East Africa and The Sahara:
Before the 1500s, the majority of slaves
taken from Africa were moved from East Africa to the Arabian mainland.
Arab slave traders as opposed to European traders preferred to carry
out raiding sorties, often travelling far into Africa. Their other
distinction was that their markets back home preferred to buy female
slaves as opposed to male. This was because there was a stronger
demand for household maids as well as
sexual slaves rather
than slaves to work on farms.
Zanzibar
 became an important sea port for the
trade. In 1822, the Omani Arabs signed the
Moresby Treaty which
amongst other things, made it illegal for them to sell slaves to
Christian powers. However, the anti-slaving treaty was widely
ignored, and the trade in Black Africans continued. Caravans departed from Bagamoyo on the coast, travelling as far inland as
1,000 miles on foot up to Lake Tanganyika. Slaves who survived the
long trek from the interior were crammed into dhows bound for
Zanzibar, and paraded for sale in the Zanzibar Slave Market.
The trade in slaves in East Africa at this time
was intense. Demand for ivory reached its peak as the
industrial revolution in the west made luxury items, such as
billiard balls and piano keys, more popular. In 1856 alone,
Zanzibar exported a quarter of a million pounds of ivory.
Slaves were needed for the arduous caravan journeys
upcountry, where diseases such as sleeping sickness killed
horses and donkeys. However, burgeoning clove plantations in
Zanzibar and Pemba began to create such a high demand for
slaves that by the 1860s, more than two-fifths of the 22,000
slaves exported from Kilwa yearly remained in Zanzibar and
Pemba. Although British colonial documents described the
East African slave trade as “Arab,” less than a fifth of
these slaves were transported to the Arabian Peninsula,
India and Indian Ocean Islands.
One must understand that the 18th century definition of "Black" did not
exist in this period and some so-called Arabs were Arab linguistically
but racially African. Thus, the Arab trade in enslaved Africans was
not only conducted by Asiatic and Caucasian Arabs, but also African
Arabs: Africans speaking Arabic as a first language embracing an Arab
culture. These Africans would have been part of the Arab society; they
would have permanently resided within Arabia for generations.
The expanding presence of Europeans along the East coast pushed Arab
traders to focus on the land slave caravan routes across the Sahara
Dessert from North Africa to the Sahel region.
In North Africa slavery was practiced in the Sahara desert and its
southern border lands as well as in the region of modern western
Sahara, Morocco and Algeria among the Berbers. In the Central Sahara
and in the sub desert areas further south, the Tuaregs practiced
slavery. In North East Africa, the Ethiopians, Somalis, Egyptians and
the people of the Sudan were all familiar with the institution of
slavery.
Dr. Akosua Perbi - Manchester College - USA [full
pdf]
Sub-Saharan Africa:
Slavery 
|
|
East Africa & The
Sahara
