Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property. A slave is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration. Many scholars now use the term chattel slavery to refer to this specific sense of legalised, de jure slavery. In a broader sense, however, the word slavery may also refer to any situation in which an individual is de facto forced to work against their own will. Scholars also use the more generic terms such as unfree labour or forced labour to refer to such situations. However, and especially under slavery in broader senses of the word, slaves may have some rights and protections according to laws or customs.
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from Central and West Africa, who had been sold by other West Africans to Western European slave traders, who brought them to the Americas. The South Atlantic and Caribbean economies were particularly dependent on the supply of slave labour for the production of commodity crops, making goods and clothing to sell in Europe. This was crucial to those Western European countries which, in the late 17th and 18th centuries, were vying with each other to create overseas empires.
The European colonization of the Americas describes the history of the settlement and establishment of control of the continents of the Americas by most of the naval powers of Western Europe.
Triangular trade or triangle trade is a historical term indicating trade among three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come. Triangular trade thus provides a method for rectifying trade imbalances between the above regions.
The Fon people, also called Fon nu, Agadja or Dahomey, are a major African ethnic and linguistic group. They are the largest ethnic group in Benin found particularly in its south region; they are also found in southwest Nigeria and Togo. Their total population is estimated to be about 3,500,000 people, and they speak the Fon language, a member of the Gbe languages.
Sugar was the main crop produced on plantations throughout the Caribbean in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Most islands were covered with sugar cane fields, and mills for refining it. The main source of labor, until the abolition of chattel slavery, was enslaved Africans. After the abolition of slavery, indentured laborers from India, China, and Java migrated to the Caribbean to mostly work on the sugar plantations. These plantations produced 80 to 90 percent of the sugar consumed in Western Europe.
The earliest humans were hunter gatherers who were living in small, family groupings. Even then there was considerable trade that could cover long distances. Archaeologists have found that evidence of trade in luxury items like precious metals and shells across the entirety of the continent.
The Slave Coast is a historical name formerly used for parts of coastal West Africa along the Bight of Benin. The name is derived from the region's history as a major source of Africans that were taken into slavery during the Atlantic slave trade from the early 16th century to the late 19th century. Other nearby coastal regions historically known by their prime colonial export are the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast, and the Pepper Coast.
Slavery in the Spanish American colonies was an economic and social institution central to the operation of the Spanish Empire – it bound indigenous people, Africans, and Asians (chinos) to a relationship of exploitation. Spanish colonists had precedents for slavery as an institution, and slavery existed in some indigenous societies. The Crown attempted to limit the bondage of indigenous people, and initiated debates that challenged the idea of slavery based on race. Spaniards regarded indigenous forced labor and tribute as rewards for participation in the conquest. The crown gave some conquerors encomiendas, private grants to individual Spaniards of groups of indigenous. Formally, the indigenous held in encomienda were not slaves, but their labor was mandatory and coerced. With the collapse of indigenous populations in the Caribbean, where Spaniards created permanent settlements starting in 1493, Spaniards raided other islands and the mainland for indigenous brought to Hispaniola as slaves. With the rise sugar cultivation as an export product, Spaniards increasingly utilized enslaved Africans for labor on commercial plantations. Although plantation slavery in Spanish America was one aspect slave labor, urban slavery in households, religious institutions, textile workshops (obrajes), and other venues was also important.
The Soninke are a West African ethnic group found in eastern Senegal and its capital Dakar, northwestern Mali and Foute Djalon in Guinea, and southern Mauritania. They speak the Soninke language, also called Maraka language, which is one of the Mande languages.
The Arab slave trade is a name used to refer to the intersection of slavery and trade surrounding the Arab world and Indian Ocean, mainly in Western and Central Asia, Northern and Eastern Africa, India, and Europe. This barter occurred chiefly between the medieval era and the early 20th century. The trade was conducted through slave markets in these areas, with the slaves captured mostly from Africa's interior, Southern and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.
The Atlantic World comprises the interactions among the peoples and empires bordering the Atlantic Ocean rim from the beginning of the Age of Discovery to the early 21st century. Atlantic history is split between three different contexts. transatlantic history, meaning the international history of the atlantic world, circum-atlantic history meaning the transnational history of the atlantic world, and cis-atlantic history within an atlantic context. The Atlantic slave trade continued into the 19th century, but the international trade was largely outlawed in 1807 by Britain. Slavery ended in 1865 in the United States and in the 1880s in Brazil (1888) and Cuba (1886). While some scholars stress that the history of the "Atlantic world" culminates in the "Atlantic Revolutions" of the late 18th century and early 19th century, the most influential research in the field examines the slave trade and the study of slavery, thus in the late-ninetennth century terminus as part of the transition from Atlantic history to globalization seems most appropriate.
The first European colonization wave began with Castilian Conquest of the Canary Islands, and primarily involved the European colonization of the Americas, though it also included the establishment of European colonies in India and in Maritime Southeast Asia. During this period, European interests in Africa primarily focused on the establishment of trading posts there, particularly for the African slave trade.The wave ended with British annexation of Kingdom of Kandy in 1815 and founding of colony of Singapore in 1819.
Colonial Nigeria was the area of West Africa that later evolved into modern-day Nigeria, during the time of British rule in the 19th and 20th centuries. British influence in the region began with the prohibition of slave trade to British subjects in 1807. Britain annexed Lagos in 1861 and established the Oil River Protectorate in 1884. British influence in the Niger area increased gradually over the 19th century, but Britain did not effectively occupy the area until 1885. Other European powers acknowledged Britain's dominance over the area in the 1885 Berlin Conference.
Slavery has historically been widespread in Africa, and still continues today in some countries.
The Barbary slave trade refers to the slave markets that were lucrative and vast on the Barbary Coast of North Africa, which included the Ottoman provinces of Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania and the independent sultanate of Morocco, between the 16th and middle of the 18th century. The Ottoman provinces in North Africa were nominally under Ottoman suzerainty, but in reality they were mostly autonomous. The North African slave markets were part of the Arab slave trade.
Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo was a Nigerian historian known for the history and historiography of Africa, more particularly Igbo history and the history of Southeastern Nigeria. Themes emphasised include pre-colonial and colonial history, inter-group relations, the Aro and the slave trade, the art and science of history in Africa, and nation-building.
Proto-globalization or early modern globalization is a period of the history of globalization roughly spanning the years between 1600 and 1800, following the period of archaic globalization. First introduced by historians A. G. Hopkins and Christopher Bayly, the term describes the phase of increasing trade links and cultural exchange that characterized the period immediately preceding the advent of so-called "modern globalization" in the 19th century.
Slave breeding in the United States was the practice in slave states of the United States of slave owners to systematically forced the reproduction of slaves to increase their returns. Slave breeding included coerced sexual relations between male and female slaves, forced pregnancies of slaves, and favoring female slaves who could produce a relatively large number of children. The objective was to increase the number of slaves without incurring the cost of purchase, and to fill labor shortages caused by the termination of the Atlantic slave trade.
Stephen D. Behrendt is a historian at Victoria University Wellington who specialises in the transatlantic slave trade. He earned his MA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin.
