The Human Market
The Slave Trade
Neither slavery nor the slave trade came to West Africa with the arrival
of the Portuguese in the middle of the fifteenth century. To the
contrary, both institutions had a very long history. A two-way slave
trade had existed between the West Africans and the Arabs for centuries.
In view of the social structure of both societies, sociologists believe
that the Arabs could make use of more slaves than could the West
Africans. Therefore, West Africa probably exported more slaves than it
imported.
Slaves, besides being common laborers, were often men of considerable
skill and learning, Slavery was not a badge of human inferiority. Thus,
the first slaves procured by the Europeans from Africa were displayed as
curiosities and as proof of affluence. While, especially at the
beginning, some slaves were taken by force, most of the African slaves
acquired by the Europeans were obtained in the course of a peaceful and
regular bargaining process.
When the Portuguese arrived in West Africa, they found a thriving economy
which had already developed its own bustling trading centers. Before
long, a vigorous trade opened up between the Portuguese and the West
Africans. Slaves were only one of a great variety of exports, and guns
were only one of a large variety of imports. One of the ways in which the
slave trade came to cripple the West African economy was that slaves
became almost the exclusive African export. The more the Africans sought
to fulfill the Europeans' thirst for slaves, the more they needed guns
with which to procure slaves, and to protect themselves from being
captured and sold into slavery. Therefore, the Euro-African trade,
instead of further stimulating the African economy, actually limited
production of many items and drained it of much of its most productive
manpower.
The rulers, who had voluntarily and unwittingly involved themselves in
this gigantic trade, soon found themselves trapped. Those who wanted to
eliminate or reduce the trade in slaves and who preferred to develop
other aspects of a trading economy, found themselves helpless. A ruler
who would not provide the Europeans with the slaves they desired was then
bypassed by all the European traders. Besides losing the revenue from
this trade, his own military position was weakened. Any ruler who did not
trade slaves for guns could not have guns. Without guns, he would have
difficulty in protecting himself and his people. Any ruler or people who
could not provide adequate self-defense could be captured and sold into
slavery. Once begun, the Africans found themselves enmeshed in a vicious
system from which there seemed to be no escape. The only possibility for
escape would have been the development of some kind of African coalition,
but each petty ruler as too concerned with his own power to be able to
contemplate federated activity. European greed fed African greed, and
vice a versa.
In the beginning, African slaves were carried back to Portugal and other
parts of Europe to be used as exotic domestic servants. In some cases,
they were also used as farm laborers. Parts of Portugal were suffering
from a distinct shortage of farm laborers, and Africans filled the void.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, in some sections of rural
Portugal as much as one third of local population was African in origin.
Even so, European labor needs could not support much of a slave trade for
long. The enclosure system was under way, changing farming techniques,
and it had created a labor surplus. However, at the same time, emerging
capitalism financed explorations in Africa, Asia, and the western
hemisphere. African sailors were involved in most of these explorations
including Columbus's voyage in 1492. New World gold provided the economic
basis for even more rapid European expansion. When the New World came to
be viewed by the hungry capitalists as having a potential for
agricultural exploitation, New World labor needs expanded astronomically.
At first these needs were filled by surplus labor from Europe or by
exploiting the local Indian populations. When these labor sources proved
to be inadequate, the exploitation of slave labor from Africa was the
obvious answer.
While the Portuguese were the first to reach the shores of West Africa
and the first to bring African slaves back to Europe, neither they nor
the Spaniards ever dominated the slave trade which followed. In 1493, as
European exploration of the world moved into high gear, the Pope
published a Bull dividing the world yet to be explored into two parts.
His intention was to limit competition and conflict between the rulers of
Spain and Portugal and to prevent undue hostility between his two main
supporters.
However, this left the other European powers, officially, with no room
for overseas expansion. While these powers refused to acknowledge the
legality of the Bull and soon became involved in exploration and
colonization in spite of it, they also tended to become more involved
than did Portugal or Spain in some of the by-products of colonization,
such as the slave trade. When the Spaniards began to use slaves in their
American colonies, the Dutch, French, and British were only too eager to
provide the transportation. Before long, they too had colonies and slaves
of their own.
The triangular trade between Europe, Africa, and the New World, was one
of the most lucrative aspects of the mercantile economy. Mercantilism
sought to keep each country economically self-sufficient. Within this
framework the role of the colony was to provide the mother country with
raw materials which it could not produce for itself and to be a market
for the consumption of many of the manufactured goods produced within the
mother country.
