AUHRM Project Focus Area: Slavery

Slavery took place in Africa for more than five centuries, Africans were traded within the continent and exported to the rest of the world to perform labour of different forms to nations including Spain, Britain, Dutch Empire, France and Portugal amongst others.

The transatlantic slave trading were patterns which were established in the mid-17th century. These trading patterns involved trading ships which set sail from Europe with a cargo of manufactured goods to the west coast of Africa. There, these goods were traded, over weeks and months, with captured people who were provided by African traders. European traders found it easier to do business with African intermediaries who raided settlements far away from the African coast and brought those young and healthy enough to the coast to be sold into slavery.

Slavery had different elements, with the most notable being labour and economics. Africans were traded to perform labour and the traders would reap the rewards of such labour. Thousand were forcefully captured, sold and shipped across the world. After centuries, this created the notion that Africans were and still are inferior. By the 19th century, there was a movement for the abolition of slavery, although opposed by many of these nations which dealt in slaves, it gained momentum when slave masters saw no economic potential in the slave trade. There was resistance from the enslaved Africans which led to its abolition. Majority of these nations had declared the end of slavery and moved to a new form of slavery.

When slavery did not make economic sense, the masters began a campaign which could be said to enslave Africans in their own land instead of shipping them across the world.