Six illustrative examples slavery in modern world
Human rights activists highlight the following characteristics slave labor: they are engaged in it against their will, under the threat of force and with insignificant wages or without it at all.
December 2nd– International Day for the Abolition of Slavery. The use of slave labor in any form is prohibited Universal Declaration human rights. However, in the modern world, slavery is more prevalent than ever before.Very profitable business
Experts international organization Free the Slaves claim that if over the 400 years of the existence of the transatlantic slave trade, approximately 12 million slaves were exported from the Black Continent, then in the modern world More than 27 million people live as slaves(1 million in Europe). According to experts, the underground slave trade is the third most profitable criminal business in the world, second only to the arms and drug trade. Its profits amount to $32 billion, and the annual income brought by forced laborers to their owners is equal to half this amount. "Quite possible, – writes sociologist Kevin Bales, author of The New Slavery in global economy», – that slave labor was used to make your shoes or the sugar you put in your coffee. Slaves laid the bricks that make up the wall of the factory where your television is made... Slavery helps lower the cost of goods around the world, which is why slavery is so attractive today.”
Asia
IN India still exist today entire castes, supplying free workers, especially children working in hazardous industries.
In the northern provinces Thailand selling daughters into slavery has been the main source of livelihood for centuries.
« Here, – Kevin Bales writes: – cultivated special shape Buddhism, which sees in a woman a being incapable of achieving bliss as the highest goal of the believer. Being born as a woman indicates a sinful life in the past. It's a kind of punishment. Sex is not a sin, it is only part of the material natural world of illusion and suffering. Thai Buddhism preaches humility and submission in the face of suffering, because everything that happens is karma, from which a person still cannot escape. Such traditional ideas greatly facilitate the functioning of slavery.".
Patriarchal slavery
Today there are two forms of slavery - patriarchal and labor. Classical, patriarchal forms of slavery, when a slave is considered the property of the owner, are preserved in a number of countries in Asia and Africa - Sudan, Mauritania, Somalia, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Nepal, Myanmar and Angola. Officially, forced labor has been abolished here, but it persists in the form of archaic customs, which the authorities turn a blind eye to.
New world
More modern form slavery is labor slavery, which appeared already in the twentieth century. Unlike patriarchal slavery, here the worker is not the property of the owner, although he is subject to his will. " So new slave system , says Kevin Bales, assigns economic value to individuals without any responsibility for their basic survival. The economic efficiency of the new slavery is extremely high: economically unprofitable children, the elderly, the sick or crippled are simply discarded(in patriarchal slavery they are usually kept at the very least in easier jobs. - Note "Around the world"). IN new system slavery slaves are a replaceable part that is added to the production process as needed and has lost its former high cost».
Africa
IN Mauritania slavery is special - “family”. Here power belongs to the so-called. white moors – to the Hassan Arabs. Each Arab family owns several Afro-Moorish families – Haratinov. Haratin families have been passed down through the families of the Moorish nobility for centuries. Slaves are entrusted with the most various works– from caring for livestock to construction. But the most profitable type of slave business in these parts is the sale of water. From morning to evening, water-carrying Kharatins transport carts with large flasks around the cities, earning 5 per day – 10 dollars is very good money for these places.
Countries of victorious democracy
Labor slavery is widespread throughout the world, including countries of victorious democracy. It usually includes those who have been kidnapped or immigrated illegally. In 2006, a UN commission published a report entitled “Trafficking in Persons: global patterns" It says that people are sold into slavery in 127 countries of the world, and in 137 states victims of human traffickers are exploited (as for Russia, according to some data, more than 7 million people live here as slaves). In 11 states, a “very high” level of kidnapping activity was noted (more than 50 thousand people annually), among them – New Guinea, Zimbabwe, China, Congo, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania And Sudan.
Men, women and children
For those workers who themselves want to leave their homeland, certain companies usually first promise highly paid work abroad, but then (upon arrival in a foreign country) their documents are taken away and the simpletons are sold to the owners of criminal businesses, who deprive them of their freedom and force them to work. According to experts from the US Congress, Every year 2 million people are transported abroad for resale. Mostly these are women and children. Girls are often promised a career in the modeling business, but in reality they are forced to do prostitution(sexual slavery) or work in underground garment factories.
Into labor slavery men get in too. The most famous example is the Brazilian charcoal burners. They are recruited from local beggars. Recruits who were first promised high earnings, and then had their passports taken away and work book, are taken to the deep forests of the Amazon, from where there is nowhere to escape. There, just for food, without rest, they burn huge eucalyptus trees into the charcoal on which they work. Brazilian steel industry. Rarely do any of the charcoal burners (and their number exceeds 10,000) manage to work for more than two or three years: those who are sick and injured are mercilessly kicked out...
The UN and other organizations are making a lot of efforts to combat modern slavery, but the result is still quite modest. The fact is that the punishment for the slave trade is several times lower compared to other serious crimes such as rape. On the other hand, local authorities are often so interested in shadow business that they openly patronize modern slaveholders, receiving a portion of their excess profits.
Photo: AJP/Shutterstock, Attila JANDI/Shutterstock, Paul Prescott/Shutterstock, Shutterstock (x4)
Most of the condemnation and attention in the world is paid to the black slave trade, which took place from the 16th to the 19th centuries. However, at the same time, human trafficking also flourished on the southern Mediterranean coast. More than 1.25 million Europeans were sold into slavery by the so-called Barbary pirates, Muslim sailors from North Africa. The further fate of the white slaves was no less difficult than that of their African comrades in misfortune.
The slave trade is one of the most ancient types of commodity transactions, known to mankind. The first mention of it is contained in the Code of Hammurabi of Ancient Babylon of the 18th century BC. Almost all civilizations and major cultures had slaves from among their own fellow citizens or enslaved peoples. However, it is not often possible to find information about corsair pirates operating along the coast of North Africa. These were residents of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.
