Impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Overview
Impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
The Transatlantic slave trade negatively affected the peoples and societies of Western and Central Africa.
Learning Objectives
Evaluate the effects slavery had on economic and social life on African peoples, as well as on African states.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Elmina: a fortified slave castle (feitoria) on the West African coast, now Ghana
Middle Passage: the voyage across the Atlantic from Africa to the Americas, comprised the middle leg of the trans- Atlantic slave trade
Bight of Biafra: the “bend” (bight) of the central West African coast in a southerly direction
Whydah: West African port for exporting enslaved Africans used by the Kingdom of Dahomey in the 18th century
Luanda: West African port and Portuguese colony founded in 1575 (From this port alone an estimated 1.3 million enslaved Africans were exported to the Western Hemisphere, primarily to Brazil in South America.)
Jihad: according to Islamic teaching, Muslims are obligated to “struggle” (jihad), so that they will obey God’s laws (the greater jihad) and non-Muslims will obey God’s laws (the lesser jihad)
Sufism: mystical teaching of Islam that seeks spiritual unity with Allah (God)
Tariqa: the different schools of thought or brotherhoods into which Sufis are divided
Impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade on the Peoples of Africa
The trans-Atlantic slave trade was the largest long-distance forced movement of people in recorded history. From the sixteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, over twelve million (some estimates run as high as fifteen million) African men, women, and children were enslaved, transported to the Americas, and bought and sold primarily by European and Euro-American slaveholders as chattel property used for their labor and skills.
The trans-Atlantic slave trade occurred within a broader system of trade between West and Central Africa, Western Europe, and North and South America. In African ports, European traders exchanged metals, cloth, beads, guns, and ammunition for captive Africans brought to the coast from the African interior, primarily by African traders. Many captives died during the long overland journeys from the interior to the coast. European traders then held the enslaved Africans who survived in fortified slave castles before forcing them into ships for the Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean; some of the slave castles were Elmina in the central region (now Ghana), Goree Island (now in present day Senegal), and Bunce Island (now in present day Sierra Leone).
At first, some Europeans tried to use force in acquiring slaves, but this method proved impracticable. The only workable method was acquiring slaves through trade with Africans, since they controlled all trade into the interior. Typically, Europeans were restricted to trading posts, or feitorias, along the coast. Captives were brought to the feitorias, where they were processed as cargo rather than as human beings. Slaves were kept imprisoned in small, crowded rooms, segregated by sex and age, and “fattened up” if they were deemed too small for transport. They were branded to show what merchant purchased them, that taxes had been paid, and even that they had been baptized as a Christian. The high mortality rate of the slave trade began on the forced march to the feitorias and a slave’s imprisonment within them. The mortality rate continued to climb during the second part of the journey, the Middle Passage.
The Middle Passage, the voyage across the Atlantic from Africa to the Americas, comprised the middle leg of the Atlantic Triangle Trade network, which traded manufactured goods such as beads, mirrors, cloth, and firearms to Africa for slaves. Slaves were then carried to the Americas, where their labor would produce items of the last leg of the Triangle Trade, such as sugar, rum, molasses, indigo, cotton, and rice. The Middle Passage itself was a hellish experience. Slaves were segregated by sex, often stripped naked, chained together, and kept in extremely tight quarters for up to twenty-three hours a day. As many as 12 – 13 percent died during this dehumanizing experience. Although we will likely never know the exact number of people who were enslaved and brought to the Americas, the number is certainly larger than ten million.
Slaves who arrived at various ports in the Americas were then sold in public auctions or smaller trading venues to plantation owners, merchants, small farmers, prosperous tradesmen, and other slave traders. These traders could then transport slaves many miles further to sell on other Caribbean islands or into the North or South American interior. Predominantly European slaveholders purchased enslaved Africans to provide labor that included domestic service and artisanal trades. The majority, however, provided agricultural labor and skills to produce plantation cash crops for national and international markets. Slaveholders used profits from these exports to expand their landholdings and purchase more enslaved Africans, perpetuating the trans-Atlantic slave trade cycle for centuries, until various European countries and new American nations officially ceased their participation in the trade in the nineteenth century (though illegal trans-Atlantic slave trading continued even after national and colonial governments issued legal bans).
Overview of the impact of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa
The trans-Atlantic slave trade impacted the societies of West and East African peoples, who were often engaged in the trafficking of slaves to European slave traders. The sheer human and environmental diversity of the African continent makes it difficult to examine the trade from Africa as a whole. The slave trade did not expand, nor, indeed, decline, in all areas of Africa at the same time. Rather, a series of marked expansions (and declines) in individual regions contributed to a more gradual composite trend for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. Each region that exported slaves experienced a marked upswing in the amount of slaves it supplied for the trans-Atlantic trade and, from that point, the normal pattern was for a region to continue to export large numbers of slaves for a century or more. The three regions that provided the fewest slaves—Senegambia, Sierra Leone, the Windward Coast in West Africa—reached these higher levels for much shorter periods.
By the third quarter of the eighteenth century, all regions had undergone an intense expansion of slave exports. A cargo of slaves could be sought at particular points along the entire Western African coast. As the Brazilian coffee and sugar boom got under way near the end of the eighteenth century, slavers rounded the Cape of Good Hope and traveled as far as southeast Africa to fill their vessels’ holds. But while the slave trade pervaded much of the African coast, its focus was no less concentrated in particular African regions than it was among European carriers. West Central Africa, the long stretch of coast south of Cape Lopez and stretching to Benguela, sent more slaves than any other part of Africa every quarter century with the exception of a fifty-year period between 1676 and 1725. From 1751 to 1850, this region supplied nearly half of the entire African labor force in the Americas; in the half century after 1800, West Central Africa sent more slaves than all the other African regions combined. Overall, the center of gravity of the volume of the trade was located in West Central Africa by 1600. It then shifted northward slowly until about 1730, before gradually returning back to its starting point by the mid-nineteenth century.
Further, slaves left from relatively few ports of embarkation within each African region, even though their origins and ethnicities could be highly diverse. Although Whydah, on the Slave Coast, was once considered the busiest African slaving port on the continent, it now appears that it was surpassed by Luanda, in West Central Africa, and by Bonny, in the Bight of Biafra. These three most active ports together accounted for 2.2 million slave departures. The trade from each of these ports assumed a unique character and followed very different temporal profiles. Luanda alone dispatched some 1.3 million slaves, actively participating in the slave trade from as early as the 1570s—when the Portuguese established a foothold there—through the nineteenth century. Whydah supplied slaves over a shorter period of time and was a dominant port for only thirty years prior to 1727. Bonny, probably the second largest point of embarkation in Africa, sent four out of every five of all the slaves it ever exported in just the eighty years between 1760 and 1840. It is not surprising, therefore, that some systematic links between Africa and the Americas can be perceived.
As research on the issue of trans-Atlantic connections has progressed, it has become clear that the distribution of Africans in the New World is no more random than the distribution of Europeans. Eighty percent of the slaves who went to southeast Brazil were taken from West Central Africa. Bahia traded in similar proportions with the Bight of Benin. Cuba represents the other extreme: no African region supplied more than 28 percent of the slave population in this region. Most American import regions fell between these examples, drawing on a mix of coastal regions that diversified as the trade from Africa grew to incorporate new peoples.
The Kingdom of Dahomey
European merchants and explorers brought many changes to West Africa. In some areas, the slave trade had the effect of breaking down societies. For instance, in the early nineteenth century the great Oyo Yoruba confederation of states began to break down due to civil wars. Conflicts escalated as participants sold slaves to acquire European weapons; these weapons were then used to acquire more slaves, thus creating a vicious cycle. Other groups grew and gained power because of their role in the slave trade, perhaps the most prominent being the West African kingdom of Dahomey.
The Kingdom of Dahomey was established in the 1720s. Dahomey was built on the slave trade; kings used profits from the slave trade to acquire guns, which in turn were used to expand their kingdom by conquest and incorporation of smaller kingdoms. Most slaves were acquired either by trade with the interior or by raids into the north and west into Nigeria. Dahomey also took advantage of the civil wars among the Yoruba to gain access to a ready source of captives.
European trade agents were kept isolated in the main trade port of Whydah. Only a privileged few were allowed into the interior of the kingdom to have an audience with the king; as a result, only a few contemporary sources describe the kingdom. Like his European counterparts, the king of Dahomey was an absolute monarch, possessing great power in a highly centralized state. All trade with Europeans was a royal monopoly, jealously guarded by the kings. The monarchs never allowed Europeans to deal directly with the people of the kingdom, keeping all profits for the state, and allowing this highly militarized state to grow and expand.
