L'Europa, 1450-1789: Enciclopedia del diritto d'autore prima età moderna mondo 2004 La Gale Group Inc. schiavitù e la tratta degli schiavi schiavitù e la tratta degli schiavi. La schiavitù è esistito nel corso della storia. La maggior parte delle società hanno provveduto per esso all'interno della loro struttura, e la maggior parte dei popoli sono stati fonti di schiavi in una sola volta o in un altro. L'espansione della schiavitù era spesso un sottoprodotto della costruzione di un impero come potenza dominante trasformato i suoi prigionieri di guerra in schiavi attraverso la conquista. Tuttavia, da impero dell'impero c'era una notevole variazione degli schiavi status giuridico e le prospettive per incorporazione nella comunità politica allo stesso modo, all'interno di una data società o stato, ci potrebbe essere una vasta gamma di stato, del lavoro, e le opportunità tra i diversi schiavi. Infatti, una definizione precisa di schiavitù che si adatta tutte le società è difficile presentare. La maggior parte delle forme di quota di schiavitù, le seguenti caratteristiche: (1) gli schiavi hanno l'obbligo di vivere la loro vita nel servizio perpetuo al loro padrone, un obbligo che solo il maestro (o lo Stato) possono sciogliere (2) slave sono sotto il potere completo del loro padroni, anche se lo stato o comunità possono imporre alcune restrizioni sul trattamento maestri dello slave (3) gli schiavi sono di proprietà, che possono essere venduti o passava in eredità al Masters discrezione e (4) la condizione di schiavitù viene trasmesso da genitore a figlio. Gli storici spesso distinguono tra le società di schiavi e società con gli schiavi, basati sulla centralità della schiavitù per l'economia. Roma antica e le colonie piantagioni del Brasile. i Caraibi, e il Sud America sono state le società di schiavi durante il periodo moderno, la maggior parte dei paesi europei e molte colonie latine e nordamericane erano solo le società con slave. La domanda di chi può legittimamente essere schiavi in qualsiasi società spesso si riduce ad una definizione di chi costituisce un insider e che è fondamentalmente esclusi da una società. Nel corso del periodo moderno, queste linee spostato dal religioso al categorie somatiche, creando così la relativamente nuova categoria di gara. Così, del XV secolo i cristiani giustificato l'asservimento dei non cristiani per motivi fondamentalmente religiose. In alcuni contrasto con gli imperi russo e ottomano, dal XVII secolo, tutte le potenze dell'Europa occidentale definiti gli africani come particolarmente destinati alla schiavitù, un parere che è stato spesso giustificato dal racconto biblico della maledizione figli Noahs. Come illuminazione secolarismo e il materialismo sono diventati influenti nei secoli XVIII e XIX, un nuovo discorso biologicamente giustificata del razzismo è stata rafforzata dai pronunciamenti della scienza. Alcuni teorici, compresi quelli nelle nazioni che non ha legami diretti con la tratta degli schiavi, abbracciato questi atteggiamenti. Ad esempio, il tedesco Illuminismo pensatore Immanuel Kant ha citato con approvazione David Hume caratterizzazione dei neri come altamente superstiziosa, eccessivamente loquace, intelligenza manca, e ungifted nelle arti. Varie forme di razzismo x2014 x2014 scientifico, istituzionale, culturale e sopravvissero l'istituzione della schiavitù e persistono oggi in Europa. RADICI DELLA PRIMA schiavitù moderna Mentre la schiavitù è stata una caratteristica significativa della società antiche greche e del Medio Oriente, le radici dirette di Europe precoce traffico moderno in slave possono essere ricondotti a Roma antica e al primo Islam. Al culmine della sua potenza (c. 200 aC x2013 200 CE), la repubblica romana dipendeva forse 2 milioni di schiavi (o circa un terzo della sua popolazione) per eseguire ogni tipo di lavoro, dalla produzione agricola e dei servizi domestici di comando militare e consulenza politica. Molti di questi schiavi sono stati presi dalle comunità e le culture al imperi periferia e messo in servizio in cui, attraverso le reti commerciali, ci siamo trasferiti in tutte le terre sotto il controllo imperiale romana. Con il crollo dell'Impero Romano alla fine del IV secolo, la schiavitù è diventato molto più marginale nella maggior parte delle regioni europee. Mentre alcune famiglie hanno continuato a mantenere un piccolo numero di schiavi, spesso come domestici, diffusa schiavitù agricola in generale ha dato modo di servitù, specialmente in Europa settentrionale e occidentale (tra cui l'Inghilterra. Scandinavia. E Francia). La differenza principale tra i servi e schiavi era che servi erano legati alla x2014 terra che non potevano essere scambiati via dalla proprietà feudale di cui sono nati. Schiavi, al contrario, erano di proprietà beni mobili che potevano essere acquistati e venduti la loro esistenza legale è stata mediata attraverso i loro padroni. In 1086, quando Guglielmo il Conquistatore ha ordinato l'indagine delle terre di EnglandcommonlyknownastheDomesday (Doomsday) Libro, solo circa il 10 per cento della popolazione inglese è stato contato come schiavi, e la percentuale ha continuato a diminuire dopo. Le regioni con legami più forti con l'impero bizantino (per esempio, la Russia) e musulmana del nord Africa (per esempio, la Sicilia) hanno avuto un maggiore accesso ai mercati di schiavi, e la schiavitù hanno continuato come una caratteristica secondaria ma persistente delle società medievali dell'Europa meridionale e orientale. L'Islam, essendo religiosamente e linguisticamente distinto da Europa cristiana, ampliato un sistema schiavistico preesistente nel settimo e ottavo secolo durante le sue principali conquiste da Europe penisola iberica (Spagna e Portogallo) fino alla frontiera della Cina. L'impero islamico, come Roma, ha permesso per l'integrazione delle persone conquistati nella propria popolazione attraverso vari meccanismi di assimilazione, tra cui la schiavitù. La lingua araba x2014 la lingua dominante delle x2014 originali musulmani forniti unità burocratica e culturale per le élite, mentre molte lingue vernacolari e costumi persistevano. Eppure la religione dell'Islam ha dato giuridico, culturale, linguistica e l'unità x2014 almeno a livello amministrativo elite x2014 ad un impero vario e cosmopolita. La schiavitù sotto regimi islamici, tuttavia, differiva dalla schiavitù romana in un certo modo. In primo luogo, non è stato un elemento centrale nella produzione agricola, come la schiavitù era stata quella della penisola italiana la maggior parte degli schiavi tenuti dai musulmani sono stati impiegati nel servizio domestico. In secondo luogo, la grande maggioranza degli schiavi nei primi stati islamici erano donne e bambini x2014 prigionieri maschi di guerra che hanno resistito sono stati uccisi più probabilità di Enslaved. Tuttavia, gli schiavi di sesso maschile è venuto per essere utilizzati da migliaia come soldati e amministratori di imperi successivi, come quelli dei Mamelucchi dell'Egitto e degli ottomani. Un'altra caratteristica importante della schiavitù islamica, dal punto di vista dell'Europa moderna, è lo sviluppo di percorsi di schiavi trans-sahariane e un discorso emergente associando oscurità con la schiavitù. Mentre i musulmani schiavi una gamma estremamente diversificata dei popoli, dalla biondi e dagli occhi azzurri caucasici al ebano pelle Zanj dell'Africa orientale, un tropo letterario emerso circa 675 x2013 725 sotto la dinastia degli Omayyadi, connotando di inferiorità a quelli con la pelle scura. Il mondo musulmano ha anche fornito la penisola iberica con gli schiavi, in modo che entro il completamento della Reconquista nel XV secolo, ci fu una comunità stabile di diverse migliaia di neri dell'Africa sub-sahariana discendenza africana nelle principali città del Portogallo e Castiglia. Costanzo II (esclusa 337 x2013 361), l'imperatore cristiano di Roma, aveva decretato in 339 che gli ebrei non era permesso di tenere i cristiani come schiavi. Durante il Medioevo una nuova politica blocco l'asservimento dei compagni cristiani x2014 forse ad imitazione di divieti musulmani simili contro l'asservimento dei correligionari x2014 è servito a vincere pagani convertiti alla espansione ordine feudale cristiana. La maggior parte delle lingue dell'Europa occidentale parole per schiavo sono etimologicamente correlata slave (inglese), Sklave (tedesco), esclave (francese), Esclavo (spagnolo), Schiavo (italiano), e anche le saqaliba arabi sono tutti basati sulla slava etnica termine e si riferiscono ai popoli dei Balcani meridionali che erano una delle principali fonti di schiavi durante i periodi antichi e medievali. EUROPEI come schiavi gli europei non erano solo schiavisti nel periodo moderno erano anche schiavi. Da almeno dal XVI secolo, migliaia di europei sono stati catturati dai corsari musulmani, o lungo le coste del Mar Mediterraneo. Oceano Atlantico. o del Mare del Nord e venduto nei mercati di schiavi da Alessandria, Egitto a Meknes, in Marocco. Seamen, pescatori, commercianti, viaggiatori e soldati sono stati i più vulnerabili ai predoni via mare. Sulla terra, con l'espansione dell'Impero Ottomano in Europa, le famiglie contadine erano altrettanto soggetta alla schiavitù come lo erano i soldati combattenti. Alcuni prigionieri cristiani convertiti all'Islam e fatti una nuova vita per se stessi, gli altri sono stati riscattati dai loro parenti, sono fuggiti, o sono morti in cattività. Alcuni sono stati premuti in servizio come galeotti sulle navi musulmane. Molti osservatori hanno notato che il loro trattamento non era meglio sulle galere francesi, italiano o spagnolo. In generale, la schiavitù nell'Impero Ottomano è stato riferito più mite che la schiavitù altrove, e la manomissione (la liberazione individuale di schiavi) era una forma comune, anche atteso, di carità per i musulmani osservanti. Nella seconda metà del XVII secolo, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, il primo ministro di Frances re Luigi XIV (governata 1643 x2013 1715), ha ampliato un sistema di galeotti come punizione per diversi tipi di reati. Più di 1.500 dissidenti protestanti sono stati condannati alla galera francesi. Nello stesso periodo, l'imperatore asburgico Leopoldo I (che regnò dal 1658 x2013 1705), in collaborazione con Luigi XIV, ha sospeso la libertà religiosa garantita dalla costituzione ungherese e inviati alcuni ministri protestanti sessanta per essere venduti alle galere spagnole ventisei prigionieri sopravvissuti sono stati rilasciati nel 1676. il sistema penale cucina francese continuò fino al 1748. Nello stesso periodo, tra la fine del XVII secolo fino alla fine del XVIII, il sequestro di prigionieri di guerra a scopo di estorsione o di lavoro è diventato un appuntamento fisso della guerra tra la Russia e imperi ottomano. Tuttavia, in contrasto con gli ottomani, i cui schiavi erano prevalentemente stranieri non musulmani, la Russia ha attirato la maggior parte dei suoi schiavi dalla sua stessa popolazione nazionale, molti dei quali si sono venduti per sfuggire la fame o di indigenza. La schiavitù persistette in Russia fino agli inizi del secolo XVIII, quando lo stato zarista ridefinito schiavi domestici come servi in modo che essi possano essere imponibile. La linea di demarcazione tra servo e schiavo, tuttavia, è stata spesso offuscata nella pratica. La schiavitù in Europa ha continuato ottomana in forma ridotta attraverso il XIX secolo fino alla sua abolizione formale, alla fine del secolo. EUROPA E transatlantico degli schiavi Le radici di Europa colonie di schiavi in America si possono trovare in Portugals esplorazione della costa occidentale dell'Africa del XV secolo. Su conquistare la fortezza musulmana di Ceuta in Nord Africa nel 1415, i governanti portoghesi hanno rivolto la loro attenzione ai beni commerciali vengono consegnati attraverso il deserto del Sahara. Costeggiando la costa, esploratori regalmente sponsorizzati speravano di rintracciare le cessioni di oro e altri beni preziosi per la loro fonte, bypassando così i costi dei commercianti intermediari. Verso la metà 1450, i portoghesi avevano cominciato ad acquistare schiavi lungo la costa dell'Africa occidentale, che stabilisce i contratti con Wolof, Mandinga e governanti Bati per lo scambio di oro, cotone, avorio e schiavi per i cavalli, stoffa rossa, e ferro. Negli anni 1480, il portoghese ha stabilito i XF4 entrep ts di S XE3 o tom xE9 e Elmina a servire le rotte commerciali regolari da Congo e Benin. Allo stesso tempo, secondo il modello medievale della produzione di zucchero in Nord Africa e diverse isole del Mediterraneo, le piantagioni portoghesi stabiliti nelle isole atlantiche di Madeira, le isole di Capo Verde, e le Canarie, e li hanno lavorato sempre con gli schiavi importati dall'Africa . Anche se alcuni schiavi africani arrivati in America con conquistatori spagnoli fin dal 1502, la maggior parte delle esigenze di manodopera coloniale nel Nuovo Mondo sono stati inizialmente accolti da amerindi. I governanti spagnoli replicano il sistema tributo feudale di encomienda nelle loro colonie del Nuovo Mondo, convincenti amerindi per la produzione di punti metallici come il mais, fagioli, e cotone, così come prodotti di lusso, tra cui oro e argento. A causa di questo sfruttamento, predisposizione alle malattie del Vecchio Mondo, e forse, in alcune regioni, una crisi ambientale di impoverimento del suolo, le popolazioni indigene è morto a prezzi spaventosi: nel bacino messicano densamente popolato, il 90 per cento della popolazione è morto all'interno di un secolo di conquiste . Una confluenza di questa carenza di manodopera con forniture pronte di schiavi africani provenienti dai XF4 entrep ts nelle regioni dell'Africa occidentale e centrale del Senegal. Elmina (lungo la Gold Coast), Angola. e Congo facilitato colonie spagnole sperimentazione con l'importazione di schiavi africani ai Caraibi, Messico e Perù. In 1580, alcuni 74.000 africani erano stati spediti dall'Africa per le Americhe, mentre alcuni 232.000 spagnolo e portoghese sinistra per le Americhe durante lo stesso periodo. Dal 1580 fino al 1700, la proporzione relativa di emigrazione dall'Africa e dall'Europa invertito. Circa 1.531.000 africani lasciato l'Africa per le Americhe (anche se in media del 20 per cento sono morti durante il Middle Passage estenuante), mentre nello stesso tempo solo circa 944.000 europei si avventurò per il Nuovo Mondo, soprattutto per le colonie spagnole e britanniche. Fondamentale in questa trasformazione è stata l'introduzione della coltivazione dello zucchero, prima in portoghese Brasile, poi nei Caraibi. A differenza di tabacco, un altro prodotto esotico coltivato in America per l'esportazione verso l'Europa, lo zucchero necessario un grande forza lavoro per elaborare la canna da zucchero maturo sul posto prima che decomporsi. fioriere coloniali hanno cercato economia di scala consolidando grandi piantagioni, con bande di 20 a 200 schiavi che soggiornano fino tutta la notte per alimentare i mulini di zucchero proto-industriale e tendono le vasche di raffinazione. Anche nel XVII secolo, gli olandesi hanno preso su gran parte dell'impero portoghese, conquistando stazioni commerciali in Africa e in Brasile e confiscare il redditizio commercio transatlantico di schiavi. Nel frattempo, inglese e coloni francesi hanno cominciato a invadere il monopolio coloniale iberica in Nord America. le Antille e della Guyana costiera. In un primo momento, la merce favorita in Virginia e nei Caraibi era tabacco, coltivato soprattutto con servi a contratto provenienti da Europa, ma a poco a poco questo è stato superato nei tropici da zucchero e indaco, ed è stato completato da caffè e cotone. Queste colture accelerato la domanda coloniale come schiavi in modo che 1700-1760, alcune 2.775.000 africani sono stati spediti per il Nuovo Mondo, mentre solo 891.000 gli europei partì per la stessa destinazione. In questo modo, un triangolo di commercio è emerso, che collega i continenti di Europa, Africa e Americhe. mercanti di schiavi provenienti da Portogallo, Paesi Bassi. Inghilterra e la Francia hanno portato le materie prime e manufatti (come il ferro, il vetro, le pistole, stoffa, e cavalli) per i commercianti africani. governanti africani hanno beneficiato di questo commercio, guerra contro i vicini o che richiedono tributo sotto forma di schiavi, che, a sua volta, scambiati per gli europei per gli articoli di lusso esotici essi forniti. commercianti europei imballati schiavi in barche a vela per il Middle Passage noto, che in media due o tre mesi nel XVI secolo, ma potrebbe essere completato in appena 20 a 40 giorni da parte del XIX secolo. I sopravvissuti del viaggio transatlantico sono stati venduti a schiavisti per lo zucchero, l'oro, il tabacco e il rum, che a loro volta sono stati venduti in Europa. Il commercio portoghese regalmente sponsorizzato è stato eclissato nel XVII secolo dagli olandesi, inglesi, francesi e società commerciali, ognuno con i privilegi nazionali esclusivi, o carte, agli scambi tra regioni specifiche. Eppure molti coloni chafed contro queste restrizioni mercantilistiche, e il contrabbando era diffusa, soprattutto al di fuori dei centri commerciali centrali. Entro la metà del XVIII secolo, l'inglese e il francese ha dominato la tratta atlantica degli schiavi. La schiavitù e la economia dell'Europa L'effetto di Atlantic schiavitù Europes economie è stata una questione di notevole dibattito dal 1944 la pubblicazione di Eric Williamss Capitalismo e schiavitù. Come parte del suo argomento circa l'ascesa e la caduta della schiavitù atlantica, Williams ha affermato che il sistema schiavistico Atlantico ha creato la domanda di esportazioni, la rete commerciale, e uno dei principali flussi di capitali che hanno alimentato Inghilterra del rivoluzione industriale. reclami Williamss sono state contestate, tuttavia, da una generazione di storici, come Roger Anstey e Seymour Drescher, che hanno sostenuto che i profitti dal commercio degli schiavi non sono mai stati sufficienti per essere una fonte significativa di capitale per la rivoluzione industriale, e che lo schiavo colonie, invece di generare notevoli profitti, erano in realtà una perdita netta per la metropoli. Ancora, i complessi rapporti economici stabiliti all'interno e tra l'Europa, l'Africa e le Americhe durante il periodo moderno rendono difficile isolare sviluppi economici Europes dal complesso degli schiavi americani. Alcuni storici continuano a sostenere che gli schiavi africani erano responsabili di circa il 75 per cento dei prodotti americani che hanno alimentato la rivoluzione commerciale del XVII e XVIII secolo, che a sua volta ha contribuito alla Gran Bretagna s urbanizzazione, creazione di mercati, produzione di esportazione, e passare a industriale produzione dopo 1750. Altri suggeriscono che la concentrazione del capitale, l'innovazione tecnologica, e l'organizzazione del lavoro per l'efficienza nelle piantagioni di zucchero coloniali erano modelli per l'industrializzazione delle industrie tessili europee. La schiavitù e la legge LEGGE slave, come per legge, più in generale, comprende il diritto positivo (statuti), giurisprudenza (filosofia del diritto), e la giurisprudenza. Mentre la conoscenza degli statuti è necessario conoscere lo stato prescrittivo di schiavi in qualsiasi giurisdizione, una migliore comprensione della loro condizione attuale, in ogni comunità può essere trovata attraverso un esame dei casi giudiziari riguardanti schiavi, così come quelle riguardanti gli ex schiavi o liberti. legge schiavo romano, codificata nel Giustiniani VI