Exposing Africa's Part In The Slave Trade

Slavery has existed in Africa for as long as recorded history. Ancient Egypt had slaves toiling away in its fields and on its monuments, ancient Carthage trafficked in slaves across the Mediterranean, and the Ethiopian kings of Aksum wrote proudly of the slaves they took in war. Slaves were also exported from Africa for centuries before Europeans arrived. The Trans-Saharan slave trade lasted for over a thousand years and dragged about 10 million people across the desert to be slaves in the Islamic world. The Indian Ocean also had a similarly long-lasting ocean-going slave trade with about 5 million ending up in slave ships, bound and branded for use in foreign lands. These slaves ended up as labourers, domestic servants, soldiers, or more. Male slaves in the Islamic world were typically castrated which meant that new slaves had to be regularly imported to maintain the population.

For this video, we’ll focus on Western Africa where the Atlantic slave trade was centred. West Africa was removed from the Indian Ocean trade and mostly secure from Islamic slave raids, but slavery was still a feature of life there long before the Atlantic slave trade began. A succession of powerful empires occupied the region which all rested on complex slave systems. The Ghanaian Empire from the 3rd to the 13th century began a tradition of powerful West African imperial states and built much of its wealth through trans-Saharan trading of slaves or goods acquired through slave labour.

The Salt, copper, and gold that made the Mali Empire and Mansa Musa fabulously wealthy were all extracted with slave labour. Domestic slavery was also common and Mali was known to import female slaves from the Mediterranean to act as domestic servants in the households of the elites. Most of the slaves were acquired through conquest of neighbouring kingdoms or tribal groups who were too weak to defend themselves from the organised imperial militaries. Successor empires like the Songhai, Jolof, and Kaabu inherited the social and economic structures of slavery and continued to acquire slaves as they scrambled to establish their own territories. Elites in these empires used slaves as a status symbol and ownership of slaves came to represent someone’s wealth and power.

#history #slavetrade #transatlanticslavetrade #historyofslavery

Music: Epidemic music

Sources:
C. Ebert, ‘European Competition and Cooperation in Pre-Modern Globalization: Portuguese West and Central Africa, 1500-1600,’ African Economic History, 36 (2008)

M. A. Gomez, African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa, (2018)

P. A. Igbafe, ‘Slavery and Emancipation in Benin, 1897-1945’, Journal of African History, 16/3, (1975)

J. Iliffe, Africa: History of a Continent, (2019)

R. Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550-1750: The impact of the Atlantic slave trade on an African society, (Clarendon 1991)

J. C. Miller, ‘The Dynamics of History in Africa and the Atlantic ‘Age of Revolutions’, in in D. Armitage and S. Subrahmanyam (eds.), The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760-1840, (2010)

J. K. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, (1999)

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[ADayInHistoryOfficial]

It's vital that we strive to know the complete history surrounding this deeply painful period in human history. Understanding the roles played by different regions and parties, including Africa, helps us paint a more accurate picture of the past. Thank you for tuning in.

[jculver]

Hilariously, when Hollywood made a big-budget film about the Dahomey a few years ago (The Woman King), it portrayed them as anti-slavery crusaders and fighters. This was the historical equivalent of a WWII movie where the Nazis fought against antisemitism. It just illustrates how the movies are a terrible place for people to get their history.

[dekev]

One thing that many non-Africans (especially blacks in the Americas) don’t realise is that, there was never an “African” identity. There were countless individual city states, kingdoms and empires that did not see themselves as one, most of them were bitter adversaries for centuries. Europeans were very successful in colonialism because they were able to conquer each city state one by one, at times with the help of the vanquished’s local enemies. They then amalgamated the conquered tribes into colonies and these colonies went on to become sovereign countries after independence. The problem now is that, as a result of these countries being formed by multiple ethnic empires that were bitter rivals for centuries, they still harbour resentment towards each other and a house with opposing foundations cannot stand. This has lead to countless civil wars and skirmishes in almost all the modern countries on the continent.

[waywarddrifter]

Historians don't get enough credit for how vital their roles really are in society.

[talyadalaha]

Big shoutout to the school system for never even mentioning these things

[eastvilleholdingscorporate]

Something that utterly disgusted me was Dahomey being portrayed as freedom fighters in The Woman King.

[raissa]

Black Americans need to watch this. As an African, I find it bikarious when they act like they are the only slave descendants in the world😢. Even today in my country Cameroon, there are tribes still considered as slave tribes. Although they are not enslaved I the old way, they still occupy lower ranks in their villages. When they get to towns, if faced with a non slave tribe from the same region, the gap is immediately évident. They don't look at superiors in the eyes and occult certain local govt positions in their tribe. So, slavery has just shape shifted. Human trafficking IS slavery. It never stopped

[batprime]

Finally, someone not placing all the blame on Europe. People need to realize slavery wasn’t just one or two parts of the world, it was many different parts enslaving each other

[norcal]

the irony of "dahomey" being the biggest slave traders sounds like homie enslaved yall

[ruachspiritual]

6:59 The Akan tribe is modern day Asante Kingdom in Ghana. I’m Ghanaian and we know our history well and how our royals were an integral part of the slave trade. This is quite accurate and very informative. Great video

[brandonmedeiros]

Funny thing is you have people here saying Africa had slavery! Bruh there is still countries in Africa that have slavery

[MarcusC]

I bet this won’t ever be played in any classroom

[Althedemonking]

As a Nigerian these are things we're taught as children in Primary School, we even had excursions to the routes that the slaves passed through, it's our history so everyone knows here, no matter how bad it's taught

[Cleanslit]

As an African, this story is often overlooked! Our so-called kings were involved in the slave trade

[ksmith]

Humans are terrible to each other and we need to learn! I grew up in a household where we talked about these things. I was very young when I was informed that slavery was also very prominent on the continent of Africa and as an adult, I'm grateful for the knowledge. It's very easy to skew a narrative to "Them versus Us" when knowledge is missing or ignored. In truth it is "Us versus Us" and we're too stupid to realize and accept we're just destroying ourselves!

[gensdupays]

Funny thing, I was taking with a Senegalese woman about slavery, and she told me that they took pride in that because that made them rich. She was proud of Muslim colonialism.

[MrStephen]

The truth hurts. I've been telling folks this for years and have lost friends because they wanted to blame European folks for this evil deed. African Kings sold their enemies from different tribes to them for gold and modern weaponry the time.

[riothead]

Too many people think Europeans showed up with nets and just started going to town.

[PradhanmantriBruhh]

During Ottoman empire, many Europeans had to face persecution and slavery as well.

[somindlesssmedia]

As a black American I took a west African studies class in college so none of this is new to me lol it was a business. I will say I think the reason the trans Atlantic slave trade gets a lot of attention is because it ultimately reshaped the whole western world to what it is today. This whole side of the world between the indigenous population almost becoming extinct the black and mixed race ppl here etc. just my take. And great video.