Everything about African Slave Trade totally explained
» This article discusses systems of slavery within Africa, the history and effects of the slavery trade upon Africa. And also Maafa. See Atlantic slave trade for the trans-Atlantic trade, and Arab slave trade for the Trans-Saharan trade. See Slavery in modern Africa for the current status of slavery on the African continent.
The
slave trade in Africa existed for thousands of years. The first main route passed through
the Sahara, tying in to the
Arab slave trade. After the European
Age of Exploration, African slaves became part of the
Atlantic slave trade, from which comes the modern, Western conception of
slavery as an institution of African-descended slaves and non-African slave owners. Despite its illegality, slavery
continues in some parts of the world, including Africa.
Elikia M’bokolo, April 1998,
Le Monde diplomatique. Quote:"The
African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the
Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the
Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth)." He continues: "Four million slaves exported via the
Red Sea, another four million through the
Swahili ports of the
Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the
trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the
Atlantic Ocean"
Slavery within Africa
In most African societies, there was very little difference between the free peasants and the feudal vassal peasants. Vassals of the
Songhay Empire were used primarily in agriculture; they paid tribute to their masters in crop and service but they were slightly restricted in custom and convenience. These non-free people were more an occupational
caste, as their
bondage was relative..
There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the
Ashanti of
Ghana and the
Yoruba of
Nigeria had economies largely depending on the trade. African peoples such as the
Imbangala of
Angola and the
Nyamwezi of
Tanzania would serve as intermediaries or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans. Extenuating circumstances demanding exploration are the tremendous efforts European officials in Africa used to install rulers agreeable to their interests. They would actively favor one African group against another to deliberately ignite chaos and continue their slaving activities..
"Slavery", as it's often referred to by people, in African cultures was generally more like
indentured servitude: "slaves" were not made to be chattel of other men, nor enslaved for life. African "slaves" were paid wages and were able to accumulate property. They often bought their own freedom and could then achieve social promotion -just as freedman in
ancient Rome- some even rose to the status of kings (for example
Jaja of Opobo and
Sunni Ali Ber). Similar arguments were used by Western slave owners during the time of abolition, for example by
John Wedderburn in
Wedderburn v. Knight, the case that ended legal recognition of slavery in
Scotland in 1776. Regardless of the legal options open to slave owners, rational cost-earning calculation and/or voluntary adoption of moral restraints often tended to mitigate (except with traders, who preferred to weed out the worthless weak individuals) the actual fate of slaves throughout history.
In
Senegambia, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early
Islamic states of the western Sudan, including
Ghana (750-1076),
Mali (1235–1645),
Segou (1712–1861), and
Songhai (1275-1591), about a third of the population were slaves. In
Sierra Leone in the 19th century about half of the population consisted of slaves. In the 19th century at least half the population was enslaved among the
Duala of the
Cameroon, the
Igbo and other peoples of the lower
Niger, the
Kongo, and the Kasanje kingdom and
Chokwe of
Angola. Among the
Ashanti and
Yoruba a third of the population consisted of slaves. The population of the
Kanem (1600–1800) was about a third-slave. It was perhaps 40% in
Bornu (1580–1890). Between 1750 and 1900 from one- to two-thirds of the entire population of the
Fulani jihad states consisted of slaves. The population of the
Sokoto caliphate formed by
Hausas in the northern
Nigeria and Cameroon was half-slave in the 19th century. It is estimated that up to 90% of the population of
Arab-
Swahili Zanzibar was enslaved. Roughly half the population of
Madagascar was enslaved.
Slavery in Ethiopia
Ethiopian slavery was essentially domestic. Slaves thus served in the houses of their masters or mistresses, and were not employed to any significant extent for productive purposes, slaves were thus regarded as second-class members of their owners' family, and were fed, clothed and protected. Women were taken as
sex slaves. They generally roamed around freely and conducted business as free people. They had complete freedom of religion and culture. First attempt to abolish slavery was made by Emperor
Tewodros II (r. 1855-1868), although slave trade wasn't abolished completely until 1923 with Ethiopia's ascension to the
League of Nations. Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2,000,000 slaves in the early 1930s, out of an estimated population of between 8 and 16 million. Slavery continued in Ethiopia until the Italian invasion in October 1935, when was abolished by order of the Italian occupying forces. In response to pressure by Western
Allies of World War II Ethiopia officially abolished slavery and involuntary servitude after regained its independence in 1942. On
August 26 1942 Haile Selassie issued a proclamation outlawing slavery.