Everyone who set out on a journey Mediterranean Sea in the 17th century, was under real threat to be captured and sold as a slave somewhere on the coast of North Africa. "The Slave Market" Gustave Boulanger/it.wikipedia.org/Public Domain
However, corsairs attacked ships not only on the high seas; sometimes they made raids on coastal settlements of such European countries as Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, England, the Netherlands, even reaching the shores of Holland and Iceland. They landed on unguarded coastlines and sneaked into villages under cover of darkness. In 1631, almost all the inhabitants of the village of Baltimore in Ireland were kidnapped. As a result, until the 19th century, many Europeans refused to live off the coast of the Mediterranean.
A little history
In the 13th and 14th centuries, Christian pirates, mainly from Catalonia and Sicily, dominated the seas, posing a constant threat to merchants. However, in the 15th century, after the expansion Ottoman Empire, Barbary pirates took control of the Mediterranean waters. Now they were plundering the ships of Christian Europeans.
In 1600, pirates from Europe brought Hi-tech shipbuilding and structures sailing ships. This allowed the Berbers to expand their influence in the Atlantic Ocean. The peak of their heyday occurred in the first half of the 17th century.
The Berber slave trade is usually presented as the capture of white Europeans by Muslim pirates, but in reality the pirates did not select slaves based on race or religious belief. Berber slaves could be black, white, mulatto, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish and also Muslim. And the pirates themselves were not exclusively Muslims. Pirates from England and Holland also exploited people.
“One of the things that the general public and learned men have taken for granted is slavery along racial lines,” wrote historian Robert Davis, author of Christian Slaves of Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy. - But it's not right".
In comments that could spark heated debate, Davis argues that the extent of white slavery has been minimized or simply ignored because scholars are more inclined to portray Europeans as ruthless colonizers rather than victims.
Life of a Berber Slave
Slaves captured by Barbary pirates were doomed to a hard existence. Many died right on the ships, during the long crossing to North Africa, from disease or from lack of food and water. The rest ended up on the slave market. There they had to stand for hours while buyers carefully examined their bodies before purchasing.
The slaves were then sent to various jobs. Usually men were in for a difficult manual labor, such as quarry work, and for women - housework or sexual slavery. At night, slaves were placed in prisons called banyos. More often than not, the rooms were overcrowded, which made it very stuffy. However, the worst fate awaited those who had the chance to become galley rowers. For days these people sat at the oars without leaving their place. They ate, slept and even defecated on the spot. The overseers were ready to break their whips on the bare backs of slaves if they thought that they were not working hard enough.
The end of the era of Barbary pirates
Berber piracy began to decline in the 17th century, when the increasingly powerful navies of European powers began to more actively protect their ships. However, the Ottoman robbers continued their activities until early XVIII century, until the US fleet and a number of European powers entered the battle against pirates with renewed vigor.
The Algerian pirates were attacked by Spanish, French and American naval forces. Eventually, after an Anglo-Dutch raid in 1816, the corsairs were forced to agree to terms that included ending the enslavement of Christians. However, the slave trade in non-Europeans continued to flourish.
"Sea battle with Barbary pirates" Lauris Castro/en.wikipedia.org/Public Domain
Rare incidents continued to occur until the British raid on the Algerians in 1834. The activities of the Ottoman pirates ceased completely after the attack on them by the French fleet in 1830. This ended the colonial rule of North African sailors. Later, in 1881, the French attacked the Tunisians. Tripoli returned to Ottoman control in 1835, but fell completely into Italian hands in 1911 as a result of the Italo-Turkish War. European governments passed laws to emancipate slaves. Thus ended the era of the slave trade on the Berber coast.
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A big demographic blow was dealt African civilization during the slave trade. Slavery and the slave trade in Africa are nothing less than genocide of black people. But what is slavery? Slavery is when a person is a commodity and has no rights in society, he is property that belongs to his master, slave owner, owner or state.
If in other countries slaves were primarily captives, criminals and debtors, then in Africa they were simple people who were forcibly torn away from their families. The slave trade is the buying and selling of people into slavery. One of the first to use black slaves for their own purposes were the ancient Egyptians. It was the slaves who built the beautiful pyramids and temples that have survived to this day.
The largest supplies of slaves were precisely from African countries, and it was in connection with this that a certain image of a black slave spread. What needs to be understood is that the slave trade did not occur on the basis of race.
How many thousands of people were taken to distant lands? It is impossible to make accurate calculations. According to many historians, before 1776, at least nine million Africans were captured and transported around the world. for the most part in America. But many recent studies confirm the fact that these figures are significantly underestimated, with too few records remaining from this period of time.
The first transatlantic slaves for the slave trade were taken from Senegambia and near the coast. This region had a long history of providing slaves for the Islamic trans-sugar trade. The expansion of European empires in the New World required one of the main sources of resources - work force. The Africans, on the other hand, were excellent workers: they had extensive experience in the agricultural sector and keeping livestock. They were also more resistant to heat, which helped them work in mines and tropical forests.
What was the tripartite slave trade like in Africa?
All three stages of the Golden Triangle trade in Africa were profitable. It worked according to this scheme: goods from Europe were sent to Africa (fabric, alcohol, tobacco products, beads, cowrie shells, metal products, weapons). The weapons were used to expand the slave trade and obtain large supplies of slaves. Goods were exchanged for African slaves.
The second stage of the triangular trade was the delivery of slaves to America.
The third and final stage of the trilateral trade involved the return of ships to Europe with the products of slave labor on the plantations: sugar, tobacco, rum, cotton, etc.
Slaves for the transatlantic slave trade, as we said above, were initially exported from Senegambia. But trade and enslavement spread into west-central Africa. You can see all the regions that were subject to enslavement in the picture.
Who started the three-way slave trade from Africa along the Golden Triangle?
From 1460 to 1640, Portugal had a monopoly on the export of slaves from African countries. It is worth pointing out the fact that it was and last country which abolished the slave trade. Europeans most often received permission from African kings. There were also attempted military campaigns organized by Europeans to capture slaves.