Diverse peoples of West Africa
To the northwest of the kingdom of Dahomey, a number of West African peoples were impacted by the slave trade. From the 14th through the 18th century, three smaller political states emerged in the forests along the coast of Africa, below the Songhai Empire. The uppermost groups of states were the Gonja or Volta Kingdoms, located around the Volta River and the confluence of the Niger on what was called the Windward Coast, now Sierra Leone and Liberia. Most of the people in the upper region of the Windward Coast belonged to a common language group, called Gur by linguists. They also held common religious beliefs and a common system of land ownership. They lived in decentralized societies where political power resided in associations of men and women.
Below the Volta lay the Asante Empire in the southeastern geographical area of the contemporary nations of Cote d’Ivoire and Togo, as well as modern Ghana. By the 15th century the Akan peoples, who included the Baule and Twi-speaking Asante, reached dominance in the central region. Akan culture had a highly evolved political system. One hundred years or more before the rise of democracy in North America, the Asante governed themselves through a constitution and assembly. Commercially the Asante-dominated region straddled the African trade routes that carried ivory, gold, and grain. As a result, Europeans called various parts of the region the Ivory Coast, Grain Coast, and Gold Coast. The transatlantic slave trade was fed by the emergence of these Volta Kingdoms and the Asante Empire, which was a contemporary of the Dahomey Kingdom. During the 17th and early 18th centuries African people taken from these regions were predominately among those enslaved in the British North American mainland colonies.
Yorubaland: Introduction
The Ibo people, found around the Bight of Biafra to the southeast of Yorubaland, predominated among those enslaved in the Chesapeake region of Virginia during the late 17th and early 18th century. Yorubaland is the cultural region of the Yoruba people in West Africa. It spans the modern-day countries of Nigeria, Togo, and Benin. Yorubaland lay along the West African coast along the Bights of Benin and Biafra, where the important slave trading station of Bonny was located. Its pre-modern history is based largely on oral traditions and legends. According to Yoruba religion, Olodumare—the Supreme God—ordered Obatala to create the earth, but on Obatala’s way he found palm wine, which he drank and became intoxicated. Therefore, his younger brother Oduduwa took the three items of creation from him, climbed down from the heavens on a chain, and threw a handful of earth on the primordial ocean; he then put a baby rooster on it so that it would scatter the earth, thus creating the land on which Ile-Ife would be built. On account of his creation of the world, Oduduwa became the ancestor of the first divine king of the Yoruba, while Obatala is believed to have created the first Yoruba people out of clay. The meaning of the word “ife” in Yoruba is “expansion.” “Ile-Ife” is therefore in reference to the myth of origin, “The Land of Expansion.”
Ile-Ife
Evidence suggests that as of the 7th century BCE, the African peoples who lived in Yorubaland were not initially known as the Yoruba, though they shared a common ethnicity and language group. By the 8th century CE, Ile-Ife was already a powerful Yoruba kingdom, one of the earliest in Africa south of the Sahara-Sahel. Almost every Yoruba settlement traces its origin to princes of Ile-Ife. As such, Ife can be regarded as the cultural and spiritual homeland of the Yoruba nation. Archaeologically, the settlement at Ife can be dated to the 4th century BCE, with urban structures appearing in the 12th century CE. The Oòni (or king) of Ife today still claim direct descent from Oduduwa.
Ile-Ife was a settlement of substantial size between the 12th and 14th centuries, with houses featuring potsherd pavements. The city is known worldwide for its ancient and naturalistic bronze—as well as stone and terracotta—sculptures, which reached their peak of artistic expression between 1200 and 1400. In the period around 1300 the artists at Ile-Ife developed a refined and naturalistic sculptural tradition in terracotta, stone, and copper alloy—copper, brass, and bronze—many of which appear to have been created under the patronage of King Obalufon II—the man who today is identified as the Yoruba patron deity of brass casting, weaving, and regalia. After this period, production declined as political and economic power shifted to the nearby kingdom of Benin, which, like the Yoruba kingdom of Oyo, developed into a major empire.
The Rise of the Oyo Empire
The mythical origins of the Oyo Empire lie with Oranyan (also known as Oranmiyan), the second prince of Ile-Ife, who made Oyo his new kingdom and became the first oba with the title of Alaafin of Oyo (Alaafin means “owner of the palace” in Yoruba). The oral tradition holds that he left all his treasures in Ile-Ife and allowed another king, named Adimu, to rule there.
Oranyan was succeeded by Oba Ajaka, but he was deposed because he allowed his sub-chiefs too much independence. Leadership was then conferred upon Ajaka’s brother, Shango, who was later deified as the deity of thunder and lightning. Ajaka was restored after Shango’s death. His successor, Kori, managed to conquer the rest of what later historians would refer to as metropolitan Oyo. The heart of metropolitan Oyo was its capital at Oyo-Ile.
Oyo had grown into a formidable inland power by the end of the 14th century, but it suffered military defeats at the hands of the Nupe led by Tsoede. Sometime around 1535, the Nupe occupied Oyo and forced its ruling dynasty to take refuge in the kingdom of Borgu. The Yoruba of Oyo went through an interregnum of eighty years as an exiled dynasty. However, they re-established Oyo to be more centralized and expansive than ever. During the 17th century, Oyo began a long stretch of growth, becoming a major empire. It never encompassed all Yoruba-speaking people, but it was the most populous kingdom in Yoruba history.
The Oyo Empire rose through the outstanding organizational skills of the Yoruba, gaining wealth from trade and its powerful cavalry. It was the most politically important state in the region from the mid-17th century to the late 18th century, holding sway not only over most of the other kingdoms in Yorubaland but also over nearby African states, notably the Fon Kingdom of Dahomey in the modern Republic of Benin to the west.
The Power of Oyo
The key to Yoruba rebuilding Oyo was a stronger military and a more centralized government. Oba Ofinran succeeded in regaining Oyo’s original territory from the Nupe. A new capital, Oyo-Igboho, was constructed, and the original became known as Old Oyo. The next oba, Eguguojo, conquered nearly all of Yorubaland. Despite a failed attempt to seize the Benin Empire sometime between 1578 and 1608, Oyo continued to expand. The Yoruba allowed autonomy to the southeast of metropolitan Oyo, where the non-Yoruba areas could act as a buffer between Oyo and Imperial Benin. By the end of the 16th century, the Ewe and Aja states of modern Benin were paying tribute to Oyo.
The reinvigorated Oyo Empire began raiding southward as early as 1682. By the end of its military expansion, its borders would reach to the coast some 200 miles southwest of its capital. At the beginning, the people were concentrated in metropolitan Oyo. With imperial expansion, Oyo reorganized to better manage its vast holdings within and outside Yorubaland; it was divided into four layers defined by relation to the core of the empire. These layers were Metropolitan Oyo, southern Yorubaland, the Egbado Corridor, and Ajaland.
The Oyo Empire developed a highly sophisticated political structure to govern its territorial domains. Scholars have not determined how much of this structure existed prior to the Nupe invasion. Some of Oyo’s institutions are clearly derivative of early accomplishments in Ife. The Oyo Empire was not a hereditary monarchy, nor an absolute one. While the Alaafin of Oyo was supreme overlord of the people, he was not without checks on his power. The Oyo Mesi (seven councilors of the states) and the Yoruba Earth cult—known as Ogboni—kept the Oba’s power in check. The Oyo Mesi spoke for the politicians while the Ogboni spoke for the people, backed by the power of religion. The power of the Alaafin of Oyo in relation to the Oyo Mesi and Ogboni depended on his personal character and political shrewdness.
Oyo became the southern emporium of the trans-Saharan trade. Exchanges were made in salt, leather, horses, kola nuts, ivory, cloth, and slaves. The Yoruba of metropolitan Oyo were also highly skilled in craft making and iron work. Aside from taxes on trade products coming in and out of the empire, Oyo also became wealthy off the taxes imposed on its tributaries. Oyo’s imperial success made Yoruba a lingua franca almost to the shores of the Volta. Toward the end of the 18th century, the empire acted as a go-between for both the trans-Saharan and trans-Atlantic slave trade. By 1680, the Oyo Empire spanned over 150,000 square kilometers.
Decline
In the second half of the 18th century, dynastic intrigues, palace coups, and failed military campaigns began to weaken the Oyo Empire. Recurrent power struggles and resulting periods without a reigning king created a vacuum, in which the power of regional commanders rose. As Oyo tore itself apart via political intrigue, its vassals began taking advantage of the situation to press for independence. Some of them succeeded, and Oyo never regained its prominence in the region. It became a protectorate of Great Britain in 1888 before further fragmenting into warring factions. The Oyo state ceased to exist as any sort of power in 1896.