Slavery in Somalia
The
Bantus are the descendants of people from various ethnic groups in what is modern-day
Tanzania,
Malawi and
Mozambique who were brought to
Somalia as slaves in the
19th century. It is estimated that the Bantu in Somalia number around 600,000 out of a total population of over 11 million. Contrary to the Somali, who are for the most part nomadic herders, the Bantu are mainly sedentary farmers. Bantus have darker skin and are shorter and more muscular with broader features and kinkier hair than the
Somalis. During the
Somali Civil War, many Bantu were evicted from their farms by various armed factions of
Somali clans.
Slavery in North Africa
The
medieval slave trade in
Europe was mainly to the East and South:
Byzantine Empire and the
Muslim World were the destinations, pagan
Central and
Eastern Europe an important source.
Slavery in medieval Europe was so common that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it—or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was prohibited at, for example, the
Council of Koblenz in 922, the
Council of London in 1102, and the
Council of Armagh in 1171. Because of religious constraints, the
slave trade was monopolised by Iberian
Jews (known as
Radhanites) who were able to transfer the slaves from pagan
Central Europe through Christian
Western Europe to Muslim countries in
Al-Andalus and
Africa. So many
Slaves were enslaved for so many centuries that the very name 'slave' derived from their name; not only in English, but in other European languages and in Arabic.
Mamluks were
slave soldiers who converted to
Islam and served the
Muslim caliphs and the
Ayyubid sultans during the
Middle Ages. The first mamluks served the
Abbasid caliphs in
9th century Baghdad. Over time they became a powerful military
caste, and on more than one occasion they seized power for themselves, for example, ruling
Egypt in the from 1250-1517. From 1250
Egypt had been ruled by the
Bahri dynasty of
Kipchak Turk origin.
White slaves from the
Caucasus served in the army and formed an elite corp of troops eventually revolting in Egypt to form the
Burgi dynasty.
According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by
Barbary pirates and sold as
slaves to
North Africa and the
Ottoman Empire between the
16th and
19th centuries. The coastal villages and towns of
Italy,
Portugal,
Spain and
Mediterranean islands were frequently attacked by them and long stretches of the Italian and Spanish coasts were almost completely abandoned by its inhabitants; after
1600 Barbary pirates occasionally entered the Atlantic and struck as far north as
Iceland. The most famous corsairs were the Ottoman
Barbarossa ("Redbeard"), and his older brother
Oruç,
Turgut Reis (known as
Dragut in the West),
Kurtoğlu (known as
Curtogoli in the West),
Kemal Reis,
Salih Reis and
Koca Murat Reis.
In 1544,
Khair ad Din captured the
Ischia, taking 4,000 prisoners in the process, and deported to
slavery some 9,000 inhabitants of
Lipari, almost the entire population. In 1551, Dragut enslaved the entire population of the Maltese island
Gozo, between 5,000 and 6,000, sending them to
Libya. When pirates sacked
Vieste in southern Italy in 1554 they took an 7,000 slaves. In 1555, Turgut Reis sailed to
Corsica and ransacked
Bastia, taking 6000 prisoners. In 1558 Barbary corsairs captured the town of
Ciutadella, destroyed it,
slaughtered the inhabitants and carried off 3,000 survivors to
Istanbul as slaves. In 1563 Turgut Reis landed at the shores of the province of
Granada, Spain, and captured the coastal settlements in the area like
Almuñécar, along with 4,000 prisoners. Barbary pirates frequently attacked the
Balearic islands, resulting in many coastal watchtowers and fortified churches being erected. The threat was so severe that
Formentera became uninhabited.
