Place where slaves are bought and sold
For other uses, see Slave market (disambiguation).
A slave market is a place where slaves are bought and sold. These markets are a key phenomenon in the history of slavery.
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A slave market is a place where slaves are bought and sold. These markets are a key phenomenon in the history of slavery.
Since antiquity, cities along the Silk road of Central Asia, had been centers of slave trade. In the early middle ages, Central Asia was a transit area for European slaves sold by the Vikings in Russia to slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate via the slave markets of the Central Asia. The slave trade in the Mongol Empire created a network of connected slave markets between Asia and Europe.
In the 19th century, the slave markets of Khiva and Bukhara were still among the biggest slave markets in the world. [1] In Bukhara, Samarkand, Karakul, Karshi, and Charju, mainly Persians, Russians, and some Kalmyk slaves, were traded by Turkmens, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz. [2] From the 17th to 19th centuries, Khiva was a notorious slave market for captured Persian and Russian slaves. [3] The slave markets of central Asia was eradicated with the Russian conquest of the Islamic states of Central Asia in the 1870s.
In Somalia, the inhabiting Bantus are descended from Bantu groups that had settled in Southeast Africa after the initial expansion from Nigeria/Cameroon, and whose members were later captured and sold into the Arab slave trade. [4]
From 1800 to 1890, between 25,000–50,000 Bantu slaves are thought to have been sold from the slave market of Zanzibar to the Somali coast. [5] Most of the slaves were from the Majindo, Makua, Nyasa, Yao, Zalama, Zaramo and Zigua ethnic groups of Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi. Collectively, these Bantu groups are known as Mushunguli, which is a term taken from Mzigula, the Zigua tribe's word for "people" (the word holds multiple implied meanings including "worker", "foreigner", and "slave"). [6] [7] Bantu adult and children slaves (referred to collectively as jareer by their Somali masters [8] ) were purchased in the slave market exclusively to do undesirable work on plantation grounds. [9]
Enslaved Africans were sold in the towns of the Arab world. In 1416, al-Maqrizi told how pilgrims coming from Takrur (near the Senegal River) had brought 1,700 slaves with them to Mecca. In North Africa, the main slave markets were in Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli and Cairo. Sales were held in public places or in souks.
Potential buyers made a careful examination of the "merchandise": they checked the state of health of a person who was often standing naked with wrists bound together. In Cairo, transactions involving eunuchs and concubines happened in private houses. Prices varied according to the slave's quality. Thomas Smee, the commander of the British research ship Ternate, visited such a market in Zanzibar in 1811 and gave a detailed description:
'The show' commences about four o'clock in the afternoon. The slaves, set off to the best advantage by having their skins cleaned and burnished with cocoa-nut oil, their faces painted with red and white stripes and the hands, noses, ears and feet ornamented with a profusion of bracelets of gold and silver and jewels, are ranged in a line, commencing with the youngest, and increasing to the rear according to their size and age. At the head of this file, which is composed of all sexes and ages from 6 to 60, walks the person who owns them; behind and at each side, two or three of his domestic slaves, armed with swords and spears, serve as guard. Thus ordered the procession begins, and passes through the market-place and the principle streets... when any of them strikes a spectator's fancy the line immediately stops, and a process of examination ensues, which, for minuteness, is unequalled in any cattle market in Europe. The intending purchaser having ascertained there is no defect in the faculties of speech, hearing, etc., that there is no disease present, next proceeds to examine the person; the mouth and the teeth are first inspected and afterwards every part of the body in succession, not even excepting the breasts, etc., of the girls, many of whom I have seen handled in the most indecent manner in the public market by their purchasers; indeed there is every reasons to believe that the slave-dealers almost universally force the young girls to submit to their lust previous to their being disposed of. From such scenes one turns away with pity and indignation. [10]
The slave trade had existed in North Africa since antiquity, with a supply of African slaves arriving through trans-Saharan trade routes. The towns on the North African coast were recorded in Roman times for their slave markets, and this trend continued into the medieval age. The Barbary slave trade on the Barbary Coast increased in influence in the 15th century, when the Ottoman Empire took over as rulers of the area. Coupled with this was an influx of Sephardi Jews [11] and Moorish refugees, newly expelled from Spain after the Reconquista. The Barbary slave trade encompassed both African slavery and White slavery.