Sokoto Caliphate
North of the Oyo state in West Africa, the Sokoto Caliphate arose as a sovereign Sunni Muslim caliphate in West Africa that was founded during the jihad of the Fulani War in 1804 by Usman dan Fodio. It was dissolved when the British conquered the area in 1903 and annexed it into the newly established Northern Nigeria Protectorate.
Developed in the context of multiple independent Hausa Kingdoms, at its height the caliphate linked over 30 different emirates and over 10 million people in the most powerful state in the region and one of the most significant empires in Africa in the nineteenth century. Bringing decades of economic growth throughout the region, the caliphate was a loose confederation of emirates that recognized the Amir al-Mu'minin, the Sultan of Sokoto as their overlord. An estimated 1 million to 2.5 million non-Muslim slaves were captured during the Fulani War. Slaves provided labor for plantations and were provided an opportunity to become Muslims.
Rise of the Sokoto Caliphate
The major power in the region in the 17th and 18th centuries had been the Bornu Empire. However, revolutions and the rise of new forces decreased the power of the Bornu empire, and by 1759 its rulers had lost control over the oasis town of Bilma and access to the Trans-Saharan trade. Vassal cities of the empire gradually became autonomous, and the result by 1780 was a political array of independent states in the region.
The fall of the Songhai Empire in 1591 to Morocco had freed much of central Africa, and a number of Hausa sultanates led by different Hausa aristocracies had grown to fill the void. Three of the most significant to develop were the sultanates of Gobir, Kebbi (both in the Rima River valley), and Zamfara, all in present-day Nigeria. These kingdoms engaged in regular warfare against each other, especially in conducting slave raids. To pay for the constant warfare, they imposed high taxation on their citizens.
The region between the Niger River and Lake Chad was largely populated with the Hausa, the Fulani, and other ethnic groups that had immigrated to the area, such as the Tuareg. Much of the Hausa population had settled in the cities throughout the region and became urbanized. The Fulani, in contrast, had largely remained a pastoral community, herding cattle, goats, and sheep; they populated grasslands between the towns throughout the region. With increasing trade, a good number of Fulani settled in towns, forming a distinct minority.
Much of the population had converted to Islam in the centuries before; however, local pagan beliefs persisted in many areas, especially in the aristocracy. At the end of the 1700s, an increase in Islamic preaching occurred throughout the Hausa kingdoms. A number of the preachers were linked in a shared school of Islamic study. Scholars were invited or traveled to the Hausa lands from Muslim North Africa and joined the courts of some sultanates, such as in Kano. These scholars preached a return to adherence to Islamic tradition.
Usman dan Fodio, an Islamic scholar and an urbanized Fulani, had been actively educating and preaching in the city of Gobir with the approval and support of the Hausa leadership of the city. However, when Yunfa, a former student of dan Fodio, became the sultan of Gobir, he restricted dan Fodio's activities, eventually forcing him into exile in Gudu. A large number of people left Gobir to join dan Fodio, who also began to gather new supporters from other regions. Feeling threatened by his former teacher, Yunfa declared war on dan Fodio on February 21, 1804.
Usman dan Fodio was elected "Commander of the Faithful" (Amir al-Mu'minin) by his followers, marking the beginning of the Sokoto state. Usman dan Fodio then created a number of flag bearers amongst those following him, creating an early political structure of the empire. Declaring a jihad against the Hausa kings, dan Fodio rallied his primarily Fulani “warrior-scholars” against Gobir. Despite early losses at the Battle of Tsuntua and elsewhere, the forces of dan Fodio began taking over some key cities starting in 1805. The Fulani used guerrilla warfare to turn the conflict in their favor and gathered support from the civilian population, which had come to resent the despotic rule and high taxes of the Hausa kings. Even some non-Muslim Fulani started to support dan Fodio. The war lasted from 1804 until 1808, and it resulted in thousands of deaths. The forces of dan Fodio were able to capture the states of Katsina and Daura, the important kingdom of Kano in 1807, and finally Gobir in 1809. In the same year, Muhammed Bello, the son of dan Fodio, founded the city of Sokoto, which became the capital of the Sokoto state. The jihad had created a new slaving frontier on the basis of rejuvenated Islam. By 1900 the Sokoto state had at least 1 million and perhaps as many as 2.5 million slaves, second in size only to the United States (which had 4 million in 1860), among all modern slave societies. However, there was far less of a distinction between slaves and their masters in the Sokoto state.
Expansion of the Sokoto State
From 1808 until the mid-1830s, the Sokoto state expanded, gradually annexing the plains to the west and key parts of Yorubaland. It became one of the largest states in Africa, stretching from modern-day Burkina Faso to Cameroon and including most of northern Nigeria and southern Niger. At its height, the Sokoto state included over 30 different emirates under its political structure.
The political structure of the state was organized with the sultan of Sokoto ruling from the city of Sokoto (and for a brief period under Muhammad Bello from Wurno). The leader of each emirate was appointed by the sultan as the flag bearer for that city but was given wide independence and autonomy.
Much of the growth of the state occurred through the establishment of an extensive system of ribats as part of the consolidation policy of Muhammed Bello—the second Sultan. Ribats were established, founding a number of new cities with walled fortresses, schools, markets, and other buildings. These proved crucial in expansion through developing new cities, settling the pastoral Fulani people, and supporting the growth of plantations which were vital to the economy. By 1837, the Sokoto state had a population of around 10 million people.
Administrative Structure
The Sokoto state was largely organized around a number of mostly independent emirates pledging allegiance to the sultan of Sokoto. The administration was initially built to follow the teachings of the prophet Muhammad as well as the theories of Al-Mawardi found in “The Ordinances of Government.” The Hausa kingdoms prior to Usman dan Fodio had been run largely through hereditary succession. The early rulers of Sokoto, dan Fodio and Bello, abolished systems of hereditary succession, preferring leaders to be appointed by virtue of their Islamic scholarship and moral standing. Emirs were appointed by the sultan; they traveled yearly to pledge allegiance and deliver taxes in the form of crops, cowry shells, and slaves. When a sultan died or retired from the office, an appointment council made up of the emirs would select a replacement. Direct lines of succession were largely not followed, although each sultan claimed direct descent from dan Fodio.
Major administrative authority in the empire was divided between Sokoto and the Gwandu Emirates. In 1815, Usman dan Fodio retired from the administrative business of the state and divided the area taken over during the Fulani War. He appointed his brother Abdullahi dan Fodio to rule in the west in the Gwandu Emirate and appointed his son Muhammed Bello to govern the Sokoto Sultanate. The Emir at Gwandu retained allegiance to the Sokoto Sultanate and spiritual guidance from the sultan, but the emir managed the separate emirates under his supervision independently from the sultan.
The administrative structure of loose allegiances of the emirates to the sultan did not always function smoothly. There was a series of revolutions by the Hausa aristocracy in 1816 – 1817 during the reign of Muhammed Bello, but the sultan ended these by granting the leaders titles to land. There were multiple crises that arose during the 19th century between the Sokoto Sultanate and many of the subservient emirates: notably, the Adamawa Emirate and the Kano Emirate. A serious revolt occurred in 1836 in the city-state of Gobir, which was crushed by Muhammed Bello at the Battle of Gawakuke.
The Sufi community throughout the region proved crucial in the administration of the state. The Tariqa brotherhoods, most notably the Qadiriyya, to which every successive sultan of Sokoto was an adherent, provided a group linking the distinct emirates to the authority of the sultan. Scholars claim that this Islamic scholarship community provided an “embryonic bureaucracy” that linked the cities throughout the Sokoto state.
Economy
After the establishment of the Caliphate, there were decades of economic growth throughout the region, particularly after a wave of revolts in 1816 – 1817. The Sokoto Caliphate established significant trade over the trans-Saharan routes. After the Fulani War, all land in the empire was declared waqf—owned by the entire community. However, the Sultan allocated land to individuals or families, as could an emir. Such land could be inherited by family members but could not be sold. Exchange was based largely on slaves, cowries, or gold. Major crops produced included cotton, indigo, kola and shea nuts, grain, rice, tobacco, and onion.
