Slaves and slave owners. Human trafficking in the modern world. Shameful pages in the history of the exploration of the New World: how people lived who became slaves

African slaves began to be imported into the territory of the modern United States of America in the 17th century. The first permanent settlement of English colonists in America, James Town, was founded in 1607. And twelve years later, in 1619, the colonists acquired a small group of Africans of Angolan origin from the Portuguese. Although these blacks were not formally slaves, but had long-term contracts without the right to terminate, it is from this event that the history of slavery in America is usually counted. The indenture system was soon officially replaced by the more profitable system of slavery. In 1641, Massachusetts changed the term of service for slaves to life, and a 1661 law in Virginia made maternal slavery hereditary for children. Similar laws enshrining slavery were passed in Maryland (1663), New York (1665), South (1682) and North Carolina (1715), etc.

The importation of blacks and the introduction of slavery were a consequence of the need for labor in the south of North America, where large agricultural enterprises were established - tobacco, rice and other plantations. In the North, where the plantation economy, due to special economic and climatic conditions, was less widespread, slavery was never used on such a scale as in the South.

The black slaves imported to America were mostly residents of the western coast of Africa, a much smaller part belonged to the tribes of Central and Southern Africa, as well as North Africa and the island of Madagascar. Among them were blacks of the Fulbe, Wolof, Yoruba, Ibo, Ashanti, Fanti, Hausa, Dahomey, Bantu and others tribes.

Until the end of the 17th century, the slave trade in the English colonies in America was a monopoly of the Royal African Company, but in 1698 this monopoly was eliminated, and the colonies received the right to independently engage in the slave trade. The slave trade took on even wider dimensions after 1713, when England achieved the right of asiento - the exclusive right to trade in black slaves.

In Africa, an agency of slave traders was created who rounded up slaves and prepared them for sale. This organization reached the far reaches of Africa and many people worked for it, including tribal and village leaders. The leaders either sold their fellow tribesmen or launched attacks on hostile tribes, took captives, and then sold them into slavery. The captured blacks were tied up in twos and led through the forests to the coast.

Factories grew along the western coast of Africa from Cape Verde to the equator, where slaves were driven in batches. There, in dirty, cramped barracks, they awaited the arrival of slave ships. When a ship arrived for “live goods,” the agents began to negotiate with the captains. Each black man was shown personally. The captains forced the blacks to move their fingers, arms, legs and whole body to make sure that there were no fractures. Even the teeth were checked. If there were not enough teeth, then a lower price was given for the black man. Each black cost approximately 100 gallons of rum, 100 pounds of gunpowder, or 18-20 dollars. Women under 25, pregnant or not, were worth full price, but after 25 they lost a quarter of the price.

When the transactions ended, the slaves began to be transported in boats to ships. They transported 4-6 blacks at a time. On board the ship, the blacks were divided into three groups. The men were loaded into one compartment. Women in another. Children were left on deck. Slaves were transported on ships specially designed to “stuff” more live goods into the hold. Small sailing ships of that time managed to transport 200, 300, even 500 slaves in one voyage. And at least 600 slaves were loaded onto the ship with a displacement of 120 tons. As the slave traders themselves said, “a Negro should not take up more space in the hold than in a coffin.”

2 On the road

The ships were on the road for 3-4 months. All this time the slaves were in terrible conditions. The holds were very crowded, the blacks were shackled. There was very little water and food. There was no thought of taking the slaves out of the hold to relieve themselves. In the darkness, the slave ship was easily distinguished from any other by the heavy stench emanating from it. Young black women were often raped by the captain and crew. Blacks had their nails cut short so they couldn't tear each other's skin. A large number of fights broke out between men as they tried to make themselves a little more comfortable. Then the overseer's whip came into play.

Slaves died in droves during transportation. For every Negro who survived, there were often five who died on the road - suffocated from lack of air, died from illness, went crazy, or simply threw themselves into the sea, preferring death to slavery.