This triangular trade began in Europe with the purchase of guns,
gunpowder, cheap cotton, and trinkets of all kinds. These were shipped
to the coast of West Africa and unloaded at a trading station. At key
points along the coast, the European nations had made treaties with the
local rulers allowing them to set up trading stations and slave
factories. At this point, the European traders entered into hard
bargaining sessions with the representatives of the local ruler in which
the manufactured goods from Europe, especially guns, were traded for
African slaves. When the deal was completed, the slaves were loaded on
the ship, and the captain set sail for the New World.
Upon arrival in the West Indies, another bargaining process was begun.
Here the slaves were traded for local agricultural products which were
wanted in Europe. Then the ships were loaded with tobacco, sugar, and
other West Indian produce and returned to Europe for still another sale
and another profit. At every point along the route, large sums of money
were made. A profit of at east one hundred percent was expected. Vast
wealth was obtained through the slave trade, and this money was
reinvested in the developing industrial revolution. Thereby the Africans
unwittingly helped to finance the European industrial revolution which
widened the technological gap between Africa and Europe.
The African slave was sometimes a criminal, but, more often than not, he
was captured in battle. As the slave trade grew and with it the need for
more slaves, the number of these battles increased. Clearly, many battles
were being fought solely for the purpose of acquiring slaves who could
then be sold to the European traders. Sometimes, too, the slave might
have been the political enemy of the ruler or of some other powerful
person.
The slaves were then marched to trading stations along the coast where a
European agent, who resided at the station, inspected them and negotiated
their purchase. The inspection was humiliating and degrading procedure.
Men, women, and children usually appeared stark naked and underwent the
close scrutiny of the agent and sometimes a physician. After the trauma
of capture and the shame of inspection, the slaves were regimented into
crowded quarters at the trading station or "factory" to wait for the next
shipment to leave. They had to be supervised very closely as many tried
to escape and others tried to commit suicide.
When a ship was ready to sail, the slaves were chained together and
marched down to the shore. There they were bundled into large canoes and
were paddled through the crashing breakers to where the slave ship was
waiting. Slaves have told how they began the voyage in trepidation, being
frightened by the sight of the "white devils" who, they had heard, liked
to eat Africans. Then the long voyage commenced. Conditions here were
even more crowded than at the "factory." Slaves were generally kept below
deck with no sunshine or fresh air. They were crowded so close together
that there was never any standing room and often not even sitting room.
Again, they had to be supervised closely as many tried to starve
themselves to death or to jump overboard. However, the greatest loss of
slave property was due to disease, The ship's captain feared that disease
would whittle away his profits, and, even more, he worried that it would
attack him and his crew. When the passage was completed, and the West
Indies had been safely reached, the slave again had to undergo the same
kind of degrading inspection and sale which had occurred in Africa, but
this time he had to experience the torment in a strange and distant land.
While the economic profits in the slave trade were great, so were the
human losses. Statistics concerning the slave trade are often inaccurate
or missing. However, it is generally agreed that at least fifteen million
Africans, and perhaps many more, became slaves in the New World. About
nine hundred thousand were brought in the sixteenth century, three
million in the seventeenth century, seven million in the eighteenth
century, and another four million in the nineteenth century.
The mortality rate among these new slaves ran very high. It is estimated
that some five percent died in Africa on the way to the coast, another
thirteen percent in transit to the West Indies, and still another thirty
percent during the three-month seasoning period in the West Indies. This
meant that about fifty percent of those originally captured in Africa
died either in transit or while being prepared for servitude.
Even this statistic, harsh as it is, does not tell the whole story of the
human cost involved in the slave trade. Most slaves were captured in the
course of warfare, and many more Africans were killed in the course of
this combat. The total number of deaths, then, ran much higher than those
killed en route. Many Africans became casualty statistics, directly or
indirectly, because of the slave trade. Beyond this, there was the untold
human sorrow and misery borne by the friends and relatives of those
Africans who were torn away from home and loved ones and were never seen
again.
Statistics concerning profits in the slave trade are also difficult to
obtain. Profits often ran as high as two or three hundred percent, and
were an important part of the European economy. These profits provided
much of the capital which helped to spur on the industrial revolution.
When Queen Elizabeth, in 1562, heard that one of her subjects, John
Hawkins, had become involved in the slave trade, she was very critical
and commented that he would have to pay a very high price for dealing in
human lives. However, when she was confronted with a copy of his profit
ledger, her moral indignation softened, and she quickly became one of the
members of the corporation. Some merchants were hit hard by the risks
accompanying the slave trade and suffered financial disaster. The
possible profits were so high, however, that other merchants were always
eager to venture into this field and new capital was ever lacking.
