Slavery in Africa

slavery is one thing most african are noted for as being a great part of their history. Most africans believe slavery played a major role in their present condition as a third world country. Whether slavery existed within sub-Saharan African societies before the arrival of Europeans is a hotly contested point between Afrocentric and Eurocentric academics. What is certain is that Africans were subjected to several forms of slavery over the centuries, including chattel slavery under both the Muslims with the trans-Saharan slave trade, and Europeans through the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Even after the abolition of the slave trade in Africa, Colonial powers used forced labor – such as in King Leopold's Congo Free State (which was operated as a massive labor camp) or as libertos on the Portuguese plantations of Cape Verde or San Tome. Forced labor,Otherwise known as 'unfree' labor. Forced labor, as the name implies, was based on the threat of violence against the laborer (or their family). Laborers contracted for a specific period would find themselves unable to escape enforced servitude. This was used to an overwhelming extent in King Leopold's Congo Free State and on Portuguese plantations of Cape Verde and San Tome. Serfdom:A term usually restricted to medieval Europe in which a tenant farmer was bound to a section of land and was thus under the control of a landlord. The serf achieved subsistence through the cultivation of their lord's land, and was liable to provide other services, such as working on other sections of land or joining a war-band. A serf was tied to the land, and could not leave without his lord's permission. A serf also required permission to marry, to sell goods, or to change their occupation. Any legal redress lay with the lord. Debt bondage, bonded labor, or peonage, involves the use of people as collateral against debt. Labor is provided by the person who owes the debt, or a relative (typically a child). It was unusual for a bonded laborer to escape their debt, since further costs would accrue during the period of bondage (food, clothing, shelter), and it was not unknown for the debt to be inherited across several generations. In the Americas, peonage was extended to include criminal peonage, where prisoners sentenced to hard labor were 'farmed out' to private or governmental groups. Africa has it's own unique version of debt bondage: pawnship. Afrocentric academics claim that this was a much milder form of debt bondage compared to that experienced elsewhere, since it would occur on a family or community basis where social ties existed between debtor and creditor. At the beginning of the 1600s, slaves for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade were sourced in Senegambia and the Windward Coast. This region had had a long history of providing slaves for the Islamic trans-Saharan trade. Around 1650 the Kingdom of the Kongo, which the Portuguese had ties with, started exporting slaves. The focus of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade moved to here and neighbouring northern Angola,Kongo and Angola would continue to be substantial exporters of slaves until the nineteenth century. Senegambia would provide a steady trickle of slaves through the centuries, but never on the same scale as the other regions of Africa. From the 1670s the Slave Coast (Bight of Benin) underwent a rapid expansion of trade in slaves which continued until the end of the slave trade in the nineteenth century. Gold Coast slave exports rose sharply in eighteenth century, but dropped markedly when Britain abolished slavery in 1808 and commenced anti-slavery patrols along the coast. The Bight of Biafra, centred on the Niger Delta and the Cross River, became a significant exporter of slaves from the 1740s and, along with its neighbour the Bight of Benin, dominated the Trans-Atlantic slave trade until its effective end in the mid-nineteenth century. These two regions alone account for two-thirds of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in the first half of the 1800s. The decline of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade The scale of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade declined during the Napoleonic wars in Europe (1799--1815), but quickly rebounded once peace returned. Britain abolished slavery in 1808 and British patrols effectively ended trade in slaves along the Gold Coast and up to Senegambia. When the port of Lagos was taken by the British in 1840, the slave trade from the Bight of Benin also collapsed. The slave trade from the Bight of Biafra gradually declined in the nineteenth century, partially as a result of British patrols and a reduction in demand for slaves from America, but also because of local shortages of slaves. To fulfil the demand for slaves, the significant tribes in the region (such and the Luba, Lunda, and Kazanje) turned on each other using the Cokwe (hunters from further inland) as mercenaries. Slaves were created as a result of raids. The Cokwe, however, became dependent on this new form of employment and turned on their employers when the coastal slave trade evaporated. The increased activities of British anti-slaver patrols along the west-African coast resulted in a brief upturn in trade from west-central and south-east Africa as increasingly desperate Trans-Atlantic slave ships visited ports under Portuguese protection. The authorities there were inclined to look the other way. With a general abolition of slavery in effect by the end of the nineteenth century, Africa started to be seen as a difference resource – instead of slaves, the continent was being eyed up for its land and minerals. The scramble for Africa was on, and its people would be coerced into 'employment' in mines and on plantations.