A SURVEY OF THE TRANS-ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE -WEST AFRICA

ABSTRACT

A recognized social institution in Africa long before the arrival of the Europeans on the coast of West Africa was known as slavery. This word, however, does not mean the same thing as the slave trade. To distinguish between these two terms, the former comprised captives taken in the tribal wars of pre-colonial Africa who were, thus, sometimes put to domestic service or labour in the fields. Also, it involved persons or people condemned in the courts of chiefs for crimes and bad conduct who finally found themselves reduced to a status equal to that of slaves. However, a general survey of slavery in old Africa reveals that it was void of undue hardship, unlike the slave trade. This term (slavery) can, thus, be termed domestic slavery. This means that the slave was to all intents and purposes regarded as a member of his or her master’s family. Certainly a male slave could own property and was by custom and practice protected against extreme cruelty and injustice. A female slave could be fortunate to become the wife of her master. If she were so fortunate, she immediately ceased to be a slave and all her children would be considered and recognized as free-born. The male one (ie slave) could marry a daughter or a close relative of his masters. The third form of treatment given to slaves in old Africa was that if a slave offered good service and behaved well to his master, he could be declared a free man by his master in no time. Most of the slaves are therefore known to have succeeded even to the extent of acquiring property from their masters, even to the exclusion of the master’s children. Admittedly the unfortunate ones remained obscure until their death and might have also suffered some injustice and indignity, like those captured in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It is also too shameful to hear that the master’s desire to make his slave a victim in human sacrifices was at times irresistible.  According to the book of T.A. Osae and S.N Nwabara¹, West Africa suffered from the slave trade at the hands of Europeans. But one should not forget that in other parts of the continent trade in slaves had existed earlier, before the coming of the Europeans. It is thus worth mentioning that for centuries North African merchants took African slaves from the western Sudan to North Africa and the Orient. Meanwhile the trans-Saharan trade routes that linked North Africa and the Sudan were strewn with skeletons of thousands of African slaves who had lost their lives during long marches made across the desert.