Atlantic Slave Trade: History and Impact

Introduction

• Slavery is an emotive issue with a vile history, but has been a constant across civilizations
• Slavery's effects reach to the present day, impacting modern debates over racism and equality
• The Atlantic slave trade is significant because it shaped the composition and culture of the USA, the West Indies, parts of Latin America, and greatly affected Africa
• The slave trade was vital to the economics of the Atlantic world from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries and crucial to power and social dynamics
• The slave trade highlights the goals, methods, and ethos of the major European powers, particularly Britain
• The slave trade transformed the demographics, economies, society, and politics of the eastern seaboard of the New World
• About 12.5 million slaves were embarked from Africa to the Americas, with about 10.7 million arriving due to deaths in passage

Definitions

• Varied definitions of slavery are significant for the account of the slave trade
• The International Convention defined slavery as "the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised"
• The definition emerged after debate and political bargaining, leading to the exclusion of forced labor and concubinage
• In 2000, the International Association Against Slavery included debt bondage, forced work, forced prostitution, and forced marriage in the scope of slavery
• It is important to note that many who are not formally seen as slaves have had little or no choice about work and its character and context, not least in terms of subservience and remuneration

Continued

• In the nineteenth century, comparisons were drawn between black slaves in the American South and white workers in Northern company towns
• 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 of 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
• Those who were not slaves included many people subject to compulsory movement-for example, 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 within a system in which their choices were limited or nonexistent
• Discussion of how far serfdom, or other forms of labor or life, constitute slavery therefore has to take note of the extent to which slavery itself was, and is, not a fixed category

Further Definitions

• Slavery is open to a variety of definitions
• It is possible to differentiate between societies with slaves, in which slavery, while sanctioned by society, was largely a domestic institution providing labor in the household, 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, even if readily contrasted categories, individual slaves could move from one to the other
• 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
• In some cases, state slaves were key elements in the governmental system, most obviously with the janissary units in the Ottoman (Turkish) army who played a crucial role in the army and the politics of the state
• Slaves were also important in the Ottoman navy
• The history of the slave trade is in part that of war and of the cruelty surrounding war
• In the branch of military history known as war and society, it is nècessary 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

Slavery and Racism

• There was no necessary or inevitable relationship between slavery and racism
• In practice, the origins and early history of both slavery and the slave trade are unclear, and 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
• Racism was a key element in slavery, which became a response to the "other"-in short, to different people
• 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

Ancient Slavery

• As a result, there was significant demand for slaves and that at a time of low population
• Slaves were available from internal sources, especially as criminals, but were also acquired from abroad
• This indicates the continuities involved in slavery, for such processes continued at a large scale in this region into the nineteenth century
• The current relationship between Sudan and both its region of Darfur and the now independent state of South Sudan can be understood as a further continuation
• In the branch of military history known as war and society, it is nècessary to appreciate that the attempts to create at 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 and the plentiful opportunities from war

Imperialism and Slavery

• The numbers of slaves passing through the great slave marts was formidable
• Alexander the Great of Macedon captured the major Phoenician port of Tyre in 332 BCE, which had mounted a strong defense, he enslaved those in the city who were not killed
• The Phoenicians, traders based in the coastal cities of modern Lebanon, had acquired slaves from across the Mediterranean, notably North Africa and Spain
• The Cilician pirates at the southern end of the Taurus mountains in modern Turkey were responsible in the first century BCE for slavery and piracy in the eastern Mediterranean
• The far-flung nature of the conquests of the empires of Antiquity, notably Rome, produced slaves.
• Trade for slaves was another major source.
• This emphasizes a range of relationships stretching from linking in with existing slave-trade networks, to adapting these networks, to creating new ones
• The Roman trade along the Red Sea involved cooperation with the kingdom of Axum in what is now Eritrea
• The use of slave labor increased as the slave population continued to reproduce

Beyond the Roman Empire

• 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
• For example, in Anglo-Saxon England (fifth to eleventh centuries), slavery was linked with nonmembership of the tribe, rather than the racism of the modern time
• This was often linked with a transition from slaves as single people to servile families
• This ensured that the labor force reproduced itself, which was more useful for the landlord than purchasing slaves as those raised to slave labor were familiar with what it involved
• 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
• Slavery in England was connected to religion

Global Slave Trade

• There were white slaves in the early modern period (sixteenth-eighteenth centuries)
• Enslavement was frequently the response to the "other": to other peoples (irrespective of their skin color), and other creatures
• In a fictional form, the treatment of the "other" was captured in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest (1611), which, in part, drew on accounts of English transoceanic exploration and colonization
• In 1677, the status of a slave was recognized in English law in Butts vs. Penny
• The decision was also followed in Gully v. Cleve (1694), but Sir John Holt declared that "as soon as a negro comes to England he becomes free" in Smith v. Browne (1701)
• 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

Islamic Slave Trade

• The slave trade does not fit with the narrative of Western colonial exploitation, and is therefore widely neglected in public history, as well as in the current demand for apology and compensation
• Muslims used slaves
• West Africa and Europe looks very different from the perspective of the horn of Africa
• In 1535, there were about 20,000 Christian slaves when Tunis was attacked by Spanish
• In the nineteenth century, state of Bornu captured slaves by raiding and, aside from its own use, transported some slaves north across Sahara to well-established markets.
• Three other states developed between forests after slavery: Baquirmi, Darfur and Wadai, using strength to acquire them
• The slave trade across the Sahara was different because the prime demand in the Americas was generally for male labor in plantations

The Western Quest

• The Atlantic slave trade was a labor quest for a widening population
• However, the norms of Western war didn't allow for the enslavement of captives in warfare with Christian states
• Paralleling plantation exports from New World and Europe, second serfdom was a response to the economic opportunities
• Western slavery reflected sociocultural practices involving nationhood, religion
• In 1415, they were used as an explanation for racism
• During the first stages of expansionism against Moors to get context
• Both people had a range of opportunity to develop Western control over slavery