secolo Corpus iuris civilis, influenzato sistemi giuridici europei più continentale, anche se, come la schiavitù è diventato economicamente importante colonie americane la legge è stata modificata in modo da riflettere gli interessi locali. Diverse caratteristiche del diritto romano sono stati fondamentali per giuristi successive, comprese le pratiche Manumission, stato civile e diritto penale. Per alcuni scopi, la legge trattata schiavi come se fossero esseri umani, per gli altri, come le cose. diritto romano facilitato manomissioni, o liberazione individuale di schiavi, e l'ingresso schiavi nella popolazione come cittadini. Anche se gli schiavi affrancato non godono di tutti i diritti dei cittadini romani nati liberi, i loro figli nati liberi hanno fatto. Schiavi, come figli nati liberi o figlie di cittadini romani, non potevano possedere proprietà di per sé fino alla morte del masterpatriarch. Tuttavia, il diritto romano ha permesso la creazione di un fondo di risparmio, o peculio, che x2014 se tecnicamente la proprietà del padrone x2014 è stato somministrato dallo slave entro i limiti dettati dal master. Così gli schiavi sono stati autorizzati ad acquistare la loro libertà attraverso risparmi accumulati, con il permesso di, e al prezzo fissato dal, il maestro. L'imperatore Giustiniano ha introdotto una serie di procedure che, se applicata, potrebbe moderare il sistema schiavo dal punto di vista dello slave. Ad esempio, il codice Giustiniani ha dichiarato che un maestro non poteva uccidere il suo schiavo impunemente e, nei casi di abuso estremo, uno schiavo potrebbe cercare la protezione dell'imperatore o la chiesa. E mentre la tarda repubblica romana (c. 50 aC) aveva riconosciuto solo tre vie alla libertà x2014 manomissione di iscrizione sul censimento, manomissione per testamento, e il procedimento con cui la libertà è stata restaurata per una persona libera che era stato ingiustamente detenuto come x2014 schiava sotto Giustiniano, ulteriori mezzi di manomissione sono stati riconosciuti, tra cui una lettera firmata da cinque testimoni, manumission nella chiesa cristiana, e il riconoscimento ufficiale da un maestro che uno schiavo era suo figlio. Eppure, in base al diritto romano, gli schiavi non potevano essere parti in cause civili, né accusatori nei processi penali, né in base al diritto romano che potessero sposarsi. La loro testimonianza potrebbe, a determinate condizioni, essere accettato, ma non contro i loro padroni. Nei casi in cui la loro testimonianza è stata autorizzata, sono stati tenuti a sottoporsi tortura. Allo stesso tempo, è stato perfettamente legittimo per cercare di schiavi come imputati in procedimenti penali. schiavi fuggiti non sono stati puniti dallo Stato, ma, se catturato, erano soggetti alla disciplina padroni. La maggior parte delle Corti dell'Europa occidentale assorbito diritto romano come parte della loro cultura giuridica, ma innovato in base alle proprie abitudini e le condizioni attraverso le epoche moderne medievale e. Per castigliano Spagna, Las Siete Partidas, una raccolta consolidata sotto Alfonso X (governata 1252 x2013 1284) intorno al 1265 (e promulgato nel 1348) integrato caratteristiche romani con i codici visigoti e pratiche medievali. La nuova legge spagnola ha riconosciuto i matrimoni di schiavi, anche su un'opposizione maestri e maestri verrebbe penalizzato per favorire un matrimonio clandestino tra loro schiavo e quella di un altro. Portugals Ordena XE7 OES Filipinas, promulgate da Filippo II (governato 1556 x2013 1598) e confermata dal re portoghese Giovanni IV (governata 1640 x2013 1656) nel 1643, stabilito leggi schiavi generali di territori portoghesi passato l'indipendenza del Brasile nel 1822, ma questi sono stati integrati esplicitamente dal Corpus juris civilis fino al 1769, quando i precedenti romani sono stati scartati per principi del diritto naturale del secolo dei Lumi. In molti aspetti, tra cui manomissione, leggi Portugals erano quindi identici a Romes. Mentre Codice Frances noir del 1685 riflette fortemente Luigi XIV desiderio di rendere il cattolicesimo la sola religione del regno (una novità nel corso tradizioni romane), molte delle disposizioni legislative francesi rispecchiato l'antico codice Giustiniano. Nonostante queste continuità con il diritto romano, la nuova esperienza schiavo Atlantico ha generato nuove abitudini di legge e, alla fine, gli statuti. Nelle colonie dei Caraibi francesi, il noir codice conteneva una disposizione, a quanto pare secondo l'usanza, ma senza dubbio sanzionato dalla chiesa, nel senso che ogni maestro che generò un bambino con la sua concubina schiavo sopportare una pesante multa e gli schiavi sarebbero confiscata per lo stato, a meno che il padrone ha sposato lo schiavo in questione, dopo di che la madre e il bambino sarebbe stato in tal modo riconosciuta indenne. Quando il noir codice è stato ristampato per la nuova colonia della Louisiana nel 1724, tuttavia, tale disposizione è stata omessa e uno nuovo vietava esplicitamente i matrimoni tra bianchi e neri. Le innovazioni più evidenti erano evidenti in Inghilterra e le sue colonie, dove né tradizioni giuridiche romane, né la pratica della schiavitù, effettuata attraverso il Medioevo fino all'inizio del periodo moderno di Atlantic colonizzazione. assemblee coloniali Englands sono stati autorizzati a fare la legge locale distinta da quella della metropoli, quindi, ogni colonia ha sviluppato la propria legge statutaria e caso unico per quanto riguarda lo status e il trattamento degli schiavi e liberti. Durante la fine del XVII e XVIII secolo, colonie americane britanniche passati misure sempre più severe che regolano schiavi e neri liberi. Ad esempio, uno statuto della Virginia del 1682 ha stabilito che, se uno schiavo morto resistere alla forza del suo padrone, il padrone non sarebbe responsabile per le spese di crimine dal momento che non si può presumere che la malizia premeditata dovrebbe indurre ogni uomo di distruggere la sua proprietà immobiliare. La legge scritta della Spagna mutato ulteriormente negli insediamenti coloniali del Nuovo Mondo. Ad esempio, gli schiavi sono stati a volte permesso di testimoniare in tribunale e un privilegio padroni di ri-schiavizzare un liberto ingrato cadde in disuso. Una delle più significative innovazioni usuali nel diritto schiavo era la pratica di coartaci XF3 n, che si è sviluppato nel XVIII secolo l'America spagnola. Sulla base di coartaci XF3 n, uno schiavo che ha presentato un prezzo equo per il suo padrone potrebbe raggiungere il suo x2014 libertà con o senza il consenso padroni. Questo fattore, insieme con la demografia, le condizioni economiche, e le ragioni culturali, aiuta a spiegare perché la gente di colore composto da una percentuale maggiore della popolazione libera in molte colonie dell'America Latina. Antischiavista e abolizione Il movimento per l'abolizione della schiavitù ha radici nella cultura europea urbana, movimenti religiosi e intellettuali europei elite, e la resistenza degli schiavi afro-americano. Ma non è stato fino alla fine del XVIII secolo, che tutte queste forze combinate per creare un attacco continuo sulla istituzione della schiavitù in sé, e non fino al XIX secolo che la tratta atlantica degli schiavi, e poi la schiavitù americana, sono stati finalmente aboliti. Dal momento che almeno dal XIII secolo, i centri urbani in Francia, come Tolosa e Pamiers, divennero rifugi dalle forme più estreme di bondage con l'adozione di carte che ha liberato gli schiavi al momento dell'ingresso al villaggio. In Inghilterra, uno schiavo russo è stato liberato nel 1567 sulla base del fatto che l'aria d'Inghilterra è troppo pura per uno slave a respirare. In Francia del XVII secolo, le tradizioni locali che sostengono la libertà sono state estese al regno francese nella massima, tutte le persone sono libere in questo regno e non appena uno schiavo era arrivato ai confini di questo luogo, il battesimo, viene liberato. Come il sistema schiavistico Atlantico ha cominciato ad espandersi, alcuni critici hanno sostenuto per le limitazioni sugli eccessi della schiavitù e la tratta degli schiavi per tutto il periodo moderno. Nel XVI e XVII secolo, la Spagna e l'America spagnola, alcuni clero cattolico hanno espresso le loro preoccupazioni, tra cui Bartolom xE9 de Las Casas (1474 x2013 1566), che si opponevano alla schiavitù degli indiani, e Tom XE1 s de Mercado e Alonso de Sandoval, che sfidato le crudeltà più estremi della tratta degli schiavi. Nel 1646, l'ordine missionario cappuccino è stato espulso dalla colonia Antille francese di Saint-Christophe, presumibilmente perché predicavano l'idea che, una volta battezzati, i neri non potevano più essere tenuti come schiavi dal momento che è una cosa indegna di utilizzare quelli fratello cristiano come schiavo. Nel 1688, molti di lingua olandese Quakers di Germantown, in Pennsylvania. castigato loro correligionari per il possesso e la negoziazione schiavi, perché hanno. lo stesso diritto di lottare per la loro libertà come si deve tenerli come schiavi. Eppure molti cristiani anche sottolineato la virtù degli schiavi obbedienza ai loro padroni, e la sospensione del premio fino al seguito, così implicitamente sanzionare la schiavitù e la disuguaglianza nel qui e ora. Nel XVIII secolo, le voci più laici hanno iniziato a criticare la schiavitù per motivi di diritto naturale e il legame di schiavitù personale con dispotismo politico. scrittori scozzese illuministi Francis Hutcheson e George Wallace sono stati tra i primi ad attaccare sia la schiavitù e la tratta degli schiavi come violazioni della giustizia naturale e di umanità. filosofo francese Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 x2013 1778) ha richiamato direttamente da Wallace a sfidare il diritto di schiavi a vendersi in schiavitù nella sua sul contratto sociale. Entro 1762, ci fu un corpo sufficiente di pensiero antischiavista per la Pennsylvania Quaker Anthony Benezet di pubblicare il primo titolo dedicato esclusivamente alla abolizione della schiavitù e la tratta degli schiavi, una collezione ha intitolato Un account corta di quella parte d'Africa abitato da negri, che è stato ampiamente letto su entrambi i lati dell'Atlantico. La terza fonte di abolizionismo era azioni intraprese dagli schiavi loro stessi a resistere schiavitù. Nelle Americhe, schiavi che correvano via, noto come marroni, fondato comunità indipendenti nelle regioni al di là di potere coloniale diretto, come i canyon della Giamaica, le montagne della Guadalupa, il XE3 Sert o del Brasile, e le paludi della Florida. Alcune delle comunità maroon erano così potenti militarmente che hanno stabilito i trattati con le potenze coloniali europee locali, come in Suriname. Già a partire dal 1527 e per tutta l'espansione delle piantagioni schiavitù nel XVII, XVIII e XIX secolo, gli schiavi tracciati e si ribellarono contro padroni. La maggior parte di tali rivolte erano piccoli eventi, con l'obiettivo di cercare la giustizia locale. Sia che sono state emanate sulla scala individuale o comunitaria dalle marroni, o nel più ampio nell'arena di rivolta o di rivoluzione, schiavi superato enormi probabilità nella ricerca di autonomia per se stessi e, quando possibile, ad estendere tale libertà agli altri. La rivolta degli schiavi 1791 a nord di Saint Domingue, che si trasformò in rivoluzione haitiana articolato una forte ideologia antischiavista e effettuato la prima emancipazione universale (di colonie francesi, nel 1794) e la prima repubblica indipendente fondata da ex schiavi (Haiti. 1804). La fine del XVIII secolo, segna anche l'inizio dei movimenti abolizione atlantiche borghesi. Granville Sharp, un inglese eccentrico e pio, ha preso la causa di uno schiavo che era stato rapito e picchiato dal padrone in Inghilterra nel 1765. Sharps ricerca sulla legge lo convinse la costituzione inglese era antitetica alla schiavitù. abolizionisti inglesi hanno avuto il loro primo grande successo quando hanno radunato al supporto dello schiavo Somerset, il cui padrone tentato di espulsione dal Inghilterra su una nave diretta a Giamaica nel 1772. Anche se la portata della decisione giudice Mansfields nel caso Somerset è stato dibattuto da gli storici, è stato ampiamente interpretato al momento abolire la schiavitù nel modo più efficace in Inghilterra, e campi scozzesi presto seguito l'esempio con una dichiarazione ancora più ampia contro la schiavitù nel 1778. in Nord America, i patrioti della Rivoluzione Americana equiparato tirannia politica inglese con proposte schiavitù e offerte di vietare il commercio degli schiavi. Alcuni esteso la critica in schiavitù in sé, anche se i sentimenti anti-schiavisti e antiblack erano talvolta intrecciate. Vermont vietato la schiavitù nella sua costituzione 1777, mentre in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island. e Connecticut tutti adottato statuti emancipazione. I giudici in Massachusetts e New Hampshire emesse decisioni analoghe per decisione Inghilterra del Somerset, stabilendo così questi territori come Stati liberi. Nel Nord, solo New York e New Jersey. sia con le popolazioni schiave di considerevoli dimensioni, mantenuto un apparato legale che permette la continuazione della schiavitù, eppure questi stati generati anche attiva, se, le società abolizionisti elitari. Sharp è stato presto raggiunto da altri attivisti anti-schiavisti in Inghilterra, tra cui il fondatore metodista John Wesley, che predicava contro i mali della schiavitù su entrambi i lati dell'Atlantico. Quaccheri, metodisti, Sharp, e altri formarono la Società per effettuare l'abolizione della tratta degli schiavi nel 1787 e si mise a fare pressioni sul Parlamento britannico per la loro causa. Thomas Clarkson è stato il Societys a tempo pieno organizzatore e propagandista. In pochi mesi, il gruppo aveva raccolto più di 10.000 firme su una petizione antischiavista dalla città di Manchester da solo, che comprende la metà della popolazione adulta maschile. Gli ex schiavi, tra cui Olaudah Equiano (Gustavus Vassa) e Ottobah Cugoano rinchiusi loro storie di vita e sono andati nel circuito delle conferenze a raccolta il pubblico alla causa. William Wilberforce, an influential member of Parliament, translated the antislavery sentiment into legislative initiatives. The first of these was defeated by pro-slavery opponents in 1791. Petition drives increased, with nearly 400,000 signatories in 1792. At this same time, the Danish government announced that it would abolish its own slave trade within ten years. In France, the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 and the Saint Domingue slave revolt of 1791 made it expedient for the French antislavery association, the Amis des noirs, to focus on mulatto rights. In 1794, the French Convention ratified the republican commissioners offer of freedom to slaves who would fight against the royalists in Saint Domingue, and they extended it as a universal emancipation to slaves in all other colonies still under French control. However, Napoleons forceful reimposition of slavery to the Caribbean colonies in 1802 precipitated Haitian independence and postponed French abolition until 1848. The French and Haitian revolutions proved a setback to the British abolitionist movement, as conservative forces asserted that the popular classes were incapable of self-rule. It was not until 1808 that the Atlantic slave trade was formally abolished by Britain and the United States. with Britain policing the seas in an attempt to prevent Spanish and Portuguese trade to the Caribbean and Central and South America. It would take another thirty years for Britains abolitionists to eliminate slavery within its remaining colonies (for example, Jamaica and Barbados), and not until 1888 was slavery abolished within the last American state, Brazil. Though slavery was officially abolished in the Americas in the nineteenth century, it expanded in some parts of Africa as a direct result of Euro-American abolition. Slavery and related forms of coerced labor still exist today in many countries of the world. Women and children are especially vulnerable. See also Africa Equality and Inequality Industry Laborers Race, Theories of Serfdom Servants . BIBLIOGRAPHY Anstey, Roger. The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760 x2013 1810. Atlantic Highlands, N. J, 1975. Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492 x2013 1800. New York, 1997. x2014 x2014. The Old World Background to European Colonial Slavery. William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 54, no. 1 (January 1997): 65 x2013 102. x2014 x2014 . The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776 x2013 1848. London, 1988. Braude, Benjamin. The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods. William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 54, no. 1 (January 1997): 103 x2013 142. Cotter, William R. The Somerset Case and the Abolition of Slavery in England. History 79, no. 255 (1994): 31 x2013 56. Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770 x2013 1823. Ithaca, N. Y. 1975. x2014 x2014 . The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture. Ithaca, N. Y. 1966, reissued 1971. x2014 x2014 . Slavery and Human Progress. New York, 1984. Drescher, Seymour. Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition. Pittsburgh. 1977. x2014 x2014 . From Slavery to Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery. New York, 1999. Drescher, Seymour, and Stanley L. Engerman, eds. A Historical Guide to World Slavery. New York, 1998. Eltis, David. The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas. Cambridge, U. K. 2000. Epstein, Steven A. Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity, and Human Bondage in Italy. Ithaca, N. Y. 2001. Finley, Moses I. Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology. London, 1980. Gerzina, Gretchen. Black London: Life before Emancipation. New Brunswick, N. J. 1995. Hellie, Richard. Slavery in Russia, 1450 x2013 1725. Chicago. 1982. Karras, Ruth Mazo. Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia. New Haven, 1988. Klein, Herbert S. African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean. New York, 1986. Lewis, Bernard. Race and Slavery in the Middle East. An Historical Enquiry. New York, 1990. Lind, Vera. Privileged Dependency on the Edge of the Atlantic World: Africans and Germans in the Eighteenth Century. In Interpreting Colonialism, edited by Byron Wells and Philip Stewart. Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century. Forthcoming. Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York, 1985. Patterson, Orlando . Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1982. Peabody, Sue. There Are No Slaves in France: The Political Culture of Race and Slavery in the Ancien R xE9 gime. New York, 1996. Phillips, William D. Jr. Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade. Minneapolis. 1985. Restall, Matthew. Black Conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early Spanish America. The Americas 57, no. 2 (2000): 171 x2013 205. Saunders, A. C. de C. M. A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal, 1441 x2013 1555. Cambridge, U. K. and New York, 1982. Shyllon, F. O. Black People in Britain, 1555 x2013 1833. London, 1977. Tannenbaum, Frank. Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas. New York, 1946. Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400 x2013 1800. 2nd ed. Cambridge, U. K. 1998. Toledano, Ehud. The Ottoman Slave Trade and its Suppression, 1840 x2013 1890. Princeton, 1982. United Nations Office of the High Commission for Human Rights. Fact Sheet No. 14: Contemporary Forms of Slavery. Geneva, June 1991. Available online at: 193.194.138.190htmlmenu62fs14.htm. Vitkus, Daniel J. ed. Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England. Introduced by Nabil Matar. New York, 2001. Walvin, James. Black Ivory: A History of British Slavery. Washington, D. C. 1994. Watson, Alan. Slave Law in the Americas. Atene. Ga. 1989. Williams, Eric. Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill, N. C. 1944. Dictionary of American History COPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. SLAVE TRADE SLAVE TRADE. The widespread enslavement of diverse peoples for economic and political gain has played a fundamental role throughout human history in the development of nations. Ancient Greek and Roman societies operated by using slave labor, as did many European countries in the modern period. As early as the Middle Ages, Mediterranean cities were supplied with Moorish black slaves from Muslim countries in North Africa. By comparison, the slave trade is a term which has grown to be associated specifically with the transatlantic or triangular trade that spanned four centuries (roughly between 1518 and 1865), involved three continents (Europe, Africa, and the Americas), and was responsible for human suffering on an unprecedented scale. Slavery Comes to the New World African slaves were first brought to the New World shortly after its discovery by Christopher Columbuslegend has it that one slave was included in his original crewand they could be found on Hispaniola, site of present-day Haiti, as early as 1501. Upon his arrival in the Bahamas, Columbus himself captured seven of the natives for their education on his return to Spain. However, the slave trade proper only began in 1518, when the first black cargo direct from Africa landed in the West Indies. The importation of black slaves to work in the Americas was the inspiration of the Spanish bishop, Bartolom de Las Casas, whose support of black slavery was motivated by humanitarian concerns. He argued that the enslavement of Africans and even of some whitesproving that in the early period slavery did not operate according to exclusive racial demarcationswould save the indigenous Amerindian populations, which were not only dying out but engaging in large-scale resistance as they opposed their excessively harsh conditions. As a result, Charles V, then king of Spain, agreed to the asiento or slave trading license (1513), which later represented the most coveted prize in European wars as it gave to those who possessed it a monopoly in slave trafficking. The widespread expansion of the oceanic slave trade can be attributed to the enormous labor demanded by sugarcane, one of the first and most successful agricultural crops to be cultivated by slaves. The earliest lucrative Spanish sugar plantations were in the Caribbean and West Indies on the islands of Haiti, Cuba, and Jamaica, while Portugal controlled large areas of Brazil. However, Spanish and Portuguese domination of the trade was soon challenged by other Europeans, including the British. One of their earliest adventurers, Sir John Hawkins, undertook his first voyage between 1562 and 1563, and as a direct consequence of his gains was knighted by Elizabeth I. By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Dutch had also secured prominence by founding the Dutch West India Company, taking control of northern Brazil, and conquering the slave-holding fort of Elmina on the West African coast. Among Britains major slave-trading successes was Barbados (and later Jamaica, seized from Spain), upon which sugar was cultivated by Africans imported by the Royal African Company, founded in 1672 to protect a British monopoly in the trade. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Britains transatlantic slaveholding empire was unrivaled. By using vessels that embarked from the ports of Liverpool, Bristol, and London, Britain traded slaves from diverse areas of the African continent: from Senegambia south to the Gambia River as well as within Sierra Leone (later a settlement of British missionaries), the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin, and West-Central Africa. The main African tribes associated with the slave trade were the Ibo, Mandingo, Ashanti, Yoruba, and Eweand each responded very differently, with various consequences, to white processes of enslavement. Height and Decline of the Slave Trade According to Philip Curtin, a recent statistician of the transatlantic slave trade, the eighteenth century both represented the height of the trade and also marked the beginnings of its decline. As far as the practice of negotiations between African and European sellers and buyers was concerned, the trade was made possible by middlemen. These were usually mixed-race in origin or lower-class whites, who traveled deep into the interior and bartered with local African peoples. The sale of weapons in exchange for slaves represented the preferred commodity of Africans, as these were needed to maintain the trade and to protect their communities from raids and incursions by illegal traders and kidnappers (many of them European). The slave trade stimulated divisions within Africa as European rivalry encouraged various nations to enslave, kidnap, or wage war on each other whileas part of its more prolonged legacyit devastated indigenous populations and economic structures. From a European point of view, it greatly stimulated national wealth and laid the foundations for modern capitalism as, in particular, the financial infrastructures required by the slave trade inaugurated new systems of banking and insurance. Throughout the period, the slave trade remained closely linked to advances in the sugar plantation system as, for example, major production areas were transferred from offshore African islands to northeastern Brazil by the mid-sixteenth century. As the arrival of the first Africans in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619 attests, slave populations working tobacco crops in the British colonies of Virginia and Maryland, as well as rice plantations in the Carolinas of mainland North America, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, could only be sustained by the transatlantic slave trade. The major reasons for the need of a trade in slaves on such a scale can be traced to the much smaller populations of the Americas in comparison with those of the Old World. For white immigrants (including paupers, criminals, and some kidnapped children) who arrived in the seventeenth and eighteenth century as indentured servants, the conditions were so harsh that they were unable, and in many cases refused, to fulfill the existing labor market they frequently opposed the renewal of their contracts or simply died out. While the first Africans who were imported to the Americas were described somewhat euphemistically as apprentices for life, as labor demands increased and racist rhetoric became more deeply entrenched in everyday life, they acquired an unambiguous chattel status. It was not long before slavery in the Americas operated according to, and was legitimated by, white racist discourses of natural black inferiority. Proponents of slavery ideology, including such prominent nineteenth-century figures as John C. Calhoun and even Thomas Jefferson, argued that slavery (or the peculiar institution, as it became known in North America) served a civilizing and christianizing process (the Portuguese were well known for the baptism of their slaves) by educating the heathen and barbarous African while instilling both discipline and a religious sensibility. Thus, Europeans and Euro-Americans did not try to impose slavery on the poor, on victims of war, or on those imprisoned for crimes in their own continent. Instead, they undertook extremely expensive and hazardous journeys in merchant ships to buy peoples from the African coast. In addition to their being subject to racist definitions of cultural differences, Africans were selected for other reasons, including the widespread belief that they were better able to withstand the climate and disease however, it is unlikely that many Africans outlived Europeans in plantation areas of the Americas. One historian has commented perceptively that the African slave trade appears rooted as much in cultural perceptions and social norms as in economic and demographic imperatives. The slave trades contribution to European and American understanding of Africans as property with no rights that they were bound to respect left behind a legacy that has continued well into the twentieth century, arguably undergirding the racial politics of the civil rights movement in North America and continuing to shape the contemporary debates concerning reparations for slavery. Despite early problems, the slave trade was enormously financially successful: Britains colonial status was fueled by wealth from tobacco and sugar plantations in both the West Indies and mainland North America as ports in London, Liverpool, and Bristol prospered, ushering in a modern age dominated by a plantocracy of elite slave owners or absentee landlords with interests (rarely specified) abroad. The later transatlantic slave trade complemented earlier trans-Saharan practices, which had traded primarily in men, by its demographic diversity. European traders preferred male slaves however, despite popular belief, on the slave ships men were outnumbered by women and children, who were exported in unprecedented numbers and to such an extent that, by the end of the period, the largest numbers of slaves were children. The numbers of human beings involved are staggering: both when considered by themselves and even more so when placed within a context of earlier slave-trading practices. For example, over the course of some twelve centuries, three and a half to four million slaves crossed the Sahara in the trans-Saharan trade of Arabic origins. However, in the transatlantic trade, which lasted less than half that time, a conservative estimate (which significantly neglects to consider the recent statistics of Afrocentric historians) suggests that as many as twelve million (ten and a half million surviving) were transported out of Africa between the mid-fourteenth century and 1867, when a final slave ship arrived in Cuba with its human cargo (it is likely that the last cargoes landed as lately as 1880). Statistics are almost impossible to verify but research suggests that, by the early nineteenth century, for every European who crossed the Atlantic, two Africans were exported. Approximately one-half of the total number of Africans shipped in the eighteenth century, and onequarter in the nineteenth, was sent to the Americas. A little-discussed subject concerns the mortality rate among slaves (for which statistics are not known) who died in the African interior. By far the greatest bulk of captives for sale had traveled far across the continent, in some cases as many as a thousand miles, previous to their departure at the Atlantic coast. European Character and Intervention The slave trade was primarily European in character, as among those profiting in the trade were Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, and Holland they were later seconded by Swedish, Danish, and North American participants. Much earlierin the thirteenth centuryItaly had also played an important role in the human trade bronze sculptures dating from the medieval period and representing shackled Africans can still be found in Venice. While slavery did exist in Africa before 1400 (slaves were traded largely as the result of internal raids and wars for domestic purposes), European intervention changed the face of indigenous slavery as it became systematized and organized to a previously unimaginable extent. The slave trade was operated internationally and combined the economic interests of the Americas, Britain, and continental Europe as it simultaneously exacerbated and contributed to the impoverishment of western Africa. European dominance in the slave trade also encouraged slavery within Africa itselfespecially the enslavement of womenand fomented dissensions across and within different African societies while stimulating war and kidnapping between various traders as they represented conflicting national interests. European intervention into African slavery revolutionized existing systems and internal trading patterns as slave ships participated in the triangular trade between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Slave captains took manufactured goods (rum, textiles, weapons) to Africa, which they exchanged for slaves whom they then sold in the Americas in return for raw materials such as sugar, tobacco, and later cotton, which they then brought back to Europe, completing the triangle. In the early period of the slave trade, Europeans built medieval forts such as Elmina Castle, a Portuguese stronghold that later fell to the British and that survived as a tourist attraction until the twenty-first century. These castles functioned as barracoons where slaves were held under horrendous conditions until they were loaded on ships bound for the Americas. Initially Europeans took slaves to the Iberian Peninsula, Madeira, the Canaries, and So Tom they were moved from one part of the African coast to the other before they were transported to the Americas. Throughout a four-hundred-year period, slaves were exported from western Africa to Brazil, the Caribbean Islands, Greater Antilles, and North America. Regardless of the fluctuations in trading routes and agreements throughout this period, one factor remained constant: the cost of slaves increased and profits soared. What was the likely destination for slaves from Africa who made the transatlantic voyage Brazil and the Caribbean took as much as 90 percent of the slaveswhere upon arrival they underwent a process of seasoning, which even fewer survivedwhile the American colonies took as little as 8 percent. Within the Caribbean and Central America, Spain dominated the early trade, while Britain, due to its improvements in maritime technology, gained prominence between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. Following the abolition of the slave trade by Britain and the United States in 1807 (full emancipation was not to be awarded in the British colonies until 1834, while the Thirteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution abolished slavery much later, in 1863), nine-tenths of slaves were taken to Cuba and Brazil. After the above legislation, many illegal voyages took place with paradoxically greater human suffering, as they were forced to operate clandestinely. By far the most important reason for exporting slaves was sugar cultivation by comparison, tobacco, rice, coffee growing, and mining for precious metals accounted for less than 20 percent of Africans. Despite popular opinion, the booming production of cotton depended not on the transatlantic slave trade but on the nineteenth-century internal slave trade, which operated from east to west, north to south, and which was made possible only by an expanding black population. This trade brought with it its own horrors, including not only the separation of slave families and suffering under brutal conditions on remote plantations, but also the kidnapping of free blacks into slavery and the wholesale exploitation of the black female slave for breeding purposes. In 1790, there were approximately 697,897 slaves in North America as compared to 3,953,760 in 1860, all of whom were indigenous rather than imported. Slave Resistance and the Abolitionist Movement Throughout the years of slavery in the Americas, slave resistance played a fundamental role and contributed to the abolition both of the slave trade and slavery as an institution. The earliest recorded slave uprising took place in 1494 as slaves protested Columbuss policy of enslavement in the Caribbean. The methods of slave rebellion were various and ranged from day-to-day resistance (sabotage of machinery, dissembling to avoid work) to escapes involving large numbers of runaways and the establishment of maroon communities. Slaves on the mainland also spearheaded organized revolts such as those led by the black preachers Denmark Vesey (North Carolina, 1822) and Nat Turner (Virginia, 1831). Contrary to earlier scholarship documenting the slave trade, certain areas of the Americas repeatedly drew on particular parts of Africa, so that many more African cultural and social practices have survived than had been previously supposed. Often compared by historians to the Holocaust, the transatlantic slave trade and the extent to which it legitimized and endorsed the mass enforced migration of enslaved peoples nevertheless remains unparalleled in human history. The full extent of the horrors of the Middle Passage, by which the transportation of slaves from Africa to the Americas is known, will forever remain insufficiently realized or understood. However, it can be said that this journey was characterized, as a minimum, by annual average losses of between 10 and 20 percent during the six-to-fourteen-week voyage. These deaths were due to dehydration from gastrointestinal disease (known as the bloody flux) caused by unhygienic conditions in slave ship holds, over-tight packing as the slaves were placed close together like books upon a shelf, and epidemics of smallpox. Life aboard the slave ships was relentlessly oppressive: slaves were chained together, unable to exercise, fed from communal bowls, and provided with minimal sanitation. They suffered from the whites brutality (including severe whippings and the rape of slave women), starvation in some cases (as supplies ran out), disease, and severe psychological trauma (many of them remained chained throughout the journey to those who had died). The slave-trader-turned-abolitionist-and-preacher, John Newton, as well as the former slave, Olaudah Equiano, provide moving testimony concerning its perpetual terrors during the eighteenth century and after in their written accounts of the slave trade. John Newton described this unhappy and disgraceful trade as contradictory to the feelings of humanity and as the stain of our national character. Captured and placed upon a slave ship, Equiano testified to personal horror and anguish he wrote in 1789: I saw a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow. Each slave ship was designed to hold an average of 330 slaves, although this number was regularly doubled. This is made clear in the notorious case of the Liverpool slaver, the Brookes, which is known to have carried as many as 609 slaves on a single voyage. In the eighteenth century, British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson took a plan of this ship (including the illustrations of how the slaves were to be stowed) to Paris, where a small model was made of it which was used to convert European opinion to antislavery activism. Faced with these conditions and nothing to lose, slave resistance aboard ships was frequent: they refused to eat so that implements had to be devised for force-feeding they committed suicide in the mythical hope of their soul being freed upon death so that they could return to Africa (captains cut off their heads and returned their headless bodies to Africa as proof to others that even in death they were enslaved) and they led slave revolts against the white crewssome of which were successful, including those aboard the Amistad (1839) and the Creole (1841). Resistance was hardly an issue, however, in one of the most notorious examples of cruelty toward slaves ever recorded, which happened aboard the Liverpool-owned slave ship the Zong (1783). The slave captain decided that, in view of their unhealthy status, it would be more profitable to throw his 131 slaves overboard and submit an insurance claim for their loss than to treat them. The slaves prospects hardly improved upon their arrival in the Americas as many as one-third of Africans died within four years of landing, and few survived the seasoning process, as they were unable to adjust to the vast changes in climate, culture, and living conditions. In addition to the slaves placed in the holds, large numbers occupied the slightly more fortunate position of working aboard ships as sailors, interpreters, bookkeepers, and cooks (the latter, with their proximity to knives, are historically related to slave revolts). Paradoxically, however, it was the suffering of white crewscondemned by contemporaries as the rapid loss of seamenwhich marked the beginning of the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade. While this is a subject for ongoing debate, it seems clear that the slave trade did not die out solely due to economic losses but as a direct result of a number of forces, not least of which included the escalating acts of successful slave resistancemost notably the Haitian Revolution (1794), as well as the American, British, and French abolitionist movements. In its enduring effects for British, French, and Dutch economies, among others, the European-engineered slave tradedescribed by one historian as a corrosive commercial and human virusencouraged the expansion of merchant shipping, provided a market for goods produced by new industries, and supplied the capital to fund the British Industrial Revolution. Thus, steel products from Sheffield, England, for example, such as hoes and knives, equipped slaves with tools for their labor on plantations in the Americas. By comparison, following the abolition of the slave trade, almost all African regions that had participated in the trade experienced severe financial losses, which continued to have a profound and nefarious impact upon the economic stability of the continent well into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Despite all the efforts of European and North American slave traders to suppress slave culture, enslaved Africans in the Americas nonetheless had the final word, as they developed vast networks across communities. These resulted in rich creole cultures and languages as well as an inspirational legacy of art, music, literature, and history the full extent of which remains to be explored. BIBLIOGRAPHY Curtin, Philip D. The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969. Engerman, Stanley, Seymour Drescher, and Robert Paquette, eds. Oxford Readers: Slavery. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano Written by Himself. 1789. Boston: BedfordSt. Martins, 1995. Mannix, Daniel P. and Malcolm Cowley. Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 15181865. New York: Viking, 1962. Newton, John. Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade. London: J. Buckland and J. Johnson, 1788. Rawley, James A . The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History. New York: Norton, 1981. Walvin, James. Black Ivory: A History of British Slavery. London: Fontana, 1992. Wood, Marcus. Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 17801865. Manchester, U. K. Manchester University Press, 2000. See also Middle Passage and vol. 9: Voyages of the Slaver St. John Spanish Colonial Officials Account of Triangular Trade with England . Slave Trade The history of most modern societies has involved, in some form or fashion, the use of coerced labor, including the institution of slavery and the exploitation of slave labor. And where slavery existed x2014 defined as a system in which the production process is carried out by human beings owned by other human beings x2014 a mechanism for supplying slaves was necessary. This mechanism is called the slave trade. While slavery and the slave trade as concepts and as practices have an ancient pedigree and global itineraries, their relationship to the history, practices, and realities of modern societies continues to stir considerable concern and controversy. The tools of historians must be combined with tools and insights from economics, political science, and other social sciences to explore how empirical data and theoretical debates have animated our understanding of the slave trade x2019 s global history, especially the transatlantic slave trade. Slavery was commonplace in many ancient societies, including Greece. Rome. and Egypt. Slaves were forced to work in almost all sectors x2014 agriculture, mining, domestic service, and even as gladiators and soldiers. Many of these slaves were captured in war, but formal mechanisms to supply slaves were also well established. Rome drew its slaves from all over its expanding empire, for example, and at one point there were as many slaves as there were Roman citizens. The slave trade was also a prominent feature of medieval societies, with Africans being enslaved and shipped to the Muslim world across the Sahara. the Red Sea. and the Indian Ocean. Scholars have estimated that as many as 19 million people from sub-Saharan Africa were shipped to the Muslim world between 650 and 1890. Until the fifteenth century, the major destination for the slave trade was the Muslim world, with slaves coming from Africa and from Europe. In fact, the word slave is derived from the word slav . the name for a large ethnic and linguistic group residing in eastern and southeastern Europe, including Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, and others. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Africa became the major source of slaves, and the international slave trade was dominated by Portugal. reflecting the development of European colonies in the Americas that needed labor. In the seventeenth century, Britain emerged as the largest carrier of slaves. There have been three waves of estimates regarding the numbers of Africans who were traded as commodities in the slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean. The first wave included estimates ventured by scholars who repeated earlier numbers gleaned mainly from popular writing and not based on systematic analysis x2014 W. E. B. Du Bois x2019 s approximation of 100,000,000 Africans lost to the slave trade was a prime example. Such estimates were the main target of Phillip Curtin x2019 s The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (1969), one of the pioneering studies seeking to provide more accurate numbers. The second wave of estimates, to which Curtin contributed, was based on more extensive compilation and synthesis of available data and estimates using statistical inferences based on population changes in importing countries, but not on research into original sources. Curtin provided an estimate of 9,566,100 Africans between 1451 and 1870, concluding provocatively that it was unlikely that new scholarship would alter his estimate by a number greater than 10 percent. Noel Deerr x2019 s The History of Sugar (1949-1950) was an earlier representative of this tradition extended but not initiated by Curtin x2019 s census. The major impact of Curtin x2019 s work was not its originality but its method, comprehensiveness, and timing, appearing at a time when concerns over race and race relations were mounting, and drastically lower estimates of the number of Africans traded were bound to provoke controversy. Joseph Inikori (1976, 1982) provided one of the earliest critiques of these census efforts. He pointed to his own research and synthesized the work of other scholars as the basis for concluding that Curtin x2019 s estimate required a 40 percent upward adjustment. Most important was his discovery of new shipping data that provided more accurate numbers of slaves carried. Beyond confirming that all such estimates are far from complete or final, the continuing debate underscores the centrality of intellectual history in exploring heated disagreements in historical interpretation where perspectives are shaped by the dynamics of color, class, nationality, morality, disciplinary paradigms, ideological orientations, and claims about objectivity. A third wave is represented by scholars who have compiled the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (TSTD), sponsored by Harvard University x2019 s Du Bois Institute and published in 1999. With data on more than 27,000 slave voyages, TSTD concluded that 11,062,000 Africans were transported from Africa between 1519 and 1867, with 9.6 million landing in the Americas, figures not substantially different from Curtin x2019 s. More than half were carried between 1700 and 1799, and about 30 percent after the abolition of the slave trade by Great Britain and the United States in 1807. Beginning with Prince Henry x2019 s traders in 1441, Portugal was the major carrier in the trade involving Africans, and 75 percent of all slaves were carried by the Portuguese in the first 150 years of the trade. Overall, however, British citizens transported 46 percent of all Africans, followed by the Portuguese (29.1), France (13.2), Spain (4.8), the Netherlands (4.7), and Denmark (1). Only 2.5 percent of all slaves were transported by slave merchants based in the United States and British Caribbean. Up until 1820, more Africans were transported across the Atlantic than Europeans x2014 8.4 million Africans to 2.4 million Europeans. TSTD enables more detailed attention to the geographical distribution of the origins and destinations of enslaved Africans and the resulting demographic and cultural shape of the x201C diaspora x201D in which Africans were dispersed or scattered. Almost 45 percent of all slaves came from the West African coast that is today Ghana. Togo. Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso. Benin, and parts of Nigeria. per esempio. As destinations, 41 percent of enslaved Africans were shipped to present-day Brazil. 27 percent to British America, 11 percent to French territories, and 13 percent to Spanish territories. And there was method in the madness, with European slave traders and slave-purchasing areas in the Americas showing preference for Africans from particular regions (e. g. rice-growing South Carolina preferred slaves from Gambia and rice-growing regions of West Africa). There have also been substantial updates to TSTD, bearing out earlier and unwelcome insistence that all such estimates were only provisional. A new revised TSTD now includes over 34,000 slaving voyages. It recognizes x201C major gaps x201D in the 1999 database, especially with regard to the early history of the slave trade and that of Brazil, the largest importing nation. It adds 7,000 new voyages and provides additional information on more than 10,000 voyages in the 1999 database. Political economy generally denotes an approach that focuses on the relationship of economic activity x2014 trade and commerce as well as production x2014 and their interrelationships with the activities of government, politics, and the broader society. To paraphrase Adam Smith x2019 s 1776 title for his pioneering volume in this tradition, the slave trade and slavery x2019 s contribution to x201C the wealth and poverty of nations x201D was critical. This line of thinking was continued in the next century by Karl Marx. who pondered in Vol. 1 of Capital, x201C the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of Black skins x201D as an initial source for early investment in capitalist production. The approach is also closely related to Walter Rodney x2019 s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1974) and similar discussions by such scholars as J. M. Blaut (1992, p. 206) of x201C the role played by colonialism in industrial production. x201D Meeting the need for labor in the Americas was essential if European nations were to realize the goals of mercantilism x2014 favorable trade balance, increased amounts of precious metals, and the like. Therefore, beyond the issue of how many Africans were taken from the continent into slavery in the Americas x2014 especially the horrendous treatment during the middle passage between Africa and the Americas x2014 and who played what role in enslaving them, is the need to understand the contribution of African labor to wealth production in the various nations that were carriers of slaves and beneficiaries from the economic productivity of slave labor. Expectedly, sharp differences have emerged as well over this area, generally termed x201C profitability x201D of the slave trade, an assessment dependent in part on calculations of the number of slaves traded. For example, Roger Anstey (1975) suggested 9.6 percent as the rate of profit in the British slave trade between 1761 and 1897, calculating profits by using data on the number of slaves landed, slave prices, and other data on cost and revenue. Inikori (1976) provided evidence pointing to underestimations in the number of slaves landed in the West Indies and the average price for which slaves were sold. William Darity (1985) used these corrected figures to demonstrate a plausible increase in the rate of profits from 9.6 percent to 30.8 percent, a figure consistent with the conclusion of Eric Williams in Capitalism and Slavery (1944). Efforts to calculate the contribution of the slave trade to economic development became more controversial when prominent scholars concluded that profits from the slave trade were not large enough to make a significant contribution to British industrialization, a view that diverged from the long-held conventional wisdom about the impact of what had been called x201C the triangular trade x201D (Anstey 1975 Engerman 1972 Davis 1984, p. 73). Darity (1990), Barbara Solow (1991), and others highlighted the impact that different definitions, theoretical assumptions and economic models can have in calculating rates of profits, concluding that the slave trade was a relatively important source of industrial capital. Moreover, Ronald Bailey (1986, 1990) has given the term x201C slave(ry) trade x201D x2014 activities related both to the slave trade and slavery and closer to the x201C multiplier effect x201D concept used by some economists x2014 as the source of profits that should be utilized in calculating contributions to industrialization and not just profits from buying and selling slaves. Substituting profits from the Caribbean trade in place of profits solely from the sale of slaves, he concluded that enough profits could have been generated to finance the British industrial revolution several times over. (As an additional example, the 7,000 new voyages added to the 1999 TSTD database discussed above requires a recalculation of the slave trade x2019 s impact on the expansion of the ship-building and shipping industry.) In this approach, this contribution from the x201C slave(ry) trade x201D would include the important role and economic significance of agricultural crops produced by slave labor in the colonies, including sugar, tobacco, rice, coffee, and cotton, as well as profits generated in related shipping, banking and insurance, and manufacturing, a central thesis in Williams x2019 s Capitalism and Slavery and argued by Inikori (2002). Importantly, this approach facilitates a sharper focus on the role of slavery and the slave trade in U. S. history, an emphasis admirably treated, for example, by Du Bois (1896) and in the chapter on x201C Black Merchandise x201D in Lorenzo Greene x2019 s The Negro in Colonial New England (1942). Ships in the transatlantic slave trade rarely carried Europeans and were rarely owned and operated by Africans. This colorrace and class dynamic helps to explain why the controversy over the slave trade provokes sharp debates over morality and ethics. It is so potent because modern capitalist nations, which early prohibited the enslavement of Europeans, were the world x2019 s leaders in the enslavement and trade of Africans, a legacy related to both poverty and racism that hovers over world history and the history of many nations and peoples. Even more perplexing, the slave trade and slavery were consolidated and expanded at the same time as the rise of the progressive transatlantic philosophical movement called the Enlightenment in the late eighteenth century, and such practices were enshrined and extended, not abolished, by the American Revolution and the U. S. Constitution. Edmund S. Morgan, a scholar of early America, was provoked to probe the paradoxical marriage of convenience he called x201C American slaveryAmerican freedom. x201D Ideas about abolition surfaced as early as the late 1600s with the work of the Quakers and other religious groups, but it was not until 1807 that legislation to end the slave trade was enacted in Great Britain and in the United States. It was another eighty years before such practices were finally outlawed by all of the nations whose citizens had been involved as slavers and beneficiaries of slavery. Scholarly debates regarding the root causes of abolition and the slow unfolding of its success have been as intense as those regarding the causes and consequences of slavery and the slave trade, with some scholars emphasizing humanitarian motives and others stressing economic and political dynamics. That the system of U. S. slavery that fueled the transatlantic slave trade necessitated for its abolition a civil war resulting in the deaths of more than 620,000 people will guarantee that discussion and debate will continue in the decades to come. Two hundred years after the 1807 abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain and the implementation of a similar measure in the U. S. Constitution, the slave trade continues to rest uncomfortably in scholarship and in social memory. In recent times, the controversy has taken the form of calls for and debates over apologies for participation in the slave trade and slavery, and over the payment of some form of x201C reparations x201D similar to what was provided to Jews and other victims of the Holocaust and to U. S. citizens of Japanese ancestry incarcerated in World War II camps. And there are growing contemporary movements to grapple with new forms of slavery, poverty, and economic coercion in a deepening globalized economy. Research, thinking, and writing about the history of the slave trade should provide a solid foundation for understanding and acting in the present and future. SEE ALSO Caribbean, The Cotton Industry Du Bois, W. E. B. Engerman, Stanley Holocaust, The Immigrants to North America Incarceration, Japanese American Inikori, Joseph James, C. L. R. Jews Marx, Karl Mercantilism Plantation Race Racism Rodney, Walter Roma, The Slave-Gun Cycle Slavery Slavery Industry Smith, Adam Sugar Industry White Supremacy Williams, Eric World War II Anstey, Roger. 1975. The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760-1810 . Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Bailey, Ronald W. 1986. Africa, the Slave Trade, and the Rise of Industrial Capitalism in Europe and the United States: A Historiographic Review. American History: A Bibliographic Review 2: 1-91. Bailey, Ronald W. 1990. The Slave(ry) Trade and the Development of Capitalism in the United States: The Textile Industry in New England. Social Science History 14 (3): 373-414 reprinted in Stanley Engerman and Joseph Inikori. The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economics, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe . Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1992. Blaut, J. M. 1992. The Colonizer x2019 s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History . New York: Guilford. Curtin, Phillip. 1969. The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Darity, William, Jr. 1985. The Numbers Game and the Profitability of the British Trade in Slaves. Journal of Economic History 45 (3): 693-703. Darity, William, Jr. 1990. British Industry and the West Indies Plantations. Social Science History 14 (1): 117-149. Davis, David Brion. 1984. Slavery and Human Progress . New York: Oxford University Press. Deerr, Noel. 1949-1950. The History of Sugar . 2 voll. London: Chapman and Hall. Drake, St. Clair. 1987-1990. Black Folk Here and There: An Essay in History and Anthropology . 2 voll. Los Angeles: University of California Center for Afro-American Studies. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1896 1999. Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America . Mineola, NY: Dover. Eltis, David. 2001. The Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Reassessment. William and Mary Quarterly . 3rd Ser. 58: 17-46. Eltis, David, Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert S. Klein. 1999. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM . Cambridge, U. K. and New York: Cambridge University Press. The revised database, released February 2007, was sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and is accessible at dataarchive. ac. uk. Engerman, Stanley. 1972. The Slave Trade and British Capital Formation in the Eighteenth Century: A Comment on the Williams Thesis. Business History Review 46: 430-443. Greene, Lorenzo. 1942. The Negro in Colonial New England, 1620-1776 . New York: Columbia University Press. Inikori, Joseph. 1976. Measuring the Atlantic Slave Trade: An Assessment of Curtin and Anstey. Journal of African History 17: 197-223. Inikori, Joseph, ed. 1982. Forced Migration . The Impact of the Export Slave Trade on African Societies . New York: Africana Publishing. Inikori, Joseph. 2002. Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development. New York: Cambridge University Press. Rodney, Walter. 1974. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa . Washington, DC: Howard University Press. Solow, Barbara, ed. 1991. Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System. Cambridge, U. K. and New York: Cambridge University Press. Thomas, Hugh. 1997. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870 . New York: Simon and Schuster. Williams, Eric. 1944. Capitalism and Slavery . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. SLAVE TRADE The buying and selling of humans for servitude was an old tradition in the Middle East as in many other parts of the world. Since antiquity, slavery was an integral part of the various societies that inhabited the Middle East. Men, women, and children were enslaved within these lands or imported into them from neighboring and faraway regions. From the early sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries, the Middle East was part of the Ottoman Empire. in which slavery was legal and the slave trade active. The traffic in slaves was substantially reduced toward the end of the nineteenth century, and slavery died out in most of the Middle East during the first decade of the twentieth. In certain parts of Arabia. the practice lingered on well into the second half of this century, and various forms of slavery continue to exist even today. Slavery in Middle Eastern x2014 and other x2014 societies can be difficult to define. Some attempts to answer the question who is a slave have resulted in one whose labor is controlled and whose freedom is withheld, a person in a state of legal and actual servility or who is of slave origins, or a natally alienated and generally dishonored person under permanent, violent domination. In Islamic legal terms, slavery grants one person ownership over another person, which means that the owner has rights to the slaves labor, property, and sexuality and that the slaves freedoms are severely restricted. But in sociocultural terms, slavery sometimes meant high social status, or political power, for male slaves in the military and bureaucracy (Mamluks and kuls ) and female slaves in elite harems. Even ordinary domestic slaves were often better fed, clothed, and protected than many free men and women. In any event, slavery was an important, albeit involuntary, channel of recruitment and socialization into the elite and a major x2014 though forced x2014 means of linking into patronage networks. Slavery gradually became a differentiated and broadly defined concept in many Islamic societies since the introduction of military slaves into the Abbasid Caliphate in the ninth century. In the Ottoman Empire, military-administrative servitude, better known as the kul system, coexisted with other types of slavery: harem (quite different from Western fantasy), domestic, and agricultural (on a rather limited scale). While the latter types of slavery remained much the same until late in the nineteenth century, the kul system underwent profound changes. From its inception, the kul system was nourished on periodical levies of the unmarried, able-bodied, male children of the sultans Orthodox Christian subjects, mostly from the Balkans. This child levy was known as the dev x15F irme. The children were reduced to slavery, converted to Islam. and rigorously socialized at the palace school into various government roles, carrying elite status. However, freeborn Muslims gradually entered government service, and the kul system evolved to accommodate this change. Ultimately, the child levy was abandoned during the seventeenth century, the palace school lost its monopoly on the reproduction of military-administrative slaves, and a new, kul - type recruitment-cum-socialization pattern came to prevail. With the evolution of the kul system, the classification of kuls as slaves was gradually becoming irrelevant. Ottoman officials of kul origins and training held elevated, powerful positions with all rights, privileges, and honors, and cases in which the sultan confiscated their property or took their life became increasingly rare. Whereas kuls and non - kuls were subject to the sultans whims to the same extent, the intimacy and mutual reliance of the master-slave relationship often provided the kul with greater protection than that enjoyed by free officials. Harem women of slave origins were in much the same predicament, playing a major role in the reproduction of the Ottoman elite. Toward the nineteenth century, the servility of persons in the kul harem category becomes more a symbol of their high status and less a practical or legal disability. All that has led some scholars to question the very use of the term slaves for such men and women. In any event, the Hatt-i Serif of G xFC lhane of 1839 freed government officials from the last vestiges of servility attached to their status. In the Ottoman Middle East, and with local modifications also in other Muslim societies, there was a continuum of various degrees of servility rather than a dichotomy between slave and free. At one end of that continuum were domestic and agricultural slaves, the real slaves in Ottoman society, while at the other were officeholders in the army and bureaucracy, with little to tie them to actual slavery. In between, but close to officeholders and far from domestic and agricultural slaves, came officials of slave origins ( kul - type) and then harem ladies of slave origins. The overwhelming majority of the slaves living in the Middle East during the Ottoman period were female, black, and domestic they served in menial jobs in households across a broad social spectrum. A smaller number of white female slaves also worked in similar circumstances, as did a number of black and white male slaves. African male slaves were employed in the Red Sea. PersianArabian Gulf, and Indian Ocean as pearl divers, oarsmen, and crew members in sailboats, in Arabia as agricultural laborers (in date, coffee, and other plantations) and outdoor servants, and in Egypt as cotton pickers in the 1860s. African men were used as soldiers in scattered instances in Yemen and other parts of Arabia, as in Egypt where the experiment of Muhammad Ali Pasha to recruit Sudanese slave soldiers failed. Kul and harem slaves were a relatively small minority among Middle Eastern slaves in the nineteenth century. At the time, a fairly steady stream of about eleven thousand to thirteen thousand slaves per year entered the region from central Africa and the Sudan. from western Ethiopia. and from Circassia, Abkhazia, and Georgia. They were brought in by caravan and boat via the Sahara desert routes, the Ethiopian plateau, the Red Sea, the Nile river valley, the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf. the Black Sea. and the pilgrimage routes to and from Arabia. After raids, sales, and resales, they reached their final destinations in the great urban centers of the Middle East, where they were sold in markets or in private homes of slave dealers. Whereas slaveholding was still legal at the beginning of the twentieth century, the slave trade into the region had already been prohibited by law for several decades. The traffic in Africans and Caucasians practically died down, although it would pick up from time to time on a small scale. Slavery was gradually being transformed into free forms of service-cum-patronage, such as raising freeborn children (mostly female) in the household, socializing them into lower - or upper-class roles x2014 as talent and need determined x2014 and later marrying them off and setting them up in life. Ottoman elite culture was articulating a negative attitude toward the practice and gradually disengaging from it on moral grounds. This was a significant development, given the fact that slavery enjoyed Islamic legitimacy and wide social acceptance in the Middle East and that, except for cases of cruelty and ill-usage, it was a matter over which no serious moral debate ever arose. The profound change that occurred was part of a major reform program introduced into the Middle East during the nineteenth century. Much of this happened during the Tanzimat (loosely covering the 1830s to the 1880s), generally regarded as a period of change in many areas of Ottoman life, although it is not certain how deeply the reforms affected the over-whelming majority of the population or even the peripheral groups within the Ottoman elite. Visible changes in the army, the bureaucracy, the economy, law and justice, education, communication, transportation, and public health went along with the reinvigoration of central authority. This was the work of a strongly motivated, Ottoman-centered group of reformers, who implemented their own program and political agenda and were not merely the tools of Western influence. While the government came to possess more efficient means of repression, its reforms also sowed the seeds of political change, giving rise to a strong constitutional movement, although the extent to which Western ideas x2014 not just technology and fashion x2014 were assimilated into Middle Eastern culture is still under debate. Having abolished slavery by the end of the first third of the nineteenth century, the powers of Europe now turned their zeal to slavery in the Americas. But in the 1840s, the British government and public opinion were already beginning to take an interest in the abolition of slavery in the Ottoman Middle East. Attempts to induce Istanbul to adopt measures to that effect soon proved futile. Instead x2014 and as an alternative method that would ultimately choke slavery for want of supply x2014 a major effort was launched to suppress the slave trade into the region. The essence of that long-term British drive was to extract from the Ottomans, on humanitarian grounds, edicts forbidding the trade in Africans and Caucasians. The implementation of such edicts was then carefully monitored by British diplomatic and commercial representatives throughout the Middle East and reported back to London. In turn, London would press Istanbul to enforce the edicts, and so on. This pattern yielded the prohibition of the slave trade in the Gulf in 1847, the temporary prohibition of the traffic in Circassians and Georgians in 1854 x2013 1855, the general prohibition of the African slave trade in 1857, the Anglo-Egyptian convention for the suppression of the slave trade in 1877, and the Anglo-Ottoman one in 1880. The campaign reached its climax in the Brussels Act against the slave trade, which the Ottoman government signed in 1890. From the mid-1850s onward, Caucasian slavery and slave trade were excluded from the realm of Anglo-Ottoman relations. In that area, the Ottomans initiated some major changes, acting alone and according to their own views. One of the most important factors that shaped Ottoman policy toward Caucasian slavery was the large number of Circassian refugees x2014 estimates run from 500,000 to 1 million x2014 who entered Ottoman territory from the mid-1850s to the mid-1860s. That Russian-forced migration contained about 10 percent unfree agricultural population, which put the question of non-African slavery into a different perspective. Increased tensions between refugee owners and slaves, at times causing violence and disturbance of public order, induced the Ottoman government in 1867 to design a special program for slaves who wished to obtain their freedom. Using an Islamic legal device, the government granted the slaves the land they were cultivating in order to purchase manu-mission from their own masters. In 1882, the authorities moved further in the same method to facilitate the conscription of Circassian and Georgian slaves. Such a step was necessary because only free men could be drafted into the army. Measures were also taken from the mid-1860s onward to restrict the traffic in Circassian and Georgian children, mostly young girls. Thus, by the last decade of the nineteenth century, the trade in Caucasian slaves was considerably reduced. The remaining demand was maintained only by the harems of the imperial family and the households of well-to-do elite members. The imperial harem at the time contained about 400 women in a wide array of household positions quite different from those consigned to them by Western fantasy. Those harems also continued to employ eunuchs, and as late as 1903, the Ottoman family alone owned 194 of them. In the nineteenth century, a perceived decline occurred in their political influence, both as individuals and as a distinct corps in court politics. Whether officially abolished by the 1908 revolution, or only later by the new Turkish republic, Ottoman slavery died piecemeal, not abruptly, with the end of the empire. Except for the issue of equality for non-Muslims, the call for the abolition of slavery was perhaps the most sensitive and culturally loaded topic processed in the Tanzimat period. Although it was rarely debated in the open, this was a matter of daily and personal concern, for both the public and private spheres of elite life were permeated by slaves on all levels. Faced with British diplomatic pressure to suppress the slave trade into the Middle East and with the zeal of Western abolitionism, Ottoman reformers and thinkers responded on both the political and the ideological planes. However, that response came when slavery was already on the wane, doomed to disappear with other obsolete institutions. see also mamluks tanzimat. Bibliography Baer, Gabriel. Slavery and Its Abolition. In Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt, by Gabriel Baer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969. Lewis, Bernard. Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Peirce, Leslie P. The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Toledano, Ehud R. The Imperial Eunuchs of Istanbul: From Africa to the Heart of Islam. Middle Eastern Studies 20, no. 3 (1984): 379 x2013 390. Toledano, Ehud R. Ottoman Concepts of Slavery in the Period of Reform (1830s to 1880s). In Breaking the Chains: Slavery, Bondage and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia, edited by Martin A. Klein. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993. Toledano, Ehud R. The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression, 1840 x2013 1890. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982. Toledano, Ehud R. Slave Dealers, Women, Pregnancy, and Abortion: The Story of a Circassian Slave-Girl in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Cairo. Slavery and Abolition 2, no. 1 (1980): 53 x2013 68. ehud r. toledano Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Slave Mode of Production Although one of the least developed Marxist concepts, slave mode or organization of productive relations has spawned rich intellectual debate. There are four major lines of inquiry. Must the number of productive workers be the dominant form of labor What is the significance of surplus extraction (profit through exploitation) in the organization of production, and how does it define a social formation Is there one mode of production or several competing social formations at any one time What was the historical evolution of the slave mode of production Although Karl Marx x2019 s primary concern was with the historical evolution of capitalism, not pre-capitalist social formations, he occasionally referred to the slave mode of production. The German Ideology identified the first historical form of property as communal, containing within it familial and slave relations (1978, p. 151). The Communist Manifesto recognized three forms of class society: capitalist and proletarian during the bourgeois epoch, lord and serf during feudalism, and master and slave during antiquity (1978, p. 474). The Grundrisse described the second system of historical development as antiquity characterized by dynamic, urban, warlike conditions, with chattel-slave relations (1965, pp. 36, 71-75). Despite these references, Marx provided little conceptual explanation for the origins and nature of slavery. In contrast to his analysis of the conditions of modern capitalism, he gave little attention to the internal dynamic of the slave mode of production and how this mode rises out of past social formations and dissolves under new historical conditions. Unlike Marx, scholars of antiquity have long debated the nature of classical slavery. According to Moses Finley, slavery was insignificant both temporally and geographically in the Greco-Roman world. The dominant labor force produced under various degrees of x201C unfreedom x201D in a society with different relations of production. The key question, concludes Finley, is x201C whether the relations of production were sufficiently different to preclude the inclusion of such societies within a single social formation in which the slave mode of production was dominant x201D (1991, p. 496). On the one hand, Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that peasant-citizens rather than slaves constituted the productive basis of Athenian democracy and that forms of tenancy, leasing, and management, not slavery, formed the basis for surplus extraction (1988, pp. 64-82). Geoffrey E. M. de Ste. Croix agrees that non-slave producers accounted for the demographic majority during antiquity, but argues that the dominant form of exploitation was slavery because