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Multiple forms of slavery and servitude have existed throughout African history, and were shaped by indigenous practices of slavery as well as the Roman institution of slavery (and the later Christian views on slavery), the Islamic institutions of slavery via the Muslim slave trade, and eventually the Atlantic slave trade. [2]
Arab slave-trading caravan transporting African slaves across the Sahara, 19th-century engraving. Zanzibar was once East Africa's main slave-trading port, during the Indian Ocean slave trade and under Omani Arabs in the 19th century, with as many as 50,000 slaves passing through the city each year. [40]
The internal slave trade was officially abolished during French colonisation of French West Africa in 1905, which led a number of slaves to leave their former "masters ". [8] The history of descent-based slavery is linked to the history of internal migration, whether forced or voluntary, and whether or not it led to emancipation.
The West African states also imported highly trained slave soldiers. [55] Under the Saadi dynasty, Morocco's sugar industry was dependent on Sub-Saharan African slave labor. [56] According to Paul Berthier, the need for slave labor on Moroccan sugar plantations was a major reason for the 16th century Saadian invasion of the Songhai Empire. [56]
The continent of Africa is one of the regions most rife with contemporary slavery. [1] Slavery in Africa has a long history, within Africa since before historical records, but intensifying with the trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean slave trade [2] [3] and again with the trans-Atlantic slave trade; [4] the demand for slaves created an entire series ...
When the Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for chattel slave markets outside Africa. Although the Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M'bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique:
In areas of Africa where slavery was not prevalent, European slave traders worked and negotiated with African rulers on their terms for trade, and African rulers refused to supply European demands. Africans and Europeans profited from the slave trade; however, African populations, the social, political, and military changes to African societies ...
Slavery increased in importance with the Trans-Saharan slave trade across the Sahara during the Middle Ages, particularly during the Mali Empire, which traded West African slaves to the Berber and Arabic polities of North Africa.