As a result of all these inhumane acts, millions of African people died in slavery. According to some sources, the slave trade continues to exist in the world today. It's because people are looking for better life in another country, but often fall into the trap of greedy entrepreneurs.
"We saw a female slave stabbed with a dagger and lying on the road. Eyewitnesses said that the Arab killed her in anger over the waste of money, because she could not go further... we saw a male slave who died of exhaustion, a woman hanging from a tree..."(Livingston).
Nowadays, thanks to the sentimental liberal novels of the past, the image of “European colonial slave traders who massively enslaved the black population of Africa” has become established in fairly wide circles. The current racial and economic claims of blacks, both in Africa and in Europe or the USA, owe to this image to a large extent. Meanwhile, much more for a long time and the Muslim Arabs conducted the slave trade in Africa with incomparably more cruel methods.
By the 9th century, Arab traders had established trans-Saharan caravan routes between North Africa and the gold-rich areas of Senegal's headwaters. In addition to gold, they exported ivory and black slaves from there, which they sold to Egypt, Arabia, Turkey, the countries of the Middle and Far East. A large slave market, which existed for a long time, developed in Zanzibar, on the east coast of Africa.
Only in the middle of the 15th century did Europeans begin to seize blacks into slavery - by that time the Arab slave trade had existed for half a millennium.
Arab and Turkish slave owners treated black slaves much worse than Europeans and Americans; especially since they cost the Arabs much less, due to closer transportation. According to D. Livingston, almost half of the slaves died on the way to the Zanzibar market. Slaves were mainly sent to work on plantations; The fate of women was often prostitution, and the fate of boys was to become eunuchs for the harems of Muslim rulers.
Since the end of the 18th century, a movement to ban the slave trade developed in Europe. In March 1807, the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Prohibition Act. Trade in blacks was equated with piracy; British warships began to conduct inspections of merchant ships in the Atlantic. In May 1820, the US Congress also equated the slave trade with piracy and American warships began to inspect merchant ships. Since the 1840s All European countries introduced penalties for the slave trade.
However, the slave trade continued in the Arab-Muslim states. In the 19th century, Zanzibar and Egypt became the main centers of the slave trade. From here, armed groups of slave hunters went deep into Africa, conducted raids there and delivered slaves to coastal points of the East African coast. Up to 50 thousand slaves were sold annually in the Zanzibar market alone.
To fight the Arab slave traders, the French Cardinal Lavigerie put forward a project to create an alliance similar to the medieval ones knightly orders. In the second half of the 19th century, the British forced some East African rulers to sign treaties banning the slave trade. However, even after the signing of these agreements, the number of blacks taken into slavery was about a million people a year.
In many regions of Africa, the slave trade continued into the 20th century. In Turkey, slavery was only banned in 1918, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. IN Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Mauritania, it actually exists today as a branch of the criminal business.
David Livingston. "Diaries of an African Explorer."
When I visited the slave market, I saw about three hundred slaves offered for sale... All the adults seemed ashamed of being sold. Buyers examine their teeth, lift their dress to look at the lower part of their body, throw a stick for the slave to bring it and thus show his efficiency. Some sellers are dragged by the hand in the crowd, shouting the price all the time. Most of the buyers are Arabs from the north and Persians...
June 19, 1866 We passed a dead woman tied by the neck to a tree. Locals They explained to me that she was unable to keep up with the other slaves of the party and the owner decided to do this with her so that she would not become the property of some other owner if she managed to recover after some rest. I will note here that we saw other slaves tied in the same manner, and one was lying on the path in a pool of blood, either shot or stabbed to death. Each time it was explained to us that when the exhausted slaves are unable to go further, the slave owners, furious at being deprived of profits, take out their anger on the slaves by killing them.
27th of June. We came across the corpse of a man on the road; he apparently died of hunger, as he was extremely exhausted. One of ours wandered around and discovered many slaves with a yoke around their necks, abandoned by their masters due to lack of food. The slaves were too weak to speak or even to say where they were from; Among them were very young.
Much, if not entirely, of the lawlessness in this region is the result of the slave trade, as the Arabs buy anyone brought to them, and in such a wooded area as this, kidnapping can be done with extreme ease.
When asked why people are tied to trees and left to die, the usual answer is given here: the Arabs tie them and leave them to die because they are angry that they are losing money on slaves who cannot continue walking.
Caravan leaders from Kilwa usually arrive at a Waiyau village and show off the goods they have brought. The elders generously treat them, ask them to wait and live for their own pleasure; slaves for sale will be delivered in sufficient numbers. The Waiyau then raid the Manganja tribes, who have almost no guns at all, while the attacking Waiyau are abundantly supplied with weapons by their guests from the seashore. Some Arabs from coastal strip, who are in no way different from the Waiau, usually accompany them on these raids and conduct their business independently. This is the usual way of obtaining slaves for the caravan.
Not far from our camp there was a party of Arab slave traders. I wanted to talk to them, but as soon as the Arabs found out that we were close, they withdrew and moved on... The Arab party, hearing about our approach, ran away. All Arabs are running away from me, since the British, in their minds, are inseparable from the capture of slave traders.
August 30. The fear that the British instill in the Arab slave traders makes me uncomfortable. They are all running away from me, and therefore I can neither send letters to the coast, nor move across the lake. The Arabs apparently think that once I get on the schooner, I will definitely burn it. Since the two schooners on the lake are used exclusively for the slave trade, the owners have no hope that I will allow them to escape.
It was hard to see the skulls and bones of slaves; We would gladly not notice them, but they catch your eye everywhere when you wander along a stuffy path.
16 of September. At Mukate's. I discussed the issue of the slave trade with the leader for a long time. The Arabs told the leader that our goal when meeting the slave traders was to convert the selected slaves into our property and force them to accept our faith. The horrors we saw - the skulls, the destroyed villages, the many dead on the journey to the coast, the massacres committed by the Waiyaau - shocked us. Mukate tried to get rid of all this with laughter, but our remarks sunk into the souls of many...