The Velekete Slave Market established in 1502 in Badagry, Lagos State, [12] [13] was significant during the Atlantic slave trade in Badagry as it served as a business point where African middlemen sold slaves to European slave merchants thus making it one of the most populous slave markets in West Africa. [14]
Another historic slave market was Bono Manso Slave market around 16th century, which was centered at a giant Baobab tree to the west of the town played a major role in the Atlantic slave trade. This was one of the oldest slave transitions points in the Gold Coast. [15]
The maritime town of Lagos, Portugal, was the first slave market created in Portugal for the sale of imported African slaves, the Mercado de Escravos , which opened in 1444. [16] [17] In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania. [17] Prince Henry the Navigator, major sponsor of the Portuguese African expeditions, as of any other merchandise, taxed one fifth of the selling price of the slaves imported to Portugal. [17] By 1552, African slaves made up 10% of the population of Lisbon. [18] [19] In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas—in the case of Portugal, especially Brazil. [17] In the 15th century, one third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold. [20]
In the early middle ages, Dublin and Prague belonged to the biggest slave markets in Europe. Dublin was one of the centers of the viking slave trade. People taken captive during the Viking raids in Western Europe, such as Ireland, could be sold to Moorish Spain via the Dublin slave trade [21] or transported to Hedeby or Brännö and from there via the Volga trade route to Russia, where slaves and furs were sold to Muslim merchants in exchange for Arab silver dirham and silk, which have been found in Birka, Wollin and Dublin; [22] initially this trade route between Europe and the Abbasid Caliphate passed via the Khazar Kaghanate, [23] but from the early 10th-century onward it went via Volga Bulgaria and from there by caravan to Khwarazm, to the Samanid slave market in Central Asia and finally via Iran to the Abbasid Caliphate. [24]
Prague was the center of the Prague slave trade, to which Pagan Eastern Europeans where trafficked from Eastern Europe to Prague, where they were purchased by slave traders who sold them to slavery in al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula. Among other European slave markets, Genoa, and Venice (center of the Genoese slave trade and the Venetian slave trade) were some well-known markets, their importance and demand growing after the great plague of the 14th century which decimated much of the European work force. [25]
In the Ottoman Empire during the mid-14th century, slaves were traded in special marketplaces called "Esir" or "Yesir" that were located in most towns and cities. It is said that Sultan Mehmed II "the Conqueror" established the first Ottoman slave market in Constantinople in the 1460s, probably where the former Byzantine slave market had stood. According to Nicolas de Nicolay, there were slaves of all ages and both sexes, they were displayed naked to be thoroughly checked by possible buyers. [26]
In the early 18th century, the Crimean Khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, exporting about 2 million slaves from Russia and Poland-Lithuania over the period 1500–1700. [27] Caffa (modern Feodosia) became one of the best-known and significant trading ports and slave markets. [28]
The last slave market in Europe was in Constantinople, the Ottoman capital. It was a destination for slaves trafficked from Europe via the Crimean slave trade and the Circassian slave trade, and from Africa via the Trans-Saharan slave trade, the Red Sea slave trade, and the Indian Ocean slave trade. The slave market was divided in different sections for male and female slaves. In the market bazaar for female slaves, the Avret Pazari, slave girls where undressed naked on the auction block and tied in position for presumptive buyers to inspect. [29] The huge slave market in the Ottoman capital was closed by the Disestablishment of the Istanbul Slave Market edict in 1847. This edict did not ban the sale of slaves, but moved it indoors, thereby making it less visible. [30]
In the history of slavery in the United States, the domestic slave trade had become a major economic activity by 1815, and lasted until the 1860s. [31] Between 1830 and 1840, nearly 250,000 slaves were taken across state lines. [31] In the 1850s, more than 193,000 were transported, and historians estimate nearly one million in total took part in the forced migration of this new Middle Passage. By 1860, the slave population in the United States had reached 4 million. [31]
In the 1840s, almost 300,000 slaves were transported, with Alabama and Mississippi receiving 100,000 each. During each decade between 1810 and 1860, at least 100,000 slaves were moved from their state of origin. In the final decade before the Civil War, 250,000 were moved. Historian Ira Berlin wrote:
