Slave Trade Research Articles

Slave trades, kinship structures and women's political participation in Africa

AbstractWe study whether present‐day women's political participation in sub‐Saharan Africa is associated to the temporary gender ratio imbalances caused by the transatlantic and Indian Ocean slave trades, taking into account pre‐existing gender norms influenced by kinship structures. To study the interrelatedness between historical exposure to the slave trades, patrilineality and their association to contemporary women's political participation, we use individual‐level data for 35,595 women from 28 sub‐Saharan African countries from three rounds of Afrobarometer surveys, georeferenced to historical ethnic region kinship and slave trade data. Our findings suggest that a woman's ethnic region historical exposure to the transatlantic slave trade is associated with an increase in her likelihood to vote today, however, only in non‐patrilineal ethnic regions. This effect is mitigated in patrilineal ethnic regions, where women have less decision‐making power. This paper contributes to the literature on the contemporary sub‐national effects of the slave trades and the historical causes of gender gaps in political participation.

The Origins and Destinations of Captives from the Bight of Biafra, 1807–1843: New Evidence from the Identification of African Names and Languages

ABSTRACT Between 1807 and 1843, British naval officers liberated more than thirty thousand Africans from slave vessels that embarked enslaved people along the Bight of Biafra. Large ledger books display these Liberated Africans’ names, sexes, ages, and other characteristics. The names, many of which are easily recognizable today, provide clues about individuals pulled into the transatlantic trade and reveal a range of experiences that shaped the lives of Africans in the nineteenth century. Connecting the names to ethnolinguistic homelands helps establish a rough place of origin for more than twelve thousand of the individuals. The data underscore the centrality of Igbo-speakers – the major language in the Bight of Biafra hinterland – to the region’s slave trade. Given the representative nature of the ethnolinguistic makeup of the individuals to the broader slave trade from the Bight of Biafra, we use the intended destinations of the captured vessels as a basis for projecting the size and direction of the transatlantic diaspora of Igbo-speakers. Despite their limited cultural impact on African and African-descended regions in the Americas, large numbers of captives from Igbo-speaking communities were sent to almost every plantation society in the New World in the nineteenth century.

An Abolitionist Vicious Circle: Slaving, Antislavery, and Violence on the Shores of Lake Tanganyika at the Onset of Colonial Occupation

ABSTRACT In the late nineteenth century, abolitionists felt entitled to use all possible means to save the African victims of the slave trade. As European imperialism rose, abolitionism legitimized interventionism. This article explores how a major humanitarian movement could sanction colonial occupation and the violence that accompanied it. It also examines the position of African slaveholders who resisted the entrenchment of European rule and defended an order in which slavery was common. It focuses on two main actors: French Captain Leopold Joubert, Catholic royalist and former pontifical Zouave who supported Cardinal Lavigerie's Missionaries of Africa and Belgian King Leopold II's allegedly abolitionist endeavours; and Tippu Tip, a trader and slaver who, like Joubert, worked for self-styled abolitionists such as Leopold II and the Sultan of Zanzibar. The connected microhistories of these men show how the international problematization of African slavery fuelled both European imperialism and anti-colonial resistance, while also creating circumstances in which enslaved persons emancipated themselves. The article investigates the moral perceptions of individuals whose sense of self was predicated upon values embodied by Europe's monarchies, the papacy of Rome, and the sultanate of Zanzibar. Faced with what they perceived as existential threats to these institutions, they responded with rising radicalism.

Elite schools and slavery in the UK – capital, violence and extractivism

ABSTRACT Elite schools in the UK are bound to the history of British colonialism. This paper examines the material ties between these schools and the transatlantic slave trade. We combine multiple sources to examine which schools and their alumni accrued substantial economic capital derived from the enslavement of Black people. We find two principal connections: first, in donations and foundations of schools from those who made their fortune in the slave trade; and second, through income of boys attending these schools. Drawing on the Legacies of British Slavery dataset, we show that schools with alumni benefitting from the slave trade include the most prestigious British private schools. Moreover, this paper traces the histories of several secondary schools founded by, or in receipt of, substantial donations from slave-owning families. We argue that extractive, violent forms of colonial capital accumulation have been central to, the formation and maintenance of these elite educational institutions.

