| SLAVE-TRADE
AND ITS CONSEQUENCES |
An accurate estimation of the importance of the drastic cuts in
the population is practically impossible to
make. Loss of life would first occur when
would-be slaves were being chased, would continue
while they were taken to the Atlantic coast
and litteraly loaded on board ships, then
again during the crossing. It is thought that
only 30 % of the captives were to reach the
American shores (or others) and land.
Between 20 and 100 million men and women were
actually lost for the African continent ;
what's more they were all young, thus fit
for procreation.
The deportation was the very origin of a major
upheaval of the political and economic structures
of Africa...
Slavery was (officially) abolished in 1833
(Great Britain), 1848 (France),1865 (U.S.A.),1963
(Saudi Arabia) and July 5th ... 1980 in Mauritania
where the U.N.O. have estimated current slave
population is ...125,000. |
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Same engraving as above, presumably before 1848 (French
ban on slavery) ...
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HISTORICAL REVIEW OF SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE
BACKGROUND
It is both painful and perilous to write about
slavery and slave-trade. Indeed painful because
the horrors of that trade are obvious for
everybody nowadays, and the abject behaviour
of the slave-traders inspires fears, just
like a fiend of the past lying dormant in
mankind’s history.
Indeed perilous because dates, figures, places,
protagonists’ names are sometimes subject
of uncalled for polemics.
Slavery and serfdom have been at the root
of the economy of most civilizations.
In Senegal for one free man there used to
be one slave, and, in certain areas from four
up to sixteen slaves for one free adult.
The Coniagui and the Bassari were of service
as "hunting preserves for slave-hunt"
before they became the main suppliers for
the West to the detriment of the Dioula,
Mandjaque and other populations settled by
the rivers of the South. (Majhemout Diop,
1972)
The Tekrour region was known for practising
slavery as far back as the XIth century.
The Sereres,
one of the most ancient populations in Senegal,
did not practise slavery on a large scale
before populations arrived from the North
(Peulh and Toucouleur).
When the kingdoms of Sine and Saloum were
established, the Sereres
adopted the slave states’ institutions
of the Djolof.
In 1455, navigator Ca da Mosto reports that
Senegalese King Zucholin "maintains
his economic power by means of plundering
several slaves in both his own country and
his neighbours’ whom he makes use of,
in several ways, mostly in making them cultivate
his lands. He sells a good number of those
slaves to Arab traders, and also hands some
over to the Christians, since the latter started
trading with those countries.".
After the decree of April 27th 1848 which
abolished slavery in the French colonies was
promulgated, Governor Baudin tried to establish
"villages of Liberty" at
Ndar Toute and Sor, around Saint-Louis
in 1849.
In 1880 missionaries
of Paris’s missionary Society founded
the village of Bethes ou Khor, near Saint-Louis.
But the most important of those villages were
situated near Matam at Civé, at Podor
and in the Niani Ouli (Maka Kaba, Gamou, Diendé,
Baby and Tambacounda). Then other smaller
villages were founded almost everywhere ;
Kaolack and Karabane
being the best known.
The rulers’ economic and military power
was based on th eproslavery principles, so
much so that the new law wasn’t actually
enforced until the beginning of the XXth century
.
Moreover several centuries of trade over the
Atlantic, what with the Exchange Economy,
had furthered the development of a feudal
society : the old feudalism type (dom-i-bour)
and the feudalism of the robe type (marabouts,
almany, damel, cadis) reigned over the countrymen
(badolo) up to the European colonization
Thus castes and feudal systems were to set
up the structure of the Senegalese society.
THE SLAVE TRADE
The slave trade appears in 1444 with the arrival
of Portuguese. As well as enslaved servants,
the civilizations of the Mediterranean Basin
have always been in need of traded slaves
to build their cities and temples and to man
the galleys either for commerce or for war
. Those slaves were either prisoners of war,
sentenced men or the victims of the slave
trade the Moors were engaged in Black Africa.