Slavery remained a large part of the economy, although its operation changed with the end of the Atlantic slave trade in the early 19th century. Slaves were gained through raiding and via markets, just as they had earlier been in West Africa. The founder of the Caliphate allowed slavery only for non-Muslims; this was viewed as a regulation that would bring non-Muslims into the Muslim community. However, the expansion of agricultural plantations under the Caliphate was dependent on slave labor, and around half of the Caliphate's population was enslaved in the 19th century. The plantations were established around the ribats, and large areas of agricultural production took place around the cities of the empire. The institution of slavery was mediated by the lack of a racial barrier among the peoples, and by a complex and varying set of relations between owners and slaves, which included the right to accumulate property by working on their own plots, manumission, and the potential for slaves to convert and become members of the Islamic community. There are historical records of slaves reaching high levels of government and administration in the Sokoto Caliphate. Its commercial prosperity was also based on Islamic traditions, market integration, internal peace, and an extensive export-trade network.
Kingdom of Kongo
The Kongdom of Kongo is significant in exploring the historic contexts of African American heritage because the majority of all Africans enslaved in the Southern English colonies were from West Central Africa. The history and culture of West Central African peoples is thus important to the understanding of African American people in the present because of their high representation among enslaved peoples. It has been estimated that 69% of all African people transported in the Transatlantic Slave Trade between 1517 – 1700 CE were from West Central Africa and, between 1701 – 1800, people from West Central Africa comprised about 38% of all Africans brought to the West to be enslaved. In South Carolina, by 1730, the number of Africans or “salt-water negroes,” mostly from West Central Africa, and “native-born” African Americans, many descended from West Central Africans, exceeded the white population. However, slave traders trnasported the majority of enslaved Africans from this region to Brazil.
To the south of the Bights of Biafra and Benin in West Central Africa, the Portuguese under the leadership of Paulo Dias de Novais established a protectorate over the Kingdom of Kongo and founded a colony at Luanda in 1575, in the modern nation of Angola. The city of Luanda became one of the main ports for the export of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. In the century before Portuguese exploration of West Africa, the Kongo was another kingdom that developed in West Central Africa. In the three hundred years from the date Ne Lukeni Kia Nzinga founded the kingdom until the Portuguese destroyed it in 1665, Kongo was an organized, stable, and politically centralized society based on a subsistence economy.
The Bakongo (the Kongo people), today several million strong, live in the modern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, neighboring Cabinda, and Angola. The present division of their territory into modern political entities masks the fact that the area was once united under the suzerainty of the ancient Kingdom of Kongo—one of the most important civilizations ever to emerge in Africa.
The Kings of the Kongo ruled over an area stretching from the Kwilu-Nyari River, just north of the port of Loango, to the river Loje in northern Angola, and from the Atlantic to the inland valley of the Kwango. The Kongo encompassed an area roughly equaling the miles between New York City and Richmond, Virginia, in terms of coastal distance and between Baltimore and Eire, Pennsylvania, in terms of inland breadth. By 1600, after a century of overseas contact with the Portuguese, the complex Kongo kingdom dominated a region more than half the size of England which stretched from the Atlantic to the Kwango.
The Bakongo shared a common culture with the people of eight adjoining regions, all of whom were either part of the Kongo Kingdom during the transatlantic slave trade or were part of the kingdoms formed by peoples fleeing from the advancing armies of Kongo chiefdoms. In their records slave traders called the Bakongo, as well as the people from the adjoining regions “Congos” and “Angolas,” although they may have been Mbembe, Mbanda, Nsundi, Mpangu, Mbata, Mbamba or Loango.
Ki-Kongo-speaking groups inhabited the West Central African region then known as the Loango Coast—the term used to describe a historically significant area of West Central Africa extending from Cape Lopez or Cape Catherine in Gabon to Luanda in Angola. Within this region, Loango has been the name of a kingdom, a province, and a port. Once linked to the powerful Kongo Kingdom, the Loango Kingdom was dominated by the Villi—a Kongo people who migrated to the coastal region during the 1300s. Loango became an independent state probably in the late 1300s or early 1400s. Along with two other Kongo-related kingdoms, Kakongo, and Ngoyo (present day Cabinda), it became one of the most important trading states north of the Congo River.
A common social structure was shared by people in the coastal kingdoms of Loango, Kakongo, Ngoyo, Vungu, and the Yombe chiefdoms, as well as the Teke federation in the east and the Nsundi societies on either side of the Zaire River from the Matadi/Vungu area in the west to Mapumbu of Malebo pool in the east. The provincial regions, districts, and villages each had chiefs and a hierarchical system through which tribute flowed upward to the King of the Kongo and rewards flowed downward. Each regional clan or group had a profession or craft, such as weaving, basket making, potting, and iron working. Tribute and trade consisted of natural resources, agricultural products, textiles, other material cultural artifacts, and cowries shells.
The “Kongos” and “Angolas” shared a “ lingua franca ” or trade language that allowed them to communicate. They also shared other cultural characteristics, such as matrilineal social organization and a cosmology or world view expressed in their religious beliefs and practices. Woman-and-child figures are visual metaphors for both individual and societal fertility among Kongo Peoples; these images reflect their matrilineal social organization—the tracing of kinship through the mother’s side of the family. The mother and child was a common theme representing a woman who has saved her family line from extinction. Matrilineal social organization and certain cosmological beliefs expressed in religious ceremonies and funerary practices continue to be evident in the culture of rural South Carolina and Florida African Americans, who are descendants of enslaved Africans.
Before the 1920s, male and female figures carved in stone served as Kongo funerary monuments commemorating the accomplishments of the deceased. Kongo mortuary figures are noted for their seated postures, expressive gestures and details of jewelry and headwear that indicate the deceased’s status. The leopard claw hat is worn by male rulers and women acting as regents.
European slave trade led to internal wars, enslavement of multitudes, introduction of major political upheavals, migrations, and power shifts from greater to lesser-centralized authority of Kongo and other African societies. Most notably the slave trade destroyed old lineages and kinship ties upon which the basis of social order and organization was maintained in African societies.
Christianity in the Kingdom of Kongo
The conversion of Kongo to Christianity was one of the more remarkable accomplishments of the early modern Catholic church. Within a few years of contact with the Portuguese, following a brief exchange of people, King Nzinga a Nkuwu of Kongo was baptized in 1491 as João I. His son Afonso (1509 – 1542) then established the church in the kingdom and created an educational network that trained the local nobility in Christian religious concepts, financing its operations and keeping it firmly under his control. During his reign, locally educated Kongolese elites carried the faith to literally every corner of his domains, so that when he died in 1542 it could rightfully be said that Kongo was a Christian country. Missionaries from Portugal played a remarkably small role in the propagation of Christianity, primarily being valued for their capacity to administer the sacraments, as this could only be done by ordained priests. Afonso expected even this dependency upon a foreign clergy to end, and Rome cooperated with him by elevating his son, Henrique, to the status of bishop. However, this did not produce a long-lasting tradition of local ordination. In 1534, the Portuguese crown claimed the right to appoint bishops for Kongo, and subsequently kept the numbers of priests low, while failing to promote significant numbers of Kongolese to holy orders. Thus, Kongo was in the interesting position for most of its history as a Christian kingdom of hosting foreign priests primarily to administer the sacraments while keeping lay people in charge of Christian education throughout the realm.
The Jesuits became involved in Kongo shortly after Afonso’s death, with a mission that began in 1548. Afonso’s successor Diogo I (1545 – 61) sent a Kongolese man of whole or partial Portuguese descent named Diogo Gomes, educated in Kongo’s school system, as an ambassador to Portugal to request missionaries. Gomes contacted the Jesuits, accompanied them to Kongo, and then joined the order himself, taking the name Cornélio Gomes. He was probably responsible for the linguistic content of the first Kikongo catechism (a summary of church teachings), published in 1556 (but no longer extant). The catechism likely included the linguistic equations between Christianity and local religion that would characterize Kongo’s own interpretation of the faith. The mission ran into political difficulties with Diogo over matters of precedence and some local customs. It lasted only a few years.
When they came with the colonial mission of Paulo Dias de Novais in 1575, the Jesuits played a key role in the evangelization of the Portuguese colony of Angola and its surrounding Kimbundu-speaking neighbors. Their experience is an example of evangelization in a colonial setting in Africa, and it contrasts with Jesuit approaches to conversion in the neighboring and independent Kingdom of Kongo. They drew heavily on previous experiences in the Kingdom of Kongo, which had itself become Christian a century earlier and pioneered a marriage between African religion and Christian spirituality. When Jesuits came to Kongo in 1548 they found an existing established church and added relatively little to it before they left following political disputes. When Dias de Novais came to found Angola, he initially was militarily dependent on Kongo’s assistance and the Jesuits, too, were dependent on the Kongolese version of Christianity, which is clear in their choice of vocabulary in the Kimbundu catechism that they sponsored and oversaw in 1628. However, the colonial situation in Angola made the Jesuits more willing to accept the idea of conversion by the sword, and they were notably less tolerant of African religious inclusions in Angola than in Kongo.
