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Slavery

Slavery, and in particular the Atlantic slave trade, had a great effect on the region—socially, economically and politically—from the late 15th to the mid-19th centuries.

There had been lucrative trans-Saharan trade of slaves in West Africa from the 6th century. At its peak (c. 1350) the Mali Empire surrounded the region of modern-day Sierra Leone and Liberia, though the slave trade may not have significantly penetrated the coastal rainforest. The peoples who migrated into Sierra Leone from this time would have had greater contact with the indigenous slave trade, either practicing it or escaping it.

When Europeans first arrived at Sierra Leone, slavery among the African peoples of the area was believed to be rare. According to historian Walter Rodney, the Portuguese mariners kept detailed reports, and so it is likely if slavery had been an important local institution that the reports would have described it. There was mention of a very particular kind of slavery in the region, which was:

According to Rodney, such a person would likely have retained some rights and had some opportunity to rise in status as time passed.

If the Africans were not much interested in acquiring slaves, the Portuguese—as well as the Dutch, French, and English who arrived later—certainly were. Initially, their method was to cruise the coast, conducting quick kidnapping raids when opportunities presented themselves. Soon, however, they found locals willing to partner with them in these affairs: some chiefs were willing to part with a few of the less-desirable members of their tribes for a price; others went into the war business—a large group of battle captives could be sold for a fortune in European rum, cloth, beads, copper, or muskets.

This early slaving was essentially an export business. The use of slaves as labourers by the local Africans appears to have developed only later. It may first have occurred under coastal chiefs in the late 18th century:

For example, in the late 18th century, chief William Cleveland had a large "slave town" on the mainland opposite the Banana Islands, whose inhabitants "were employed in cultivating extensive rice fields, described as being some of the largest in Africa at the time".^[3] The existence of an indigenous slave town was recorded by an English traveler in 1823. Known in the Fula language as a rounde, it was connected with the Sulima Susu's capital city, Falaba. Its inhabitants worked at farming.

Rodney has postulated two means by which slaving for export could have caused a local practice of using slaves for labour to develop:

1. Not all war captives offered for sale would have been bought by the Portuguese, so their captors had to find something else to do with them. Rodney believes that executing them was rare and that they would have been used for local labour.
2. There is a time lag between the time a slave is captured and the time he or she is sold. Thus there would often have been a pool of slaves awaiting sale, who would have been put to work.^[4]

There are possible additional reasons for the adoption of slavery by the locals to meet their labour requirements:

1. The Europeans provided an example for imitation.
2. Once slaving in any form is accepted, it may smash a moral barrier to exploitation and make its adoption in other forms seem a relatively minor matter.
3. Export slaving entailed the construction of a coercive apparatus which could have been subsequently turned to other ends, such as policing a captive labour force.
4. The sale of local produce (e.g., palm kernels) to Europeans opened a new sphere of economic activity. In particular, it created an increased demand for agricultural labour. Slavery was a way of mobilising an agricultural work force.^[5]

This local African slavery was much less harsh and brutal than the slavery practiced by Europeans on, for example, the plantations of the United States, the West Indies, and Brazil. The local slavery has been described by anthropologist M. McCulloch:

Slaves were sometimes sent on errands outside the kingdoms of their masters and returned voluntarily.^[7] Speaking specifically of the era around 1700, historian Christopher Fyfe relates that, "Slaves not taken in war were usually criminals. In coastal areas, at least, it was rare for anyone to be sold without being charged with a crime."^[8]

Voluntary dependence reminiscent of that described in the early Portuguese documents mentioned at the beginning of this section was still present in the 19th century. It was called pawning; Arthur Abraham describes a typical variety:

Some observers consider the term "slave" to be more misleading than informative when describing the local practice. Abraham says that in most cases, "subject, servant, client, serf, pawn, dependent, or retainer" would be more accurate.^[10] Domestic slavery was abolished in Sierra Leone in 1928. McCulloch reports that at that time, amongst Sierra Leone's largest present-day ethnolinguistic group, the Mende, who then had about 560,000 people, about 15 per cent of the population (i.e., 84,000 people) were domestic slaves. He also says that "singularly little change followed the 1928 decree; a fair number of slaves returned to their original homes, but the great majority remained in the villages in which their former masters had placed them or their parents."^[11]

Export slavery remained a major business in Sierra Leone from the late 15th century to the mid-19th century. According to Fyfe, "it was estimated in 1789 that 74,000 slaves were exported annually from West Africa, about 38,000 by British firms." In 1788, a European apologist for the slave trade estimated the annual total exported from between the Nunez River (110 km north of Sierra Leone) and the Sherbro as 3,000.^[12] The Atlantic slave trade was banned by the British in 1807, but illegal slave trading continued for several decades after that.

Siehe auch

• Atlantischer Sklavenhandel
• Liste der Festungen in Sierra Leone

Literatur

Weblinks

Commons: Sklaverei in Sierra Leone – Sammlung von Bildern, Videos und Audiodateien

Einzelnachweise

1. [1]

   Rodney, "Slavery"
2. [2]

   Rodney, "Slavery", p 439.
3. [3]

   Rodney, "Slavery", p 439. The rounde report which follows is from Major A.G. Laing, Travels in the Timannee, Kooranko and Soolima Countries; London, 1825, p 221, cited in Rodney, "Slavery", p436.
4. [4]

   Rodney, "Slavery", p 435.
5. [5]

   On the fourth point: Abraham, Mende Government, pp 24, 29, 30, and especially 20.
6. [6]

   McCulloch, p 28.
7. [7]

   Abraham, Mende Government, p 24. He cites British Parliamentary Papers, vol xlvii, 1983, p 15.
8. [8]

   Fyfe, p 9.
9. [9]

   Abraham, Mende Government, pp 23,4.
10. [10]

    Abraham, Mende Government, p 22.
11. [11]

    McCulloch, p 29.
12. [12]

    Fyfe, pp 11, 12. The apologist is Matthews, A Voyage to the River Sierra Leone, London, 1788.

! Kategorie:Sklavenhandel Kategorie:Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Afrika) Kategorie:Kolonialgeschichte Afrikas Sklave Kategorie:Geschichte (Atlantischer Ozean) Kategorie:Kolonialgeschichte Amerikas Kategorie:Kolonialgeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit Kategorie:Seehandel Kategorie:Migration (Afrika) Kategorie:Migration (Amerika)