The slave-trading party consisted of five or six half-breed Arabs from the coast; According to them, they are from Zanzibar. The crowd was so noisy that we could hardly hear each other. I asked if they would mind if I came up and looked at the slaves up close. The owners allowed it, but then began to complain that, taking into account the human losses on the way to the seashore and the cost of food, they would have very little profit left from this journey. I suspect that the main income is made by those who send slaves by sea to the Arabian ports, since in Zanzibar most of the young slaves that I have seen here go for about seven dollars a head. I told the slave traders that this was all a bad deal...
Y. Abramov. "Henry Morton Stanley. His life, travels and geographical discoveries" (ZhZL series),
As Stanley approached the waterfalls named after him on this journey, the country, which he had found on his first visit so prosperous and overcrowded with population, now appeared before him completely ruined. Villages were burned, palm trees were cut down, fields were overgrown with wild vegetation, and the population disappeared. It was as if some gigantic hurricane had passed through the country and destroyed everything that could be destroyed. Only here and there were people sitting on the river bank, resting their chins on their hands and blankly looking at everything around them. From questioning these people, Stanley learned that the devastation of the country was the work of Arab slave traders, who finally penetrated here. These robbers made their way from Niangue in the upper Congo to the Aruvimi, one of the main tributaries of the Congo, and devastated a huge area of 50 thousand square miles, also catching part of the population along the Congo, above the confluence of the Aruvimi. Approaching a village, the Arabs attacked it at night, lit it with different sides, they killed adult men from among the residents, and women and children were taken into slavery.
Stanley soon encountered a huge detachment of slave traders, who were leading more than two thousand captive natives. To collect such a number of prisoners, the Arabs destroyed 18 villages with a population of approximately 18 thousand people, some of whom were killed, some fled, and some finally died in captivity from the cruel treatment of their new masters. This treatment was immeasurably worse than the treatment of any livestock. The unfortunates were in chains and tied in whole parties to one chain. The chain was attached to collars that pressed on the throat. During the journey, the position of the chained was immeasurably worse than the beasts of burden, no matter how heavily laden they were. At rest stops, the shackles and chain made it impossible to straighten the limbs or lie down freely. People had to huddle together and never had peace. The Arabs fed their captives only enough for the strongest to survive, since the weaker ones were only a burden for them due to the long journey to Zanzibar, the main slave market in East Africa.
Stanley was ready to attack these robbers, punish them and take their unfortunate captives from them by force. Unfortunately, his forces were too insignificant to have any success in a skirmish with a large detachment of Arabs and their people, armed with excellent guns. But he decided to do everything possible to protect the natives from the robbery of the Arabs and soon founded a station at Stanley Falls, the purpose of which was to help the natives repel the Arab slave traders if they appeared in the upper Congo... in 1886 it was destroyed by the combined forces Arab slave traders. But another measure, the adoption of which Stanley strongly insisted, turned out to be more effective - the prohibition of the slave trade in Zanzibar. This measure was adopted only very recently, although given the influence that Europeans have received in Zanzibar since 1884, when they - first the Germans and then the British - became complete masters of the Sultanate, such a measure could have been implemented immediately after Stanley published those horrors , which are produced by slave traders inside Africa, looking for slaves there.
...the Arabs turn out to be a terrible plague Central Africa, - because the most important subjects What they export from Central Africa are ivory and slaves. The Arabs, overwhelmed by the thirst for profit, in order to get more ivory, unceremoniously take it away from the native population, burning villages and killing the inhabitants. Even more murderous is the slave trade. The Arabs simply hunt people, ruining and depopulating entire countries. Since both main items of Arab export are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain in areas closer to the sea - ivory due to the departure of elephants from here, and slaves due to the fact that the natives, having received firearms, are now repelling the Arab robbers - then Arabs are penetrating further and further into Africa every year. In the mid-sixties they did not penetrate further than Lake Tanganyika, and in the late eighties Stanley met them far to the west, along the banks of the Aruvimi, a tributary of the Congo, and in the upper reaches of the Congo itself. Of course, not all Arabs are engaged in such robbery; There are noble people among them, conducting correct and honest trade, which itself is profitable enough here to enrich everyone involved in it... Serious measures are currently being taken against stubborn slave traders in Zanzibar, which was recently the main point of the slave trade. These measures were mainly influenced by Stanley’s discovery of the monstrous way in which the Arabs received their living goods. However, this evil is still strong, and many Arabs still hunt people and devastate entire regions.
First stage of the slave trade (1441 - 1640)
The export of slaves from Africa to the American coast began to take place from the beginning of the 16th century. Until this time, the Europeans had not yet begun to fully exploit American territory. Therefore, the slave trade first went from Africa to Europe, to certain areas of Africa itself and to the islands adjacent to the western coast of the mainland, on which the Portuguese had already created plantation farms. The first base of the slave trade in the West African region was the Cape Verde Islands, colonized by Portugal by 1469.
In 1441, the first batch of 10 Africans was delivered to Portugal. Since the 40s of the 15th century. Lisbon began to regularly equip special expeditions for live goods. The sale of African slaves began in the country's slave markets. They were used as domestic servants in the city and for work in agriculture. As they colonized the islands in the Atlantic Ocean - Sao Tome, the Cape Verde archipelago, the Azores and Fernando Po - the Portuguese began to create sugar cane plantations on them. Labor was needed. Its main source at that time was Benin, which had the opportunity to sell prisoners of war captured during constant wars with the small tribes of the Niger Delta.
From the beginning of the 16th century. The importation of slaves from Africa to the New World begins. The first batch of slaves from Africa in the amount of 250 people was delivered to the mines of Hispaniola (Haiti) by the Spaniards in 1510. During the period from 1551 to 1640, Spain used 1222 ships to transport slaves, delivering up to one million slaves to its colonial possessions in America . Portugal did not lag behind Spain. Having received its possession of Brazil under the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), from 1530 to 1600, it imported 900 thousand African slaves into the colony.