It was from contact with Kongo’s southern neighbor of Ndongo that the Jesuits would come both as missionaries to non-Christians and as part of the Portuguese conquest, but their engagement was always tempered by contact with Kongo. Engagement with Ndongo began in 1560 when Portugal dispatched Paulo Dias de Novais and four Jesuits to the kingdom in response to King Ngola Kiluanje’s request for missionaries. The mission did not make much progress and Dias de Novais soon returned to Portugal, leaving only the Jesuit Francisco de Gouveia to labor on in Ndongo, where he made some converts and established a small community of Christians. While Gouveia enjoyed considerable influence, he never managed to convert the king. When Dias de Novais returned to Angola in 1575, it was with an army, more Jesuits, and a charter to subjugate and to conquer the Kingdom of Angola.
Kongo would play an important role in the initial conquest of Angola, for Dias de Novais’s mission had begun largely because Kongo’s king Álvaro I (1568 – 87) agreed to allow Portugal to use his territory at Luanda as a base in compensation for the help Portugal had given him in quelling an uprising by a mysterious group of people called “Jagas.” In addition to relying on Kongo for a base, Novais offered services to Kiluanje kia Ndambi, King of Ndongo, as mercenaries and assisted him in putting down rebellions of his own. But in 1579, upon hearing of Dias de Novais’s charter and commission to conquer Angola, Ndongo’s king expelled the Portuguese from his lands.
In the aftermath of this disaster, the Portuguese fell back on their alliance with Kongo, but Kongo then retracted its official support of the Portuguese colony following the defeat of the Kongolese army by Ndongo in 1580. However, Kongo continued to play an important role for some time both in Portuguese politics in Angola and in the way in which Christianity developed there. Even without official support from the king, many Kongolese noblemen privately helped the Portuguese. According to one report of 1588, some 4,000 Kongolese were serving in the Portuguese forces, and Andrew Battell, a captive Englishman serving in Portuguese forces around 1600, noted that it was a regular practice to bring a Kongolese nobleman to come with a troop of soldiers and to serve as an organizer for the new Christian community, as well as to be an intermediary between the surrendered Mbundu lord and the Portuguese assigned to collect tribute from him.
In addition to receiving assistance from these noble allies, Dias de Novais also built support by taking in disgruntled local rulers from the fringe areas of Ndongo’s control along the Kwanza and Bengo Rivers. The Jesuits successfully converted some of these local rulers to Christianity. Conversion was considered a step toward their becoming Portuguese vassals, a change of status that was required by Portugal both for the allied and the conquered in the region. Baltazar Barreira, one of the leading Jesuits of the mission, described the baptism in 1581 of the first of these allied nobles, named Songa, as occurring in a large ceremony that was conducted by the Jesuits with great pomp and which included a number of Kongolese participants. In addition to an installation ceremony, there was also a ritualistic burning of country “idols.” These ceremonious conversions, which were made quickly and with considerable political expediency, characterized the advance of Portuguese rule in Angola.
If military aid from Kongo was important, the country played an even more substantial role in the Christian evangelization of Angola. The dependency of the Angola mission on Kongo was symbolically marked in 1596 when Rome elevated Kongo’s capital of São Salvador as the seat of the bishop of Kongo and Angola, placing the nascent Angolan church under the nominal control of Kongo, where the bishop’s cathedral was located. Kongo’s ascendancy in religious matters was more symbolic than real, and Portugal claimed the right to appoint bishops of this new see.
This joint alliance of the Jesuits with both the Kongo church and Kongo’s military was sharply challenged in the early seventeenth century. Thanks to some key alliances, Portugal was able to recover the military initiative and made major conquests in Ndongo, driving the king from the capital and forcing him to come to terms. But in the process they also made incursions into Kongo and in 1622 launched a major, but unsuccessful, invasion. From that point onward, Kongo became the sworn enemy of Portugal and formal ecclesiastical relations were strained to a breaking point.
The new estrangement between Kongo and Angola meant that the Angolan church would not benefit from Kongo’s long-established network of schools and schoolmasters who led theological instruction in every corner of the country, just at the time when the Portuguese were conquering territory that was far from the area around Kongo’s coastal land of Luanda. The Jesuits, along with Portuguese secular priests, were thus responsible for building a network themselves in Angola, and they never won the sort of general adherence to Christianity found in Kongo.
Despite the substantial differences in their political situations, missionaries both in Kongo and the Kimbundu-speaking areas of Angola developed Christian theologies that essentially incorporated large components of indigenous spirituality. These two syncretic systems could then potentially have been translated into other African religious systems and carried across the Atlantic, where so many Central Africans served as catechists. The role of Kongolese clergy and lay catechists in developing a syncretic form of Christianity in conquered Angola may just as well have served the same purpose in the America of the slaves.
The conversion of Angolans had its reflection in the religion of slaves in Brazil. The same wave of Portuguese conquest and colonization that had led to the formation of Kimbundu Christianity also brought thousands of slaves to Brazil; there, in the most successful of the sixteenth-century captaincies of Bahia and Pernambuco, the Jesuits took the lead not only in converting the indigenous Brazilians but also the African slaves who came among them. In this, they employed the language of their early catechisms. Jesuits in Pernambuco, for example, studied Kimbundu and learned to read and even to compose in the language, as sixteenth-century sources reveal. Both Christian and traditional religious ideas and practices crossed the Atlantic with these slaves.
Queen Ana Nzinga
African peoples fiercely resisted Portuguese expansion under the leadership of the Queen Ana Nzinga. In 1624, she inherited the throne of Ndongo, just to the east of the Portuguese colony of Luanda. To put a stop to slave raids in her kingdom and attacks by rival African states on her kingdom, she agreed to an alliance with the Portuguese and to become baptized as a Christian in 1626. When the slave raids continued and the Portuguese reneged on this alliance, Ana Nzinga and her supporters migrated into the African interior away from Portuguese control and formed the new kingdom of Matamba. The new kingdom waged war on the Portuguese and became a haven for runaway slaves. In 1641, the queen even formed an alliance with the Dutch, whose forces conquered and briefly occupied Luanda before the Portuguese were able to recover and retake the colony. Ironically by the time of her death in 1663, the queen was rebaptized as a Christian, while her kingdom, Matamba became a major supplier of slaves to the Portuguese by securing slaves from outlying regions. Ana Nzinga’s life story illustrates that indigenous Africans were not simply passive agents in the African slave trade.
Kingdoms of Madagascar
On the island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa, a number of states emerged that were heavily involved in the slave trade. Among the many fragmented communities that populated Madagascar, the Sakalava, Merina, and Betsimisaraka seized the opportunity to unite disparate groups and establish powerful kingdoms under their rule.
Diverse Populations and the Rise of Great Kingdoms
Over the past 2,000 years, Madagascar has received waves of settlers of diverse origins, including Austronesian, Bantu, Arab, South Asian, Chinese, and European populations. Centuries of intermarriages created the Malagasy people, who primarily speak Malagasy, an Austronesian language with Bantu, Malay, Arabic, French, and English influences. Most of the genetic makeup of the average Malagasy, however, reflects an almost equal blend of Austronesian and Bantu influences, especially in coastal regions. Other populations often intermixed with the existent population to a more limited degree or have sought to preserve a separate community from the majority Malagasy.
By the European Middle Ages c 1200 CE, over a dozen predominant ethnic identities had emerged on the island, typified by rule under a local chieftain. Leaders of some communities, such as the Sakalava, Merina, and Betsimisaraka, seized the opportunity to unite these disparate groups and establish powerful kingdoms under their rule. The kingdoms increased their wealth and power through exchanges with European, Arab, and other seafaring traders, whether they were legitimate vessels or pirates.
