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Daily Life in Western Africa During the Era of the “Slave Route”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Paul E. Lovejoy
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The slave route from Africa to the Americas is as old as the contact between Europe and the New World itself, and the slave route across the Sahara is older still. Hence to describe the lives of ordinary people in western Africa during the era of slavery would require an examination of the whole of African history over the past five hundred years and more. And in Africa, as in Europe and the Americas, there was tremendous change over this period and extensive variation at any point in time. Life in 1807, when Britain and the United States outlawed the slave trade, was considerably different than in 1492, when Columbus first sailed to the Caribbean. Hence to give an impression of how people in Africa lived during the era of transatlantic slavery is also to understand how the lives of people changed over the course of the slave trade. In 1492, a coup d’état brought a Muslim ruler, Askia Muhammad, to the throne of the great empire of Songhay, and for the next hundred years, Songhay ruled much of West Africa. As empires have always done, Songhay's influence extended to areas beyond its military control. At this time, the slavery of Africans in the Americas was in its infancy. Yet, in 1593, a military invasion from Morocco across the Sahara destroyed Songhay, and much of the internal cohesion of western Africa came to an end, precisely when transatlantic slavery emerged as the principal means of exploiting the agricultural and mineral wealth of the Americas. The lives of ordinary people changed because of this monumental collapse of Songhay. Similarly, the changes imposed by European abolition of the slave trade after 1807, although confusing and often delayed in their impact, were also monumental. Hence the first task in considering how people lived during the slavery era is to identify the differences over time that affected both people who were forced, through slavery, to cross the Atlantic and those who remained behind in Africa. Africa in 1492 or 1593 was not the same as in 1807, any more than Europe and America were.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 45 , Issue 179 , September 1997 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

Notes

1. See, for example, the multivolume UNESCO History of Africa, and more local studies such as Obaro Ikime (ed.), Groundwork of Nigerian History (Ibadan, 1980).

2. Kenneth Onwuka Dike and Felicia Ekejiuba, The Aro of South-eastern Nigeria, 1650-1980 (Ibadan, 1990); A.E. Afigbo, “Igboland before 1800,” in Ikime, Groundwork of Nigerian History.

3. See, for example, John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680 (Cambridge, 1992).

4. See, for example, Philip D. Curtin (ed.), Africa Remembered: Narratives of West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, 1967); Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stores and Spiritual Struggles (New York, 1997); Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook (New York, 1984); and Carl Campbell, “Mohammedu Sisei of Gambia and Trinidad, c. 1788-1838,” African Studies of the West Indies Bulletin 7 (1974): 29-38.

5. See Paul E. Lovejoy, “Biography as Source Material: Towards a Biographical Archive of Enslaved Africans,” in Robin Law (ed.), Sources for the Study of the Slave Trade and the African Diaspora (Centre of Commonwealth Studies, Uni versity of Stirling, 1997).

6. This process of adjustment has sometimes been referred to as “creolization,” which originally distinguished between those people born in the Americas, and those who were born in the Old World, whether Africa or Europe; see Edward Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 1770-1820 (Oxford, 1971); and Sidney Mintz and Richard Price, The Birth of African-Amer ican Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (Boston, 1992 [1956]).

For a critique of this approach, see my paper “Identifying Enslaved Africans: Methodological and Conceptual Considerations in Studying the African Diaspora,” paper presented at the UNESCO Summer Institute, “Iden tifying Enslaved Africans: The ‘Nigerian' Hinterland and the African Dias pora,” York University, Canada, 1997.

7. Claude Meillassoux, Anthropologie de l'esclavage. Le ventre de fer et d'argent (Paris, 1986).

8. For the extent of literacy among Muslims, see, for example, the detailed bibli ography of texts written in Arabic that has been compiled by John Hunwick, The Writings of Central Sudanic Africa: Arabic Literature of Africa, Vol.II (Leiden, 1995). For the development of literacy along the Guinea coast, see Daryll Forde, Efik Traders of Old Calabar (London, 1956), p.viii.

9. The literature on Ahmad Baba is extensive, but see Bernard Bernard and Michelle Jacobs, “The Mi raj: A Legal Treatise on Slavery by Ahmad Baba,” in John Ralph Willis, Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, vol. 1, pp.125-59. Also see Elias N. Saad, Social History of Timbuktu: The Role of Muslim Scholars and Notables 1400-1900 (Cambridge, 1983).