The internal slave trade became the largest enterprise in the South outside the plantation itself, and probably the most advanced in its employment of modern transportation, finance, and publicity. The slave trade industry developed its own unique language, with terms such as "prime hands, bucks, breeding wenches, and "fancy girls" coming into common use. [32]
The expansion of the interstate slave trade contributed to the "economic revival of once depressed seaboard states" as demand accelerated the value of slaves who were subject to sale. [33]
Some traders moved their "chattels" by sea, with Norfolk to New Orleans being the most common route, but most slaves were forced to walk overland in coffles. Others were shipped downriver from such markets as Louisville on the Ohio River, and Natchez on the Mississippi. Traders created regular migration routes served by a network of slave pens, yards, and warehouses needed as temporary housing for the slaves. In addition, other vendors provided clothes, food, and supplies for slaves. As the trek advanced, some slaves were sold and new ones purchased. Berlin concluded, "In all, the slave trade, with its hubs and regional centers, its spurs and circuits, reached into every cranny of southern society. Few southerners, black or white, were untouched". [34]
New Orleans, where French colonists had established sugarcane plantations and exported sugar as the chief commodity crop, became nationally important as a slave market and port, as slaves were shipped from there upriver by steamboat to plantations on the Mississippi River; it also sold slaves who had been shipped downriver from markets such as Louisville. By 1840, it had the largest slave market in North America. It became the wealthiest and the fourth-largest city in the nation, based chiefly on the slave trade and associated businesses. [35] The trading season was from September to May, after the harvest. [36]
One of the most famous remaining slave market buildings in the United States is the Old Slave Mart in Charleston, South Carolina. Throughout the first half of the 19th century, slaves brought into Charleston were sold at public auctions held on the north side of the Exchange and Provost building. [37] After the city prohibited public slave auctions in 1856, [37] enclosed slave markets sprang up along Chalmers, State, and Queen streets. One such market was Ryan's Mart, established by City Councilman and broker, Thomas Ryan and his business partner, James Marsh. Ryan's Mart originally consisted of a closed lot with three structures— a four-story barracoon or slave jail, a kitchen, and a morgue or "dead house". [38]
In 1859, an auction master named Z. B. Oakes purchased Ryan's Mart, and built what is now the Old Slave Mart building for use as an auction gallery. The building's auction table was 3 feet (0.91 m) high and 10 feet (3.0 m) long and stood just inside the arched doorway. [37] In addition to slaves, the market sold real estate and stock. [38] Slave auctions at Ryan's Mart were advertised in broadsheets throughout the 1850s, some appearing as far away as Galveston, Texas.
Saqaliba is a term used in medieval Arabic sources to refer to Slavs, and other peoples of Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe. The term originates from the Middle Greek slavos/sklavenos (Slav), which in Hispano-Arabic came to designate Slavic slaves.
Brännö is an island in the Southern Göteborg Archipelago and a locality situated in Göteborg Municipality, Västra Götaland County, Sweden. It had 708 inhabitants in 2010 and belongs to the parish of Styrsö within Gothenburg Municipality.
Slave raiding is a military raid for the purpose of capturing people and bringing them from the raid area to serve as slaves. Once seen as a normal part of warfare, it is nowadays widely considered a war crime. Slave raiding has occurred since antiquity. Some of the earliest surviving written records of slave raiding come from Sumer. Kidnapping and prisoners of war were the most common sources of African slaves, although indentured servitude or punishment also resulted in slavery.
The Somali Bantus are a Bantu ethnic minority group in Somalia who primarily reside in the southern part of the country, primarily near the Jubba and Shabelle rivers. The Somali Bantus are descendants of enslaved peoples from various Bantu ethnic groups from Southeast Africa, particularly from Mozambique, Malawi, and Tanzania. The East African slave trade was not eliminated until the early parts of the 20th century.
The Barbary slave trade involved the capture and selling of European slaves at slave markets in the largely independent Ottoman Barbary states. European slaves were captured by Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to Ireland, and the southwest of Britain, as far north as Iceland and into the Eastern Mediterranean.