1441, Adahu, a nobleman Moor captured by the
Portuguese proposes buying himself back and
paying with six black slaves. The "swap"
took place in 1443.
The "Infant" (Iberic crown prince)
wished to obtain information about the country
of legendary Priest John , in the hope of
being then able to take the Moors from the
rear ( that country may correspond to present
Ethiopia which had been a Christian land since
King of Axoum Ezana's conversion in the course
of the IVth century).
1444, Dinis Dias reached Senegal and took
four captives back to Lagos : it was the beginning
of a systematic slave trade .
As soon as 1450 steady organized trade with
Arabs and Guinean Chiefs will take the place
of brutal capture.
At the end of the XVth century 800 to 1,000
Blacks arrived from Arguin Island to Portugal
every year.
In 1552 slaves made up 10 % of the population
in Lisbon, i.e. 10,000 persons composed of
Moors, Blacks and Canarians. At that time
there were an estimated 70 slave traders in
the city.
Servants in Portugal at first and converted
to Christianity, the victims of the trade
were quickly sent to the Canaries' sugar cane
plantations from Madera to the Azores.
As the colonial empires developed rapidly
across the Atlantic, the black slaves were
deported to America and the Caribbean in appalling
conditions. In 1600, 300,000 of them had been
deported to America. In the course of the
XVIIth century, Africa handed over one and
a half million slaves. This figure will reach
six and a half million during the XVIIIth
century.
The largest trade centres were situated on
the "Wind Coast" (the Gambia, Guinea),
on the "Seed Coast" (Sierra Leone,
Guinea), the "Ivory Coast", the
"Gold Coast" (Ghana, Togo), the
"Slave Coast" (Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon
and Gabon) and on the Angola coast line (the
Congo, Angola).
In order to make up their load some slave
traders travelled as far as the Eastern coastline
of the Mozambique. Thus, for more than 300
years, that "triangular trade"
was at its height.
As a country which opens on to the Ocean and
at the same time borders up on the Moorish
regions, Senegal benefited by this geographical
position with regard to that trade. Bakel
was but a huge slave-market mainly supplied
by the Bambara and the Dawiches : in the XVIIIth
century, 60,000 slaves were traded every year.
Joal was named Diong originally and had been
founded by Massai Diome to pen his slaves.
The fact that there was no sand-bar along
the small coastline of the Cap Vert helped
the development of the trading posts of Rufisque,
Portudal and Joal.
The island
of Goree, thanks to a privileged position
that made it getat-able in any season strengthened
its strategic situation with regard to both
the control of the west coast and the slave
trade. At Karabane,
one can still see the Captives' House, which,
though ruined, is still the most important
building on the island.
Saint-Louis,
first French trading post was not to be outdone
at that time : the large Captives' House the
building of which can be seen round the back
of the Hôtel de la Poste, testifies
to this past period.
From 1827, when the slave trade was banned
(1815 the Vienna Treaty and 1818, the Aachen
Treaty) the French chased from Goree
the slave traders that were still trading
north of the Equator.
Then, from 1821, slave trade was no longer
"legal" except on board Portuguese
ships and only south of the Equator.
Once slave trade was totally banned on the
West Coast, the heinous trade picked up on
the East Coast : Zanzibar became the new centre
for trading at the end of the XIXth century.
In 1846 Goree
sheltered 250 slaves taken away from a slave-ship
off the Angola Coast. After three years spent
in Goree,
those freed slaves settled in Gabon where
they founded Libreville.
Nowadays Goree
is universally acknowledged as a memory site
of the slave trade.
The sanguinary "Maison
des Esclaves" (Slaves' House) an
the memorial to be, Goree-Almadies, will allow
symbol and reality to converge for ever and
ever.
© Dominique Moiselet - 1998 |
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Goree memorial - December
1999by Italian architect Ottavio di Blasi
(engineers : Favero & Milan). .
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