I don’t mean “how”, morally; this isn’t a Great Debate. I’m just wondering about the logistics of it. Slaves, by definition, didn’t go willingly–or did they, until they got on the boat? Were they promised a sweet life above the equator, and then chained when they got to the boat? I’m just wondering how slave traders could kidnap so many people–mostly men in the prime of their youth–at one time. Even if they brought their own big, strong crews with them, they were still on someone else’s turf.
The fact that they were on someone’s turf was a key part of the system. One of the factors that’s usually ignored in discussions of the African slave trade is the number of Africans who supported it. The European or American slavers would form a business relationship with an African chief or king. He would send raiding parties into other villages and take captives. These captives would then be held until the ship arrived and paid for them. The captives understood full well they were being sold into slavery and did not participate of their own free will.
The slaves were usually sold or traded to the slave traders by other Africans. I even found a cite this time:
http://www.pbs.org/wonders/fr_e3.htm
There are and were many different nations in Africa, and many of the existing kingdoms of that time made slaves of conquered or captured peoples.
Yep. Little Nemo’s explanation is correct. It was very common in Africa to become a slave–it was sort of an expected thing as a result of war. Being sold to a white slave trader and shipped to the West Indies…now that was unexpected!
You might think of reading The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. It is the autobiography of a man who started as a free man in Africa, was taken into slavery, then sold to a white slaver, then shipped to North America as a slave, then obtained his freedom, and finally established himself as a free man in Europe. It is a fascinating story, and you get a firsthand account of “how slave trading was possible.” You can also find excerpts of this account in books like the Norton Anthologies.
And to step back a milennium or two, when slavery was not divided along racial lines, all you had to do was live in a town that defended itself against an invader, and lost. Alexander the Great made a great example, and a tidy profit, by selling the inhabitants of a few fortified cities into slavery when they succumbed. Those that survived the looting and raping and pillaging, that is.
Certainly you’ve heard of the… um, Really Scary and Wrong Triangle, haven’t you? Slaves purchased from sympathetic tribes in Africa are sold to the sugar plantations in the Carribean, who hack enough cane to make molasses, which in turn is sent to New England, who makes rum out of the molasses and trades it for… slaves in Africa. Talk about a vicious circle, uh, triangle.
I see. Thank you!
Go to the local Lib. or Blockbuster… check out the first volume of ‘Roots’.
I guarantee you will be back for the set. Its a nice starting point for your quest - and a ripping great yarn too.
toe
African slaves were not enslaved by the Europeans but by other Africans who then sold them to whoever would pay for them, including white traders.
And here’s a whacked little nug about one of America’s first “colonies.” I’ve never substantiated claims that the “colonists” endorsed slaveholding themselves, but they certainly held a large influence on social and political affairs in Liberia. And hey, the Capital is named Monrovia after James Monroe, and their greatest recent hero is General Butt Naked. How much more American can you get?
http://www.encyclopedia.com/printable/07437.html
http://www.aimnet.com/~suntzu75/pirn9753.htm
I had read that the reason Africans were shipped to the western hemisphere was because the Central and South American Indians were so decimated by the Europeans by disease and war they had to have a fresh supply of labor. Is this correct?
Whew. That one is a tough one to tangle with. It is true that American Indians were found “unsuitable” as slaves, to quote one contemporary tome I recently read. There are a few explanations that have been held up for it:
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Yes, there just weren’t that many American Indians. And they weren’t very healthy, those that had survived the onslaught of worldwide disease. Nevertheless, they numbered in the millions in North America throughout the period when slavery was profitable and not highly questioned as an institution.
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The English, and the Americans after them, had (and have, in the case of America and Canada) a government-to-government relationship with Indian Tribes. That is, Indians dealt directly with the highest levels of a colonial or American government just as if they were any other foreign nation. One of the first solid agreements reached was that the selling of members of various tribes into servitude was unallowable. Slaves were purchased from Africa via contractor tribes who also theoretically had a sovereign status in the eyes of England and America. American Indian tribes just didn’t seem to be willing to do the same, for whatever reason.
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This one is a little wacky, but I do know it from experience, and if my explanation is a little off, it does not detract from the facts I give. Many American Indians did not have the same concept of time as their European invaders. It has been suggested that this is a result language. Edward T. Hall recounts a situation where Indian students were chronically late for the school bus, and often did not show up to school at all: they just didn’t have a concept of time as we view it now. He contends that this is a cultural condition which is a result of the languages Indian tribes spoke, which were unsuitable for future planning. That can be a problem when you tell someone, “have this field hacked down by noon,” and the person you’ve just told hasn’t a clue about what you’re talking about. It’s also a great benefit if you’re planning a spring campaign while your enemy is sitting tight with his women trying to keep warm.
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American Indians are and always have been fiercely independent, loyal primarily to their small family groups or factions, and especially their tribes. Many accounts of Indians sold into slavery record them as obstinate and unusually resistant to physical punishment. A large group of Pequots were sold into slavery to Bermuda in 1632; their intransigence was highly noted by the Bermudan authorities, and Bermudans were quite unhappy when a group of Narragansetts were sent there over forty years later. Detectable signs of American Indian culture on Bermuda remain to this day, some 350 years after their removal from Connecticut and Rhode Island.
So, um, that’s the short version.
Another factor that probably discouraged the enslavement of American Indians was that it would tend to piss off other American Indians, who unlike pissed off Africans were right in the neighborhood and therefore capable of expressing their displeasure.