Sahrawi-Moorish society in
Northwest Africa was traditionally (and still is, to some extent) stratified into several tribal castes, with the
Hassane warrior tribes ruling and extracting tribute -
horma - from the subservient
Berber-descended
znaga tribes. The so-called
Haratin lower class, largely sedentary
oasis-dwelling
black people, have been considered natural slaves in Sahrawi-Moorish society.
Slaves taken from Africa
Trans Saharan trade
» Main article Arab slave trade
The very earliest external
slave trade was the
trans-Saharan slave trade. Although there had long been some trading up the
Nile River and very limited trading across the western desert, the transportation of large numbers of slaves didn't become viable until
camels were introduced from
Arabia in the 10th century. By this point, a
trans-Saharan trading network came into being to transport slaves north. It has been estimated that from the 10th to the 19th century some 6,000 to 7,000 slaves were transported north each year. Frequent intermarriages meant that the slaves were
assimilated in North Africa. Unlike in the
Americas, slaves in North Africa were mainly
servants and soldiers rather than
labourers, and a greater number of females than males were taken, who were often employed as servants for the women of
harems. It was also not uncommon to turn male slaves, both African and European, into
eunuchs to serve as guardians to the
harems. The Moroccan Sultan
Moulay Ismail "the Bloodthirsty" (1672-1727) raised a corps of 150,000 black slaves, called his
Black Guard, who coerced the country into submission.
Indian Ocean trade
The trade in slaves across the
Indian Ocean also has a long history beginning with the control of sea routes by
Afro-Arab traders in the ninth century. It is estimated that only a few thousand slaves were taken each year from the Red Sea and Indian Ocean coast. They were sold throughout the
Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on
plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands per year were being taken.. The majority of the Arabs responsible for the slave trade in East Africa were blacks themselves. Afro-Arabs were Africans who had adopted Arab culture and language.
David Livingstone wrote of the slave trade: "
To overdraw its evils is a simple impossibility.... We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body and lying on the path. [Onlookers] said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he'd given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer. We passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and dead.... We came upon a man dead from starvation.... The strangest disease I've seen in this country seems really to be broken heartedness, and it attacks free men who have been captured and made slaves." Livingstone estimated that 80,000 Africans died each year before ever reaching the slave markets of
Zanzibar. Zanzibar was once East Africa's main slave-trading port, and under Omani Arabs in the
19th century as many as 50,000 slaves were passing through the city each year.
Some sources estimate that between 11 and 17 million slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900.
Atlantic Ocean trade
» Main article Atlantic slave trade
The first Europeans to arrive on the coast of
Guinea were the
Portuguese; the first European to actually buy African slaves in the region of Guinea was
Antão Gonçalves, a Portuguese explorer. Originally interested in trading mainly for
gold and
spices, they set up colonies on the uninhabited islands of
São Tomé. In the 16th century the Portuguese settlers found that these volcanic islands were ideal for growing
sugar. Sugar growing is a labour-intensive undertaking and Portuguese settlers were difficult to attract due to the heat, lack of infrastructure, and hard life. To cultivate the sugar the Portuguese turned to large numbers of African slaves.
Elmina Castle on the
Gold Coast, originally built by African labor for the Portuguese in 1482 to control the gold trade, became an important depot for slaves that were to be transported to the
New World.
The first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World were the Spaniards who sought auxiliaries for their conquest expeditions and laborers on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola, where the alarming death rate in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population (Laws of Burgos, 1512-1513). The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.
In 1452,
Pope Nicholas V issued the
papal bull Dum Diversas, granting
Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery. This approval of slavery was reaffirmed and extended in his
Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. These papal bulls came to serve as a justification for the subsequent era of slave trade and European colonialism. However
Pope Eugene IV in his bull,
Sicut Dudum of 1435 had condemned the enslavement of the black inhabitants of the
Canary Islands.
Pope Paul III in 1537 issued an additional Bull,
Sublimis Deus, declaring that all peoples, even those outside the faith shouldn't be deprived of their liberty. The followers of the church of England and Protestants didn't use the papal bulls as a justification for their involvement in slavery.