The main areas for the export of slaves from Africa were the Gold Coast, Congo and Angola. Trading forts on the West African coast turned into points for the purchase and sale of slaves. The main consumer of live goods in the 16th-17th centuries. was Spain. Supply of Spanish slaves colonial possessions in America it was carried out on the basis of special agreements - ascento. In form, it was a contract to provide the colonies with labor - slaves. A contract was concluded between the so-called intermediary and the Spanish royalty, under which the former assumed the obligation to supply labor to the royal colonies. “Crown” received income from this system and at the same time saved “ clean hands”, since she herself did not directly participate in the acquisition of slaves on the Guinea coast. Others did this for Spain, and above all Portugal, which concluded a similar contract with it.
The monopoly on a dominant position in the world, granted to Spain and Portugal by the Pope, over time began to cause sharp displeasure among other European powers. As Holland, France, England and other countries acquired colonies in the New World and created plantation slavery in them, the struggle for possession of slave markets began. The first of the former “outsiders” to turn their attention to the west coast of Africa was England. In 1554, John Locke's trading expedition reached the Portuguese possession of El Mina, and in 1557 another expedition reached the shores of Benin. The first three major... New English expeditions for African slaves in 1559-1567. under the leadership of J. Hawkins, they were partially financed by the Queen of England herself, and he himself was subsequently elevated to knighthood. The English government believed that “the slave trade contributed to the well-being of the nation,” and took English slave traders under its protection. In 1618, a special English company of London entrepreneurs was created in Great Britain to trade in Guinea and Benin.
France also began to establish its trade relations with the western coast of Africa. From 1571 to 1610 and its ports, 228 ships were sent to the “Guinean coasts” (Sierra Leone, El Mina, Benin, Sao Tome). The final destination of many of them was “Peruvian India” or Brazil.
The Dutch set their sights most seriously on undermining the Portuguese monopoly in the slave trade. Since 1610, they have provided tough competition to Portugal. The Dutch advantage became especially clear with the formation of the Dutch West India Company in 1621, which began to seize Portuguese trading posts on the coast of West Africa. By 1642, the ports of El Mina, Arguin, Gori, and Sao Tome were already in the hands of the Dutch. They also captured all the Portuguese trading posts on the Gold Coast. Holland became in the first half of the 17th century. the main supplier of African slaves to the Spanish and other colonies in America. In 1619, the Dutch delivered the first batch of 19 slaves to the New Amsterdam (future New York) they founded, which marked the beginning of the formation of the black community on the territory of the future United States. France brought the first slaves to America in the 40s of the 17th century.
With the loss of El Mina and other possessions, the Portuguese were nevertheless not driven out of the coast. The Dutch failed to gain the monopoly position that Portugal had previously occupied. The west coast of Africa was exposed to European competition. The struggle for the monopoly of the slave trade became the core of the fierce competition of the main European powers in the second half of the 17th century. and throughout almost the entire 18th century. The main ones in this struggle were England and France.
Second stage of the slave trade (1640 - 1807)
From the second half of the 17th century. The slave trade increased and its organization improved. The first manifestations of an organized system of trade in African slaves across the Atlantic were associated with the activities of large commercial companies and their branches, clearly striving for a monopoly position. Holland, England and France organized large trading companies, which were given the right to monopoly trade in African slaves. These were the already mentioned Dutch West India Company, the English Royal African Company (from 1664), and the French West India Company (from 1672). Despite the official ban, private entrepreneurs were also involved in the slave trade.
One of the companies' goals was to obtain the right to "asentpo" from the Spaniards (which only ceased to exist in 1789). The Portuguese had this right, then it passed to the Dutch, and again returned to the Portuguese. France held the right of asiento from 1701 to 1712, losing it at the Treaty of Utrecht in favor of the British, who received a monopoly on supplying America with African slaves for 30 years (1713-1743).
However, the heyday of the slave trade in the 18th century. was tied up in to a greater extent not with monopoly companies, but was the result of free private enterprise. So, in 1680-1700. The Royal African Company exported 140 thousand slaves from West Africa, and private entrepreneurs - 160 thousand.
About the scope and scale of the European slave trade in the 18th century. These are the numbers that say. From 1707 to 1793, the French equipped expeditions for slaves 3,342 times. Moreover, one third of such expeditions occurred in the first 11 years after the end of the American War of Independence. However, the first place in the number of expeditions for slaves remained with England, the second - with Portugal. English town Bristol in the 18th century. sent about 2,700 ships to Africa, and Liverpool sent more than 5,000 in 70 years. In total, more than 15 thousand expeditions for slaves were organized over the century. By the 70s of the 18th century. the export of slaves to the New World reached 100 thousand people a year. If in the 17th century. 2,750,000 slaves were imported to America, then by the beginning of the 19th century. About 5 million African slaves worked in the colonies of the New World and in the United States.
The slave trade brought considerable income to slave traders and merchants. Its benefit was obvious to them: if out of three ships with slaves one reached the shores of America, then even then the owner suffered no loss. According to data for 1786, the price of a slave in West Africa was 20-22 f. Art., in the West Indies - about 75-80 pounds. Art. The slave trade also had another more important, “rational” side for Europeans. In general, it contributed to the development of the economies of European countries and the preparation of industrial revolutions in them.
The slave trade required the construction and equipping of ships and an increase in their number. The labor of numerous people was involved inside and outside of a single European country. The scale of employment of people who became specialists in their field was impressive. Thus, in 1788, 180 thousand workers were employed in the production of goods for the slave trade (and it was, as a rule, of an exchange nature) in Manchester alone. The scope of the slave trade end of the XVIII V. was such that if it were terminated on the Guinea coast, about 6 million French alone could go bankrupt and become impoverished. It was the slave trade that gave a powerful impetus to the rapid development of the textile industry in Europe at that time. Fabrics accounted for 2/3 of the cargo of ships used for the exchange of slaves.
In the 18th century More than 200 slave ships left the African coast every year. The movement of such a huge mass of people became possible not only because Western Europe In collaboration with American slave owners, the organization of the slave trade was formed, but also because corresponding systems for its provision arose in Africa itself. Western demand found a supply of slaves among Africans.
