The slave trade in the western Sudan during the nineteenth century

Abstract

The end of the Atlantic slave trade and the gradual closing down of markets in North Africa led not to a decline in the slave trade within Africa, but to a dramatic increase in enslavement. Within the western Sudan, the slave trade involved primarily women and children. This paper deals with the increasing demand for slaves in the western Sudan in the 18th and 19th centuries, the sectors in which slave use increased most, the growing capacity to enslave due to the use of new European weapons, the sources of slaves and the directions in which they were moved, the desert-side slave sector, which was particularly exploitative, and the organization of the slave trade in the western Sudan. Notes, ref.