The industrial revolution, which was partly financed by the slave trade,
eventually abolished the need for slavery. The humanitarian outcry
against both the slave trade and slavery which occurred at the end of the
eighteenth century and swelled in the early nineteenth century, became a
significant force as the need for slave labor diminished. In the
beginning, as previously noted, the Europeans were not powerful enough to
seize slaves at will or to invade the African kingdoms. But the
industrial revolution had immeasurably widened the power gap between
Europe and Africa. By the time the slave trade ended, and European
adventurers had found new ways to achieve gigantic capital gains, Europe
had achieved a power advantage sufficient to invade Africa at will.
As European interests in colonizing Africa increased, the European
powers, at the middle of the nineteenth century, were also tearing one
another apart in the process of this competitive expansion, In order to
avoid further misfortune, the great powers of Europe met at the
conference of Berlin in 1885. Without troubling to consult with any
Africans, they drew lines on a map of Africa dividing it among
themselves. It took only a very few years for a map drawing to become a
physical reality. When the Europeans had finished exploiting Africa
through the slave trade and had greatly weakened its societies, they
invaded Africa in order to exploit its nonhuman material resources.
Caribbean Interlude
Most of the Africans, who were enslaved and brought to the New World,
came to the American colonies after a period of seasoning in the
Caribbean islands. To the Europeans who had settled in America the
Colonies were their new home and they strove to develop a prosperous and
secure society in which to live and raise their families. They hesitated
to bring their slaves directly from Africa as they believed that Africans
were brutal, barbaric savages who would present a real danger to the
safety and security of their new homes. Instead, they preferred to
purchase slaves who had already been tested and broken.
In contrast to this, Europeans who had gone to the Caribbean islands did
not consider the New World as their new home. The island plantations were
to be exploited to provide the wealth with with which their owners could
return to Europe and live like gentlemen. Many of them did not bring
their families to the islands, or, when they did, their stay was a
temporary one. Therefore, they were more willing than were the Americans
to purchase slaves directly from Africa. Moreover, because their sole
interest in the islands was economic profit, they could make a double
profit by selling their seasoned slaves as well as selling their
plantation produce. While the Africans' stay in the Caribbean, obviously,
was not part of their African heritage, it was part of the experience
which they brought with them to the Colonies. Many of the events which
occurred in the Caribbean islands had important repercussions in the
American Colonies.
A quarter of a century after Columbus had discovered the New World, the
first African slaves were brought to the West Indies to supplement the
inadequate labor supply. The Indians who lived on the islands were few in
number and had had no experience in plantation agriculture. As the
shortage of labor became severe, the plantation owners began to import
criminals and were willing to accept the poor and the drunks who had been
seized from the streets of European ports.
There was also a continual stream of indentured servants, but this influx
was nowhere nearly large enough to fill the growing labor demands. The
advantage of African slaves over indentured servants was that they could
be purchased outright for life. Moreover, the Africans had no contacts
in the European capitals through which they could bring pressure to bear
against the abuses of the plantation masters. In fact, African slaves
really had no rights which the master was obliged to respect. The supply
of African labor seemed to be endless, and many masters found it cheaper
to overwork a slave and to replace him when he died, rather than take
care of him while he lived. In short, the plantation experience was a
brutalizing one.
In the beginning, the major plantation crop had been tobacco, It could be
grown efficiently on small plantations of twenty or thirty acres. The
tobacco plant needed constant, careful attention throughout the season,
and this meant that the number of raw, unskilled laborers that was needed
was relatively small.
However, when the new colony of Virginia entered the tobacco field in the
early seventeenth century, it was able to produce larger quantities of
tobacco at a lower price. The Caribbean islands were hit by a severe
economic depression. The Dutch came with a solution. They had previously
conquered parts of northern Brazil from the Portuguese, and there they
had learned the techniques of plantation sugar production. It could only
be carried on efficiently with plantations of two or three hundred acres,
and it required large numbers of unskilled laborers both to plant and
harvest the crop and to refine the sugar. The Dutch, then, brought sugar
cane to the West Indies. This gave them a new plantation crop, and it
also gave them a new outlet for the slave trade which, at that point in
history, they had come to dominate.