3 America

Upon arrival in America, slaves were first fed, treated, and then sold. However, some tried to buy slaves quickly: after all, as the slave took a break from the “travel,” the cost increased. Slave prices varied over time. For example, in 1795 the price was $300, by 1849 it had risen to $900, and on the eve of the Civil War it reached $1,500-2,000 per slave.

Slaves were imported mainly for the tobacco and cotton plantations of the southern states. They were sent to work in batches, they worked up to 18-19 hours a day, driven by the scourge of the overseer. At night the slaves were locked up and the dogs were let loose. The average life expectancy of a black slave on plantations was 10 years, and in the 19th century it was 7 years. Conditions were slightly better for those slaves who served as servants, cooks, and nannies.

Slaves had no rights and freedoms and were considered the property of the owner, with whom the owner could do whatever he wanted without any prosecution by the law. The Virginia Slave Code, adopted in 1705, prohibited slaves from leaving plantations without written permission. He sanctioned flogging, branding and mutilation as punishment for even minor offenses. Some codes prohibited teaching slaves to read and write. In Georgia, the crime was punishable by a fine and/or flogging if the offender was a “negro slave or free person of color.” The ears of a slave who escaped and was caught were cut off, and the arms and legs of his children were cut off for unfulfilled work. A slave owner could, if he wished, kill his slave, although able-bodied slaves were rarely killed.

Slaves were prohibited from traveling in groups of more than 7 people unless accompanied by whites. Any white man who met a black man outside the plantation had to demand a ticket from him, and if he did not have one, he could give him 20 lashes. If a black man tried to defend himself or respond to a blow, he was subject to execution. For being outside the house after 9 pm, blacks in Virginia were quartered.

Negroes were made slaves, but they were never submissive slaves. They often started uprisings on ships. This is evidenced by a special type of insurance for shipowners to cover losses specifically in the event of a slave rebellion on the ship. But even on the plantations, where blacks lived, brought from different parts of Africa, representatives of different tribes, speaking different languages, slaves managed to overcome inter-tribal strife and unite in the fight against their common enemy - the planters. During the period from 1663 to 1863, over 250 black uprisings and conspiracies were recorded. Black uprisings were brutally suppressed. But even these isolated outbursts of despair among the oppressed slaves made the planters tremble with fear. Almost every plantation had its own weapons depot, and groups of planters maintained security detachments that prowled the roads at night.

Negro slaves expressed their protest in other forms, such as damage to tools, murder of overseers and owners, suicide, escapes, etc. Blacks fled to the forests, to the Indians, to the North, where by the end of the 18th century slavery was abolished . At least 60 thousand fugitives reached the northern states between 1830 and 1860.

Of course, the living conditions of each individual slave depended on his owner. In 1936-1938, American writers, participants in the so-called Federal Writers' Project, commissioned by the government, recorded interviews with former slaves, who by that time were over 80 years old. The result was the publication of Collected Stories of Former Slaves. From these stories it is very clear that blacks lived differently, some were more lucky, some were less fortunate. Here is the story of 91-year-old George Young (Livingston, Alabama): “They didn’t teach us anything and didn’t let us learn ourselves. If they saw us learning to read and write, our hand would be cut off. They were also not allowed to go to church. Sometimes we would run away and pray together in an old house with a dirt floor. There we rejoiced and shouted, and no one heard us, because the earthen floor muffled us, and one person stood in the doorway. We weren't allowed to visit anyone, and I saw Jim Dawson, Iverson Dawson's father, tied to four stakes. They laid him on his stomach and stretched out his arms to the sides, and tied one hand to one stake and the other to the other. The legs were also stretched to the sides and tied to stakes. And then they started beating me with a board - the kind they put on the roof. The blacks then came there at night and carried him home on a sheet, but he did not die. He was accused of going to a nearby plantation at night. At nine o'clock we all had to be home. The elder came and shouted: “All clear! Lights out! Everyone go home and lock the doors!” And if anyone didn’t go, they beat him.”

