Every successful civilization from the Biblical era to Modernity was built on slave labor.

Though slavery already existed in small forms, it didn’t become widespread until the invention of agriculture (10,000 BCE). Slavery as an institution requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable and that is exactly what agriculture gave it. [1]

We all know the Moses story. “Let my people go!” Even in the earliest known records, slavery is treated as an established institution. The Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC), for example, prescribed death for anyone who helped a slave escape or who sheltered a fugitive. [2]

Literally every civilization had slaves. Ancient Egypt (Pharaohs) had slaves, Romans has slaves, even the Chinese (Shang Dynasty) had slaves. I guess what I really want to discover is how did Black Americans, Africans that became black Americans, become slaves?

It starts with the Arab Slave Trade, or the Islamic Slave Trade. The African continent was dominated by Arab-Berbers in the north; Islam spread southwards along the Nile and through the Sahara. Thus began at least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries. [3]

The Arab Slave Trade began after Muslim Arab and Swahili traders won control of the Swahili Coast and sea routes during the 9th century. These traders captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast. [3]

“Zanj”, in Arabic means the “country of the blacks”, was a name used by medieval Muslim geographers to refer to both a certain portion of Southeast Africa (primarily the Swahili Coast) and to its Bantu inhabitants. [4]

Swahili Coast
Bantu inhabited Areas

Arabs had established commercial settlements on the Swahili Coast and continued to trade slaves there to countries to the east. Then in the 14th century the Portuguese exploded onto the scene in the Indian Ocean. [3]

Afonso de Albuquerque

On his way to India, Afonso de Albuquerque, manages to capture control of the narrow sea passages leading to and from the Indian ocean and smashes the Arab Trade network.

Its like Alfonso hit the jackpot. Controlling one of the richest trade routes ever, Portugal became uber powerful. They traded silk, spices, coffee, tea, fish furs, tobacco, cotton, bullion, manufactured goods, textiles and slaves.

The Portuguese were transporting slaves to the Americas long before the first slave ship arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. Christopher Columbus likely transported the first Africans to the Americas in the late 1490s on the way to Hispaniola, now part of the Dominican Republic. [10]

The Portuguese were transporting slaves to the Americas long before the first slave ship arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. Christopher Columbus likely transported the first Africans to the Americas in the late 1490s on the way to Hispaniola, now part of the Dominican Republic.

The sultan ended up getting killed by the native people and his son, who was away getting educated by the Catholics, took his place as sultan.

When he came back to Zanzibar, he exacted revenge and massacred all the European inhabitants occupying his fathers land. This started the decline of the Portuguese Empire.

The sultans son eventually escaped capture and Mombasa never has another sultan again. The Portuguese never successfully took back the port and it was back in control of the Arabs. [5] Then in 1647, the Dutch arrive.

The Dutch, on their way to India where they were also trading slaves, shipwreck on Cape of Good Hope. The shipwreck victims built a small fort and they were eventually rescued a year later.

After their return to Holland some of the shipwrecked cremates tried to persuade the Dutch East India Company to open a trading center at the Cape and oh boy did they do that.

They built their first settlement in cape town, and expanded their way upward pillaging, enslaving the natives, taxing the free natives, and choking the free natives of any means of independence.

The Dutch occupied the area tyrannically until 1795 when the French occupied the Seven Provinces of the Netherlands, the mother country of the Dutch East India Company. [7]

Taking advantage of their rivals war, the British swooped in Cape town and took over. Their goal was to make sure that the French didn’t gain control of the most richest trade route ever. Of course, they continued where the Dutch left off in the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. [6]

The British kept the slave trade until the 1807 when the abolition movement started. The British over the course of 30 years enacted several of policies to end the African Slave Trade. William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano were integral to the movement. [9]

William Wilberforce
Olaudah Equiano

I’d like to point out that the British did move to abolish slavery for Africans, however, they replaced their African slaves with East Asian slaves. They forced indentured servitude on Indians until 1917. There are still slaves in India though. [8]

Now back to America. America participated in slave trade with the Dutch until 1795 and the British until 1807 when the African Slave trade “ended”. On July 4th, 1858, however, Lincoln gave the speech “Evolution of the Declaration”, and the Wanderer set off on a mission. Irony. [11]

The Wanderer, The Last American Slave Ship

Among a group of pro-slavery radicals known as “fire-eaters,” W. Corrie and C. Lamar supported Southern secession and wanted the slave trade reopened. Even if American law banned the importation of slaves, they wished to prove the impotence of the federal government to stop them.

As the New York Times described, the radicals believed that if arrested they could “trust to the laxity of officials, the defects of proof, the technicalities of the law, and especially the sympathy of jurors, for escape from punishment.” Sound familiar?

As the New York Times described, the radicals believed that if arrested they could “trust to the laxity of officials, the defects of proof, the technicalities of the law, and especially the sympathy of jurors, for escape from punishment.” Sound familiar?

Wanderer dropped anchor at Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia on November 28, 1858, with 400 African slaves. The slavers smuggled slaves ashore in small boats and scattered them in plantations and slave markets across the South, they were sold for upwards of $700 a head.

Reports quickly surfaced of the presence of newly imported slaves from Africa. Within weeks, Corrie and Lamar were arrested and charged with slave trading & piracy. They stood trial in court in Savannah, Georgia, in 1860, but the result was much as the fire-eaters had imagined.

The Southern jury refused to convict them, a verdict that further inflamed sectional tensions that burst into the Civil War the following year. Ultimately, the harshest punishment given to them was Corrie’s expulsion from the New York Yacht Club. America has a history of this. [12]

Then in 1861, the Civil war starts and here was are full circle. Slavery is “abolished” in America in 1865.

Twitter post.

Sources:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
[3] https://sovereignnations.com/2018/04/30/history-arab-slave-trade-africa/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanj
[5] https://archive.org/details/eastafricaprotec00eliouoft/page/26/mode/2up
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Cape_Colony_before_1806
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_French_Empire
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanzibar_independence_movement
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism_in_the_United_Kingdom
[10] https://www.history.com/news/american-slavery-before-jamestown-1619
[11] http://objectofhistory.org/objects/extendedtour/desk/?order=12
[12] https://www.history.com/news/the-last-american-slave-ship