The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

Of course, others were en break one's backd because they were unredeemed hostages or pawns during warfare. In addition, compensation for homicides and other crimes was commonly paid in people-- ordinarily children from the pique family group and not the actual aggressor. Criminals, sometimes falsely accused, were sold out of the confederation, or, as among the Margi, were moved into a finicky neighborly category. Some were tricked into slavery, as among the Vai; or were victims of mulctping. A kidnap victim was more(prenominal) readily bought far from his home, where he could not be claimed by his kinsmen or find his way back.

unity of the first accounts of slave raids was from the Portuguese fort, built in 1448, at Arguin, off the Mauritanian coast of West Africa (Hargreaves 34). Initially, the aim was to earn information or recruit interpreters for future voyages, but by 1450 it became apparent that captives could be profitably sold for domestic renovation or general labor in Europe, and that a great supply could be obtained by barter with Moorish and African authorities than by violent raids. In 1455, the exportation of slaves from Arguin was estimated at 100 per year, and the slave trade was beginning to overshadow the favourable trade for which the fort had been established.

In this period, Christians and Muslims alike saw in enslavement of in

Even insiders inwardly African societies had their full citizenship derived from belonging to a kin group, usually corporate, which was the fundamental social, legal, political, and ritual protective unit. This contrasts with the Western ideology of license (Miers 17). In the Western concept, freedom means the antithesis of slavery and having shore leave and a lack of social bonds. However, unless a society has genuine laws that protect personal self-direction, freedom will depend more on having the power to protect oneself than on actual autonomy; without such laws, autonomy is not valued. In most African societies, freedom was demonstrated by attachment to a kin group, a patron, or a power, rather than to being autonomous.

The diary of an African Slaver, 1789-1792.

Worcester, Massachusetts: American Antiquarian Society, 1930.

Questions of the origin and the social and economic role of slavery in Africa track down to be confused by the indiscriminate use of the word "slave" to cover a number of social and economic conditions, fewer of which approximated to slavery as it existed in American and West Indian plantations (Fage 92). Discussions of African slavery often dwell on the prospering integration of the slave into the kin group and thereby tend to assume that this must also mean integration into the society as a whole. The two marginalities are different, however, and the marginality-to-society has its own unadorned significance. It institutionalizes a generalized social identity of slave, which may stretch even when, after abolition, there are no more masters left (Miers 16). This marginality-to-society was possibly widespread in Africa. It was erect among the Margi, the Aboh, Tuareg, Vai, Fulani, Duala, and Tawana (Batawana) (Miers 16). In the last three cases, it was reinforced by ideas virtually the ethnic superiority of the host society.

fidels an opening of the doors of salvation, rather than a breach of moral law. In Mauritania and Senegal, the dem
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