Increasing penetration into the Americas by the Portuguese created more demand for labour in
Brazil--primarily for
farming and
mining. Slave-based economies quickly spread to the Caribbean and the southern portion of what is today the
United States, where Dutch traders brought the first African slaves in 1620. These areas all developed an insatiable demand for slaves. As European nations grew more powerful, especially
Portugal,
Spain,
France,
England and the
Netherlands, they began vying for control of the African slave trade, with little effect on the local African and Arab trading. Great Britain's existing colonies in the Lesser Antilles and their effective naval control of the Mid Atlantic forced other countries to abandon their enterprises due to inefficiency in cost. The English crown provided a charter giving the
Royal African Company monopoly over the African slave routes until 1712.
The
Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms against weaker African tribes and peoples. These mass slavers included the
Oyo empire (
Yoruba),
Kong Empire,
Kingdom of Benin,
Kingdom of Fouta Djallon,
Kingdom of Fouta Tooro,
Kingdom of Koya,
Kingdom of Khasso,
Kingdom of Kaabu,
Fante Confederacy,
Ashanti Confederacy, and the kingdom of
Dahomey. Europeans rarely entered the interior of Africa, due to fear of
disease and moreover fierce African resistance.
Before the arrival of the
Portuguese, slavery had already existed in
Kingdom of Kongo. Despite its establishment within his kingdom,
Afonso I of Kongo believed that the slave trade should be subject to Kongo law. When he suspected the Portuguese of receiving illegally enslaved persons to sell, he wrote letters to the King
João III of Portugal in
1526 imploring him to put a stop to the practice.
The kings of
Dahomey sold their
war captives into transatlantic slavery, who otherwise would have been killed in a ceremony known as the
Annual Customs. As one of West Africa's principal slave states, Dahomey became extremely unpopular with neighbouring peoples. Like the
Bambara Empire to the east, the
Khasso kingdoms depended heavily on the
slave trade for their economy. A family's status was indicated by the number of slaves it owned, leading to
wars for the sole purpose of taking more captives. This trade led the Khasso into increasing contact with the
European settlements of Africa's west coast, particularly the
French.
Benin grew increasingly rich during the 16th and 17th centuries on the slave trade with Europe; slaves from enemy states of the interior were sold, and carried to the Americas in Dutch and Portuguese ships. The Bight of Benin's shore soon came to be known as the "Slave Coast".
King Gezo of
Dahomey said in 1840's:
» The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth…the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery…
In 1807, the UK Parliament passed the Bill that abolished the trading of slaves. The King of Bonny (now in
Nigeria) was horrified at the conclusion of the practice:
» We think this trade must go on. That is the verdict of our oracle and the priests. They say that your country, however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God himself.
Source of slaves
All three slave-trading routes tapped into local trading patterns. Europeans or Arabs in Africa very rarely mounted expeditions to capture slaves. Lack of people and the prevalence of disease prevented any widespread gathering of slaves by Europeans and other non-Africans. Local rulers were very rarely open to allowing groups of armed foreigners to enter their lands. It was far easier and more common to make use of existing African middlemen and slave traders. Slavery has been present in Africa for millennia,
and still is today
even with children, though some historians prefer to describe African slavery as
feudalism, arguing it was more like the
serfdom system that controlled the peasantry of Western Europe during the
Middle Ages or
Russia into the
19th century than slavery as it was practiced in the Americas.
The slaves came from many different sources. About half came from the societies that sold them. These might be
criminals,
heretics, the
mentally ill, the
indebted and any others that had fallen out of favour with the rulers. Little is known about the details of theses practices before the arrival of Europeans, and so it's difficult to tell if the number of people considered as undesirables was artificially increased to provide more slaves for export. It is believed that
capital punishment in the region nearly disappeared since prisoners became far too valuable to dispose of in such a way.
Another source of slaves, comprising about half the total, came from
military conquests of other
states or
tribes. It has long been contended that the slave trade greatly increased violence and warfare in the region due to the pursuit of slaves, but it's hard to provide evidence to prove this;
tribal warfare was certainly common even before slave hunting had added such an extra inducement.
