Jihad and the Era of the Second Slavery

Abstract

The concept “second slavery” as applied to the resurgence of slavery as a factor of production in the Americas in the nineteenth century emphasizes radical changes in the economies of the Atlantic world. The expansion of slavery in the southern United States, Cuba and Brazil occurred in the context of the emergence of an independent Haiti, where slavery had once been dominant but was now abolished, and where the British shifted from being the most important nation in the slave trade to the champions of its abolition, ultimately emancipating the slaves in their colonial empire. The comparable expansion in slavery that occurred in Islamic West Africa as a result of jihad in the same era must be placed in the context of other developments in the Atlantic world. Unlike second slavery in the Americas, developments in the jihad states resulted in economic autonomy, not the growth of the global economy.