SLAVERY is the indenturing of human beings as personal property. This is a very old practice. Three millenniums ago, the Egyptians used a large work force of slaves to build the pyramids. In the dark ages, the strong Germanic tribes in Europe enslaved many Slavics — hence the name ‘slaves’. Contiguity of Arabia to African land mass had resulted in the use of African migrant labour as domestics and personal slaves bought at open markets. Trade between the Harappa civilization and Mesopotamia in prehistoric days had accompanying diaspora of free or enslaved African sailors around the Indian ocean. History also recorded the rule by a slave dynasty in Hindustan during the 13th century. Many freed slaves (Manumission) in Greece and Rome reached influential positions. Another slave dynasty, the Mamelukes, ruled Egypt from 1250 to 1517AD. These were only a few incidental streaks of history, otherwise the story of the slaves had been very pitiable.
By the middle of the last millennium, western African societies had become economically very strong. The first contact of west Africans with continental Europe took place in the early part of the 15th century when the Portuguese sailed down the Atlantic coast of West Africa. The Portuguese were interested in African gold mines at Akan deposits. They initially brought copperware, cloth, tools, wines and horses to barter for ivory, peppers and gold. This also was the period of agricultural development of the sugar plantations on Portuguese possessions in Madera, Canary and Cape Verdi Islands in the Atlantic. A market for agricultural workers had developed in off-shore farming of Portugal. By the year 1500 the Portuguese had managed to marshal some 80,000 Africans to be used as exotic domestic servants or farm hands. Migrations of the main Portuguese populace had created a severe labour shortage in Portugal. African immigrants filled this gap. In some sections of rural Portugal the demographic scene had changed drastically as a result of this situation — at one time one half of the population in these regions was African.
In 1492 discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus opened new vistas of exploitation, first to Spain and Portugal and subsequently by other European nations. The West Indies, the isthmus of Central America and South American regions were claimed and colonized by Spain and Portugal. North America became the preserve of Britain and France. The Dutch and Germans claimed the northern part of South America. Vast areas of these lands became agricultural belts where sugar, cotton and tobacco plantations were set up for which the ethnic locals provided the farm labour. But soon the deprivations inflicted on this cross section of the natives through hunger, cruel working conditions and European diseases depleted this source. The colonial masters then reverted to Africa from where huge labour could be acquired and transported to American colonies to replace the dwindling local labour sources.
The transcontinental slave trade started in the late 16th century. In 1619 a Dutch slave trader exchanged his cargo of 20 slaves for food at Janise Town. This was the first injection of African labour into the New World’s economy.
When the Spaniards began to use slaves in their American colonies, the British, French and Dutch found a new business of transporting the Africans through their ships. The local rulers provided these wretched men and women mostly from the west coast of Africa to the slavers. Those made slaves were either the members of rival tribes defeated in perpetual wars who became the war booty or sometimes even the loyal populace of the local kings itself. The slaving ships’ captains exchanged them for cheap commodities brought from Europe. Among these were the arms and ammunition needed by the local warlords to wage their tribal wars to turn their rivals into slaves and sell the captives to the European captains.
The Europeans had their own slave catching techniques of raiding the isolated villages and hamlets to entrap men, women and children and moving them overland to the collecting points or factories established on the coastlands. And when the tribal chiefs needed European commodities they would send messages to anchoring ships and happily exchange their own people for the goods they ravished! If the chiefs could not provide the manpower to the slavers, the white men would force them and their tribes into slavery.
Thus this vicious circle continued for three centuries — ships laden with European goods arriving off the African coast and leaving with human cargo for the West Indies. There the slaves in their custody were auctioned for tobacco, sugar and cotton, which would be brought back to Europe and sold at great profits. Since profit was the only motive in this three-way trade, no consideration was given to the Africans as human beings — they were just like common animals to be whipped, tied up and to be traded!
The journey of the captives from their homes to the trading stations and their passage over the Atlantic to the West Indies was a horrendous story of the African holocaust. Slave fortresses were located along the coast of Ghana, Senegambia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Bights of Benin, Biafra (Central Africa), a coastal distance of 2,000 miles. The slaves were marched to the trading fortresses where they were inspected and medically examined in a degrading fashion. Men, women and children usually appearing naked underwent close scrutiny and inspection. Then they were holed up in their crowded quarters awaiting passage.
When ready to move they were chained together and canoed to the waiting ships through breakers and waves. On board the ships they were kept below decks with no sunshine or light. They were chained to the planks, each person being allotted a 6ft by 16inch space, not being able to stand or comfortably sit. It was a hellish passage usually under horrendous conditions in their own stench and refuse and on a rationed diet. The mortality rate during the eight to 10 weeks’ sea passage was between 13 and 15 per cent of those embarked. This was in addition to the five per cent wastage during land passage and at transit barracks.
It is estimated that during 1500-1900AD 11 million Africans were made slaves and transported on a one-way passage to the New World out of which only 9.5 million could make the destination. Another 30 per cent were destined to die in the period of exchanges before the start of their servitude.
Further indignities awaited them after disembarkation. They were auctioned in the most dehumanizing way, made the servants of different owners, their families and friends separated from each other and then made to live under harsh working conditions without any sympathy. They were disowned of their native faiths with their generations left to live as second- or third-class citizens as victims of race hatred in cultured Christian societies whose missionaries had successively done a good job of converting them to their faith.
What a horror let loose by racially superior and all-powerful masters who held sway over the life and death of the generations of human commodities acquired by them.
