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Slaves and society in Western Africa, c. 1445—c. 17001

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

J. D. Fage
J. D. Fage
Affiliation:
Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham
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Extract

Published European first-hand accounts of the coastlands from Senegal to Angola for the period c. 1445-c. 1700 are examined to see what light they throw on the extent to which institutions of servitude in pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa were autonomous developments or a response to external demands for African slaves. It seems clear that when, in the early years of this period, European traders first approached societies along the western African coasts, they were commonly offered what they called ‘slaves’ in exchange for the goods they had brought. But it would be wrong to conclude from this that a slave class was necessarily a feature of western African coastal societies when these were first contacted by Europeans. It is clear, for instance, that the Europeans preferred to deal with societies which had developed monarchical governments, whose leaders had control of sufficient surpluses to make trade worthwhile. The evidence suggests that in these societies most individuals were dependants of a ruling and entrepreneurial elite, but that there was also social mobility. A category of dependants that particularly attracted the notice of the European observers was women, whom men of power and wealth tended to accumulate as wives (and hence as the potential mothers of still more dependants). The necessarily limited supply of women may have been a factor encouraging such men to seek to increase their followings, and thus their status, power and wealth, by recruiting other dependants by forcible, judicial and economic means. While many such dependants, or their offspring, would be assimilated into the social groups commanded by their masters, the latter were certainly willing to contemplate using recently acquired or refractory recruits in other ways, such as exchanging them for alternative forms of wealth.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , July 1980 , pp. 289 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

2 An early expression of this view may be found in the Hon. Wyndham, H. A., The Atlantic and Slavery (London, 1935), particularly at pp. 221–2Google Scholar. Wyndham's book was one of the few scholarly works available on the subject when I was writing An Introduction to the History of West Africa (Cambridge, 1955)Google Scholar, where I took the same line on pp. 77–9.Google Scholar

3 Rodney's, research, originally for a 1966 London Ph.D., was published as A History of the Upper Guinea coast, 1545–1800 (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar. The clearest expression of his view on the slavery issue, however, is to be found in his article, ‘African slavery and other forms of social oppression on the Upper Guinea coast in the context of the Atlantic slave trade’, J. Afr. Hist, vii, iii (1966)Google Scholar. He subsequently enlarged on it in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London and Dar es Salaam, 1972)Google Scholar, especially ch. 4.

4 My views have been expressed in Fage, J. D., States and Subjects in sub-Saharan Africa, the tenth Raymond Dart Lecture (Johannesburg, 1974)Google Scholar, and in A History of Africa (London and New York, 1978)Google Scholar, especially chs. 3–5 and 11. On the question of the land/labour relationship, a recent reference is Patterson, Orlando, ‘The structural origins of slavery: a critique of the Nieboer-Domar hypothesis…’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, ccxcii (1977), 12–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which should be read with the comments of Engerman, Stanley in the same volume at pp. 65–7.Google Scholar

5 This, of course, is essentially a geographical enlargement of the method of enquiry pioneered by Dr Rodney.

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9 The best modern edition, in French translation, is by Bal, Willy, Description du Royaume de Congo…par Filippo Pigafetta et Duarte Lopes (Louvain and Paris, 2nd rev. ed. 1965).Google Scholar

10 Dapper, Olfert, Naukeurige Beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche Gewesten… (Amsterdam, 1668)Google Scholar; this is now rare, so that reference is now often to the second Dutch edition (Amsterdam, 1676) and, especially, the German translation (Amsterdam, 1670), which is available in modern facsimile. The French translation (Amsterdam, 1686) and the English version (Ogilby, John, Africa, being an Accurate Description… London, 1670)Google Scholar often depart considerably from the original. Barbot, Jean, A Description of the Coasts of North and South GuineaGoogle Scholar, was published as vol. v of the Churchills', A Collection of Voyages and Travels (London, 1732).Google Scholar

11 The major exception is the section on the Kquoja.

12 Many of the problems involved in using Dapper and Barbot are graphically demonstrated by Hair, P. E. H., ‘Barbot, Dapper, Davity: a critique of sources on Sierra Leone and Cape Mount’, Africa in History, 1 (1974), 25–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Measured in terms of estimates for African slaves successfully imported by Europeans into the Americas or elsewhere, the volume of the Atlantic slave trade would seem roughly to have doubled each half century from 1451–1500 to 1601–1650. But in the latter half century the annual average was still only about 7,400. For the second half of the seventeenth century the annual average was about 19,400; for the eighteenth century, it was about 55,000. See Philip Curtin, D., The Atlantic Slave Trade; a Census (Madison, 1969), tables 33Google Scholar, 34 and 65.