"Slave Trade Africa"
In Africa itself, especially in its eastern regions, the slave trade began a long time ago. Already from the first centuries of our chronology, black slaves and female slaves were highly valued in Asian bazaars. But these male and female slaves were bought in Asian countries not as carriers of labor, but as luxury goods for the palaces and harems of eastern rulers in North Africa, Arabia, Persia, and India. The rulers of the countries of the East usually made their black African slaves into warriors who filled the ranks of their armies. This determined the size of the East African slave trade, which was smaller than the European one.
Until 1795, Europeans were not yet able to advance into the Dark Continent. For the same reason, they could not capture slaves themselves. The extraction of “living goods” was carried out by the same Africans, and the size of its supply to the coast was determined by demand from outside.
In the slave-trading areas of Upper Guinea, slaves were obtained and then sold mainly by mulattoes, closely associated with the local population. Muslim Africans also showed significant activity in supplying slaves to Europeans. In areas colonized south of the equator, the Portuguese also directly participated in the extraction of “goods” for slave ships. They organized special “slave trading” military campaigns into the interior of the continent or sent caravans into the interior of the continent, at the head of which they put their trading agents - “pombeiros”. The latter were sometimes among the slaves themselves. "Pombeiros" made long expeditions and brought many slaves.
The slave trade of previous centuries led to a complete and widespread degradation of the legal, sometimes very harsh, norms that in the past regulated the activities of traditional societies. The ruling strata of African states and societies, drawn into the slave trade for profit, also became morally degraded. Constantly European-inspired demands for new slaves led to internecine wars with the goal of capturing prisoners by each side in order to sell them into slavery. The activity of the slave trade became something common among Africans over time. People made slave trading their profession. The most profitable thing was not production work, but hunting for people and capturing prisoners for sale. Of course, no one wanted to be a victim, everyone wanted to become hunters. The conversion of people into deportable slaves also occurred within African societies themselves. These included those who did not obey local authorities, did not carry out prescribed instructions, were convicted of violence and robbery, adultery, in a word, were violators of certain social norms that guided society.
Over the 150 years of growing demand for African labor in European countries, its satisfaction, that is, the supply of the slave market, had a different impact on social organization involved in the African slave trade. In the kingdom of Loango, on the West African coast, the supreme ruler created a special administration to manage slave trading operations with Europeans. It was headed by "mafuk" - the third most important person in the kingdom. The administration controlled the entire course of trade operations at each point of commodity exchange. Mafuk determined taxes and prices in the slave trade, acted as an arbiter in disputes, ensured the maintenance of order in the markets, and paid an annual fee to the royal treasury. Any resident of Loango could bring slaves to the market - whether it was a local leader; Just free people and even their servants, as long as everything complied with the established rules of sale. Any deviation from the established system of slave trade led to the annulment of the transaction, be it African or European. Such centralization provided the state and a small stratum of intermediaries with an increase in their wealth. Strict control over the sale of slaves for export did not violate the internal rules of the kingdom, since the slaves sold to Europeans never came from the kingdom, but were delivered from outside the borders of Loang. Thus, the local population was not afraid of the slave trade and was traditionally engaged in farming and fishing.
The example of the kingdom of Dah-hom (Dahomey-Benin) demonstrates the dependence of European slave traders on the orders established in the African states themselves in the 18th century: in terms of regulating the slave trade in the economic and cultural interests of the state. The sale of Dahomean nationals for export was strictly prohibited. The influx of slaves occurred only from the territories adjacent to Dahomey. There were strict and mandatory trade regulations imposed on European merchants. All slave trading operations in the kingdom were under the strict control of a special person, the Yovogan, and an extensive network of his full-time spies. Yovagan was at the same time, as it were, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Trade, often his military; received as viceroy. In the case of Dahomey, the indicator is: but that demand did not always give rise to supply. Yovagan created such a situation in his country for European traders of live goods that for some time now it has become unprofitable for them to purchase them in Dahomey.
One of the reservoirs from which slaves were constantly drawn, and in large numbers, was East End populous Niger Delta. Mini-states of the peoples of Ari, Igbo, Efik and others arose here. The structure of these states and the nature of their customs differed from the models of Loango and Dahomey. The capture of slaves, as a rule, was carried out on their own territories. The main “producer” of slaves was the oracle Aro-Chuku, who was revered throughout the Niger Delta. By his own definition, he demanded victims - he “devoured” unwanted residents. This “devouring” meant the sale of people disliked by the oracle as slaves for export. But since it was impossible to satisfy the demand for slaves in one such way, armed detachments of the Ari, under the command of the oracle, landed on the banks of the Niger and carried out raids on nearby areas. Those captured were taken to the coast. The regularity of this trade cargo flow was ensured by the “secret society” Ek-pe, which united the local trading elite. In 1711-1810 As a result of Ekpe's activities, the eastern Niger Delta supplied European slave traders with up to a million slaves. The slave trade here continued on the same scale until 1840.
Europeans, in the places where they first settled on west coast Africa, could only be controlled by those who lived in the forts themselves. There were a total of them on the entire coast of West Africa, excluding Angola, by the end of the 18th century. about three thousand people. Real power everywhere still belonged to the Africans and manifested itself in necessary cases as a force capable of eliminating the too bold claims of the Europeans. Thus, the forts in Loango and Accra were burned, and the kingdom of Benin, for example, simply abandoned all contacts with Europeans and had trade relations with them only through a formation specially created artificially for this purpose - the “kingdom” of Ode-Itsekiri.
Slave resistance to European slave traders and slave owners
Faced with the cruelty of European slave traders towards slaves, the prospect of leaving their familiar habitats forever, the unbearable conditions of sailing across the Atlantic, which caused high mortality Among the slaves, many Africans were ready to resist. It was active on land when the life of the African was in danger of being captured, and, as a rule, took passive forms during the crossing of the Atlantic.
