African Slavery With New World

¶ … African slavery with New World slavery and the Ottoman Empire. Slavery existed in Africa long before it began in the New World. In fact, in many cases, the Europeans who began trading in slaves did so as a result of viewing the practice in Africa, and it had been going on in the Arabic world of the Ottoman Empire for centuries.

In African slavery, most of the people who became slaves had been conquered in battles, and became slaves to their new leaders. "As in many other societies and culture slavery had very deep roots in Africa and was known in antiquity. Africans had enslaved other Africans, and although they were chronic injunctions against such practices" (Notes). Some of the African kingdoms that fought wars throughout Africa were extremely powerful, and they acquired many slaves from their conquered neighbors. These slave societies helped form the backbone of the slave trade to the New World because they already had a system of slavery in place, they had the ability to capture new slaves, and they were interested in developing trade of any sort with the Europeans who were coming to Africa. There was some slave trade between kingdoms; too, because some kings would sell off some of their slaves they were displeased with as punishment.

Slaves were often treated as part of the family in African culture, helping them assimilate into the culture a little easier. "In African, slaves were generally treated as part of the family members and were integrated into the larger society" (Notes). However, when trade began with Europe and other countries, it became a disaster for the African slaves. "The trade in African slaves by the western nations between the late fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries severely affected the social, cultural, economic, and even political life of African societies, and they never recovered from the blow.

When slaves began coming to the New World, their lives were transformed, and New World slavery was the worst example of the practice. The Middle Passage on board ship from Africa to America was horrific, it has been calculated that millions of slaves died during the Passage. In America, slaves had no rights, could not marry without their owner's permission, their families could be sold up and divided, they had no say in government, they could not own property, and they labored in difficult, harsh conditions. They were viewed as property by their owners, rather than human beings, and they were often cruelly punished by beating, whipping, and other forms of torture.

They were actually the largest group of immigrants to America in the colonial era (Notes). Their greatest numbers were in the plantation system in the southern United States, because the large plantations grew labor-intensive crops such as tobacco, cotton, and rice, and these crops needed a lot of manpower to grow and harvest them. The planters on the plantations often employed hundreds of slaves to ensure their plantation's success, and this is the most well-known area of slave history in the U.S. The lives of the slaves were sharply divided from the whites on the plantation. The slaves lived away from the main house in the slave quarters, and only the house slaves were allowed in the main house. The slaves not only worked in the fields, they had to grow their own gardens for food, and they usually only got Sunday off. During planting and harvest, they worked long hours, from sunrise to sunset, and they faced harsh retribution if they attempted to complain. They were the most harshly treated of any of these groups of slaves, and they suffered the most, too.

During the four centuries of the Atlantic slave trade, an estimated eleven million Africans were transported to North and South America" (Notes), and as noted, millions of them died along the way, so it is really not known how many left Africa never to return. Slaves in the New World were seen as inhuman and because they were black, they were treated more like animals than people. It began a form of bigotry and hatred that still exists today.

Slavery in the Ottoman Empire was quite different from the other forms of slavery. This was where the practice of African slavery began, and it was where it was practiced quite differently than other systems. In the Empire, slaves could rise to a very high social status, in fact, many of them were officials in the Ottoman government, who had been bought, raised as free, and trained for intricate work with the government. Harem girls are another element of slaves in the society that actually rose to very high positions. Slaves could sometimes gain their freedom, too, which sometimes happened in New World slavery, but not nearly as often.