14 However, in a later article, ‘Gold and slaves on the Gold Coast’, Trans. Hist. Soc. Ghana, x (1969), 13–28Google Scholar, Rodney considered some of the evidence for the Gold Coast.

15 Rodney, , ‘African slavery…’, 442.Google Scholar

16 My own views on this argument are given below, pp. 289–90.Google Scholar

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18 André Donelha's work was one of the sources which Dr Rodney read in manuscript (and he read his name as ‘Dornelas’). It has since been published in a scholarly edition by A. Teixeira da Mota, with a parallel English translation and additional notes by Hair, P. E. H., Descriçào da Serra Leoa e dos Rios de Guiné do Cabo Verde (Lisbon, 1977).Google Scholar

19 Cf. below, p. 309.

20 A similar observation might equally apply to the early Arabic-speaking observers of the western Sudan, such as Ibn Battuta.

21 In the Bakongo kingdom, though they themselves may not always have fully appreciated it, the missionaries seem to have been accepted because they were useful to the king and/or to the various provincial ‘counts’, and they were therefore to a considerable degree incorporated into their systems of social control.

22 Jobson, Richard, The Golden Trade… (London, 1623Google Scholar; facsimile, reprints 1904 and 1968Google Scholar, the latter with an introduction by Rodney, Walter), has much to say about the bixirinGoogle Scholar (whom he calls ‘Marybuckes’, i.e. marabouts, ) and their role, in pp. 78–101.Google Scholar

23 As has often been quoted, when, as late as 1620, slaves were offered to Richard Jobson on the Gambia, he could say that the English ‘were a people who did not deal in any such commodities, neither did we buy and sell one another, or any that had our own shapes’ (The Golden Trade, 112)Google Scholar. See also above, n. 13.

24 Gomes, , 24–5.Google Scholar

25 Pereira, Duarte Pacheco, Esmeraldo de Situ OrbisGoogle Scholar, Portuguese text and parallel French translation, ed. Mauny, Raymond (Bissau, 1956), 52–3.Google Scholar

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28 Pacheco, , 80–1Google Scholar, 130–1, 134–5, 138–9. Mauny's, edition of the EsmeraldoGoogle Scholar does not extend as far as the Congo; the Bakongo, reference may be found on p. 144Google Scholar of the English translation by Kimble, G. H. T. (London, 1937).Google Scholar

29 [Eustache de la Fosse], ‘Voyage à la côte occidentale d'Afrique’, ed. Foulché Delbosc, R., Rév. Hisp. iv (1897), 174–201, at p. 181Google Scholar. On women being offered for sale, see below p. 306 and n. 76.

30 Fosse, De la, 184.Google Scholar

31 See, for example, Marees, de (ed. Naber), 182Google Scholar, in the course of an important discussion on slavery on the Gold Coast.

32 Cf. below, pp. 302–3.

33 Villault, , 163–83.Google Scholar

34 ‘Geographers in Africk maps With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er unhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns.’

35 Pacheco, , 128–9Google Scholar. Cf. his treatment of the Ivory Coast; although he says he has little knowledge of it, he twice says that it is thickly peopled (114–15, 116–17).

36 Marees, De (ed. Naber), 230–1.Google Scholar

37 See, for example, the account of James Welsh's voyage of 1590–1 printed by Richard Hakluyt. Hakluyt's, The Principall Navigations of the English Nation was first published in London in 1589Google Scholar; a second and enlarged edition in three volumes, with some editing of the original material, appeared in 1598–9. The first edition is most accessible in the facsimile edition (in two volumes) published at Cambridge for the Hakluyt Society in 1965; the second probably in the Everyman edition in eight volumes (1907). In the latter, Welsh's voyage is at pp. 302–30 of vol. IV. The best edition of Hakluyt's material up to 1560 that is relevant to this paper is to be found, together with other relevant matter, in Blake, John W. (ed.), Europeans in West Africa, 1450–1560 (2 vols London, 1942).Google Scholar

38 Cadamosto, , 29–30.Google Scholar

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42 Almada, André Alvares de, Tratado Breve dos Rios de Guiné (c. 1594)Google Scholar, as printed in Brasio, Antònio Duarte (ed.), Monumenta Missionaria Africana; Africa Ocidental, 2nd series, vol. iii (Lisbon, 1964), at p. 234Google Scholar. There are two texts of this work; that printed by Brasio is somewhat shorter than the other, which is being edited by A. Teixeira da Mota and P. E. H. Hair for publication at Lisbon with a parallel English translation. My references to Almada are always to Brasio's publication, which includes some variant readings.

