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Chapter Eight: Empires of Slavery: The Americas, 1492-1888. Africa before European Contact. Largely composed of small complex societies (similar to Natives on first contact). Hierarchical system governed African societies. - family lineage, alliances, arranged marriages
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Africa before European Contact • Largely composed of small complex societies (similar to Natives on first contact). • Hierarchical system governed African societies. - family lineage, alliances, arranged marriages - elders governing, “divine” king ruling
Continued... • Slavery existed before Europeans • In most African societies, very little difference between free peasants and vassal peasants, i.e. slaves • Pre-European type of slavery more like indentured servitude • a person who came to America and was placed under contract to work for another over a period of time, usually seven years, especially during the 17th to 19th centuries. • Quite unlike the chattel slavery of imperial/colonial slave trade
Continued... • Three ways to become a slave prior to chattel slavery: • 1. Pawnship - sell himself or another to settle debt. In famine, pawn for food. Included the rights to slave’s labor and children. • 2. Committed a crime against one’s own family/lineage. Cut off from support and could be sold. • 3. If captured in war.
Meeting • Largely not colonized, settled or controlled as tightly as other areas at this time • Contact through coastal villages/ports and existing African/Islamic coastal-slave trading posts • Initially, traded African goods - pepper, gold - for European goods - firearms, metal, textiles, rum and tobacco. • Africa incorporated into the world trading system in the 18th century more significantly when Europeans began to want to trade slaves
By the beginning of the 18th century, slaves had become primary export from Africa • English, Spanish and French colonies - most significantly in South and North America - in huge labor shortage. • New land capable of enormous economic possibility for production of cotton, sugar, tobacco, etc. • Animated Map: http://www.the-map-as-history.com/demos/tome05/index.php
Modern slavery - human labor on an industrial scale. • Soon, there existed a booming economic triangle between Africa, the Americas and Europe due to the near free labor of countless Africans • N.B. Not just Europeans involved in capture and sale of slaves, various African peoples also involved in this highly lucrative trade.
Scale of the trade • Between 1701 and 1810, 2,000,000 slaves were exported from Africa by England alone • In the same years, France and Portugal combined exported 1,200,000. • Estimates of total number of African men and women sold in slave trade from beginning to end range from 3 million to 14 million. • Inaccuracy due to poor records and untold deaths during the march from the interior, disease and the “middle passage” • Americans tend to think of the “slave experience primarily in terms of…the United States”. But a comprehensive database of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade shows that of 12.5m Africans shipped to the New World only 388,000 landed in the US. The vast majority “were shipped directly to the Caribbean and South America; Brazil received 4.86m Africans alone”. Today’s 42m African-Americans are descended from fewer than 0.5m Africans
Abolitionist Movement • Though there was always a great deal of acceptance (or acquiescence) of slavery even from some church leaders (regrettably), there was also always a group who opposed it. • Abolitionist movements grew throughout the 18th century, mostly Christian-based humanitarian (social justice) societies and organizations • Publishing pamphlets, books, newspapers, slave biographies etc. • Organizing rallies, lobbying politicians, proposing legislation, educating public about reality of slavery
Continued... • Already in the 16th century, a priest, Bartolom de las Casas, shocked at the treatment of natives in the new world, helped Spain enact the first European law abolishing colonial slavery in the 16th century. • Many “Enlightenment” thinkers/writers were opposed to slavery, arguing rationally that it violated the universal rights of man. Example, Thomas Paine’s “African Slavery in America” (1775). • The majority of the movement’s support and continual work came from various Christian churches both Protestant and Roman Catholic, some dedicating their life to the cause. • Quakers were arguably the earliest and most heavily involved, but also Moravian, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist and Puritan churches and other evangelicals.
In 1741 Pope Benedict XIV condemned slavery generally. In 1815 Pope Pius VII demanded of the Congress of Vienna the suppression of the slave trade. • Parliamentarian William Wilberforce, in England, wrote in his diary when he was 28 that, “God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and Reformation of Morals.” • John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Harriet Beecher Stowe • John Newton, former slave-ship captain, converted, wrote Amazing Grace
End of African Chattel Slavery • Slavery abolished in France and her colonies in 1791 • Slave trade was abolished in England and her colonies in 1807, full emancipation in 1834. • Mexico abolished slavery in 1829. • In United States, finally in 1866 with the end of the Civil War. • (After insurrection, Haiti wins independence in 1804)
Consequences • When the slave trade and slavery was abolished, much of the world had been irrevocably transformed. • African societies depopulated, weakened, some traditional structures altered • Indigenous American peoples pushed out or killed off (mostly by disease) • Racial tension and long-lasting social, economic and legal inequalities remain part of “free” societies. • Especially in United States
Transatlantic Slavery Documentary • Amistad Film Clip (0:00-8:30 minutes):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saWygvAI5RA • Amazing Grace Film Clip (30:00 – 34:30; 45:00 – cont):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBjvQ7GN47I
