Landes law of first contact is that on first contact, the stronger society will always take advantage of the weaker one, if it can get away with it.
Africa south of the Sahara has endured many hardships. Sometimes it feels like Africa still has the God of the Old Testament, whose purview was slavery, physical violence and sexual violence.
DEFINITIONS
Slave — A slave is a person who is forced to work without pay and obey the slave owner. Slaves are forced to work against their will.
Slavery — Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regard to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, to benefit the slave owner. The slave’s location of work and residence is dictated by the party that holds them in bondage.
Slave Trade — This is the procuring, transporting, and selling of human beings as slaves..
Arab Slave Trade —- Started around 1,300 years ago, a full 700 years before the Atlantic slave trade. The Arab slave trade was a period when Arab people or countries traded slaves. It was often associated with the Islamic countries, the Muslim world. This slavery went on until the twentieth century.
Atlantic or Transatlantic Slave Trade — This started in the mid-1400s. The transatlantic slave trade was an oceanic trade in African men, women, and children which lasted from the mid-sixteenth century until the 1860s. European traders loaded African captives at dozens of points on the African coast.
Saltwater Slave Trade — Same as Atlantic Slave Trade
Local or Kinship Slavery — Local slavery existed in Africa and in many other parts of the world before the introduction of chattel slavery. The local or kinship slavery, consisted mainly of slaves captured during tribal wars. Others enslaved those who could not pay back debts. Africa’s population has never been rampant, so the slaves were used to increase agricultural productivity. Others were used for domestic chores. Sometimes slaves were paid as settlements for a claim against a family or even paid as dowry. This was very different from the chattel slavery of the Europeans, Americans and Arabs.
Chattel Slavery — Chattel slavery is a system where people are treated as property, or chattel, and can be bought and sold. It was a common form of slavery throughout history, and was practiced in many places, including the United States, Roman Empire, and Greece.
Slave Pump — This refers to a set of circumstances that made the continuation of a slave trade possible, because it created a need for more slaves. The new slaves were for additional labour or to replace slaves who were too old too sick, or too dead to continue working. These slave pumps changed the trajectory of slave-trading in Africa. The pumps ensured that there was no surfeit of slaves clogging up the supply chain from Africa to Arabia, North Africa and the Americas.
THE ARAB SLAVE TRADE
The reasons — Ultimate cause is Islam. The Camel was the proximate cause.
Other causes — Skin tone. Though Islam condemns racism it condoned slavery of kaffirum, non-believers, who were mostly blacks.
Overarching cause — Money, the love of which is the root of all evil.
The means — Superior weapons, to subdue or give to surrogates. Then the camel, seafaring dhows, and collusion by Africans, most of who converted to islam, were all in the mix.
How The Evil Caper Unfolded.
The Arabs came from Arabia to North Africa, bearing the news of Mohammed the Prophet and Islam. The introduction of the camel to North Africa allowed the Arabs to overrun the Berbers. With the camel, the Arabs were able to cross the Sahara into the Sahel areas and into the forest and savannah areas of Africa.
In Arabia, after the advent of Islam, it was no longer allowed to enslave people who had converted to Islam. So, an acute shortage of free labour ensued there. At that time, slavery was a norm in Arabia and surrounding areas, including Christendom. All those in Africa, who were not converts of Islam, were regarded as infidels and could be enslaved. Indeed, millions were enslaved to alleviate the shortage of slaves/free labour in Arabia and North Africa. The Arabs also took women from all parts of Africa, as domestic workers or as concubines or to add to their harems.
The Arabs had guns, which most African societies did not have. They used those guns to enslave or gave them to surrogates to enslave for them. If a tribe refused, they would be enslaved or massacred.
Indian Ocean Slave Pump — This slave pump sucked slaves from the interior of Africa to the East African coast and spewed them onwards to Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Malagasy, the Mascarene Islands – now known as Mauritius – Reunion, India, and even China!
Trans-Sahara-Mediterranean Slave Pump — This pump sucked African slaves to Islamic North Africa, then on to Arabia.
The Trans-Sahara-Red Sea Slave Pump — This pump sucked African slaves to North Africa, the Levant, the Arabian peninsula, Persia and Turkey.
Main Culprits– ALL Arab countries, plus Turkey and Iran. The Sultan of Oman run the notorious East African operation based in Zanzibar
The Figures – No one was keeping a head count and so there are all sorts of different figures about the number of slaves taken by the Arabs. By some reckoning, between five to ten million slaves were taken from Africa by Arabs. Since for each slave who arrived alive in this trade at least two died, then between ten to twenty million slaves died.