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45 For example Marees, de (ed. Naber), 232–42Google Scholar; Nyendael, David van, letter 21 (dated 1702)Google Scholar, in Bosman, (1705), 423–48.Google Scholar

46 Fernandes, , 70–1Google Scholar. My observations about the king ‘stemming from a nobility’ is based on the fact that Fernandes says the Banyun king was called ‘Jagara’ and his editors' statement (n. 133, p. 164)Google Scholar that ‘the word Jagra is used by various tribes [in modern No man has his own land that he may hoe and use for himself, for the king has all woods, fields and lands under him, so that they may not plant or sow without his consent. 33 Guinea-Bissau] to designate the superior social class from which kings and chiefs are normally drawn. Early Portuguese writers often refer to the Jagras as the “fidalgos” (nobles) of the region.'

47 Pacheco, , 72–3.Google Scholar

48 Fernandes, , 94–5Google Scholar. Fernandes's particularly detailed knowledge of the Sierra Leone region derives from the eight-year residence there of Velho, Alvaro (see his text, pp. 84–5Google Scholar and 102–3, and his editors' n. 197 on pp. 175–7).

49 The various kinds of cloth woven from raphia fibre in the Congo-Angola region were equally marks of social distinction. The best cloth, said to resemble velvet, was the prerogative of kings and nobles. See Pigafetta, and Lopes, , 36–7Google Scholar, 118–19.

50 Almada, Alvares de (ed. Brasio), 311–12.Google Scholar

51 Alvares, Manuel, Ethiopia Menor e Descriçào Geogr´frica da Provincia da Serra Leòa (c. 1616), ch. 8Google Scholar. This is another of the sources which Dr Rodney read in manuscript; a modern edition is now being prepared by Teixeira da Mota, A.. See also the graphic description of the arrival on the beach of the king of Cape Mount and his retinue in Villault, 101–3.Google Scholar

52 Fernandes, , 78–9Google Scholar; cf. Donelha's, description of the burial of a Mane king, 116–17Google Scholar; Marees's, de of a Gold Coast king, 190–1Google Scholar, as also Villault's, , 344–6Google Scholar; and the description by an anonymous Portuguese pilot of the burial of a Benin king, first published by Ramusio, G. B., Delia navigationi e viaggi (Venice, 1550)Google Scholar, and available in English translation in Blake, , ii, 150–1.Google Scholar

53 Marees, De (ed. Naber), 116.Google Scholar

54 Ruiters, Dierick, Toortse der Zee-vaert (1623), ed. l'Honoré Naber, S. P. (The Hague, 1913)Google Scholar. The relevant passage occurs when Ruiters is dealing with Sierra Leone, and so is available in English translation by Hair, P. E. H., Africana Research Bulletin (Sierra Leone), v, iii (1975). 63–5.Google Scholar

55 See n. 52 above. The Mane, of course, never conquered as far as the Biafada.

56 Alvares de Almada (ed. Brasio, , 234–5)Google Scholar savs that the territory of the Wolof king used to be large; he had tributary kings under him, and used to send his captains to govern the coastal trading places. But one of these turned against him and created the independent kingdom of Cayor.