And here is the memory of Nicey Pugh (85 years old, Mobile, Alabama): “Life was happy for the blacks then. Sometimes I want to go back there. How now I see that glacier with butter, milk and cream. How a stream gurgles over the stones, and above it there are willows. I hear turkeys cackling in the yard, chickens running and bathing in the dust. I see a creek next to our house and cows that have come to drink and cool their feet in the shallow water. I was born into slavery, but I was never a slave. I worked for good people. Is this called slavery, white gentlemen?

Cargo - “ebony”

A dozen guns with ammunition, a pack of tobacco and a bottle of rum. . To the corpulent leader with rings on his hands, ears and nose, puffing on a long pipe, such a reward for 150 young, strong Guineans seemed too small. He demanded more.

The Dutchman, the captain of the schooner that had dropped anchor in the roadstead, finally pulled a cheap watch out of his pocket. His trading partner looked at them for a long time, not knowing what to do with them. However, the metallic shine and ticking inside delighted him. The deal was completed.

But not all of the “ebony” cargo reached the Southern states. The chained Guineans violated the slave traders' calculations. They rebelled against their tormentors. True, they failed to gain the upper hand on deck, but they barricaded themselves in the hold. They tried to “smoke them out.” In vain. With a heavy heart - after all, this was his business - the captain, "under pressure from his crew trembling with fear, decided to open fire at the hatches from the ship's cannon...

This incident, described with stunning force in Merimee’s story “Tamango,” did not seem at all out of the ordinary in the era of the black slave trade. However, in most cases, the merciless methods of handling living goods were justified, and slave transports safely reached their goal. Millions of Africans were forcibly transported to America and exploited there in the most ruthless manner. This is the most shameful chapter in the history of capitalist maritime powers, which began in the first half of the 16th century. in the African colonies of Portugal, ended only in the 19th century.

Black slaves were the most profitable commodity for centuries. At any time of the year, slave ships sailed along the “middle passage” route - from West Africa to Central America. The slave trade, becoming more and more risky every year, even affected shipbuilding: in order to evade prosecution, slave traders needed the fastest ships. The slenderness and lightness of the design of these; ships were purchased at the cost of reducing the volume of holds, so transportation conditions became increasingly unbearable for the unfortunate Africans. The captains even used the cramped spaces between decks, where prisoners could only lie, as a room for living cargo. They were stacked so closely together that sometimes there were more than 300 people in an area of ​​30x10 m2. It is clear that the mortality rate under such conditions was colossal, especially since the “black goods”, even before loading onto the ships, were exhausted by the long journey from the interior of Africa to the west coast.

And another case that has become public demonstrates the shamelessness of human traffickers. When one captain learned during a voyage that a disease had broken out among the slaves, he ordered 132 Africans thrown into the sea. Arguing his action by the fact that he saved the rest of the “cargo” in this way, the captain received an insurance premium for the lost “goods”, which he would not have been entitled to if people had simply died of illness.

Despite significant losses, traders still made a huge profit; each survivor made a profit of $4,000. Trade in living goods, which was practiced in this form for several centuries, was a very profitable source of “initial accumulation” of capital. The ruling classes did not find anything shameful in this business. Some particularly cruel and unscrupulous slave traders who managed to quickly amass wealth even enjoyed the favor of the British crown. These gentlemen were looked upon as able entrepreneurs who, instead of mining raw materials or running factories, were engaged in obtaining labor.

In 1713, based on the Treaty of Utrecht, England received the exclusive right to trade slaves with Spanish possessions in South America and the West Indies. The colossal fortunes of the families that still make up the ruling elite of England and France were made in those days through human trafficking. The monopoly right to supply slaves to Spain's own colonies and overseas possessions led to the formation of entire slave fleets in English harbors during the first half of the 15th century! V. Bristol alone equipped from 80 to 90 ships to transport slaves. Since the middle of the century, Liverpool has become the main center of ebony business. By the end of the century, Liverpool's slave fleet had grown to 150 ships. The city's first millionaire, banker and mayor Thomas Leyland, earned an average of 43 English pounds from each slave.