Los vestigios del barco negrero en la memoria histórica de los afrodescendientes

The black ships were the symbol of the slave trade, and their presence unleashed a series of elements that make up part of Afro-descendant culture. The objective of this essay is to describe the journey of slaves on the black ship, as well as to iden-tify the traces left by this journey in Afro-descendant historical and cultural memory. The journey was cha-racterized by the brutality of the pillage on the coasts of Africa, the mandatory marks and baptisms to which they were subjected. During the journey, rebellions were common, and interpreters helped to calm them. The massacres of the Zong ship and the struggle of the survivors of the Clotilda remain in history to give way to the myths and rituals that endure today in commu-nities and in the memory of Afro-descendants

Understanding the genomic heterogeneity of North African Imazighen: from broad to microgeographical perspectives.

The strategic location of North Africa has led to cultural and demographic shifts, shaping its genetic structure. Historical migrations brought different genetic components that are evident in present-day North African genomes, along with autochthonous components. The Imazighen (plural of Amazigh) are believed to be the descendants of autochthonous North Africans and speak various Amazigh languages, which belong to the Afro-Asiatic language family. However, the arrival of different human groups, especially during the Arab conquest, caused cultural and linguistic changes in local populations, increasing their heterogeneity. We aim to characterize the genetic structure of the region, using the largest Amazigh dataset to date and other reference samples. Our findings indicate microgeographical genetic heterogeneity among Amazigh populations, modeled by various admixture waves and different effective population sizes. A first admixture wave is detected group-wide around the twelfth century, whereas a second wave appears in some Amazigh groups around the nineteenth century. These events involved populations with higher genetic ancestry from south of the Sahara compared to the current North Africans. A plausible explanation would be the historical trans-Saharan slave trade, which lasted from the Roman times to the nineteenth century. Furthermore, our investigation shows that assortative mating in North Africa has been rare.

Nkemvou, Nelo, and Tabula

Nkemvou, Nelo, and Tabula

The Gift: How Objects of Prestige Shaped the Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism, by Ana Lucia Araujo

The Gift: How Objects of Prestige Shaped the Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism, by Ana Lucia Araujo

Trafficking Captives in South America’s Southern Cone

Trafficking Captives in South America’s Southern Cone

Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, by Nicholas Radburn

Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, by Nicholas Radburn

A Fictional Depiction of the Peculiarities of the African Female Gender Experiences in the Diaspora

The issue of Africans in the Diaspora stretches historically to the time when Africa began having contact with the outside world, particularly the Arabs, Chinese, Turks, and others. Beginning with the 16th to the 18th C, the contacts heightened during the Trans- Atlantic Slave Trade. Thereafter, Africans have found themselves in the Diaspora for many reasons. This has elicited a myriad of reactions to their experiences in the Diaspora. Therefore, the study sought to investigate the fictional depiction of African immigrant experiences in the Diaspora. It was guided by two objectives namely: to establish the fictional depiction of the peculiarities of the African female experiences in the Diaspora, and to investigate the narrative styles adopted to convey these experiences. The focus was on four novels: Americanah (2013), Minaret (2005), We Need New Names (2013), and The Seasons of Thomas Tebo (1986). The study was library-based research. Its significance is in the fact that it gives a snapshot of the two sides of migration- positive and negative. The results revealed that the African female gender faces indescribable discrimination, undergoes the pain of assimilation into the foreign culture, has to work two jobs in order to sustain life in the Diaspora, is always haunted by the fear of aging and having nothing to show for it, plus several other challenges. The diasporic spaces also catalyse character changes in these migrants. As a result, they adopt confusing mannerisms, fail to wish away homesickness, become two-faced hypocrites, are subdued, submissive and in extreme cases – go through a mental breakdown. It was discovered that migrant fiction is narrated through humour, flashback, irony, detailed description, suspense and other stylistic techniques. The study concluded that migration is now a contemporary and central theme in much of African fiction, especially by a new generation of African writers

Insights into the Geographical Origins of the Cabo Verde Green Monkey.

The green monkey Chlorocebus sabaeus, L. 1766, native to West Africa, was introduced to the Cabo Verde Archipelago in the 16th century. Historical sources suggest that, due to the importance of Cabo Verde as a commercial entrepôt in the Atlantic slave trade, establishing the precise place of origin of this introduced species is challenging. Non-invasive fecal samples were collected from feral and captive green monkey individuals in Cabo Verde. Two mitochondrial fragments, HVRI and cyt b, were used to confirm the taxonomic identification of the species and to tentatively determine the geographic origin of introduction to the archipelago from the African continent. By comparing the new sequences of this study to previously published ones, it was shown that Cabo Verde individuals have unique haplotypes in the HVRI, while also showing affinities to several populations from north-western coastal Africa in the cyt b, suggesting probable multiple sources of introduction and an undetermined most probable origin. The latter is consistent with historical information, but may also have resulted from solely using mtDNA as a genetic marker and the dispersal characteristics of the species. The limitations of the methodology are discussed and future directions of research are suggested.