Sakalava
Madagascar’s western clan chiefs began to extend their power through trade with their Indian Ocean neighbors: first with Arab, Persian, and Somali traders who connected Madagascar with East Africa, the Middle East, and India; later with European slave traders. The wealth created in Madagascar through trade produced a state system ruled by powerful regional monarchs known as the Maroserana. These monarchs adopted the cultural traditions of subjects in their territories and, thereby, expanded their kingdoms. They took on divine status, and new nobility and artisan classes were created. Madagascar functioned as a contact port for the other Swahili seaport city-states, such as Sofala, Kilwa, Mombasa, and Zanzibar. By c. 1200 CE, large chiefdoms began to dominate considerable areas of the island. Among these were the Betsimisaraka alliance of the eastern coast and the Sakalava chiefdoms of the Menabe (centered in what is now the town of Morondava) and of the Boina (centered in what is now the provincial capital of Mahajanga). The influence of the Sakalava extended across the area that is now the provinces of Antsiranana, Mahajanga, and Toliara. According to local tradition, the founders of the Sakalava kingdom were Maroseraña—or Maroseranana, “those who owned many ports”—princes from the Fiherenana (now Toliara). They quickly subdued the neighboring princes, starting with the southern ones, in the Mahafaly area. The true founder of Sakalava dominance was Andriamisara. His son Andriandahifotsy (c. 1610 – 1658) extended his authority northwards, past the Mangoky River. His two sons, Andriamanetiarivo and Andriamandisoarivo, extended gains further up to the Tsongay region (now Mahajanga). At about that time, the empire started to split, resulting in a southern kingdom (Menabe) and a northern kingdom (Boina). Further splits followed, despite continued extension of the Boina princes’ reach into the extreme north, in Antankarana country.
Betsmiraka
Like the Sakalava to the west, today’s Betsimisaraka are composed of numerous ethnic sub-groups that formed a confederation in the early 18th century. Through the late 17th century, the various clans of the eastern seaboard were governed by chieftains who typically ruled over one or two villages. Around 1700, the Tsikoa clans began uniting around a series of powerful leaders. Ramanano, the chief of Vatomandry, was elected in 1710 as the leader of the Tsikoa—“those who are steadfast”—and initiated invasions of the northern ports. A northern Betsimisaraka zana-malata (a person of mixed native and European origin) named Ratsimilaho led a resistance to these invasions and successfully united his compatriots around this cause. In 1712, he forced the Tsikoa to flee, and was elected king of all the Betsimisaraka and, at his capital at Foulpointe, was given a new name: Ramaromanompo—“Lord Served by Many.” He established alliances with the southern Betsimisaraka and the neighboring Bezanozano, extending his authority over these areas by allowing local chiefs to maintain their power while offering tributes of rice, cattle, and slaves. By 1730, he was one of the most powerful kings of Madagascar. By the time of his death in 1754, his moderate and stabilizing rule had provided nearly forty years of unity among the diverse clans within the Betsimisaraka political union. He also allied the Betsimisaraka with the other most powerful kingdom of the time, the Sakalava of the west coast, through marriage with Matave, the only daughter of Iboina king Andrianbaba.
Ratsimilaho’s successors gradually weakened the union, leaving it vulnerable to the growing influence and presence of European and particularly French settlers, slave traders, missionaries, and merchants. The fractured Betsimisaraka kingdom was easily colonized in 1817 by Radama I, king of Merina. The subjugation of the Betsimisaraka in the 19th century left the population relatively impoverished.
Merina
The Merina emerged as the politically dominant group over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries. Oral history traces the emergence of a united kingdom in the central highlands of Madagascar—a region called Imerina—back to early 16th century king Andriamanelo. By 1824, sovereigns in his line had conquered nearly all of Madagascar, particularly through the military strategy and ambitious political policies of Andrianampoinimerina (c. 1785 – 1810) and his son Radama I (1792 – 1828). The kingdom’s contact with British and later French powers led local leaders to build schools and a modern army based on European models.
The Merina oral histories mention several attacks by Sakalava raiders against their villages as early as the 17th century and during the entire 18th century. However, it seems that the term was used generically to design all the nomadic peoples in the sparsely settled territories between the Merina country and the western coast of the island. The Merina king Radama I’s wars with the western coast of the island ended in a fragile peace sealed through his marriage with the daughter of a king of Menabe. Though the Merina were never to annex the two last Sakalava strongholds of Menabe and Boina (Mahajanga), the Sakalava never again posed a threat to the central plateau, which remained under Merina control until the French colonization of the island in 1896.
The Merina kingdom reached the peak of its power in the early 19th century. In a number of military expeditions, large numbers of non-Merina were captured and used for slave labor. By the 1850s, these slaves were replaced by imported slaves from East Africa, mostly of Makoa ethnicity. Until the 1820s, the imported slave labor benefited all classes of Merina society, but in the period of 1825 to 1861 a general impoverishment of small farmers led to the concentration of slave ownership in the hands of the ruling elite. The slave-based economy led to a constant danger of a slave revolt, and for a period in the 1820s all non-Merina males captured in military expeditions were killed rather than enslaved for fear of an armed uprising. There was a brief period of increased prosperity in the late 1870s, as slave imports began to pick up again, but it was cut short with the abolishment of slavery under French administration in 1896. Due to the influence of British missionaries, the Merina upper classes converted entirely to Protestantism in the mid-19th century, following the example of their queen, Ranavalona II.
Primary Sources The African Slave Trade
The three following primary sources offer insights on the experiences of enslaved African peoples when the Transatlantic slave trade was in operation.
John Barbot
John Barbot, an agent for the French Royal African Company, made at least two voyages to the West Coast of Africa, in 1678 and 1682.
"PREPOSSESSED OF THE OPINION...THAT EUROPEANS ARE FOND OF THEIR FLESH"
By John Barbot
Those sold by the Blacks are for the most part prisoners of war, taken either in fight, or pursuit, or in the incursions they make into their enemies territories; others stolen away by their own countrymen; and some there are, who will sell their own children, kindred, or neighbours. This has been often seen, and to compass it, they desire the person they intend to sell, to help them in carrying something to the factory by way of trade, and when there, the person so deluded, not understanding the language, is old and deliver'd up as a slave, notwithstanding all his resistance, and exclaiming against the treachery....
The kings are so absolute, that upon any slight pretense of offences committed by their subjects, they order them to be sold for slaves, without regard to rank, or possession....
Abundance of little Blacks of both sexes are also stolen away by their neighbours, when found abroad on the roads, or in the woods; or else in the Cougans, or corn- fields, at the time of the year, when their parents keep them there all day, to scare away the devouring small birds, that come to feed on the millet, in swarms, as has been said above.
In times of dearth and famine, abundance of those people will sell themselves, for a maintenance, and to prevent starving. When I first arriv'd at Goerree, in December, 1681, I could have bought a great number, at very easy rates, if I could have found provisions to subsist them; so great was the dearth then, in that part of Nigritia.
To conclude, some slaves are also brought to these Blacks, from very remote inland countries, by way of trade, and sold for things of very inconsiderable value; but these slaves are generally poor and weak, by reason of the barbarous usage they have had in traveling so far, being continually beaten, and almost famish'd; so inhuman are the Blacks to one another....
The trade of slaves is in a more peculiar manner the business of kings, rich men, and prime merchants, exclusive of the inferior sort of Blacks.
These slaves are severely and barbarously treated by their masters, who subsist them poorly, and beat them inhumanly, as may be seen by the scabs and wounds on the bodies of many of them when sold to us. They scarce allow them the least rag to cover their nakedness, which they also take off from them when sold to Europeans; and they always go bare- headed. The wives and children of slaves, are also slaves to the master under whom they are married; and when dead, they never bury them, but cast out the bodies into some by place, to be devoured by birds, or beasts of prey.
This barbarous usage of those unfortunate wretches, makes it appear, that the fate of such as are bought and transported from the coast to America, or other parts of the world, by Europeans, is less deplorable, than that of those who end their days in their native country; for aboard ships all possible care is taken to preserve and subsist them for the interest of the owners, and when sold in America, the same motive ought to prevail with their masters to use them well, that they may live the longer, and do them more service. Not to mention the inestimable advantage they may reap, of becoming christians, and saving their souls, if they make a true use of their condition....
Many of those slaves we transport from Guinea to America are prepossessed with the opinion, that they are carried like sheep to the slaughter, and that the Europeans are fond of their flesh; which notion so far prevails with some, as to make them fall into a deep melancholy and despair, and to refuse all sustenance, tho' never so much compelled and even beaten to oblige them to take some nourishment: notwithstanding all which, they will starve to death; whereof I have had several instances in my own slaves both aboard and at Guadalupe. And tho' I must say I am naturally compassionate, yet have I been necessitated sometimes to cause the teeth of those wretches to be broken, because they would not open their mouths, or be prevailed upon by any entreaties to feed themselves; and thus have forced some sustenance into their throats....