For the Atlantic slave trade, captives purchased from slave dealers in West African regions known as the
Slave Coast,
Gold Coast, and
Côte d'Ivoire were sold into slavery as a result of a defeat in warfare. In the
Bight of Biafra near modern-day
Senegal and
Benin, some African kings sold their captives locally and later to European slave traders for goods such as metal cookware, rum, livestock, and seed grain. Previous to the voyage, the victims were held in "slave castles" and deep pits where many died from multiple illnesses and malnutrition. Conditions were even worse in the
Middle Passage across the Atlantic where up to a third of the slaves died en route.
Elikia M’bokolo, April 1998,
Le Monde diplomatique. Quote:"The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the
Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the
Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth)." He continues: "Four million slaves exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the
Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean"
Effects
Effect on the economy of Africa
Few scholars dispute the harm done to the slaves themselves, but the effect of the trade on African societies is much debated due to the apparent influx of capital to Africans. Proponents of the slave trade, such as
Archibald Dalzel, argued that African societies were robust and not much affected by the ongoing trade. In the 19th century, European
abolitionists, most prominently Dr.
David Livingston, took the opposite view arguing that the fragile local economy and societies were being severely harmed by the ongoing trade. This view continued with scholars until the 1960s and 70s such as
Basil Davidson, who conceded it might have had some benefits while still acknowledging its largely negative impact on Africa. Historian
Walter Rodney estimates that by c.1770, the King of
Dahomey was earning an estimated £250,000 per year by selling captive African soldiers and even his own people to the European slave-traders. Most of this money was spent on British-made firearms (of very poor quality) and industrial-grade alcohol.
Today, however, some scholars assert that slavery didn't have a wholly disastrous effect on those left behind in Africa. Slaves were an expensive commodity, and traders received a great deal in exchange for each slave. At the peak of the slave trade, it's said that hundreds of thousands of muskets, vast quantities of cloth, gunpowder and metals were being shipped to Guinea. Guinea's trade with Europe at the peak of the slave trade—which also included significant exports of gold and ivory—was some 3.5 million pounds Sterling per year. By contrast, the trade of the
United Kingdom, the economic superpower of the time, was about 14 million pounds per year over this same period of the late
18th century. As
Patrick Manning has pointed out, the vast majority of items traded for slaves were common rather than luxury goods. Textiles, iron ore, currency, and salt were some of the most important commodities imported as a result of the slave trade, and these goods were spread within the entire society raising the general standard of living. In contrast, other scholars find that the trade in slave had a detrimental effect on long-term economic growth and development. Although the evidence suggests a causal effect, the channel trough which slave trade affects subsequent economic growth and development isn't clear. One likely explanation is that the slave trade impeded the formation of larger ethnic groups, causing ethnic fractionalization and weaking the formation of stable political structures.
Effects on Europe’s economy
Eric Williams had attempted to show the contribution of Africans on the basis of profits from the slave trade and slavery, and the employment of those profits to finance Britain’s industrialization process. He argues that the enslavement of Africans was an essential element to the Industrial Revolution, and that European wealth is a result of slavery. However, he argued that by the time of its abolition it had lost its profitability and it was in Britain's economic interest to ban it. Seymour Dreshcer and Robert Antsey have both presented evidence that the slave trade remained profitable until the end, and that reasons other than economics led to its cessation. Joseph InikoPornri have shown elsewhere that the British slave trade was more profitable than the critics of Williams would want us to believe. Nevertheless, the profits of the slave trade and of
West Indian plantations amounted to less than 5% of the British economy at the time of the
Industrial Revolution.
A similar debate has taken place about other European nations. French slave trade was more profitable than alternative domestic investments and probably encouraged capital accumulation before the Industrial Revolution and
Napoleonic Wars.
Demographics
The demographic effects of the slave trade are some of the most controversial and debated issues. Tens of millions of people were removed from Africa via the slave trade, and what effect this had on Africa is an important question.
Walter Rodney argued that the export of so many people had been a demographic disaster and had left Africa permanently disadvantaged when compared to other parts of the world, and largely explains that continent's continued poverty. He presents numbers that show that Africa's population stagnated during this period, while that of Europe and Asia grew dramatically. According to Rodney all other areas of the economy were disrupted by the slave trade as the top merchants abandoned traditional industries to pursue slaving and the lower levels of the population were disrupted by the slaving itself.
