labor services provided by the peasantry
• Western slavery thus represented an aspect of the commodification of human beings for reasons of labor that is central to economic activity

The Origins of Western Expansion into Africa

• The historical tradition of slavery that was to be directly relevant to the initial development of the Atlantic slave trade was that in Portugal and Spain
• Among Western Europeans, the Portuguese and Spaniards had the longest experience of conflict with Islam as a result of the Reconquista, which ensured a supply of Moorish slaves
• The expansionism against the Moors was to provide a context within which the opportunities were grasped by the Portuguese and Spaniards for enslavement from sub-Saharan Africa
• Portugal led the way in acquiring African slaves in West Africa in the 1440s, but Castile followed from 1453, until, in 1479, by the Treaty of Alcáçovas, Castile surrendered claims to trading rights in Guinea and the Gold Coast in West Africa to Portugal
• A major source for slaves had been established
• The expansion of Europe's Atlantic world to include the Americas was to add unprecedented demand for slaves