Hello Uche, and welcome back to the forum! Hope you are well.
Uche Americanus wrote:I hope life has been good to you?
In many ways life has been good to me. I only wish that more people had my good fortune.
The typical African communities were mostly small then and often unable to wage wars against each other except over disputes that were quickly contained and often involving farmlands.
It is true that most African societies were small. However, there are so many exceptions that these become the decisive factor when we are discussing slavery and the slave trade.
Uche Americanus wrote:It is also not true that Africans were constantly engaged in wars with each other and also for slaves.
Not constantly, at least not everywhere. It's hard to generalize about a continent as large as Africa.
However, some generalizations can be made. Virtually all African societies of any sophistication were slave societies, and historically warfare in Africa, as everywhere in the world, was endemic: frequent, and as many studies have by now demonstrated, produced even higher mortality rates than the mechanized warfare of modern centuries.
I think you made a mistake that is common with westerners and others, to conflate the two and treat them as the same. The African form of indentured servitude was not permanent and those in its service were not considered to be personal properties. There were family albeit with lower status and one that only lasted as long as their servile engagement lasted or alternately, until they could by luck or cunning gain favorable status in theair new home. It was never as you painted it like a narrative conjured out of the Heart of Darkness.
There are those who like to make a distinction between "Asian" and "African" systems of slavery:
James L. Watson (Slavery as an institution: Open and closed systems. In Asian and African Systems of Slavery, Oxford,1980) has distinguished two major types of slavery, "open" and "closed". These are ideal types that represent the end points on a continuum. Open systems of slavery (which are common in Africa but found elsewhere as well) are characterized by the gradual absorption of slaves into the kinship and family system of their masters. It may happen that over the lifetime of the slave he or she will gradually be absorbed into the master's family, often as a junior kinsperson. Or it may be that over several generations the slave's descendants are treated more and more like junior kin until they are absorbed into the kin group of the former master as a cadet branch of the kin unit. Closed systems of slavery (which are common in Asia but found elsewhere as well) are characterized by the failure of slaves to be absorbed or adopted into the family or kinship unit of the master. Slaves are excluded from participating in the kin group. The only way out of slavery is by formal emancipation, and even then the slave is not taken into a local kinship unit but remains marked as a former slave or "freedman". Obviously these are extreme cases designed to give definitional clarity to Watson's idea. But as he notes, many actual slave systems did conform very closely to these characterizations.
Watson explains the presence of an open or closed slave system by suggesting that "the differences between the dominant modes of slavery that emerged ... correspond to different concepts of property". He goes on to argue that "the open mode predominated in Africa where land was plentiful and control over people was the main avenue to wealth and power. The closed mode, prevalent in Asia, is clearly a reflection of the high premium place on land, which, in turn, affects attitudes towards outsiders.
-- Leland Donald, Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America (University of California Press, 1997)
However, in the final analysis, a slave is a slave. Women were always potential concubines. Slaves could always be sold, so that even a "good" master might threaten to sell you to someone who was not so easy going. And it is probably not even true to say that most slaves in Africa were treated better than elsewhere. There were domestic slaves in the Americas whose burdens were light, but when talking about slavery in the Americas it is thought unseemly to even discuss how "good" life was for them. And remember, there were plantations and mines in Africa and these were mostly worked by slaves. Conditions there were typically abysmal.
Uche Americanus wrote:The typical African communities were mostly small then and often unable to wage wars against each other except over disputes that were quickly contained and often involving farmlands. Cannibalism was practiced but their practices were not widespread nor was it seen or considered a standard diet. Where they were practiced, it was mostly for rituals in pagan worships and when done to captive combatants it was to capture their spirits and control that spirit from haunting its killer. There was also the issue of it being used to psychologically intimidate the enemy.
True.
Cannibalism never had wide followings in Africa despite how the opposite was depicted in 19th century writings about the continent.
Depends very much on what you consider wide followings. Most primitive societies everywhere practiced cannibalism in the context of taking on the powers of the individuals eaten. In most cases it had much more to do with religion than diet (or torture or revenge). There were possible exceptions. Many suggest that mass executions in Mexico, notably by the Aztecs, contained a certain dietary rationale, in particular because of the relative lack of animal protein in areas like meso-America where wild game was scarce and domestic animals nearly non existent.
The states that introduced industrial, cruel and dehumanizing slavery to the hinterland were those on the coasts who had contact with western slave traders and on the Tran Saharan trade route that brought in the Arab slave traders. The influence of these two foreign sources, their vital encouragement and active arming of compromised allied kingdoms that expanded the war for slavery in Africa.
I believe I might have quoted this recent book in the 'Slave Trade' thread:
Slavery in Africa took many forms, depending on the needs and occupations of the slave owners, and often the work of slaves was hardly distinguishable from that of free Africans in the society -- those who were serfs, those who labored for wages, or those working on traditional communal lands or pastures. Yet all of these workers had, theoretically, the freedom to walk away, a choice that the slave did not possess except to flee, aware of the retribution that would follow recapture. Slave owners controlled the sexual and reproductive capacities as well as the physical and mental lives of their slaves. Demand, largely regulated by the marketplace, determined the price of slaves. Women and young girls commanded higher prices than men and boys of similar age. The master's right to sexual access drove up the price of female slaves to twice that of males of comparable age. Moreover, a female slave had to have the consent of her master to have a relationship with another, and her children became his property. Bonds of affection could develop between owners and their slaves, but in the end, the master controlled the reward system. In Africa as in the Americas and Asia, the short life span of a slave, largely from overwork, and low birth rate among slave women, who did not wish to bear children that were not to be thier own, constituted the driving force to seek new sources of slaves by warfare, razzia, or trade to replace losses and to increase the slave population.