As the slaves come down to Fida from the inland country, they are put into a booth, or prison, built for that purpose, near the beach, all of them together; and when the Europeans are to receive them, every part of every one of them, to the smallest member, men and women being all stark naked. Such as are allowed good and sound, are set on one side, and the others by themselves; which slaves so rejected are there called Mackrons, being above thirty five years of age, or defective in their limbs, eyes or teeth; or grown grey, or that have the venereal disease, or any other imperfection. These being set aside, each of the others, which have passed as good, is marked on the breast, with a red- hot iron, imprinting the mark of the French, English, or Dutch companies, that so each nation may distinguish their own, and to prevent their being chang'd by the natives for worse, as they are apt enough to do. In this particular, care is taken that the women, as tenderest, be not burnt too hard.
The branded slaves, after this, are returned to their former booth, where the factor is to subsist them at his own charge, which amounts to about two- pence a day for each of them, with bread and water, which is all their allowance. There they continue sometimes ten or fifteen days, till the sea is still enough to send them aboard; for very often it continues too boisterous for so long a time, unless in January, February and March, which is commonly the calmest season: and when it is so, the slaves are carried off by parcels, in bar- canoes, and put aboard the ships in the road. Before they enter the canoes, or come out of the booth, their former Black masters strip them of every rag they have, without distinction of men or women; to supply which, in orderly ships, each of them as they come aboard is allowed a piece of canvas, to wrap around their waist, which is very acceptable to those poor wretches....
If there happens to be no stock of slaves at Fida, the factor must trust the Blacks with his goods, to the value of a hundred and fifty, or two hundred slaves; which goods they carry up into the inland, to buy slaves, at all the markets, for above two hundred leagues up the country, where they are kept like cattle in Europe; the slaves sold there being generally prisoners of war, taken from their enemies, like other booty, and perhaps some few sold by their own countrymen, in extreme want, or upon a famine; as also some as a punishment of heinous crimes: tho' many Europeans believe that parents sell their own children, men their wives and relations, which, if it ever happens, is so seldom, that it cannot justly be charged upon a whole nation, as a custom and common practice....
One thing is to be taken notice of by sea- faring men, that this Fida and Ardra slaves are of all the others, the most apt to revolt aboard ships, by a conspiracy carried on amongst themselves; especially such as are brought down to Fida, from very remote inland countries, who easily draw others into their plot: for being used to see mens flesh eaten in their own country, and publick markets held for the purpose, they are very full of the notion, that we buy and transport them to the same purpose; and will therefore watch all opportunities to deliver themselves, by assaulting a ship's crew, and murdering them all, if possible: whereof, we have almost every year some instances, in one European ship or other, that is filled with slaves.
Source: John Barbot, "A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea," in Thomas Astley and John Churchill, eds., Collection of Voyages and Travels (London, 1732).
Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa)
Olaudah Equiano also known as Gustavus Vassa vividly recounts the shock and isolation that he felt during the Middle Passage to Barbados and his fear that the European slavers would eat him.
"A MULTITUDE OF BLACK PEOPLE...CHAINED TOGETHER"
Their complexions, differing so much from ours, their long hair and the language they spoke, which was different from any I had ever heard, united to confirm me in this belief. Indeed, such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave of my own country. When I looked around the ship and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted my fate. Quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. When I recovered a little, I found some black people about me, and I believe some were those who had brought me on board and had been receiving their pay. They talked to me in order to cheer me up, but all in vain. I asked them if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces and long hair. They told me I was not.
I took a little down my palate, which, instead of reviving me as they thought it would, threw me into the greatest consternation at the strange feeling it produced, having never tasted such liquor before. Soon after this, the blacks who had brought me on board went off and left me abandoned to despair.
I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore, which I now considered as friendly. I even wished for my former slavery in preference to my present situation, which was filled with horrors of every kind.
There I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life. With the loathesomeness of the stench and the crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything. I now wished for the last friend, Death, to relieve me.
Soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables and on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands and laid me across the windlass and tied my feet while the other flogged me severely. I had never experienced anything of this kind before. If I could have gotten over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side, but I could not. The crew used to watch very closely those of us who were not chained down to the decks, lest we should leap into the water. I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. This indeed was often the case with myself.
I inquired of these what was to be done with us. They gave me to understand we were to be carried to these white people's country to work for them. I then was a little revived, and thought if it were no worse than working, my situation was not so desperate. But still I feared that I should be put to death, the white people looked and acted in so savage a manner. I have never seen among my people such instances of brutal cruelty, and this not only shown towards us blacks, but also to some of the whites themselves.
One white man in particular I saw, when we were permitted to be on deck, flogged so unmercifully with a large rope near the foremast that he died in consequence of it, and they tossed him over the side as they would have done a brute. This made me fear these people the more, and I expected nothing less than to be treated in the same manner.
I asked them if these people had no country, but lived in this hollow place? They told me they did not but came from a distant land. "Then," said I, "how comes it that in all our country we never heard of them?"
They told me because they lived so far off. I then asked where were their women? Had they any like themselves? I was told they had.
"And why do we not see them" I asked. They answered, "Because they were left behind."
I asked how the vessel would go? They told me they could not tell, but there was cloth put upon the masts by the help of the ropes I saw, and then vessels went on, and the white men had some spell or magic they put in the water when they liked in order to stop the vessel when they liked.
I was exceedingly amazed at this account, and really thought they were spirits. I therefore wished much to be from amongst them, for I expected they would sacrifice me. But my wishes were in vain- - for we were so quartered that it was impossible for us to make our escape.
At last, when the ship we were in had got in all her cargo, they made ready with many fearful noises, and we were all put under deck, so that we could not see how they managed the vessel.
The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time...some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air. But now that the whole ship's cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential. The closeness of the place and the heat of the climate, added to the number of the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us.
This produced copious perspirations so that the air became unfit for respiration from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died- - thus falling victims of the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, which now became insupportable, and the filth of the necessary tubs [toilets] into which the children often fell and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women and the groans of the dying rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.
Happily perhaps for myself, I was soon reduced so low that it was necessary to keep me almost always on deck and from my extreme youth I was not put into fetters. In this situation I expected every hour to share the fate of my companions, some of whom were almost daily brought upon the deck at the point of death, which I began to hope would soon put an end to my miseries. Often did I think many of the inhabitants of the deep much more happy than myself. I envied them the freedom they enjoyed, and as often wished I could change my condition for theirs. Every circumstance I met with, served only to render my state more painful and heightened my apprehensions and my opinion of the cruelty of the whites.
One day, when we had a smooth sea and moderate wind, two of my wearied countrymen who were chained together (I was near them at the time), preferring death to such a life of misery, somehow made through the nettings and jumped into the sea. Immediately another quite dejected fellow, who on account of his illness was suffered to be out of irons, followed their example. I believe many more would very soon have done the same if they had not been prevented by the ship's crew, who were instantly alarmed. Those of us that were the most active were in a moment put down under the deck, and there was such a noise and confusion among the people of the ship as I never heard before to stop her and get the boat out to go after the slaves. However, two of the wretches were drowned, but they got the other and afterwards flogged him unmercifully for thus attempting to prefer death to slavery.
I can now relate hardships which are inseparable from this accursed trade. Many a time we were near suffocation from the want of fresh air, which we were often without for whole days together. This, and the stench of the necessary tubs, carried off many.
Source: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African (London, 1789).
Alexander Falconbridge
Alexander Falconbridge, a surgeon aboard slave ships and later the governor of a British colony for freed slaves in Sierra Leone, offers a vivid account of Middle Passage
"THE MEN NEGROES...ARE...FASTENED TOGETHER...BY HANDCUFFS"
From the time of the arrival of the ships to their departure, which is usually about three months, scarce a day passes without some Negroes being purchased and carried on board; sometimes in small and sometimes in large numbers. The whole number taken on board depends on circumstances. In a voyage I once made, our stock of merchandise was exhausted in the purchase of about 380 Negroes, which was expected to have procured 500...
The unhappy wretches thus disposed of are bought by the black traders at fairs, which are held for that purpose, at the distance of upwards of two hundred miles from the sea coast; and these fairs are said to be supplied from an interior part of the country. Many Negroes, upon being questioned relative to the places of their nativity, have asserted that they have travelled during the revolution of several moons (their usual method of calculating time) before they have reached the places where they were purchased by the black traders.