However, by this time traditional slave labor had already begun to become obsolete. Under pressure from the revolutionary and national liberation movement, the bourgeois colonial powers abolished by the beginning of the 19th century. slavery in Europe. Soon they were forced to formally extend this ban to their colonies. In the USA, some states also banned all slavery, and in accordance with one of the federal laws of 1808, the slave trade with Africa was even punishable by severe punishment.

However, in 1793, the cotton gin was invented. In a short period of time, huge cotton plantations grew at a frantic pace in the Southern states. Slave labor became profitable again. The demand for slaves immediately increased greatly and slave traders again began to receive colossal profits. They delivered their “goods” across the Atlantic, first to the West Indies, and from there to the states where slavery still existed.

While in the United States the public seemed to accept this situation, such great maritime powers as England and France, under the pressure of public opinion, as well as for competitive reasons, tried to hinder the ebony trade with the help of their fleets. In 1830, England outlawed the slave trade, and in 1845, John Bull decided to consider the sale of slaves overseas to be piracy.

This, of course, complicated the slave trade, but could not destroy it, because the need for “living chocolate” (cynical slang name for Negro slaves) was high, and the prices for it, due to the high risk, were even higher. During these times, the “slave shanti” was composed:

Oh boy, have you been to the Congo River?

Blow, boys, blow! Where does the fever grip people?

Blow, boys, blow! There the Yankees ripped apart the wave with his stem

Blow, boys, blow, And its masts rested on the moon,

Blow, boys, blow! Saint Joseph was the captain on it,

Blow, boys, blow, All the blacks considered him a father,

Blow, boys, blow! He caught a hundred “black sheep”

Blow, boys, blow. He avoided ports like the plague,

Blow, boys, blow!

After the British placed their patrol ships in the “middle passage” and without much ado began to deal with the captains of the slave ships, the Yankees brought their last trump card into the game - Baltimore clippers with racing foxes, which, in fact, were designed specifically for this purpose.

However, it was not always possible to take advantage of the best seaworthiness of these clippers, especially if there was a sudden calm. Then the guns started talking. The slave ships were superbly armed. It seemed as if the days of Caribbean piracy were being revived again. With the difference, however, that this time the attacker acted as a guardian of order.

Both sides suffered heavy losses in men. But the true victims were the slaves, for their lives were now under even greater threat. Only one thing could save them - if the whites killed each other in boarding battles or in fights that sometimes arose among the trophy teams after the capture of the ship. Often the chase led to the premature death of the entire ship’s “cargo”: slave traders caught red-handed preferred to throw the slaves along with chains overboard from the unseen side of the ship rather than end up in hard labor for life.

In such a situation, the transportation of slaves was justified only if it was possible to increase the number of slaves transported. And this meant that even more unfortunate people were pushed into the slender hulls of clipper ships than before. The swimming and walking on the deck were over, as well as the dancing and singing. Up to 650 slaves were squeezed into the tweendeck of a slave ship, 28 m long and 7.6 m wide. And this is for a flight of 6000 km at a speed of 5-6 knots and a temperature of 30°C in the shade! The suffering of the people driven into this gas chamber is difficult to imagine. More than half of them did not survive to the end of the voyage.

The slave trade became unprofitable in Middle Passage only after the guard service had at its disposal several of the fastest clippers captured as prizes. Many captains of slave ships were sent to hard labor, and some were even hanged. The remaining ships were turned into “coolie transports”, on which cheap Indian and Chinese labor were delivered to tropical sugar and cotton plantations. The fact that many of these coolies got there far from their own free will follows from the fact that it was in In those days, the word washanhait arose, which meant forcibly bringing a person on board.