slaves provided the surplus extraction for a wealthy elite. According to Ste. Croix, Marx x2019 s concentration on the distinctive feature of society x201C is not the way in which the bulk of the labour of production is done, but how the extraction of surplus from the immediate producer is secured x201D (1981, p. 52). It was slavery x2019 s increase in surplus extraction that accounts for x201C the magnificent achievements of Classical civilization x201D (1981, p. 40). Perry Anderson agrees on the importance of slave surplus extraction during antiquity, although he argues that the imperial state played a more important role in organizing the actual process of extraction (1992, pp. 19-22). Another key question concerns the historical evolution of ancient slavery into new social formations. Marx simply described the movement of x201C progressive epochs in the economic formation of society x201D (1978a, p. 5). In contrast, Ste. Croix explains that slavery as the most efficient form of surplus extraction was transformed once Roman frontiers stabilized and the number of war-supplied slaves trailed off. The consequence was increased slave-breeding as landowners sought to maintain their labor force. The crucial factor was female slave reproduction over slave production. To make up for the lost surplus, landowners extended exploitation to hitherto free laborers, with the result of the emergence of a uniform class of coloni whose rate of exploitation was down, but volume had expanded. Thus, the ancient world was destroyed by a social crisis from within and finished off by the so-called barbarians from without (1991, p. 503). Anderson agrees on the internal social crisis but pays equal attention to external factors. x201C The dual predecessors of the feudal mode of production, x201D he argues, x201C were the decomposing slave mode of production on whose foundations the whole enormous edifice of the Roman Empire had once been constructed, and the distended and deformed primitive modes of production of the Germanic invaders x201D (1974, pp. 18-19). Although Marx x2019 s own historical moment was dominated by the capitalist mode of production, slavery was not a peculiar institution in the mid-nineteenth century. When Marx was forty-two years old in 1860, there were about six million enslaved Africans in the New World, two-thirds of whom were imprisoned in the American South. Numerous scholars have debated this duality. Eugene Genovese argues that southern slavery was in conflict with capitalism and created a x201C powerful and remarkable social class x201D (1967, pp. 3 x2013 4). In contrast, John Blassingame has focused upon slave non-productive relations, especially communal and cultural formations. Other scholars insist on the centrality of productive relations. Ira Berlin and Philip Morgan insist that work x201C engaged most slaves, most of the time x201D (1993, p. 1). Still others insist on the exploitative nature of slavery and the role of surplus extraction. Eric Williams argued that slavery built up capitalism, while capitalism destroyed slavery. Robin Blackburn has recently argued that the profits from colonial slavery x2019 s surplus extraction x2014 what he dubs x201C extended primitive accumulation x201D x2014 fueled Britain x2019 s remarkable industrial takeoff. The passage from pre-modern to modern society was not that of the classic Marxist transformation of agrarian property relations, but rather x201C exchanges with the slave plantations helped British capitalism to make a breakthrough to industrialism and global hegemony ahead of its rivals x201D (1997, p. 572). Unlike economic arguments for the shift from antiquity to feudalism, political explanations for passages from slavery to modernity, especially slave revolts in the New World, have been persuasively made by W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, Robin Blackburn, and others. The debates on slave surplus extraction, competing social formations, and historical evolution have been extended to Asia and Africa. Walter Rodney argues that there was no x201C epoch of slavery x201D in pre-fifteenth-century Africa because of the absence of x201C perpetual exploitation. x201D He prefers the notion of competing social formations to one mode of production with pre-colonial Africa in transition from communal agriculture to feudalism (1982, p. 38). Claude Meillassoux agrees that the absence of perpetual x201C relations of exploitation and the exploiting class x201D ensured there was no system of slavery in Africa and that there were several social formations (1991, pp. 36, 235). But he goes further. Slavery was not only a relationship of production, but also a x201C mode of reproduction x201D (1991, p. 324). In contrast to Ste. Croix x2019 s argument for antiquity, this reproductive slavery had little to do with procreation and much more to do with the economy of theft through war, abduction, and brigandage (1991, pp. 76, 92). x201C Wars of capture and markets, x201D Meillassoux argues, x201C had their counterpart in the sterility of the women slaves who, despite their sex and their numbers, were deprived of reproductive functions x201D (1991, pp. 85, 278). Although John Thornton does not subscribe to Marxist concepts such as mode of production and surplus extraction, he does insist on the centrality of slavery to the continent x2019 s historical development, and his argument has been quite influential. Specifically, ownership or control of labor (in contrast to land ownership in feudal Europe ) was the dominant principle of property relations in African societies, and x201C slavery was rooted in deep-seated legal and institutional structures of African societies x201D (1998, p. 74). This view has been correctly criticized for downplaying the qualitative change wrought by the advent of the Atlantic slave trade. Returning to the lines of inquiry above, there are some key points. The number of productive workers does not have to be dominant. This was as true of slaves in antiquity as of slaves in the New World. Surplus extraction is critical to particular social formations. Slaves in antiquity and the New World helped build magnificent civilizations. Slavery is a modern as well as an ancient social formation. Kevin Bales counts twenty-seven million slaves today operating as part of the global economy (1999, p. 9). Slavery plays a role in the historical evolution of social formations in terms of both reproduction and production. There is no one passage from slavery into other social formations. SEE ALSO Anderson, Perry Capitalist Mode of Production Conjunctures, Transitional Du Bois, W. E. B. Feudal Mode of Production James, C. L. R. Labor, Surplus: Marxist and Radical Economics Marx, Karl Marxism Mode of Production Surplus Anderson, Perry. 1974. Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism . London: NLB. Anderson, Perry. 1992. Geoffrey de Ste Croix and the Ancient World. In A Zone of Engagement . 1-24. London and New York: Verso. Bales, Kevin. 1999. Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy . Berkeley: University of California Press. Berlin, Ira, and Philip D. Morgan, eds. 1993. Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the America . Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Blackburn, Robin. 1988. The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848 . London and New York: Verso. Blackburn, Robin. 1997. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 . London and New York: Verso. Blassingame, John W. 1972. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South . New York: Oxford University Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. 1992. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 . New York: Atheneum. (Orig. pub. 1935.) Finley, Moses I. 1991. x201C Ancient Society x201D and x201C Slavery. x201D A Dictionary of Marxist Thought . ed. Tom Bottomore. Oxford, U. K. and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Genovese, Eugene. 1967. The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South . New York: Vintage. (Orig. pub. 1961.) James, C. L. R. 1963. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution . New York: Random House. Marx, Karl. 1965. Grundrisse. In Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations . Trans. Jack Cohen. Ed. Eric J. Hobsbawm. New York: International Publishers. (Orig. pub. 1941.) Marx, Karl. 1978a. Communist Manifesto. In The Marx-Engels Reader . ed. Robert D. Tucker. New York: Norton. (Orig. pub. 1848.) Marx, Karl. 1978b. German Ideology. In The Marx-Engels Reader . ed. Robert C. Tucker. New York: Norton. (Orig. pub. 1932.) Meillassoux, Claude. 1991. The Anthropology of Slavery: The Womb of Iron and Gold . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rodney, Walter. 1982. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa . Washington, DC: Howard University Press. (Orig. pub. 1972.) Ste. Croix, G. E. M. de. 1981. The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Thornton, John. 1998. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 . Cambridge, U. K. and New York: Cambridge University Press. Williams, Eric. 1944. Capitalism and Slavery . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Wood, Ellen Meiksins. 1988. Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy . London and New York: Verso. Slavery Industry The word industry (from the Latin industria . meaning x201C diligent activity directed to some purpose x201D ) generally refers to a combination of business operations related to a primary economic product or process. Hence, slavery industry refers to business activity related to the institution of slavery, including not just the process of supplying slaves but also the relationship of slavery-related activity to linked activity in manufacturing, agricultural production, commerce, shipping, and financial institutions. The main issue involves exploring whether Africa, the slave trade, and slavery-related economic activity x2014 conventionally characterized as the triangular trade or what Ronald Bailey (1992) calls the slave(ry) trade x2014 was important to the development of commerce and industry in Europe. especially Great Britain. e negli Stati Uniti. An estimate of the numbers of Africans taken as slaves was produced by Harvard University x2019 s Transatlantic Slave Trade Database in 1999. It provided up to 226 pieces of information for more than 27,233 slaving voyages. Some 11,062,000 Africans were transported between 1519 and 1867, though these numbers are constantly revised upward. About 55 percent were transported between 1700 and 1799, and 29.5 percent between 1800 and 1849. Surprisingly, about 30 percent were transported after Britain x2019 s slave trade abolition acts of 1807. British slave traders (including those living in British colonies) carried almost 46 percent of all slaves, and the Portuguese were responsible for about 29.1 percent. The remaining Africans were carried by France (13.2), Spain (4.8), the Netherlands (4.7), and the United States (2.5). British slave traders dominated in the all-important period in the eighteenth century when European industrialization surged. Some 280,000 x2014 about 2.5 percent of all slaves x2014 were imported into the United States, and 48 percent of these were imported after the beginning of the American Revolution (1775-1783). Some scholars have called the forced importation of Africans into the New World cauldron before the nineteenth century x201C the Africanization of the Americas, x201D one of the most significant demographic transformations in world history. Up to 1820, Africans outnumbered Europeans by a ratio of over 3 to 1 among those people who were transported across the Atlantic: almost 8.4 million Africans and 2.4 million Europeans. This had an obvious impact on population trends in Africa (depopulation) and in the Americas. The black population of the West Indies. for example, grew from 15,000 to 434,000 between 1650 and 1770 x2014 an increase of almost 2,793 percent x2014 while the white population remained almost static, increasing from 44,000 to 45,000. The need to x201C repeople x201D the Americas resulted in part from the demand for labor and the almost genocidal impact that European settlement had on the Native American population. Thus, African peoples composed an even larger proportion of the labor force in all of the American regions associated with expanded Atlantic commerce than is generally known. Beyond the number of Africans who were enslaved, the most hotly debated issue has been the impact that enslaved African labor had on the economic development of slave-trading nations. This was the central thesis in a book by Eric Williams (1911-1981), historian and former prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, titled C apitalism and Slavery (1944). Williams x2019 s book is, in his words, x201C strictly an economic study of the role of Negro slavery and the slave trade in providing the capital which financed the Industrial Revolution in England and of mature industrial capitalism in destroying the slave system x201D (1944, p. v). Both aspects of his argument continue to provoke considerable debate, especially whether or not British abolition resulted more from economic forces than from humanitarian impulses. This issue has particular relevance to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when large-scale manufacturing using machines became the dominant activity in industrial capitalist economies, especially in Great Britain and the United States, with cotton textiles as the leading sector. For example, British colonies in the Caribbean and in the South, where slavery thrived, produced an average of more than 80 percent of the total value of British America x2019 s exports in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Enslaved African labor played a central role in the production of rice, sugar, tobacco, and cotton and in other key sectors, including the mining of gold, silver, and precious metals. Sugar and cotton, however, are the two most important sectors, and data in Joseph Inikori (2002, p. 489) bear this out: from 1752 to 1754, sugar x2019 s share of British American imports into Britain was 49 percent as compared to cotton x2019 s 2 percent. By 1814 to 1816, sugar x2019 s share was 52 percent and cotton x2019 s only 22 percent. By the 1854-1856 period, however, cotton dominated with 48 percent as compared to sugar x2019 s 15 percent. Sugar and its cultivation provide the first context and a key link in the story of the evolution of racial slavery in the Americas, a point early recognized by No xEB l Deerr, who concluded that trying x201C to write a history of sugar without at the same time treating of slavery was like trying to produce Hamlet with the part of Laertes omitted x201D (1949-1950). Sugar was the crop for which large-scale plantation slavery was constructed, first on European islands in the Atlantic and then in the Caribbean. It was brought over to Hispaniola (now Haiti ) in 1493 by Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), who had learned about its cultivation from his Italian father-in-law on Madeira Island, a Portuguese territory. Once transferred to the so-called New World, sugar production became a crucible with an incessant demand for labor of any type x2014 first Native American and then European indentured servants, before the industry fastened onto African labor that was more accessible, available, abundant, and cheap. Scholars have estimated that between 60 and 70 percent of all the Africans who survived the transatlantic slave trade ended up as slaves on the sugar plantations of the Americas. Cotton was the most decisive raw material for the British and U. S. industrial revolution in textiles, the leading industrializing sector in both nations. The industry was spurred by the invention and improvement of such technologies as the flying shuttle (1733), the spinning jenny (1764), the mule (1779), and the power loom (1785). But the labor of enslaved Africans was also crucial. In 1860 enslaved Africans working on only 3 percent of the earth x2019 s land mass in the South produced 2.3 billion pounds of cotton, or 66 percent of the world x2019 s total crop, up from 160 million pounds in 1820. This was the sole source for 88.5 percent of British cotton imports in 1860, and even supplied the growing needs of a rapidly expanding cotton textile industry centered in New England after 1790. African and slave-based economies in the Caribbean also provided important markets for British and later American manufactured cloth. Moreover, economist Robert North and others concluded that incomes from marketing slave-produced cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar x2014 products x201C sold in the markets of the world x201D x2014 shaped the pattern of regional specialization and the division of labor that helped to consolidate the U. S. national economy before the Civil War (1861-1865). Beyond its pivotal contribution to consolidating the first global commercial and industrial economies centered around the Atlantic Ocean. the x201C slave(ry) trade x201D was also a focal point of intense national rivalries among European powers. Such rivalries were part and parcel of the rise of new nation-states, initial x201C testbeds x201D in which the policies and techniques associated with mercantilism, international diplomacy, colonial administration, and war were refined. Many historical aspects of the slavery industry involving people of African descent from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth century continue to have contemporary consequences. Slavery and the slave trade helped shape the persisting inequities that have historically existed in the economic and social conditions of peoples of African descent all over the world, a theme provocatively captured in the title of Walter Rodney x2019 s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972). Second, the slavery industry played a key role in fostering and sustaining racism, an ideology that groups human beings into socially constructed biological categories labeled races . and then treats these groups as if they are inherently x201C inferior x201D or x201C superior x201D in the allocation of economic, political, and social resources and opportunities. Inequality based on class and race has historically been the target of social protests from the earliest days of the slavery industry and continuing through the civil rights and Black Power movements up to the present. Recent calls for reparations x2014 which demand apologies and various forms of compensation to x201C repay x201D people of African descent for their contribution to the profits and developmental success of nations, companies, and citizens with historical ties to the slave trade and slavery x2014 have sparked considerable controversy. Some governmental units have demanded full disclosure of corporate ties to the slave trade and slavery as a precondition for granting contracts. Other recent movements, however, do not distinguish between historical forms and consequences of slavery and the slave trade that linked African peoples to the rise of capitalism from more recent systems of exploitation and oppression, such as the growing international traffic in human beings associated with contemporary globalization. Such continuing debate and ongoing struggles will undoubtedly shape these movements for social change for many decades to come. SEE ALSO African Americans Cotton Industry Industrialization Liverpool Slave Trade Reparations Servitude Slave Trade Slavery Sugar Industry Bailey, Ronald W. 1992. The Slave(ry) Trade and the Development of Capitalism in the United States: The Textile Industry in New England. In The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economics, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe, ed. Stanley Engerman and Joseph Inikori, 205-246. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Blackburn, Robin. 1997. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1942-1800 . London: Verso. Darity, William, Jr. 1990. British Industry and the West Indies Plantations. Social Science History 14 (1): 117-149. Deerr, No xEB l. 1949-1950. The History of Sugar . 2 voll. London: Chapman and Hall. Eltis, David, Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and Herbert S. Klein. 1999. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM . Cambridge, U. K. and New York: Cambridge University Press. Inikori, Joseph. 2002. Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development . Cambridge, U. K. Cambridge University Press. Rodney, Walter. 1972 1981. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa . Rev. ed. Washington, DC: Howard University Press. Solow, Barbara, ed. 1991. Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System . Cambridge, U. K. Cambridge University Press. Thomas, Hugh. 1997. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870 . New York: Simon and Schuster. Williams, Eric. 1944. Capitalism and Slavery . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. American Eras COPYRIGHT 1997 Gale Research Inc. Slave Trade Africans. The purchase and sale of African people was a major part of the early American economy. It was one of the most obvious ways Americans were linked to the global trading economy. From 1783 to 1815, around 150, 000 Africans were forced to migrate to the United States. many of them carried on American ships, and sold through networks of traders after their arrival. Thousands more were carried by American slavers to other parts of the Americas, especially Cuba. until trade there was banned in 1794. The United States accounted for an increasing proportion of the slave trade, as many as 16 percent of all people taken from Africa from 1801 to 1805. The trade centered in New England. especially Rhode Island. but leading merchants in every colony were slavers. Traders would send ships to the west coast of Africa with stores of guns, manufactured goods, and rum. These items would be traded for people brought from the interior by networks of African and European traders centered in the x201C factories, x201D or forts, along the coast. The ships would then return to America, stopping at the Caribbean colonies and southern states, before returning to the North, loaded with sugar (often in the form of molasses), rice, and other agricultural produce. (This was the so-called triangular trade, although few ships actually made the complete trip.) The trade was complex, with American and European slavers bartering among themselves off the African coast in order to acquire the most desirable variety of goods and selling slaves at various ports along the way home. Rhode Island slavers, for instance, sold half their slaves in Cuba between 1783 and 1802, dispersing the others around the West Indies and on the mainland. The ships themselves were often owned by groups of investors of different nationalities. The trade as a whole also included traffic between Europe and America, with many kinds of commercial goods, of which slaves were only one part. The profits New Englanders enjoyed from the slave trade also helped expand their trading efforts elsewhere Samuel Brown of Boston, a leader in opening trade to China in the late 1780s, made his initial fortune as a slaver. SLAVE SMUGGLING After the end of the legal importation of slaves from Africa in 1808, some traders did continue to bring Africans in by smuggling. While never very significant economically, this trade still took its toll in human terms on the individuals involved. An 1812 venture described in an abolitionist memoir conveys something of the scope and nature of the traffic: After resting a few days at St. Augustine, x2026 I agreed to accompany Diego on a land trip through the United States, where a kaffle gang of negroes was to precede us, for whose disposal the shrewd Portuguese had already made arrangements. x2026 I soon learned how readily, and at what profits, the Florida negroes were sold into the neighboring American States. The kaffle . under charge of negro drivers, was to strike up the Escambia River, and thence cross the boundary into Georgia. where some of our wild Africans were mixed with various squads of native blacks, and driven inland, till sold off, singly or by couples, on the road. x2026 The Spanish possessions were thriving on this inland exchange of negroes and mulat-toes Florida was a sort of nursery for slave-breeders, and many American citizens grew rich by trafficking in Guinea negroes, and smuggling them continually, in small parties, through the southern United States. Source: Philip Drake, Revelations of a Slave Smuggler (New York. Robert M. DeWitt, 1860), p. 51. Middle Passage. One of the most notorious aspects of the slave trade was the conditions Africans endured on their voyage to America. They were crowded onto small ships, most of the men chained together in pairs. Even without chains the conditions were harsh. Slaves stayed in holds as small as five feet high, and food and water were scarce. If the weather permitted they were forced to exercise or x201C dance x201D in their chains on deck once a day. In these conditions scurvy and other diseases flourished, and in many cases between 5 and 20 percent of the slaves died. Mortality was high among the white sailors as well, who shared at least some of these conditions, as well as the dangers of sea travel in this period. Slavers considered the slaves to be valuable property, and some did seek to protect their cargo. The Vernons of Rhode Island ordered the captain of their slave ship to let the Africans x201C have a sufficiency of good Diet x2026 as you are Sensible your voyage depends upon their Health. x201D Many slavers carried doctors to help keep the slaves alive during the voyage. Those who lived faced the ordeal of auction, a frightening process where they were scrutinized publicly by men speaking a foreign language and usually separated from their families and friends, then led to their owners x2019 farms. Legislation . Although some early Americans profited from slavery, many others objected to it. Opposition was helped by a reduced demand for slaves in the years around the Revolution. The important factor here was declining tobacco production, hurt by stagnant European prices. The abuses of the slave trade were well known, and there were many efforts to end it. Eventually, only Georgia and South Carolina permitted slave ships to land, making Savannah and Charleston the largest American slave markets. Southern states inserted some protection for the trade into the Constitution, which included a clause barring Congress from ending the trade for twenty years. Most Americans understood that slave importation would end soon, and the trade boomed after 1790, bringing more Africans into the country in the next two decades than had entered in any previous twenty-year period. In 1807 Congress passed legislation ending the trade, which took effect in 1808. By the Civil War. almost all American slaves were native-born. Cotton . Although the legal transatlantic slave trade ended in 1808, slave trading continued to be an important part of the American economy. In 1793 a young graduate of Yale College, Eli Whitney, traveled to Georgia. Although he went to pursue studies in law, he already had a reputation as an inventor. He had learned something of mechanics while working as a boy in his father x2019 s metalworking shop in Westborough, Massachusetts, and is said to have invented a mechanical apple parer when he was thirteen years old. In Georgia he noticed how difficult it was to remove the seeds from the cotton grown on the plantations there and set about devising a way to mechanize that task. The result was the invention called the cotton gin (short for engine). The gin used a toothed roller to catch the tufts of cotton and pull them through a wire mesh, leaving the seeds behind, and the cotton ready for the textile mill. Whitney x2019 s idea was quickly copied, and the rapid spread of the gin changed the face of southern agriculture and affected the fates of millions of people. Before the gin extracting the seeds was so difficult that cotton was profitable only along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts, where a certain variety grew. With the gin other varieties became economical, and the cultivation of cotton spread across the South, meeting the demands of the booming textile industry in the North and in Britain. By 1803 American growers supplied 45 percent of the cotton imported into Britain, and more and more of the new southern territories devoted themselves to the crop. Where cotton went, slavery followed. Plantation Economy . The early nineteenth century saw the firm establishment of the plantations that were the basic feature of the antebellum southern economy. This economy rested on slave labor. Plantations were large farms, single economic units run by the owner and his family, geared toward the production and sale of staple crops such as cotton. Most owners were closely involved in the work, sometimes personally overseeing the work of between five and ten slaves. Although most plantations were small, the economy was dominated by owners of larger plantations with more than fifty slaves and much higher productive capacity. As the value of cotton rose, the wealth of these slaveholders increased as well. Southern planters rivaled northern traders in economic power and displays of wealth. In the South the slaves themselves were a main source of that wealth. A principal feature of the plantation economy was the steady rate of natural increase within the slave population. Alone in the Americas, the United States slave population continued to grow despite the end of slave importations from Africa. Domestic Trade . Behind the growth of the plantation economy lay a thriving internal slave trade, which drastically undermined the significance of the end of the transatlantic trade in 1808. The trade was well established as early as the 1780s. Around 100, 000 slaves migrated internally between 1790 and the end of the foreign slave trade, and around another 100, 000 migrated by 1815 as slave sales grew quickly. By 1860 over one million slaves would move from the old slave states of Virginia, Maryland. and the Carolinas to the West, first to Kentucky and Tennessee. and then to the Deep South. The domestic slave trade was deeply embedded in larger economic relations. In South Carolina, for instance, slave-rich low country planters dominated the legislature and passed regulations limiting the slave trade, in part to prevent agricultural overproduction in the back country, where slaves were in short supply. After 1808 there were no more slave ships, but the domestic trade was just as harsh. Some slaves moved with their masters as they settled new areas, but more were taken from one master in the East and sold to new ones in the West. Most of these were abruptly torn from homes and families, and had to start new lives under harsh conditions. The horrors of this domestic trade were also well known, but it was too profitable to end. The slave Charles Ball brought a price of 400 in the Charleston market in 1805. Speculators crisscrossed the country offering cash for slaves, a sign of the strength of the market. Over time, the chance that a slave born in Virginia where labor was plentiful would be sold to a trader and moved further south increased dramatically, and the threat of sale became a common disciplinary tool. Even Thomas Jefferson used it. In 1803 he sold a slave who had angered him into x201C so distant an exile x2026 as to cut him off completely from ever being heard of again. x201D David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York amp Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York amp London: Norton, 1981) Michael Tadman, Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old South (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989). Slave Trade Early Efforts. The first slaves to be purchased in the British colonies in the seventeenth century were sold by Dutch slave traders. By the latter half of the seventeenth century England was able to prevail over Dutch control of the Atlantic Ocean. The English Crown sponsored a trading company in 1660 which they reorganized and rechartered in 1672 as the Royal African Company. For the next twenty-six years this group maintained a monopoly over the sale of African slaves. With the termination of the monopoly, New England merchants became active in the colonial slave trade. They sent goods to West Africa, where they traded for slaves whom they then sold in the West Indies or Carolina. Their slave trade was particularly active in Barbados. Puritan John Winthrop attributed the salvation of the New England economy to trade with the Caribbean. x201C It please the Lord to open to us a trade with Barbados and other Islands in the West Indies. x201D Part of that success was based on the sale of African slaves. New England slavers sailed primarily from Massachusetts until 1750, when the center of American slave trade shifted to Rhode Island . Statistics. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, ten million to eleven million African slaves crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Relatively few of those slaves arrived in the English continental colonies. Most of the slaves (85 percent) went to Brazil and the Caribbean colonies of the British, French, Spanish, Danish, or Dutch. Nine percent of the slaves went to the Spanish mainland. Six percent, or 600,000 to 650,000 Africans, went to the American colonies. Most of the slaves were from the coast of West Africa or from the CongoAngola area further south. At best a trip between Senegambia and Barbados lasted three weeks. Storms or becalming waters could delay a ship so that the transatlantic voyage took three months and exhausted the food and water supplies. Between 5 and 20 percent of the slaves died in transit during the seventeenth century, but the mortality rate declined in the eighteenth century. Merchants made money only if the slaves arrived alive, so they sought captains who could deliver healthy slaves. Middle Passage. Sailors referred to the shipboard experience of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean as x201C the middle passage. x201D On board ships men were usually chained, while women and children were allowed some freedom of movement on deck. Captains chose one of two methods for transporting slaves: tight packing or loose packing. Tight packing squeezed as many slaves into a space as possible. Male slaves lay in spaces six feet long, sixteen inches wide, and two-and-one-half feet high. Female slaves lay in spaces five feet long, fourteen inches wide, and two-and-one-half feet high. Such tight spaces prevented the slaves from moving about or even sitting up. Captains who chose this style of storage did not want to waste space. They believed that their net receipts were higher from the larger cargo even if a higher ratio of slaves died. Part of the profit derived from less food and a smaller crew. The Reverend John Newton observed, x201C The poor creatures, thus cramped, are likewise in irons for the most part which makes it difficult for them to turn or move, or attempt to rise or to lie down without hurting themselves or each other. Every morning, perhaps, more instances than one are found of the living and dead fastened together. x201D Other captains chose loose packing. They believed that more room, better food, and a degree of liberty reduced the mortality of slaves. Healthy slaves increased the profit. Some captains insured their stock of slaves against drowning. Because insurance did not cover slaves who died aboard a ship, some captains dumped dying slaves overboard and claimed drowning to collect insurance benefits. Auction Block. The goal of the slave merchants was to make a profit from the quick sale of the enslaved Africans. In some cases an entire cargo might be consigned to a planter or group of planters, which would close the sale to anyone else. A more common circumstance for the sale of slaves was an auction. Prior to bidding, slaves walked before prospective buyers for public inspection, to be poked and prodded. Upon completion of the examination an auctioneer would sell the slaves to the highest bidder. A second method was the scramble. Merchants would establish a fair market price before buyers rushed aboard ships to select slaves. Olaudah Equiano, an emancipated African, remembered, x201C On a signal given, the buyers rush at once into the yard where the slaves are confined, and make choice of that parcel they like best. The noise and clamor with which this is attended, and the eagerness visible in the countenances of the buyers, serve not a little to increase the apprehension of terrified Africans. x201D TRIANGULAR TRADE Expanding European empires relied on extensive trade across the Atlantic Ocean. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century they established a triangular pattern of commerce that reached from Europe to Africa to North America. From Africa to the Western Hemisphere thousands of Africans were brought to slave markets. From North America to Europe raw materials such as coffee, fish, furs, gold, grain, indigo, lumber, naval stores, rice, sugar, and tobacco supplied manufacturing needs. Europe then sent the manufactured goods of alcohol, cloth, metalware, household goods, and weapons to Africa and North America. Source: Richard Middleton, Colonial America: A History, 1585 x2013 1776 . I second edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550 x2013 1812 (New York. Norton, 1977) Peter Kolch x2019 m, American Slavery, 1619 x2013 1877 (New York: Hill amp Wang, 1995) Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680 x2013 1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986) Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom (New York: Norton, 1975). slave trade The Oxford Companion to British History xA9 The Oxford Companion to British History 2002, originally published by Oxford University Press 2002. slave trade. The slave trade of Great Britain. and those of other European countries, transformed the indigenous African and surpassed the Muslim trades. Britain s became the largest national trade. About 75,000 Africans were carried in British ships in the 17th cent. in 1701x20131800 the numbers were about 2.5 million out of the 6.13 million slaves exported, reflecting the expanding demand from the British plantations, especially the sugar colonies, as well as exports to Spanish America. Between 1701 and 1810 British North America received about 348,000 slaves, the British Caribbean about 1.4 million. The English trade after 1600 was first conducted by monopolistic chartered companies, of which the Guinea Company (1618) lasted until the 1650s. The Royal Adventurers into Africa (1660, 1663) was succeeded by the Royal Africa Company (1672x20131752). However, private traders were always active, even before the companys quasi-monopoly was ended in 1698, and numerous merchant partnerships were involved. The royal familys patronage of trading and colonizing companies in the 17th cent. particularly the duke of Yorks, and the granting of parliamentary subsidies for the maintenance of African forts and trading posts in the next, mirrored the involvement, if not the direct participation, of all classes of British society. Slaves were traded for an increasing number of English commodities, so that by the early 18th cent. groups as diverse as Devon textile producers and iron manufacturers from the Birmingham area sought to influence legislation. The trade was viewed as a pillar of the plantations and necessary to economic and commercial expansion. Lawyers, legislators, and churchmen viewed it as morally and theologically justifiable. The quakers were unusual in their early attacks on it as contrary to Christian equality and compassion. The slave trade has given rise to a vast historical literature. Topics examined include: the regions of west Africa from which the slaves were broughtx2014the major regions for the European trade as a whole were roughly west central Africa (2 million), Bight of Benin (1.2 million), Bight of Biafra (814,000), Gold Coast (677,000), Sierra Leone (483,000), and Senegambia (210,000)x2014how these changed over time and the extent to which preferences for Africans from one or another region could affect the market the organization of the trade on the African coast the nature of slave voyages, the size of ships, the treatment of slaves, and their mortality rates the sex and age ratios of the slaves taken from Africa the volume of the trade its impact on African societies. Econometric analyses have been complemented by studies examining the growing unease over the cruelties of the trade, part of the change in sensibilities, expressed in the literature of benevolence and sentimentalism, that found expression in the writings of, for example, William Cowper. Samuel Johnson. and the Wesleys. Other studies have looked sympathetically at the black population of 18th-cent. England and have documented the lives of individual Africans. The trade was critical to the production of major colonial commodities, especially sugar, tobacco, and rice, whose export helped shape the global market economy of the late 17th and 18th cents. as well as sectors of the British economy. Its importance for certain British ports is well known. Liverpools dominance is clear and Liverpudlians were in the forefront of opposition to reform. Figures for 1750x201376 suggest 1,868 ships sailed from there to Africa, 588 from Bristol, and about 260 from London. However, while profits from the trade in some periods may have run at about 9 per cent, arguments that it provided important investment capital, contributing to the British industrial revolution, are now discounted. See anti-slavery . Richard C. Simmons Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English xA9 The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English 2009, originally published by Oxford University Press 2009. slavxB7er 1 x2C8slx101vx259r x2022 n. chiefly hist. a person dealing in or owning slaves. x220ExA0 a ship used for transporting slaves. slavxB7er 2 x2C8slavx259r x2022 n. saliva running from the mouth. x220ExA0 archaic, fig. excessive or obsequious flattery. x2022 v. intr. let saliva run from the mouth: the Labrador was slavering at the mouth. x220ExA0 show excessive desire: suburbanites slavering over drop-dead models. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. TRAVEL YOUR WAY INSPIRATIONS TRAVEL amp TOURS Inspirations Travel amp Tours - who are we Created by way of a 2011 merger of Caraville Travel amp Tours (CTT) and International Travel amp Tours (ITT), Inspirations Travel amp Tours has today grown into a diversified and multifaceted Travel Company. With an enviable reputation for customer service and dedication, our team combines many years of expertise from actually having been there, from selecting the best value options and staying in touch with the feedback we get from our many clients Our aim is to offer travellers a broad spectrum of superb and unparalleled experiences in each of our diverse destinations. We understand that each traveller is unique, so the utmost care and attention is taken to ensure that varying tastes, expectations and requirements are met. 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Our portfolio of travel destinations: CROATIA l CYPRUS l GREECE l ITALY l MALTA l TURKEY DUBAI l EGYPT l ISRAEL l JORDAN l MOROCCO l MADAGASCAR NORWAY l SWEDEN l DENMARK l FINLAND l ICELAND AUSTRALIA l NEW ZEALAND SOUTH AFRICA l BOTSWANA l MOZAMBIQUE l NAMIBIA l VICTORIA FALLS LESOTHO, SWAZILAND, ZAMBIA, ZIMBABWE KENYA l MALAWI l RWANDA l TANZANIA l UGANDA Agents for: Hurtigruten: Norway, Greenland, Spitsbergen, Antarctica and Iceland cruises Norwegian Cruise Line - Mediterranean, Northern Europe, Caribbean, Hawaii, Alaska, South America, Middle East, Asia, Australia amp New Zealand cruises Tallink Silja Lines: Baltic Sea cruising World Expeditions: Active adventure holidays across 7 continentsThe East African slave trade From the earliest times, slaves were one of the many 39commodities39 exported from Africa to Arabia, Persia, India and beyond. In the 18th century the demand increased considerably and Arab trading caravans from Zanzibar penetrated mainland Africa in search of suitable slaves. Various contemporary accounts describe all aspects of the trade, from the initial capture of the slaves to their sale in the infamous market of Zanzibar Town. In the interior, the Arab traders would often take advantage of local rivalries and encourage powerful African tribes to capture their enemies and sell them into slavery. In this way, men, women and children were exchanged for beads, corn or lengths of cloth. When the Arab traders had gathered enough slaves, sometimes up to a thousand, they returned to the coast. Although the Koran forbade cruelty to slaves, this was frequently ignored on the long journey to Zanzibar: the slaves were tied together in long lines, with heavy wooden yokes at their necks or iron chains around their ankles which remained in place day and night until they reached the coast. The trade in slaves was closely linked to the trade in ivory: the Arab traders also bought tusks from the Africans and some of the captured slaves may have had to carry these on their heads as they marched towards the coast. If a woman carrying a baby on her back became too weak to carry both child and ivory, the child would be killed or abandoned to make the ivory load easier to carry. Any slaves unable to march were also killed and left behind for the vultures and hyenas. The passage of a slave caravan was marked by a long line of decaying corpses. After many weeks or months of marching, the slave caravans reached the coast at ports such as Kilwa and Bagamoyo. Here, the slaves were loaded onto dhows, seldom more than 30821135m long, and taken to Zanzibar. Each dhow carried between 200 and 600 slaves, all crammed below decks on specially constructed bamboo shelves with about 1m of headroom. There was not enough room to sit, or to kneel or squat, just a crippling combination of the three. Sometimes slaves were closely packed in open boats, their bodies exposed day and night to the sea and the rain. They were thirsty, hungry and seasick and many died of exhaustion. Meals consisted of a daily handful of rice and a cup of stagnant water. Sanitation was non-existent and disease spread rapidly. When any illness was discovered, infected slaves were simply thrown overboard. By the time the slaves reached Zanzibar, they were suffering from starvation and the effects of torturously cramped conditions: it was sometimes a week after landing before they could straighten their legs. The slave traders paid customs duty on all slaves who landed, so any considered too weak to live were thrown overboard as the ship approached the port. Even so, many more slaves died in the Customs House or on the streets between the port and the market. Before being put on sale, the slaves who did survive were cleaned so that they would fetch a better price. Men and boys had their skins oiled and were given a strip of material to put around their waist. Women and girls were draped in cloth, and sometimes even adorned with necklaces, earrings and bracelets. Generous layers of henna and kohl were smeared onto their foreheads and eyebrows. The slaves were put on sale in the market in the late afternoon. They were arranged in lines, with the youngest and smallest at the front and the tallest at the rear, and paraded through the market by their owner, who would call out the selling prices. The owner would assure potential buyers that the slaves had no defects in speech or hearing, and that there was no disease present. Buyers would examine the arms, mouths, teeth and eyes of the slaves, and the slaves were often made to walk or run, to prove they were capable of work. Once their suitability had been established, they were sold to the highest bidder. After being sold to a new owner, slaves were either put to work in the houses and plantations of Zanzibar or else transported again, on a much longer sea voyage, to Oman or elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. However, the slaves were relatively well treated when they arrived at their new homes. They were fed, housed and clothed, and given small plots of land, with time off to tend them. Young mothers were rarely separated from their children, and good slaves were often freed after a few years. Many took paid jobs, such as gardeners and farmers, for their previous masters: some even became leaders of slave caravans or masters of slave ships. Source: Charles Miller 39The Lunatic Express39, Macmillan 1971 This travel guide Read morePadstow - North Cornwall Holidays in Padstow Tourism Guide Perranporth Holywell Bay Crantock Bay Newquay Porth Mawgan Porth Bedruthan Steps Carnewas (NT) Treyarnon Bay Constantine Bay Harlyn Bay Trevone Padstow Wadebridge The Camel Estuary Daymer Bay Rock Polzeath Port Isaac Bodmin North Cornwall Holiday Cottages in Padstow Where to Stay - Holidays in Padstow Padstow on the Camel Estuary, is a fine example of a Cornish-fishing port. The town is largely unspoilt, with a beautiful harbour. There are good shopping facilities, a cinema, cafes and restaurants, including the famous Seafood Restaurant run by Rick Stein and many old and friendly public houses, most of them serving pub food and real ale. The Camel Estuary looking from Padstow across the river to Rock Around the harbour you will find craft and gift shops, artists studios, book - shops, grocers, newsagents, leather workshops, a home-made fudge shop and much more. Padstow itself lies on the Camel Estuary . about seven miles from Wadebridge. The area is one of considerable natural beauty with beautiful bays, golden beaches and many interesting walks, particularly along the Coastal Footpath. The site of Padstow was well chosen by its forefathers. Settled into a narrow gulley on the West side of the River Camel estuary we are well sheltered from the prevailing South - West winds and the air is balmy. Padstow is a heavenly jumble of houses, quays, boat slips, cafes and restaurants, gift and craft shops, a wine merchant, bookshops, holiday flats, grocers, gown shops, newsagents, accountants, estate agents, a chemist, homemade fudge shop and even a book maker. Not much of this was planned: it has happened through the years. No architect could have schemed the Padstow of today. It is the result of years of adaptation and change. of getting the best out of local natural materials and then ingeniously adapting these buildings to fit the current needs of a friendly little harbour town. NB ALL map locations are approximate - please verify location with the owner prior to booking - Map not displaying in IE try the F5 key The Camel Trail Cycle Route The Camel Trail in North Cornwall, winds its way along the Estuary between padstow and Wadebridge, then rising up into the hills of Bodmin Moor to Blisland. The scenery along this popular walking and cycling route is some of the most spectacular in the country. The Camel Trail cycle route was created on 11 miles of disused railway that ran along the valley beside the River Camel, on what was once originally the Atlantic Express Route from London to the West country. The Camel Trail links the towns of Padstow. Wadebridge and Bodmin. There is a branch line that follows the river through as it down from North Cornwalls rugged moor land village landscapes and wooded valleys around Blisland the picturesque market town of Camelford. The centre of the Camel Trail is Wadebridge. where the majority of people opt to follow the levelgently sloping route west to Padstow. There is bike hire available in Padstow and Wabebridge. The route between the two towns is mostly level, with some gentle slopes. With plenty of little coves and places to stop and admire the view or have a picnic along the way, the Camel trail is an ideal way to spend the day with the familly. In this part of North Cornwall, It is true that time and tide wait for no man but it is also true that here in Padstow they do seem to wait that little bit longer. Everything moves slower. The traffic, because it cannot do any other, and the people, because their lives are governed so much more by the tides, the seasons of the year and the farming calendar. It will become obvious to our visitors that we Padstonians have discovered that rushing about simply does not do anyone any good. Some of us here would like the whole world to slow down to our pace but we know that this cannot be. Instead of this, we invite our visitors to share with us the slowing down - if only for a couple of weeks, and you will find that you are drawn towards it as if by an invisible magnet. Folk always have time to stand and stare into the harbour scene and Padstow is no exception. There are seats all around and it is a favourite place for locals and visitors alike. The long seat beside the shelter on the corner of North Quay is called the Long Lugger and this is the traditional meeting place for Padstonians. Here the old boys of the town hold court. swap yarns and generally watch the world go by. Try to set aside some of your holiday to share our heritage. Visit our dear little museum which is not a huge tomb of a place. but a small room set aside to house some our modest historic treasures. Come to church. sit quietly awhile and reflect upon the history of Padstow. Somehow the church in a small seafaring town reflects lifes chequered pattern so much more. Spare a moment of thought for the wives and mothers of yesteryear who prayed for the sate return of their absent menfolk. Of the joy that would be released at the end of a long voyage safely concluded. Of the deep numb grief of women folk who waited day after day week after week, for a long overdue ship. You will be warmly welcomed at services here. The Methodist Chapel in the middle of the town and the modern Catholic Church hold out equally welcoming arms. Padstow in North Cornwall, has a long and ancient history dating back to well before the birth of Christ, for around 2500 BC people travelling from Brittany to Ireland used the FoweyCamel valleys on their journeys. During recent years this ancient path, known as The Saints Way, has been re-opened, making it possible for walkers to trace the footsteps of those early travelers. It is believed that this track continued to be used during Roman times, as some evidence of Roman settlement has been found in the area. Shortly after 2000BC the Beaker folk settled around the coast of North Cornwall, and remains of their ancient burial chambers can still be seen at Harlyn Bay. One of these cyst burials is currently on display at the Plymouth Museum. Much later, during the 1st century BC, Venitii settlers arrived from Brittany, building forts on the coastal headlands. and it is likely that Padstow was a centre of population at that time. However it was with the arrival of St. Petroc in the 6th century AD that Padstow really began to develop. He spent 30 years in Padstow, during which time he founded a monastery here. and remains of old Celtic crosses all still to be found in the area. The monastery and church were destroyed by the Danes in 981 AD and the monastery was transferred to Bodmin, when Padstow came under the control of the Priory of Bodmin. A second church was built to replace the one destroyed by the Danes, of which only the base of the tower now remains, and the present church was built between 1420 and 1450. In medaeval times, Padstow was granted the right of Sanctuary by King Athelstan, which enabled criminals to remain safe from arrest, and this continued until the time of the Reformation. At that time trading continued with Brittany and Ireland and a Guild of St. Petroc was set up by traders in Padstow. Their headquarters was thought possibly to have been in Abbey House, which can be seen over-looking the harbour on North Quay and which is now a private residence. During the Reformation the churchs control of Padstow ceased when the ownership of the land was transferred to the Prideaux family Prideaux Place, built on the site of the former Barton of the Monks of Bodmin, was completed in the 16th century and has one of the oldest deer parks in the country. This house is still occupied by descendants of the Prideaux family, and is open to the public on some afternoons. Sir Walter Raleigh lived in Padstow when he was Warden of Cornwall, and his Court House on Riverside was the central office for the collection of dues and taxes. Although his Courthouse and cottage still remain, they are now private residences and are not open to the public. Padstows importance as a port developed from earliest times and in 1565 Sir John Hawkins took shelter here while returning from the West Indies, as did Sir Martin Frobisher while returning from his search for the North West Passage to China in 1577. At that time Padstow was well used as a fishing port, and during the 17th century, when mining in Cornwall was expanding, shipments of copper ore were made to Bristol and slates were exported, many of them from the Camel quarry. By the 19th century a number of ship-building yards had been established, and the Padstow Museum houses a collection of tools from that time. At that time the fishing industry was at its height, when pilchards were landed and cured here, and cured fish of many types, as well as wheat, barley, oats, cheese and minerals were being exported. A considerable variety of goods was also imported from Ireland, France, Wales, Scandinavia and Russia. The first lifeboat was stationed at Padstow prior to 1827 when improvements began to be made to the port in an effort to make it safer. By 1899 the railway arrived, which helped the port and also marked the beginning of the tourist industry. Sadly this century has seen a decline in the fishing industry, which was further affected when the railway closed, but over recent years this seems to be recovering and there are also signs of a small return to commercial shipping. Padstow has retained some of its ancient traditions, the most notable being its May Day Festival to mark the coming of summer, which originated in an ancient fertility rite. At Christmas the traditional Padstow carols are sung in the streets of the town. These are unique to Padstow and date back at least to the 18th century
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