At these fairs, which are held at uncertain periods, but generally every six weeks, several thousands are frequently exposed to sale who had been collected from all parts of the country for a very considerable distance around....During one of my voyages, the black traders brought down, in different canoes, from twelve to fifteen hundred Negroes who had been purchased at one fair. They consisted chiefly of men and boys, the women seldom exceeding a third of the whole number. From forty to two hundred Negroes are generally purchased at a time by the black traders, according to the opulence of the buyer, and consist of all ages, from a month to sixty years and upwards. Scarcely any age or situation is deemed an exception, the price being proportionable. Women sometimes form a part of them, who happen to be so far advanced in their pregnancy as to be delivered during their journey from the fairs to the coast; and I have frequently seen instances of deliveries on board ship....
When the Negroes, whom the black traders have to dispose of, are shown to the European purchasers, they first examine them relative to their age. They then minutely inspect their persons and inquire into the state of their health; if they are inflicted with any disease or are deformed or have bad eyes or teeth; if they are lame or weak in the joints or distorted in the back or of a slender make or narrow in the chest; in short, if they have been ill or are afflicted in any manner so as to render them incapable of much labor. If any of the foregoing defects are discovered in them they are rejected. But if approved of, they are generally taken on board the ship the same evening. The purchaser has liberty to return on the following morning, but not afterwards, such as upon re- examination are found exceptionable....
Near the mainmast a partition is constructed of boards which reaches athwart the ship. This division is called a barricado. It is about eight feet in height and is made to project about two feet over the sides of the ship. In this barricado there is a door at which a sentinel is placed during the time the Negroes are permitted to come upon the deck. It serves to keep the different sexes apart; and as there are small holes in it, where blunderbusses are fixed and sometimes a cannon, it is found very convenient for quelling the insurrections that now and then happen....
The men Negroes, on being brought aboard the ship, are immediately fastened together, two and two, by handcuffs on their wrists and by irons riveted on their legs. They are then sent down between the decks and placed in an apartment partitioned off for that purpose. The women also are placed in a separate apartment between the decks, but without being ironed. An adjoining room on the same deck is appointed for the boys. Thus they are all placed in different apartments.
But at the same time, however, they are frequently stowed so close, as to admit of no other position than lying on their sides. Nor with the height between decks, unless directly under the grating, permit the indulgence of an erect posture; especially where there are platforms, which is generally the case. These platforms are a kind of shelf, about eight or nine feet in breadth, extending from the side of the ship toward the centre. They are placed nearly midway between the decks, at the distance of two or three feet from each deck. Upon these the Negroes are stowed in the same manner as they are on the deck underneath.
In each of the apartments are placed three or four large buckets, of a conical form, nearly two feet in diameter at the bottom and only one foot at the top and in depth of about twenty- eight inches, to which, when necessary, the Negroes have recourse. It often happens that those who are placed at a distance from the buckets, in endeavoring to get to them, tumble over their companions, in consequence of their being shackled. These accidents, although unavoidable, are productive of continual quarrels in which some of them are always bruised. In this distressed situation, unable to proceed and prevented from getting to the tubs, they desist from the attempt; and as the necessities of nature are not to be resisted, ease themselves as they lie. This becomes a fresh source of boils and disturbances and tends to render the condition of the poor captive wretches still more uncomfortable. The nuisance arising from these circumstances is not infrequently increased by the tubs being too small for the purpose intended and their being emptied but once every day. The rule for doing so, however, varies in different ships according to the attention paid to the health and convenience of the slaves by the captain.
About eight o'clock in the morning the Negroes are generally brought upon deck. Their irons being examined, a long chain, which is locked to a ring- bolt fixed in the deck, is run through the rings of the shackles of the men and then locked to another ring- bolt fixed also in the deck. By this means fifty or sixty and sometimes more are fastened to one chain in order to prevent them from rising or endeavoring to escape. If the weather proves favorable they are permitted to remain in that situation till four or five in the afternoon when they are disengaged from the chain and sent below.
The diet of the Negroes while on board, consists chiefly of horse beans boiled to the consistency of a pulp; of boiled yams and rice and sometimes a small quantity of beef or pork. The latter are frequently taken from the provisions laid in for the sailors. They sometimes make use of a sauce composed of palm- oil mixed with flour, water and pepper, which the sailors call slabber- sauce. Yams are the favorite food of the Eboe [Ibo] or Bight Negroes, and rice or corn of those from the Gold or Windward Coast; each preferring the produce of their native soil....
They are commonly fed twice a day; about eight o'clock in the morning and four in the afternoon. In most ships they are only fed with their own food once a day. Their food is served up to them in tubs about the size of a small water bucket. They are placed round these tubs, in companies of ten to each tub, out of which they feed themselves with wooden spoons. These they soon lose and when they are not allowed others they feed themselves with their hands. In favorable weather they are fed upon deck but in bad weather their food is given them below. Numberless quarrels take place among them during their meals; more especially when they are put upon short allowance, which frequently happens if the passage form the coast of Guinea to the West Indies islands proves of unusual length. In that case, the weak are obliged to be content with a very scanty portion. Their allowance of water is about half a pint each at every meal. It is handed round in a bucket and given to each Negro in a pannekin, a small utensil with a straight handle, somewhat similar to a sauce- boat. However, when the ships approach the islands with a favourable breeze, the slaves are no longer restricted.
Upon the Negroes refusing to take sustenance, I have seen coals of fire, glowing hot, put on a shovel and placed so near their lips as to scorch and burn them. And this has been accompanied with threats of forcing them to swallow the coals if they any longer persisted in refusing to eat. These means have generally had the desired effect. I have also been credibly informed that a certain captain in the slave- trade, poured melted lead on such of his Negroes as obstinately refused their food.
Exercise being deemed necessary for the preservation of their health they are sometimes obliged to dance when the weather will permit their coming on deck. If they go about it reluctantly or do not move with agility, they are flogged; a person standing by them all the time with a cat- o'- nine- tails in his hands for the purpose. Their music, upon these occasions, consists of a drum, sometimes with only one head; and when that is worn out they make use of the bottom of one of the tubs before described. The poor wretches are frequently compelled to sing also; but when they do so, their songs are generally, as may naturally be expected, melancholy lamentations of their exile from their native country.
The women are furnished with beads for the purpose of affording them some diversion. But this end is generally defeated by the squabbles which are occasioned in consequence of their stealing from each other.
On board some ships the common sailors are allowed to have intercourse with such of the black women whose consent they can procure. And some of them have been known to take the inconstancy of their paramours so much to heart as to leap overboard and drown themselves. The officers are permitted to indulge their passions among them at pleasure and sometimes are guilty of such excesses as disgrace human nature....
The hardships and inconveniences suffered by the Negroes during the passage are scarcely to be enumerated or conceived. They are far more violently affected by seasickness than Europeans. It frequently terminates in death, especially among the women. But the exclusion of fresh air is among the most intolerable. For the purpose of admitting this needful refreshment, most of the ships in the slave trade are provided, between the decks, with five or sick air- ports on each side of the ship of about five inches in length and four in breadth. In addition, some ships, but not one in twenty, have what they denominate wind- sails. But whenever the sea is rough and the rain heavy is becomes necessary to shut these and every other conveyance by which the air is admitted. The fresh air being thus excluded, the Negroes' rooms soon grow intolerable hot. The confined air, rendered noxious by the effluvia exhaled from their bodies and being repeatedly breathed, soon produces fevers and fluxes which generally carries of great numbers of them.
During the voyages I made, I was frequently witness to the fatal effects of this exclusion of fresh air. I will give one instance, as it serves to convey some idea, though a very faint one, of their terrible sufferings....Some wet and blowing weather having occasioned the port- holes to be shut and the grating to be covered, fluxes and fevers among the Negroes ensued. While they were in this situation, I frequently went down among them till at length their room became so extremely hot as to be only bearable for a very short time. But the excessive heat was not the only thing that rendered their situation intolerable. The deck, that is the floor of their rooms, was so covered with the blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in consequence of the flux, that it resembled a slaughter- house. It is not in the power of the human imagination to picture a situation more dreadful or disgusting. Numbers of the slaves having fainted, they were carried upon deck where several of them died and the rest with great difficulty were restored....
As very few of the Negroes can so far brook the loss of their liberty and the hardships they endure, they are ever on the watch to take advantage of the least negligence in their oppressors. Insurrections are frequently the consequence; which are seldom expressed without much bloodshed. Sometimes these are successful and the whole ship's company is cut off. They are likewise always ready to seize every opportunity for committing some acts of desperation to free themselves from their miserable state and notwithstanding the restraints which are laid, they often succeed.
Source: Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (London, 1788).
Attributions
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Alexander Ives Bortolot, "Women Leaders in African History: Ana Nzinga, Queen of Ndongo" https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pwmn_2/hd_pwmn_2.htm