The coastal slave trade soon became a threat that accompanied colonial successes. Consequences of human trafficking

are still felt today.

Early African civilizations

Colonization of Africa has a long history. The most ancient civilization here arose in Nubia, modern Sudan. Its development ran parallel to the development of Ancient Egypt. And although both cultures benefited from mutual contact, such as trade exchanges and the spread of ideas, their relationship was too burdened by conflict. So Nubia around 2800 BC. e. was occupied for 500 years by Egypt, and the Nubian kingdom of Kush, which 70 years earlier united the scattered parts of Nubia, was until about 770 BC. occupied by Egypt. After gaining independence, the development and flourishing of the Nubian kingdom began. This continued until the 4th century AD. e. and only the growing Christianization and strengthening of the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum finally determined the decline of the Nubian kingdom.

Similar traditions inherent in large civilizations existed in West Africa. In the 4th century AD. The king of Ghana ruled a society in which street systems were already built and there was a set of laws, and the number of soldiers carrying out the defense exceeded 20 thousand people. From 1200, the kingdom gave way to the Mali Empire, and Timbuktu became a center of trade and education.

Further south, on the high plateaus of Zimbabwe, there was also a highly developed culture that acquired its wealth through trade with the countries of the East African coast. The capital was the city of Great Zimbabwe, the founding date of which historians believe is around 1250. It was a relatively large city with stone buildings and conical towers. It is believed that approximately 18 thousand people lived in the city.

Abyssinian slaves in iron chains. Left: Illustration 1835; Before boarding the ship, slaves are shackled.

Beginning of the slave trade

Trade relations between Europe and the countries of North Africa located on the Mediterranean coast have existed for a long time.

Already in Ancient Greece, relations were maintained with some African cultures, and the Romans had close ties with the African continent, especially with Egypt. Until the 15th century, European knowledge of Africa was a mixture of fragmentary knowledge borrowed from classical education, myths and stories, as well as individual facts set out in the Bible.

One by one, European expeditions were sent to the Dark Continent. In 1482, the Portuguese founded a seaport in Elmina on the coast of what is now Ghana. In 1497, Vasco da Gama sailed around the entire continent, and from that moment on, Europeans began to explore Africa with an increasing degree of activity. They exported raw building materials, gold and ivory.

However, the slave trade turned out to be a much more profitable activity. So-called trading posts were established along the west coast from Senegal to Angola, and even at this early stage the trafficking in persons was extremely brutal. For Europeans, human trafficking was initially something new, but in Africa slaves have long been traded - East African rulers sold them to each other and their Arab neighbors. When Europeans joined them, they initially relied on tribal leaders to round up captives and sell them to the Europeans. At first, African slaves were expected to work on island colonies facing the continental coast; some were taken to Europe. The first slave ship bound for America, where the slave trade later became the center of the trade, set sail from Lisbon in 1518. From that moment on, human trafficking acquired enormous proportions. The echoes of this phenomenon are still felt today in politics, economics and demography.

Development of slavery

To traders, slaves were a commodity like any other, and transatlantic shipping carried out by water is recorded in history as the “Triangular Trade.” Slaves were the main component of this trade. European goods were transported by ship to Africa and exchanged for slaves, who were then transported by water to South, Central and North America. From these places, export goods were again brought to Europe. For many traders, transporting slaves was a convenient opportunity to avoid sailing from Europe to America with an empty hold and still earn extra money. From a commercial point of view, this type of trade acquired exceptional importance: significant benefits could be derived from it. This fact, coupled with the fact that slaves were viewed not as people but as cargo, meant that when transporting slaves by sea they were subjected to appalling conditions. For this reason, many slave ships became hotbeds of disease, and high mortality rates were almost the norm.

In addition, if the slave trader got into any serious situations with his ship, the “cargo” was simply thrown overboard.