Slavery in Libya has a long history and a lasting impact on the Libyan culture. It is closely connected with the wider context of slavery in North African and trans-Saharan slave trade.
Slavery in Somalia existed as a part of the East African slave trade and Arab slave trade. To meet the demand for menial labor, Bantus from southeastern Africa slaves were exported via the Zanzibar slave trade and were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in East Africa and other areas in Northeast Africa and Asia by the Somalis.
The Danish slave trade occurred separately in two different periods: the trade in European slaves during the Viking Age, from the 8th to 10th century; and the Danish role in selling African slaves during the Atlantic slave trade, which commenced in 1733 and ended in 1807 when the abolition of slavery was announced. The location of the latter slave trade primarily occurred in the Danish West Indies where slaves were tasked with many different manual labour activities, primarily working on sugar plantations. The slave trade had many impacts that varied in their nature, with some more severe than others. After many years of slavery in the Danish West Indies, Christian VII decided to abolish slave trading.
The history of slavery in the Muslim world was throughout the history of Islam with slaves serving in various social and economic roles, from powerful emirs to harshly treated manual laborers. Slaves were widely employed in irrigation, mining, and animal husbandry, but most commonly as soldiers, guards, domestic workers, and concubines. The use of slaves for hard physical labor early on in Muslim history led to several destructive slave revolts, the most notable being the Zanj Rebellion of 869–883, and led to the end of the practice. Many rulers also used slaves in the military and administration to such an extent that slaves could seize power, as did the Mamluks.
Legal Chattel slavery existed in Saudi Arabia until the 1960s.
The Black Sea slave trade trafficked people across the Black Sea from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus to slavery in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The Black Sea slave trade was a center of the slave trade between Europe and the rest of the world from antiquity until the 19th century. One of the major and most significant slave trades of the Black Sea region was the trade of the Crimean Khanate, known as the Crimean slave trade.
The Indian Ocean slave trade, sometimes known as the East African slave trade, involved the capture and transportation of predominately black African slaves along the coasts, such as the Swahili Coast and the Horn of Africa, and through the Indian Ocean. The areas impacted included East Africa, Southern Arabia, the west coast of India, Indian ocean islands and southeast Asia including Java.
Slavery in Egypt existed up until the early 20th century. It differed from the previous slavery in ancient Egypt, being managed in accordance with Islamic law from the conquest of the Caliphate in the 7th century until the practice stopped in the early 20th-century, having been gradually phased out when the slave trade was banned in the late 19th century.
Chattel slavery was a major part of society, culture and economy in the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) of the Islamic Golden Age, which during its history included most of the Middle East. While slavery was an important part also of the preceding practice of slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), it was during the Abbasid Caliphate that the slave trade to the Muslim world reached a more permanent commercial industrial scale, establishing commercial slave trade routes that were to remain for centuries.
Khivan slave trade refers to the slave trade in the Khanate of Khiva, which was a major center of slave trade in Central Asia from the 17th century until the annexation of Russian conquest of Khiva in 1873. The slave market in Khiva mainly trafficked slaves from Russia and Persia to the Islamic khanates in Central Asia, but also to India and the Middle East.
The Bukhara slave trade refers to the historical slave trade conducted in the city of Bukhara in Central Asia from antiquity until the 19th century. Bukhara and nearby Khiva were known as the major centers of slave trade in Central Asia for centuries until the completion of the Russian conquest of Central Asia in the late 19th century.
The Khazar slave trade took place in the Khazar Khaganate in Central Asia.
The Venetian slave trade refers to the slave trade conducted by the Republic of Venice, primarily from the Early Middle Ages to the Late Middle Ages. The slave trade was a contributing factor to the early prosperity of the young Republic of Venice as a major trading empire in the Mediterranean Sea.
The Volga Bulgarian slave trade took place in the Volga Bulgar Emirate in Central Asia.
The slave trade in the Mongol Empire refers to the slave trade conducted by the Mongol Empire (1206–1368). This includes the Mongolia vassal khanates which was a part of the Mongol Empire, such as the Chagatai Khanate (1227–1347), Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), Ilkhanate (1256–1335), and Golden Horde (1242–1368).