Masks Versus Cattle: The Ecology of an African Art Form

AbstractMasquerades form an important part of indigenous African religions, and headpieces of masks are found all over the world as an iconic African art form. Contrary to expectation, however, the geographical distribution of masking is very restricted, occurring only in three areas of the continent, mainly situated in the forested zones. I explain this peculiar distribution by tracing the ecological and historical parameters of the societies that harbor mask rituals. The main ecological factors are the absence of cattle and the type of horticulture, while a crucial historical element is the long history of slave raiding and trading to which the continent has been subjected. These factors have led to societies in which both gender and local power arrangements show a marked indeterminacy, operating as internal arenas between men and women, and between different groups of men. Crucial in the explanation of masquerades is the fact that masking is completely absent from societies that practice cattle husbandry with the Bos indicus species (zebu). Since sleeping sickness prohibits cattle husbandry, wherever the tsetse fly thrives, masks appear.

Undersea cables in Africa: The new frontiers of digital colonialism

The Internet has become the backbone of the social fabric. The United Nations Human Rights Council declared access to the Internet a fundamental human right over a decade ago. Yet, Africa remains the region with the widest Digital Divide where most of the population is either sparsely connected or has no access to the Internet. This has in turn created a race amongst Western big tech corporations scrambling to “bridge the Digital Divide”. Although the Internet is often portrayed as something that resides in the “cloud”, it heavily depends on physical infrastructure, including undersea cables. In this paper, we examine how current undersea cable projects and Internet infrastructure, owned, controlled, and managed by private Western big tech corporation, often using the “bridging the Digital Divide” rhetoric, not only replicates colonial logic but also follows the same infrastructural path laid during the trans-Atlantic slave trade era. Despite its significant impact on the continent’s digital infrastructure, we find publicly available information is scarce and undersea cable projects are carried out with no oversight and little transparency. We review historical evolution of the Internet, and detail and track the development of undersea cables in Africa, and illustrate its tight connection with colonial legacies. We provide an in-depth analysis of two current major undersea cable undertakings across the continent: Google’s Equiano and Meta’s 2Africa. Using Google and Meta’s undersea cables as case studies, we illustrate how these projects follow colonial logic, create a new cost model that keep African nations under perpetual debt, and serve as infrastructure for mass data harvesting while bringing little benefit to the Global South. We conclude with actionable recommendations for and demands from big tech corporations, regulatory bodies, and governments across the African continent.

Grace, the Body, and the Aesthetic in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe

This essay revisits J. M. Coetzee’s representation of Friday’s body in his 1986 novel Foe in the context of his long-standing interest in the idea of grace. Through a reading of Friday’s dancing in Foe, I argue that Coetzee’s representation of Friday consistently invokes grace as a physical and aesthetic concept, rather than the theological emphasis that has prevailed in critical discussions to date. The reading is amplified by evidence from the Coetzee Papers at the Harry Ransom Center, which points towards Coetzee’s engagement in the early 1980s with the work of German writer Heinrich von Kleist and his ‘On the Puppet Theatre’. I draw on contemporary scholarship that revisits aesthetic theory, the backdrop for Kleist’s dialogue, in the context of the transatlantic slave trade in order to understand the implications of Coetzee’s use of the figure of the puppet and the significance of grace as an aesthetic concept for his novel.

Discussing the Relationship Between Slavery and Racism; How Slavery Causes Racism?

This study aims to demonstrate the Relationship Between Slavery and Racism in terms of how slavery causes racism in four areas; first, the Greek civilisation; second, the son of Noah “Ham” and slavery; third, the scientific movement and racism; and fourth, the slave trade. This study uses inductive, historical, and critical methods to discuss the four headings stated above. The most important conclusion is that the division into those who were Greeks and those who were non-Greeks (barbarians) had led into a belief in Greek superiority emphasised that, and being a member of a superior group gives a right of doing violence towards barbarians. Second, the story of Ham was an excuse for enslaving black Africans and linking blackness with slavery, while this relationship was not known until the seventeenth century. The story supports the idea of discriminating against black slaves and linking colour with social class and prepares Europeans to accept the modern practice of slavery in the Atlantic slave trade. Third, scientists participated in provoking racism to value the European race over other races, considering it as a central race. Forth, The trade slave was the only alternative to a search for cheap labour in order to cover the gap in supply and stem this increase.