The subject of the slave trade caused wide discussion in diplomatic circles. The high profits received from the slave trade led to diplomatic scandals, and in some cases to wars and power struggles, as many countries wanted to control this market and make money from it. The wealth of many colonies and the states that arose later in their place is based on the slave trade. Between 1518 and 1650, the Spanish and Portuguese imported approximately half a million slaves into their colonies, and after 1650 there was a booming illegal slave trade. In the colonies, slaves were often used to work on sugar plantations. Spanish slaves were required to work in Mexican silver mines. However, most of the slaves went to Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba, regions where Spain was experiencing economic difficulties. The Portuguese expanded their plantations in Brazil and, from 1700, brought more and more slaves to their South American colonies to fully exploit the silver mines in Minas Guerais. Dutch, British and French slaves were required to work in the Caribbean and Guiana colonies, as well as in North American lands, where a small number of African slaves were employed, among other things, to work on tobacco plantations in Virginia and Maryland.

Riots broke out every now and then in the colonies, which at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries developed into slave uprisings. However, these uprisings were immediately suppressed. This continued until the start of the liberation struggle in 1791 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, led by Toussaint Louverture (“Black Napoleon”). The consequence of this liberation struggle was the emergence of the state of Haiti.

abolition of slavery

In Europe, voices calling for the abolition of slavery have always been heard. These were the voices of people protesting against human trafficking. But the real movement to abolish slavery began only in 1770. It began in England, when a certain Grenville Sharp submitted a petition to the Supreme Court of Justice asking for the grant of freedom to a fugitive slave from America, James Somerset, who was re-arrested in England. Despite the initial success, little changed at first. Therefore, in the 80s of the 18th century, a group of evangelical Christians began a campaign demanding the complete abolition of slavery. After this action, a public movement developed in the country, during which information was collected, which was later made public and transferred to Parliament.

William Wilberforce was an influential lawyer who worked tirelessly on this case and turned the public consciousness to the issue of slavery, as slavery increasingly seemed to be an exclusively barbaric anachronism against the backdrop of the free trade ideals of the Industrial Revolution and the ideals of the French Revolution.

In 1808, the English Parliament made the purchase, sale and transportation of slaves illegal. In 1834, owning slaves was also made illegal. In the same year, on the islands of Western India, all children of slaves under 6 years of age were granted freedom, and the slaves themselves were guaranteed six years of free education. However, these regulations carried the same connotation of exploitation as the former slavery, although there were deadlines for their implementation. Slavery was finally abolished in 1838. Meanwhile, British anti-slavery campaigners launched a campaign to abolish slavery in America. A particularly active and stable anti-slavery movement developed in the northern regions of North America. Fugitive or freed slaves, such as Frederick Douglass, gave speeches throughout the country. Many writers supported the abolition of slavery. Thus, the book of the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe “Uncle Tom's Cabin” had some influence on public consciousness. With the end of the Civil War in 1865, slavery ended in America.

The abolition of slavery in America and Europe was made possible by several factors: the abolition movement, economic difficulties and political events of the time. However, in Africa, until the end of the 19th century, traditional forms of slavery were still widespread in many territories. In Nigeria, slavery was abolished only in 1936. To this day, slavery can be found in some remote places on the African continent, and its opponents continue to fight for its abolition.

Consequences

One of the side problems of the African slave trade was population decline. In the Niger Valley, almost all the indigenous tribes were exterminated during the slave hunt. The consequence of this was hunger and disease.

But perhaps the most devastating effect of the slave trade was the recognition of the primacy of power and the creation of a social climate in which white people felt superior to blacks. These consequences can still be seen today.

We gave the king the ship Cleopatra. It has seventeen cannons, three masts, a seven-tiered hold, each tier can hold three hundred slaves. True, they cannot stand up to their full height, and they don’t need it. Sitting in such a tier for twenty-four days, and then getting into the fresh air of the plantations is not so scary. We gave this ship to the king. Four times a year, ebony - a royal commodity - is transported on it from the coast of Liberia to Guadeloupe, Martinique and Haiti. This is His Majesty's sure income, more sure than the royal domains of France.

