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The European trade in human goods
begins right at the start of European relations with Africa.
This initial slave trade, however, was negligible. The trade
itself had begun long before the Europeans ever cast a
covetous eye on the land of Africa. The Islamic
civilizations and traders of North and Western Africa had a
booming traffic in black slavery as they marched slaves
across the Sahara to regions in the east. Surprisingly,
though, slavery was not racially based in most of human
history; racial slavery, that is, slavery that is predicated
on race as a way of separating slave from free, is an
invention of the seventeenth century.
Slavery has been a constant in human
history. The only period of time in which slavery has not
been a significant part of the human experience is within
the last two hundred years. Slavery has one and only reason:
economic. Slave labor is cheap labor; it is purchased at the
price of the subsistence of the laborer. It is not
necessarily efficient labor, however, for people do not
really invest themselves in coerced work. Most of human
history is characterized by low production economies; these
low production economies produce just enough to survive for
the majority of the workers in the economy. In such an
economy, slavery, or coerced labor, is one of the most
common solutions to maintain a large, low productive
economy.
Throughout most of human history, slaves
were drawn from conquered populations and defeated armies,
and many slaves were simply sold (or sold themselves) into
slavery by the rulers or their families. These people were
slaves by virtue of being slaves; there were no racial,
ethnic, or physical markers of slavery or subsistence
servitude.
Such was the situation that the Europeans
encountered and traded in. When the Portugese forged
contacts with the Islamic civilizations and traders of North
Africa, they diverted much of this trade to Europe,
including the Muslim traffic in black slaves. The Portugese,
however, were not content with trade with North Africa and
pushed down the western coast of Africa. In 1444, a group of
Portugese stumbled on a village of black Africans and, out
of a desire to make some money, attacked them and kidnapped
as many as they could. Thus began the European traffic in
black slaves.
By 1854, the Portugese were importing some thousand or so
Africans per year into Portugal to work as indentured
servants. This traffic, however, was far different from the
character of the later slave trade. Technically, the
Africans were not slaves; they were indentured servants.
After a period of service they were freed. It was not
possible to be born a slave in Portugal. The children of
indentured servants were free. This would be the case
throughout the sixteenth and into the seventeenth centuries.
Also, slavery was not racially based. The Africans kidnapped
by the Portugese were baptized, many were educated, and they
all integrated into the lower classes of Portugese society.
Africans and Europeans intermarried; to this day, most
Portugese are of mixed blood.
This early trade in human lives was
relatively small. Two things, however, would change that
picture. The discovery of America precipitated the need for
vast amounts of subsistence labor, and the development of
high production agricultural economies in America in the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries greatly
changed the face of the African slave trade and its
aftermath.
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