On land, Africans showed constant, everyday hostility to Europeans. If there was the slightest possibility for attack, it was used. Sudden attacks, poisoned arrows - Europeans often faced this. Unable to sometimes resist in open battle, the Africans used tactics of attacking individuals, luring small detachments of slave traders into the forests, where they were destroyed. As Africans learned to use firearms, they began to attack forts and trading posts. Already in the second half of the 17th century. this was not an uncommon occurrence.
The policy of European slave traders in the spirit of “divide and conquer” also influenced Africans of various nationalities. There were cases when they, for example, together with the British attacked their competitors the Portuguese, with the Portuguese - against the British and French, etc.
The peak of activity in the fight against the European slave trade occurred mainly in the period before the beginning of the 18th century. The life of Africans under the corrupting chaos of the slave trade in subsequent times changed their psychology. The slave trade did not unite - it separated, isolated people. Everyone saved themselves, their families, without thinking about others. Resistance to the slave trade became a matter of desperate courage of individuals and separate groups. During the entire era of the slave trade, the African continent did not know a single major organized uprising or uprising against it.
However, from the moment they were captured into slavery until the end of their lives on the plantations, slaves never stopped fighting to regain their freedom. If they saw that there was no hope for liberation, they preferred death to slavery. Escapes of slaves from slave ships on coastal voyages along the African coast were frequent. During the passage across the Atlantic, entire parties of slaves on individual ships went on a mortal hunger strike. Slave riots on ships were also frequent, although they realized that by killing the crew, they were dooming themselves to death, because they themselves could not control the ship.
The entire history of slavery in America is the history of sometimes secret, sometimes open struggle of slaves against slave-owners-planters. In 1791, in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) began liberation struggle black slaves under the leadership of Toussaint Louver. It ended with the formation of the Negro Republic of Haiti in 1804 and the abolition of slavery. In 1808, a rebellion broke out in British Guiana. In 1816 - in Barbados, in 1823 - again in British Guiana. This time, 12 thousand slaves took part in the uprising. In 1824 and 1831 There were slave uprisings in Jamaica. These were uprisings prepared in advance, led by people with authority among the slaves. The slaves were determined to achieve freedom.
European public movement. Abolitionism
The movement to prohibit the slave trade in Europe and the United States began in the second half of the 18th century. The ideas of abolitionism (“prohibition”) were developed by Grenville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberson, and C. Fox in Great Britain; abbots Raynal and Gregoire in France; E. Benezet, B. Franklin, B. Rush in the USA. The views of the first abolitionists were shared by Diderot, Condorcet, Brissot and others.
The doctrine of abolitionism, the essence of which was formulated by the Quaker Benezet even before the declaration of US independence, was based on a number of economic and humanitarian provisions. Abolitionists argued that the slave trade was not a profitable, but a very expensive enterprise. It causes direct damage to the state budget of European countries due to the “bonuses” paid for slaves. The slave trade costs the lives of many sailors who die on “inhospitable shores.” It slows down the development of manufacturing because it does not require high quality products. Leaving Africa as slaves means for Europe the loss of millions of potential buyers of European goods. From a moral point of view, the abolitionists came up with a revelation that was revolutionary by the standards and views of that era - “a black man is also a person.”
The abolitionist movement increased its activity. In 1787, the Society for the Prohibition of the African Slave Trade was created in Great Britain. In 1788, the Friends of Blacks society emerged in France. Numerous societies to combat slavery and the slave trade were created in the United States. The abolitionist movement gained strength and expanded. In England, its popularity was characterized by the collection of tens of thousands of signatures on petitions containing demands to ban the slave trade. In France, these demands were colored by the general mood of the revolution of 1789.
At the beginning of the 19th century. New trends have emerged in relations between European countries and Africa. The slave trade played an important role in the genesis of the capitalist system. It was an integral element of the process of primitive accumulation, which prepared the ground for the formation and victory of capitalism. Industrial revolutions, which began in England in the 60s years XVIII century, covered throughout the 19th century. and other European countries, including the United States after the end of the civil war of 1861 - 1865.
The ever-increasing production of industrial and consumer goods required new and permanent markets for their sale. All higher value began to acquire additional sources of raw materials. At the height of the industrial boom, the Western world experienced, for example, an acute shortage of oils for machine production, household lighting, and perfumes. Such oils have long been produced in the interior of the West African coast: peanuts in the Senegambia region, oil palm in the strip from the north of Sierra Leone to the south of Angola. The emerging needs of the West determined the nature of the new economic interest in Africa - to produce oilseeds there, to obtain fats and oils on an industrial scale. If in 1790 132 tons of palm oil were delivered to England, then in 1844 it imported over 21 thousand tons, and in 1851 - 1860. this import doubled. Similar proportions were observed for other types of African traditional raw materials. Calculations showed that in monetary terms, trade in it became more profitable for merchants than income from the slave trade. Industrialists were faced with the extremely important task of maintaining local labor in order to increase the scale of African raw materials production and expand the consumer market.
England, the first to embark on the path of industrial capitalist development, was the first to advocate the abolition of the slave trade. In 1772, the use of slave labor within Great Britain was prohibited. In 1806-1807 The British Parliament passed two acts banning the trade in black slaves. In 1833, a law was passed to abolish slavery in all possessions of the British Empire. Similar legislative acts under pressure from the industrial bourgeoisie and its ideologists, they began to be accepted in other countries: the USA (1808), Sweden (1813), Holland (1818), France (1818), Spain (1820), Portugal (1830). The slave trade was declared a crime against humanity and qualified as a criminal act. However, from the moment the laws banning the slave trade and slavery were adopted and until their actual implementation, a long distance lay.