(Vinogradov. Black Consul).

Ships like the Cleopatra described a huge triangle in the Atlantic: from the shores of Europe to the West African coast, from there to the American shores, and from there back to Europe. They went to Africa, mostly loaded with rum, where, on a vast territory from the Gulf of Guinea to the White Nile, they acquired slaves and transported them to the cotton and tobacco fields in the USA, sugar cane and coffee plantations in Cuba, Mexican and Brazilian mines. They returned home with “colonial” goods - sugar, molasses, coffee, fish, valuable species of trees, etc.

In East Africa, the Arabs have long been involved in the slave trade. It has its own trade chain: East Africa – India – Middle Eastern countries (Persia, Turkey, Levant). For centuries, slave markets operated in Zanzibar, Sofala, Mombasa and Malindi. In the 16th century, the Portuguese captured all East African ports and built their administrative center - Fort Mozambique. Thus, the Indian Ocean was closed for a long time in the chain of Portuguese possessions. They were later driven out of the region by the Dutch and British. The West Coast, on the other hand, was “nobody’s.” The Portuguese, the Dutch and the English traded from here, even the Danes and Swedes built their trading posts (and there was always a fort next to the trading post). People, no matter how scary it sounds, were the main share of exports from Africa, with gold and ivory only in second place.

Starting from the middle of the 16th century, slaves from the west coast “went” to America, where there was already (!) an acute shortage of Indians. According to the roughest estimates, which varied significantly over the years, 100 thousand people were taken from the west coast. in year .

A profit of 500% was considered normal, as was the death of a third of the slaves in the party along the way. Shipbuilders and bankers, planters and winemakers, insurance companies and cloth factories, all kinds of brokers, resellers and intermediaries profited from the slave trade. In Africa, they willingly took not only weapons and rum for slaves, but also simply iron and copper bars, even cowrie shells and glass beads! Slaves were unloaded in Rio, Bahia, Pernambuco, Montevideo, in English Barbados, Dutch Curacao, Danish Saint-Thom, in the Dutch and British Guianas, on the coast of New Spain, Virginia and Carolina, on all the islands of the West and East Indies. Only in South Africa did the reverse process take place - Europeans brought Indians here from their eastern colonies to work on sugar plantations. In addition to the “legal” trade, there was also smuggling, which the colonists themselves engaged in on their ships. If the British or Spaniards intercepted such a ship, they unceremoniously hanged every third person in the crew and requisitioned the ship, and for the slaves locked below, these events remained unknown and meaningless.

A distinction was made between trade “in trading posts” and trade “from a ship”. In the first case, they used the services of a huge number of coastal markets that worked 6 days a week, such as Accra, Lagos, Loango, Luanda, Benguela, Ceuta, Oran, Algiers, Mayumba, Malembo, Cabinda. The mouths of such rivers as Bonny and Calabar (Bay of Benin) were especially popular. But it was not only coastal areas and river basins that were devastated, as one might think. Even in the very depths of the continent, people did not feel safe. Slaves were captured everywhere, and regardless of the distance of the journey, they were dragged to the coast - to Angola, Congo, Vidah, the Gold Coast, Senegal, Sierra Leone.

When “trading from a ship,” you had to wait at least three months, cruising along the coast (until the required quantity was captured on the shore), but the price was minimal (if a person was captured far from the market, the seller had to sell him in any case). People were afraid to leave the house if a slave ship was visible nearby. Those who were captured fought to the end: they fled overland, attacked the guards, jumped from boats into the sea, and rioted on the ships that were taking them away. It is noteworthy that on the ships, as a rule, the Europeans, being in the overwhelming minority, brutally dealt with the rebels, but even if the blacks won, they still lost to fate - they did not know how to control the ship and died at sea.

