2 - African Slavery versus the Slave Trade(s)

Summary

Although historians continue to trace the existence of the Atlantic slave trade back to African domestic slavery that was part of social structure, my investigation into African social stratification in the kingdoms of Senegambia uncovers significant differences between slavery as practiced within the Atlantic trade and so-termed African domestic slavery. The chapter’s objective is to affirm the absence of a correlation between the two forms of slavery. First, it questions the extent to which inegalitarian social structures, of which domestic slavery was a part, resulted in an openness to the trans-Saharan and trans-Atlantic slave trades. It argues that inegalitarian societies were in fact closed to their development into commercial slavery. Social stratification in West Africa, with its connected domestic slavery, was not designed to provide a reserve of captives, in other words. Rather, as exemplified by the case of Gajaaga, the primary function of inegalitarian social structures was to integrate people into society as dependents and kin. The second line of inquiry pursues how, with the presence of the Atlantic slave trade, this primary function dissolved in certain cases. Kingdoms that adhered to the Atlantic slave trade ceased their integration of these individuals, leaving them as easy prey for slave-hunting.