Slavery

1. Outline and label the five divisions of Africa by direction: North, West, East, Central, and Southern. Slavery Upper Guinea Coast, Lower Guinea Coast, Bight of Biafra, and West Central Africa

2. Geography • Enslaved Africans mostly came from a region stretching from the Senegal in the north to Angola in the south. • Bight—curve in a coast or the bay formed by that curve

3. Geography • The five coasts for slave exportation (N to S) • Upper Guinea Coast: Senegal, Gambia and Sierra Leone • Windward(or Ivory) Coast: Central Liberia • Lower Guinea Coast: • Gold Coast: (Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana) • Bight of Benin (Nigeria and Cameroon) • Bight of Biafra: Gabon • West Central Africa: Angola Place the circles from the map on the next slide on the political map of Africa and label them.

5. Geography • The Angolan coast supplied nearly half the slaves sent to the Americas. • Label the world map with the countries, trade routes, and percents

6. Religion • Indigenous religions are not based on sacred books, but rather that people learn about god and his wishes through other means, like nature • Most African areas relied on medicinal healers and spiritualists • Today the three main religions are: Christianity, Muslim, and Hinduism Picture: Over 70 medicinal healers in Zimbabwe are attending a 6 month university course combining traditional and modern medicine.

7. Religion • Most African religions recognized a variety of supernatural beings. • Religious practice focused on contact between this world and the other world, typically through: • divination (using signs, like reading tea leaves or Taro cards, to see the future) • prophecy (predictions of future events), • mediumship (speaking with the spirits through a gifted person) Religious masks from the Congo region Vid Short--Indigenous Religions: African Shaman Performing Levitation

8. Political and Economic Organization • Atlantic Africa was divided into states (political units) and nations (cultural units). Map: African states 1453-1648 AD

9. Political and Economic Organization • some states were quite large, others were tiny, consisting • capital town of a few thousand people • a dozen villages under its control. • In the 1600s, 70 percent of the people lived in states with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.

10. Political and Economic Organization • the rich and powerful in Africa were not landowners; African law did not recognize the right to own, sell, or rent land as property. • Private wealth usually came from control of others—customers, workers or farmers, wives, and slaves. Black: Polygyny legal Gray: Unknown Purple: Polygyny illegal but law is often ignored Blue: Polygyny and polygamy illegal Polygyny: more than one wife; polygamy can be more than one male or female spouse

11. African Slavery • African law recognized slavery and the right of owners to buy and sell slaves long before the Europeans arrived. Map: Trade routes in 1300

12. African Slavery African Population in millions. If the area of Africa is 11.67 million square miles, what was the population density of Africa in 1800? _____ In 1850? _____ In 2014? ________ Compare the populations of the US and Africa with the world. 1800 Current population of Africa: 1.033 billion 1850 1900 1950 Current US population: 317 million Current world pop: 7.1 billion

13. African Slavery • The growth of slavery in Africa was encouraged by two things: • Low population density, so people needed workers • Absence of the concept of property in land Article: Reasons for Slavery, or Attempts to Justify Slavery Ultimately, the real reasons humans enslave others are: Meet with your team and come up with the two most powerful reasons people enslave each other.

14. African Slavery • In ancient and medieval times slave exports were second only to the export of gold • In the New World slaves were used mostly in agriculture. In Africa they were employed as: • Agricultural workers • Soldiers • Servants • officials. • Most were considered part of the family

15. African Slavery • The majority of slaves sold to Europeans were not African slaves but recent war captives or victims captured by slave hunters and court cases. Slave sale in MA in 1630 Prisoners on an African River • Even under harsh chattel slavery (a system under which people are bought and sold), manumission (freedom) was possible for a large number of slaves • Slaves could keep any wages earned and buy their freedom.

16. African Slavery • Multi-generational slavery was uncommon. Children born to women slaves were FREE. CNN Freedom Project—West African Slave Trade

17. African Slavery • Right after capture, African slaves usually worked under supervision. • Then many became "allotment slaves," working days on the master's lands, evenings and days off on their own. • Later they mostly worked their own land in exchange for a fixed obligation like what it took to feed an adult male for a year. In the U.S. after the slaves were freed, this was called “sharecropping.” A New Economic Slavery: Sharecropping

18. Slave Trade • During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, many of those enslaved, perhaps a majority, were kept in Africa. • The Atlantic slave trade carried about two to three men for every woman. Middle Passage: A Film

19. Slave Trade • The slave trade reduced the adult male population by about 20 percent, dramatically altering the ratio of working adults to dependents and of adult men to adult women. • One result of unbalanced sex ratios was to encourage polygyny.

20. Slave Trade • Another result was to reduce traditional male forms of work • hunting and fishing • livestock rearing • clearing fields • digging up roots. • The result was a less protein rich diet and a reduction in agricultural productivity.

21. Slave Trade • Slaves sent to the New World • 14 percent children under 14 • 30 percent female adults • 56 percent male adults

22. Myth vs. Fact • Myth: Many slaves were captured with nets.
Fact: There is no evidence that slaves were captured with nets; war was the most important source of enslavement. • Myth: Kidnapping was the usual means of enslavement.
Fact: War was the most important source of enslavement; it would be incorrect to reduce all of these wars to slave raids.

23. Myth vs. Fact • Myth: The Middle Passage stripped enslaved Africans of their cultural heritage and transformed them into docile, passive figures wholly receptive to the cultural inputs of their masters.
Fact: Slaves engaged in at least 250 shipboard rebellions. • Myth: Most slaves were imported into what is now the United States
Fact: Well over 90 percent of slaves from Africa were imported into the Caribbean and South America

24. Myth vs. Fact • Myth: Europeans arrived in the New World in far larger numbers than did Africans.
Fact: Before 1820, the number of Africans outstripped the combined total of European immigrants by a ratio of 3, 4, or 5 to 1. • Myth: Masters assigned names to slaves or slaves imitated masters' systems of naming.
Fact: In fact, slaves were rarely named for owners. Naming patterns appear to have reflected African practices, such as the custom of giving children "day names" (after the day they were born) and "name-saking," such as naming children after grandparents.

25. Myth vs. Fact • Myth: Slaves were brainwashed and stunned into submission and rarely resisted slavery.
Fact: Resistance took a variety of forms ranging from day-to-day resistance, economic bargaining, running away and maroonage, and outright rebellions

26. Bibliography • Notes taken from: Digital History • Pictures from Wikipedia and Wiki Commons • Graph on slide 12 from the University of Botswana History Department