Livingston writes:

“The most terrible disease that I have observed in this country, apparently, is the “broken heart”, which affects free people who are captured and enslaved... These blacks complained only of pain in the heart and correctly indicated its location when laying hand on him."

How did the few teams from European ships, who had a limited supply of water and provisions (they still had to rely on feeding the “goods” on the way back), with guns that were very imperfect for that time, without guides, without immunity to malaria, without languages, managed to get to the very the heart of Africa and bleed it?

The secret is simple. They andthere was no need to do this. All (or almost all) slaves were brought by the Africans themselves. They knew that the whites would trade their amazing goods only for people or elephant tusks. So judge who is easier to catch - a man or an elephant.

P True, the person must be captured alive...

The most warlike tribes easily coped with this, capturing the “ordered” number of heads in the war. Those who were weaker gave their compatriots into slavery. Even the customs of African tribes over time adapted to the requirements of the slave trade, and for all misdeeds the perpetrator faced one punishment: sale into slavery. The only exception was debt slavery: it was served within the tribe, firstly, because it had a personal focus, and secondly, because it could be worked off.

The most terrible thing in the history of the slave trade is that Europeans managed to make it part of the lives of Africans, dulling their awareness that it was not just scary, but unacceptable. The slave trade has become something commonplace, like life and death (everyone tries to avoid death, but no one protests against it as such). Many tribes lived by the slave trade, and such as the Ashanti and Fanti, the Dahomeans and the Ewe fought fiercely among themselves for the right to be the main partner of the whites in human trafficking. The fate of the Andone tribes is indicative, who profited from selling people into slavery, and then, when trading points on the coast moved, they themselves became the subject of hunting.

At the beginning of the 19th century, Britain officially banned the slave trade. This was done for a simple reason: since by this time the British were already actively selling cotton to the world, they needed to somehow weaken the North American United States (USA) competing with them (at the hands of slaves). English cotton was produced by day laborers from India and, later, Egypt; in America, black slaves worked on cotton. Therefore, the British zealously rose up against the transportation of blacks from Africa overseas.
Note that, firstly, the abolition of the slave trade did not yet mean abolition of slavery. Secondly, the smuggling slave trade immediately began, taking on the same, if not greater, scale. They began to export African women especially zealously (there was a logic to this). With great reluctance, several other countries soon joined the ban, including the United States,Portugal refused to recognize him, and a number of other countries agreed with him for... a ransom paid by Britain (truly, these are shameful pages in the history of mankind).
English ships, according to international treaties, received the right to search all foreign ships for the presence of slaves. When patrolmen appeared, some slave traders raised someone else’s flag (usually Portuguese), others threw living “evidence” overboard, others went beyond the equator (the British had no right to pursue other people’s ships south of the equator) or even rushed to board. US slave ships would take on board a Spaniard in advance, who, when the patrol approached, would raise the Spanish flag and communicate with his pursuers in Spanish (all in order to evade responsibility under American laws that provided for the death penalty for those involved in the slave trade).

The end of the slave trade was, oddly enough, brought about by the colonial conquest of Africa. It became more profitable to leave workers at home; someone had to work in the occupied territories. This event coincided with the American Civil War, Lincoln's abolition of slavery, and the loss of the largest slave market in North America. Only thanks to this, by the end of the 19th century, the slave trade began to decline and died down.

But the bitter cup of Africa has not yet been drained to the bottom. Now the whites did not take the Africans to themselves. Now they were taking the ground from under their feet.

The number of victims of the slave trade was about 100 million people. for 4 centuries. This figure was derived taking into account the fact that no more than one in two who were attacked could be taken into slavery, and one in five made it to the coast. A large number of people died along the way, in crowded holds, dying from instantly spreading diseases or poor feeding (but from the point of view of the slave traders, it was dangerous to feed slaves well).