10. Joannes Leo Africanus, Description de l'Afrique (Paris, 1956).

11. John Hunwick, “Black Africans in the Mediterranean World: Introduction to a Neglected Aspect of the African Diaspora,” in Elizabeth Savage (ed.), The Human Commodity: Perspectives on the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade (London, 1992).

12. See Bala Usman and Nur Alkali (eds.), Studies in the History of Pre-Colonial Borno (Zaria, 1983).

13. The most convenient source of Ayuba Suleiman's account, with introduction and annotation, is in Curtin, Africa Remembered, pp.17-59.

14. See Abu Bakr's account and the commentary by Ivor Wilks, in Curtin, Africa Remembered, pp.152-69.

15. Ayuba Suleiman Ibrahima, Some Memoirs of the Life of Job, in Curtin, Africa Remembered, p.37.

16. August von Einsiedel, “Nachricht von den innern Länder von Afrika, auf einer 1785 nach Tunis unternommenen Reise,” in Ernst Wilhelm Cuhn, (ed.), Sammlung merkwürdiger Reisen in das Innre von Afrika, vol.III (Leipzig, 1791), p.446.

17. Salih Bilali's recollections of Massina, in Curtin, Africa Remembered, p.149.

18. Richard Lander, Records of Captain Clapperton's Last Expedition to Africa, vol. I (London, 1830), pp.204, 206.

19. “Narrative of a Journey from Egypt to the Western Coast of Africa, by Mahomed Misrah. Communicated by an Officer Serving in Sierra Leone, 8 April 1821,” The Quarterly Journal (October 1822): 6.

20. Ibid., p.14.

21. Ibid., pp.15-16.

22. H. F. C. Smith, Murray Last, and Gambo Gubio (eds.), “Ali Eisami Gazirmabe of Bornu,” in Curtin, Africa Remembered, pp.202, 211-12.

23. Frances de Castelnau, Renseignements sur l'Afrique centrale (Paris, 1851), p.40.

24. M. Menèzes de Drumond, “Lettres sur l'Afrique ancienne et moderne,” Jour nal des Voyages 32 (1826): 290-324.

25. Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle, Polyglotta Africana (London, 1854), p.19.

26. Ibid., p.17.

27. Ibid., p.10.

28. Ibid., p.17.

29. Ibid.

30. Sultana Afroz, “The Unsung Slaves: Islam in Plantation Jamaica,” Caribbean Quarterly, 41, no.3/4 (1995): 30-44; Allan Austin, “Islamic Identities in Africans in North America in the Days of Slavery (1731-1865),” Islam et sociétés au sud du Sahara 7 (1993): 205-19; Michael A. Gomez, “Muslims in Early Amer ica,” The Journal of Southern History, 60, no.4 (1994): 671-710; Paul E. Lovejoy, “Background to Rebellion: The Origins of Muslim Slaves in Bahia”, Slavery and Abolition 15 (1994): 151-80; Joao José Reis, “Slave Resistance in Brazil: Bahia, 1807-1835,” Luso-Brazilian Review 25, 1 (1988): 111-44; Reis, Slave Rebel lion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia (Baltimore, 1993); and Reis and Paulo F. de Moraes Farias, “Islam and Slave Resistance in Bahia, Brazil,” Islam and sociétés au sud du Sahara 3 (1989): 41-66.

31. Peter Haenger, “Ein Missionar fällt aus dem Rahmen,” based on reports and letters in the Basel Mission Archives. Also see John Henry Buchner, The Mora vians in Jamaica: History of the Mission of the United Brethren's Church to the Negroes in the Island of Jamaica, from the Year 1754 to 1854 (London, 1854); and Jon Miller, The Social Control of Religious Zeal: A Study of Organizational Contra dictions (New Brunswick, N.J., 1994).

32. Olaudah Equiano, The Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa The African, 2 vols.(London, 1969 [1789]); Paul Edwards, “Three West African Writers of the 1780s,” in Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (eds.), The Slave's Narra tive (New York, 1985); Paul Edwards, “…Written by Himself: A Manuscript Letter of Olaudah Equiano,” Notes and Queries, no.2/3 (1968): 222-25; Ian Duffield and Paul Edwards,“Equiano's Turks and Christians: An Eighteenth-Century African View of Islam,” Journal of African Studies, 2 (1975/76); and Catherine O. Acholonu, The Igbo Roots of Olaudah Equiano - An Anthropological Research (Owerri, 1989). Even in the case of Equiano, a full biography is only now being written; see James Walvin, “An African's Life: Olaudah Equiano, 1745-1797,” conference on “West Africa and the Americas: Repercussions of the Slave Trade,” University of the West Indies, Jamaica, February 1997.