Strangers and Foreigners: Trust and Attitudes toward Citizenship in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract This study explores the factors that shape natives’ attitudes toward citizenship acquisition for foreigners. The hypothesis is that, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the slave trade represents a deep determinant of contemporary attitudes toward citizenship, through a proximate determinant which is the level of trust. Accordingly, individuals belonging to ethnic groups with higher exposure to historical slave exports are more likely to exhibit a sense of distrust toward strangers, and are consequently more likely to oppose citizenship laws that favor the inclusion of foreigners. The findings indicate that individuals with higher levels of trust toward other people do exhibit more favorable attitudes regarding the acquisition of citizenship at birth for children of foreigners, that these attitudes are also negatively related to the intensity of the slave trade, and that the underlying inverse relationship between trust and the slave trade is confirmed. Other factors such as conflict, kinship tightness, and witchcraft beliefs, which could also influence attitudes toward citizenship through the channel of trust, do not yield the same distinct pattern of associations as observed with the slave trade.

‘William Fowler’, Sir William Garrard, Sir John Hawkins and the Sixteenth-Century Atlantic Slave Trade

Abstract This article sheds new light on English involvement in the sixteenth-century transatlantic slave trade, especially the voyages of John Hawkins in the 1560s. Its focus is on William Fowler, a merchant who in 1569 was brought in front of the English High Court of the Admiralty to provide expert evidence on behalf of Sir William Garrard and Sir John Hawkins. Fowler was an experienced slave trader who worked within the Spanish system, probably trading out of Seville to New Spain. His testimony in 1569 was of great importance to Hawkins, Garrard and the other investors who backed Hawkins’s ill-fated slaving voyage of 1567–9, for in his testimony Fowler provided independent and up-to-date information as to the value of slaves and other commodities which Hawkins lost in 1568 at San Juan de Ulúa. Hawkins and his backers would use these valuations to bolster their claim for compensation from the Spanish Crown for the goods they lost in 1568. Using previously unpublished sources, the article will investigate the origins of William Fowler and assess the social and economic connections that existed between Hawkins and his investors, and explain why these socio-economic networks brought Fowler to the Admiralty court in 1569. The article concludes with a transcription of Fowler’s testimony.

Au-delà de la traversée : The Transatlantic Slave Trade within Prerevolutionary Saint Domingue

Abstract: Prior to the 1791 revolution, three-quarters of a million captive Africans were dragged to Saint Domingue through the transatlantic slave trade. Re-creating these Africans' pathways of forced migration after their arrival in the island reveals the existence of a large, sophisticated, and well-organized intracolonial slave trade on Saint Domingue that has largely escaped the attention of historians. Slave ship captains steered their vessels to different locations within the colony depending on the age, health, ethnicity, and gender of their captives, determining where in the island enslaved people would likely spend the remainder of their lives. Colonial slave traders then organized sales that were designed to sort physically diverse captives and distribute them to socially and racially diverse colonial buyers. Africans moved away from such sales to remarkably varied fates: many were marched to sugar, coffee, indigo or cotton plantations; others were forced to work as servants or apprentices in port cities; and still more were held in urban barracoons and later resold, sometimes hundreds of miles away. Enslaved people were thus forced through an intracolonial slave trade that powerfully determined their often-divergent fates and began to acclimatize them to the brutalities of colonial life.

Multiethnic Slavery and the African Diaspora in Macau: The Search for the Geographic Limits of Vast Early America

Abstract: The geographic limits of early American history are continuously being debated. Recently, this has culminated in the popular adoption of the expression "vast early America," which looks beyond the previously dominant Atlantic paradigm to embrace hemispheric perspectives while underlining the need to delve more into continental Africa, the Mediterranean, Eurasia, and the Pacific and Indian Ocean worlds. But what are the limits of this widening historical panorama in the case of the history of slavery? A hitherto-unstudied set of mid-eighteenth-century baptismal records from the Portuguese enclave of Macau, which noted the birth, ethnicity, and parentage of dozens of African and other enslaved people, offers evidence that the transatlantic slave trade was part of a larger trade in people of African descent (and others) that was geographically uneven and regionally segmented but global in extent, reaching as far as China. Placing this unique new dataset within the context of other contemporary Portuguese- and Chinese-language sources reveals that the presence of "Black slaves" (黑 奴, heinu ) in this port city was shaped by many of the same imperial and missionary projects as in the Atlantic, as well as racialized in ways highly reminiscent of the Western Hemisphere by both European and Chinese observers. The increasingly racialized slave trade of vast early America was thus horrifyingly "vast."