Of all African slaves, the eunuch was the most highly prized and the most expensive. The demand for eunuchs always exceeded the supply, and consequently their price in the African slave markets could often be ten times that of a female slave. The making of a eunuch by castration has historically been extremely hazardous, with an estimated mortality of 70 to 90 percent, depending on who was doing the operation. In the literature and mythology of the West, the eunuch was the guardian of the ruler's harem, but in fact the primary role of the eunuch was not protecting the concubines but as political advisor to the ruler, whether in the African kingdoms of Asante, Oyo, Dahomey, Bagirimi; the Arab, Turkish, and Persian empires of the Middle East; or the Tang and Ming dynasties of China. The eunuch was the quintessencial slave: He could not pass on life, goods, titles, or functions. He was beholden to no clan, chief, or noble. He remained aloof from the intrigues of imperial courtesans and was not dependent on the supplications of the king's own family and kin.
After eunuchs, women were the most valued slaves, for they could perform more functions than any male. They could cook at the hearth, cultivate and carry, act as concubines and bear children, conduct business, and themselves often dealt in slaves. The average estimated demand for women to men slaves over time and place in Africa was usually two to one, and that was reflected in numbers and price. Female slaves were often purchased for their ability to reproduce, but it could be a bad investment because, as noted earlier, female slaves had few children. In eighteenth-century Cape Town, slave women had only one or at most two children, whereas free women had three or more. In the nineteenth-century Congo and West Africa, slave women had on average less than one child. These examples reflect the sad fact that motherhood was not desirable to female slaves because they knew that their children would be born into a life of slavery.
It was not through procreation but in their agricultural labor that female slaves made their most important contribution to African economies. Women in Africa traditional perform 60 to 70 percent of the agricultural labor and virtually all the housekeeping, but none of the pastoral work. Women have been not just the laborers in the field but also the artisans in intensive crafts such as weaving. The men did the heavy work of clearing and planting, but it was women's work to cultivate the crop, weed, and prepare for harvest. Because women did the agricultural fieldwork in free African socieites, they were expected to do the same as slaves and consequently were worth twice the price in the marketplace. Young girls were frequently used in the form of slavery known as pawning in whch a slave a slave was pawned by a parent or seller to a creditors in return for cash, to be recovered on repayment; this was widely practiced throughout Africa. Young girls were also given to reward soldiers or as booty, payment of fines, and bride-wealth. In some African socieites women were also warriors. There are romantic descriptions of the corps of three thousand Amazons in Dahomey during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who were celibate female slaves and the loyal bodyguards of the king.
The export trade in slaves was Africa's most dependable commodity, but within the markets of the continent, the slave was the most convertible of all currencies - more so than gold or cowries - and became the essential medium in the transactions of the internal trade. [emphasis added] The buying and selling of slaves was not a male monopoly: female owners and traders in slaves were not uncommon. They were were free women who kept their property separate from that of their men, according to local custom and traditions. The female head of the house dominated and controlled the household slaves. She did not hesitate to exploit female African slaves in pursuit of commercial profit in the marketplace. In many African socieites, particularily in West Africa, there was a long and respected tradition of female mercantile enterprise.
[...]
Ironically, the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in the nineteenth century produced a dramatic increase in slavery within Africa. When slaves could no longer be exported, the trade expanded into the interior regions of the continent where slaving and slavery had hitherto be of little importance. The Mossi on the Upper Volta River and Luba and the Ovambo in the interior of Angola were now enslaved by African slave trades. No longer exportable, the number of slaves increased, and their masters now feared that the concentration of slaves in their territory, most of whom were men, would overwhelm them in times of trouble. There were slave rebellions in the Futa Jalon, the Niger delta, and among the Yoruba, the suppression of which was perfunctory, but usually attached to a festival, funeral, or a religious rite. The asantehente Kwaku Dua I (1835-67) justified the practice to a missionary: "If I were to abolish human sacrifices, I should deprive myself of one of the most effectual means of keeping the people in subjugation."
Slavery in Africa was a historic and accepted institution, and the number of slaves throughout the millennia undoubtedly surpassed the estimated 16.5 million slaves who were forcefully exported out of Africa between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries to the Americas and Asia.
-- Robert O. Collins, James M. Burns, A History of Sub-Saharan Africa, 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
The book by Collins and Burns gives figures for the Atlantic, "Asian", i.e., Saharan and Indian Ocean trade, and the internal African slave trade. Most specialists conclude that figures for the Atlantic and "Asian" trade were, over the course of the last one thousand years, roughly equivalent. The intra-African totals are harder to ascertain, however, they were likely at least as high as the export trade. Interestingly, the Dutch got their start in the slave trade by exporting slaves from one part of Africa to another.
There were lots of Africans taken into slavery that constituted the spiritual and intellectual elites of their defeated kingdoms. Some of the contributions of these Africans in slave holding communities in Virginia, Georgia and elsewhere are documented. There were not mostly thieves, vagabonds and ruffians as you noted. The charge that they are is I think recent.
Surely this did happen. But the scenario depicted in
Roots was in fact highly exceptional. As always, everywhere, the elites suffered far less than the common people, especially those without relatives willing to pay ransom or their own resources to pay debts. In most societies, in some ways true even today, debt is the prelude to slavery.
should also sue the Arabs/Middle Easterners/Muslims who oversaw much of the slave trade.....
off......
or Mean Green Mother Nature does it with Space Rocks or something else.... 