Others have challenged this view.
J. D. Fage compared the number effect on the continent as a whole. David Eltis has compared the numbers to the rate of
emigration from
Europe during this period. In the nineteenth century alone over 50 million people left Europe for the Americas, a far higher rate than were ever taken from Africa.
Others have challenged this view. Joseph E. Inikori argues the history of the region shows that the effects were still quite deleterious. He argues that the African economic model of the period was very different from the European, and couldn't sustain such population losses. Population reductions in certain areas also led to widespread problems. Inikori also notes that after the suppression of the slave trade Africa's population almost immediately began to rapidly increase, even prior to the introduction of modern medicines. Shahadah also states that the trade wasn't only of demographic significance, in aggregate population losses but also in the profound changes to settlement patterns, epidemiological exposure and reproductive and social development potential.
In addition, the majority of the slaves being taken to the Americas were male. So while the slave trade created an immediate drop in the population, its long term effects were less drastic..
Legacy of racism
Maulana Karenga states that the effects of slavery where "the morally monstrous destruction of human possibility involved redefining African humanity to the world, poisoning past, present and future relations with others who only know us through this stereotyping and thus damaging the truly human relations among people of today." . He cites that it constituted the destruction of culture, language, religion and human possibility.
Abolition
Beginning in the late
18th century, France was Europe's first country to abolish slavery, in 1794, but it was revived by
Napoleon in 1802, and banned for good in 1848. In 1807 the British Parliament passed the
Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, under which captains of slave ships could be stiffly fined for each slave transported. This was later superseded by the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, which freed all slaves in the British Empire. Abolition was then extended to the rest of Europe. The
1820 U.S. Law on Slave Trade made slave trading
piracy, punishable
by
death. In 1827, Britain declares the slave trade piracy, punishable by death. The power of the
Royal Navy was subsequently used to suppress the slave trade, and while some illegal trade, mostly with Brazil, continued, the Atlantic slave trade would be eradicated by the middle of the 19th century. The
West Africa Squadron was credited with capturing 1,600 slave ships between
1808 and
1860 and freeing 150,000 Africans who were aboard these ships. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against ‘the usurping King of Lagos’, deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers.
The
Islamic trans-
Saharan and
Indian Ocean trades continued, however, and even increased as new sources of slaves became available. In
Caucasus, slavery was abolished after Russian conquest. The slave trade within Africa also increased. The British Navy could suppress much of the trade in the Indian Ocean, but the European powers could do little to affect the intra-continental trade.
The continuing
anti-slavery movement in Europe became an excuse and a
casus belli for the European conquest and colonisation of much of the African continent. In the late 19th century, the
Scramble for Africa saw the continent rapidly divided between Imperialistic Europeans, and an early but secondary focus of all
colonial regimes was the suppression of slavery and the slave trade. In response to this public pressure, Ethiopia officially abolished slavery in
1932. By the end of the colonial period they were mostly successful in this aim, though slavery is still very active in Africa even though it has gradually moved to a
wage economy. Independent nations attempting to westernise or impress Europe sometimes cultivated an image of slavery suppression, even as they, in the case of Egypt, hired European soldiers like
Samuel White Baker's expedition up the Nile. Slavery has never been eradicated in Africa, and it commonly appears in African states, such as
Chad,
Ethiopia,
Mali,
Niger, and
Sudan, in places where
law and
order have collapsed..
See also Slavery in modern Africa.
Although outlawed in nearly all countries today slavery is practiced
in secret in many parts of the world. There are an estimated 27 million victims of slavery worldwide. In
Mauritania alone up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are enslaved, many of them used as
bonded labour.
Slavery in Mauritania was finally criminalized in August 2007. It is estimated that as many as 200,000 black Sudanese children and women have been taken into
slavery in Sudan during the
Second Sudanese Civil War. In
Niger, where the practice of slavery was outlawed in 2003, a study found that almost 8% of the population are still slaves.
Further Information
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