Third stage. The fight against the "contraband slave trade" (1807 - 1870)
In the first half of the 19th century. Slave labor on the plantations and mines of the New World was still profitable, allowing planters and entrepreneurs to earn high profits. In the United States, after the invention of cotton gins, cotton plantations rapidly expanded. In Cuba, sugar cane plantings increased. In Brazil, new diamond deposits were discovered and the area of coffee plantations increased. The preservation of slavery in the New World after the prohibition of the slave trade predetermined the widespread development of smuggling trade in Africans. The main areas where slaves were smuggled were: in West Africa - the Upper Guinea coast, Congo, Angola, in East Africa - Zanzibar and Mozambique. Delivering slaves mainly to Brazil, Cuba, from where big number slaves were re-exported to the United States. According to the British parliamentary commission, in 1819-1824. On average, 103 thousand slaves were exported from Africa annually, in 1825-1839. - 125 thousand. In total, over fifty years of the illegal slave trade, more than three million slaves were taken from Africa. Of these, 500 thousand were supplied to the USA, from 1808 to 1860.
Napoleon's defeat brought the fight against the slave trade to international level. The Paris Peace Treaty declared for the first time the need for joint... consolidated fight against this phenomenon. The issue of ending the slave trade was discussed at other international meetings and conferences: Congress of Vienna(1815), Achaean (1818), Verona (1822), etc. Among the countries that participated in the signing of the slave trade was Russia, which was never involved in the slave trade, but used its international influence to fight against it.
The prohibition of the slave trade required not only the adoption of legal measures, but also the presence of a tool for their implementation - joint military, especially naval, forces to suppress the smuggling slave trade. Proposals to create a “supranational” force failed. Then England took the path of concluding bilateral agreements. Such agreements included two main points: 1) the right of mutual control and inspection by a warship of one signatory power of the merchant ships of another country - a party to the agreement, if black slaves are transported on them; 2) the creation of mixed legal commissions with the right to judge captured slave traders.
Such agreements in 1817-1818. were concluded by England with Portugal, Spain and Holland. Great Britain achieved agreements with Spain and Portugal only thanks to monetary compensation- more than a million pounds sterling - for damage to those financially affected by repressive measures. At the same time, the Portuguese retained the right to legally continue the trade in slaves exported to Brazil south of the equator. The Brazilian parliament passed a law completely banning the slave trade only in 1850. Spain introduced an effective law banning slavery only in 1870.
The abolitionist law in the United States was adopted back in 1808, but only in 1819 did the American Congress begin to consider two options for its application in practice. In 1824, Congress passed a new law that equated the slave trade with piracy, and those guilty of it were sentenced to death. Nevertheless, until 1842, American cruising along the coasts was sporadic, and at times not carried out at all.
France passed laws banning and combating the slave trade three times (1818, 1827, 1831), until, finally, in the last one it recorded tough measures against slave traders. In 1814 - 1831 it was the largest trading power among the countries involved in the sale of slaves. Of the 729 ships involved in the trade, 404 were openly slave ships. The French naval blockade of the African coast was ineffective. Three of the four slave ships passed freely through the international anti-slave trade network at sea.
During the period from 1814 to I860, about 3,300 slave voyages were carried out. The total number of flags captured during the punitive cruising (primarily by the British) was about 2000. Repressive actions against the slave trade led to the liberation of approximately 160 thousand Africans, and even to the deliverance from slavery of approximately 200 thousand people in America. “Slave production” in Africa itself decreased by 600 thousand people.
Brussels Conference 1889 - 1890
In the second half of the 19th century. Large traditional slave trading centers continued to operate openly along the entire coast of Africa. The exception was the Gold Coast, where there were English forts (the Dutch ones here were bought up by the British in 1850 - 1870). The officially repressive measures taken did not cause significant damage to the slave trade. Demand for slaves and competition from buyers continued to be high, as did the supply of slaves from African slave traders. The European powers decided to take advantage of the latter circumstance. A plausible pretext has emerged for intervention in intra-African affairs in order to establish a policy of expansionism in Africa.
From November 1889 to July 1890, the Brussels Conference was held, in which 17 countries took part. Its main participants were Belgium, Great Britain, Portugal, USA, Zanzibar, “ Independent state Congo”, etc. The main issue discussed at the conference was the elimination of the slave trade in Africa itself. The adopted General Act to combat it identified measures, including such as limiting the import of firearms and ammunition into slave trading territories. The Brussels Conference marked the end of the general slave trade.
According to the United Nations (UN), the population of Africa from 1650 to 1850 remained at the same level at 100 million people. An unprecedented case in history, when the population of an entire continent did not grow for 200 years, despite the traditionally high birth rate. The slave trade not only slowed down the natural development of the peoples of Africa, but also sent it along an ugly path that had previously had no significant preconditions in self-developing African societies.
The slave trade contributed to property stratification, social differentiation, the disintegration of community ties, undermined the intra-tribal social organization of Africans, and created a collaborationist layer from part of the tribal nobility. The slave trade led to isolation African peoples, to aggressiveness and distrust towards each other. It also led to a worsening of the situation of “domestic” slaves everywhere. By threatening to sell slaves to Europeans for the slightest disobedience, African slave owners intensified their local exploitation.
The slave trade also had economic and political side. In one case, it hampered the development of local traditional crafts (weaving, basketry, jewelry) and at the same time drew Africa into the world trade market. In another, it served as an obstacle to the development of African statehood (Benin, Congo, etc. collapsed) while simultaneously promoting the emergence of new state formations, such as Vida, Ardra, etc., which grew rich as a result of mediation between Europeans and African slave traders of the internal regions . By bleeding Africa dry, the slave trade contributed to the economic prosperity of Europe and America.
The most severe consequences of the slave trade for Africa were psychological: devaluation human life, degradation of both slave owners and slaves.
Its most inhuman manifestation was racism. For four centuries in the minds of many, especially a significant part European society, the word slave became associated with the name of an African, that is, a black person. For many generations, people learned about Africa through the prism of the slave trade, not knowing about the original civilizations of Ghana, Songhai, Vanin, Monomotapa, etc. The slave trade gave rise to the concept of the unhistoricity of African peoples, their low mental abilities. A mythological political precedent was created to justify their actions to conquer Africa and divide it into colonies.