The development of the sugar cane economy in the West Indies produced a
basic social revolution. The small tobacco farmers did not have the
capital to develop the large sugar plantations. Some of them went into
other occupations, but most of them returned to Europe. The new labor
needs were filled by a gigantic increase in the importation of African
slaves. The ratio of whites to blacks within the islands changed markedly
within a matter of one or two decades. The white population consisted of
a handful of exceedingly wealthy plantation owners and another handful of
white plantation managers. Many of the slaves soon learned new skills
associated with sugar manufacturing, thus reducing the need for white
labor even further. The rising demand for slaves meant an expansion of
the slave trade, and, as West Indian slaves had a high mortality rate and
a low birthrate, this meant a continually thriving slave trade.
As the ratio between whites and blacks widened, the problem of
controlling the slaves grew more serious. Brute force was the only
answer. The European governments had tried to solve the problem by
requiring the plantation owners to hire a specified number of white
workers. However, many owners found it cheaper to pay the fine than to
comply with this regulation.
In 1667, the British Parliament passed a series of black codes intended
to control the slaves in the Caribbean colonies. Other colonial powers
followed their example. The law stated that a slave could not be away
from the plantation on a Sunday and that he was not permitted to carry
any weapons. It also specified that, if he were to strike a Christian, he
could be whipped. If he did it a second time, he could be branded on the
face. However, if a master, in the process of punishing a slave,
accidentally beat him to death, this master could not be fined or
imprisoned.
Because the Europeans did not view the islands as their home, there was
always a shortage of white women. One of the results of this was the
development of an ever-growing class of mulattoes. More and more of them
were granted their freedom. While these freedmen did not receive equal
treatment with the whites, they were careful to preserve the advantages
they held over the slaves. Many of them served in the militia to help
keep the slaves under control. However, the threat of slave revolts
continued. The greater the possibility of success, the greater the
probability that slaves would take the risk of starting a revolt. All of
the islands in the West Indies had a history of slave rebellion.
Undoubtedly, the most outstanding slave revolt in the western hemisphere
took place in Haiti. During the French revolution, concepts of the rights
of man spread from France to her colonies. In Haiti, the free mulattoes
petitioned the French revolutionary government for their rights. The
Assembly granted their request. However, the French aristocrats in Haiti
refused to follow the directives of the Assembly. At this point, two
free mulattoes, Vincent Oge and Jean Baptiste Chavannes, both of whom had
received an education in Paris, led a mulatto rebellion. The Haitian
aristocrats quickly and brutally suppressed it.
By this time, however, the concepts of the rights of man had spread to
the slave class. In 1791, under the leadership of Toussaint l'Ouverture,
the slaves began a long and bloody revolt of their own. Slaves flocked
to Toussaint's support by the thousands until he had an army much larger
than any that had fought in the American revolution, This revolt became
entangled with the French revolution and the European wars connected with
it. Besides fighting the French, Toussaint had to face both British and
Spanish armies. None of them was able to suppress the revolt and to
overthrow the republic which had been established in Haiti.
After Napoleon came to power in France, he sent a gigantic expedition
under Leclerc to reestablish French authority in Haiti. While he claimed
to stand for the principles of the revolution, Napoleon's real interest
in Haiti was to make it into a base from which to rebuild a French empire
in the western hemisphere. Toussaint lured this French army into the
wilderness where the soldiers, who had no immunity to tropical diseases,
were hit very hard by malaria and yellow fever.
Toussaint was captured by trickery, but his compatriots carried on the
fight for independence. Finally, Napoleon was forced to withdraw from the
struggle. One of the results of his failure to suppress the slave revolt
in Haiti was his abandonment of his New World dreams and his willingness
to sell Louisiana to the United States. Unfortunately, this meant new
areas for the expansion of the plantation economy and slavery. In other
words, the Haitian revolution was responsible for giving new life to the
institution of slavery inside America.
American plantation owners were faced with a dilemma. The Louisiana
Purchase, resulting from the revolution in Haiti, greatly expanded the
possibilities of plantation agriculture. This meant a greater need for
slave labor. However, they were not sure from which source to purchase
these slaves. They hesitated to bring new slaves directly from Africa.
They were also loath to bring seasoned slaves from the Caribbean. Events
in Haiti had demonstrated that these Caribbean slaves might not be as
docile as previously had been believed. Certainly, Americans did not want
repetition of the bloody Haitian revolt within their own borders. Greedy
men still bought slaves where they could, but many American slave owners
were deeply disturbed and began to give serious thought to terminating
the importation of African slaves to America.