57 Fosse, De la, 182.Google Scholar

58 Hakluyt, , in Blake, 11Google Scholar, 378–9, 383, 404–7.

59 Marees, De (ed. Naber), 58–9.Google Scholar

60 Villault, , 218, 296.Google Scholar

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67 S.J., Father Baltazar Barreira, worked in Sierra Leone from 1606 to 1609Google Scholar. His letters were published in the various volumes of Guerreiro, Fernào, Relaçam amial das causas que fizeram os Padres da Companhia de Jesus… (Lisbon, 1603–1611)Google Scholar, of which there is a modern edition by Viegas, A. (Coimbra and Lisbon, 1930–1942)Google Scholar. There were contemporary translations into other European languages, e.g. Jarric, Pierre du, Histoire des choses les plus mémorables… (Bordeaux, 108–14)Google Scholar. Barreira's letters are reprinted by Brasio, in his MonumentaGoogle Scholar, and some of them have been translated into English by Hair, P. E. H. in various numbers of Africana Research Bulletin (Sierra Leone) from 1975Google Scholar onwards. The first quotation here is from Barreira's, letter of 1 08 1606Google Scholar, which is less a letter than a general description of Guinea and of Sierra Leone in particular; the quotation may be found in Brasio, , 2nd series, iv, 172Google Scholar, and in Hair's, translation in A.R.B. vii, i, 66Google Scholar. The second is from Barreira's, letter of 9 03 1607Google Scholar; Brasio, , 2nd series, iv, 237Google Scholar, and Hair, , A.R.B. vi, ii, 62.Google Scholar

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69 Villault, , 231–2.Google Scholar

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71 Brun, Samuel (or Braun, ), Schiffarten…in etliche newe Länder und Instden (Basel, 1624Google Scholar; facsimile, ed. Graz, 1969), 14Google Scholar. (There is also a modern ed. by l'Honoré Naber, S. P., The Hague, 1913.)Google Scholar Denis de Carli went so far as to say (A Curious and Exact Account of a Voyage to Congo in the Years 1666 and 1667, in the Churchills', Voyages, vol. 1, at p. 662)Google Scholar that women hoeing with a child on their backs might ‘very often carry another in their belly’. But this seems an exaggeration if, as is likely, the child on the back was not yet weaned. At the end of ch. 6 of the first book of Cavazzi da Montecuccolo, G. A., Istorica Descrizioni dè treè Regni Congo, Matamba e Angola… (first pub. Bologna, 1687), at vol. 1, p. 39Google Scholar, of the modern Portuguese ed. by de Leguzzano, G. M. (Lisbon, 1969)Google Scholar, there is a piquant little picture of a Mukongo woman hoeing with a child on her back.

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76 In this context, it seems odd that the King of Benin should have placed restrictions on the export of male slaves in 1516, restrictions which developed ‘within a few years into a total embargo which persisted until the close of the seventeenth century’ (Ryder, A. F. C., Benin and the Europeans, 1485–1897, London, 1969, 45)Google Scholar, while at the same time allowing a virtually unrestricted trade in female slaves. Perhaps it is possible to go further than Dr Ryder, who says this was ‘striking evidence of Benin's general indifference’ to the opportunities offered by European trade, and suggest that Benin was an autarkic state, as well as an autarchic one, in which political and military demands-which would include a desire to lose neither potential soldiers nor ancestral sacrifices-might prevail over economic reasoning. On the other hand, the early Grain Coast example, given by de la Fosse, of women being offered for sale, might indicate a society in which economic reasoning was little developed.

77 M.D., Thomas Masterman Winterbottom, An account of the native Africans in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone (2 vols London, 1803), i, 148Google Scholar. In other respects, Winter-bottom's account of the place of women in society is on all fours with that of earlier observers.

78 Almada, Alvares de (ed. Brasio), 274Google Scholar; cf. also 263.

79 ‘History of the Congo’, in Cuvelier, and Jadin, , 119.Google Scholar

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81 Jobson, , 66Google Scholar. Hence, perhaps, some of the importance of Jobson's dealings with the up-river bixirin.

82 Fernandes, , 30–1, 82–3.Google Scholar

83 Barreira, , ‘Dos escravos que saem de Cabo Verde’ (undated, but probably 1606)Google Scholar, Brasio, , 2nd series, iv, 194–5Google Scholar, Hair, , A.R.B. vi, i, 67.Google Scholar

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86 Barreira, , as n. 83Google Scholar, Brasio, , 194Google Scholar; Hair, , 67.Google Scholar

87 Almada, Alvares de (ed. Brasio), 270 and 332.Google Scholar

88 Almada, Alvares de (ed. Brasio), 263 and 332.Google Scholar

89 Ruiters, (trans. Hair), 57–8.Google Scholar

90 Marees, De (ed. Naber), 182.Google Scholar

91 Villault, , 297–8.Google Scholar

92 Sorrento, Girolamo Merolla da (first pub., Relazione nel Regno do Congo, Naples, 1692)Google Scholar, Voyage to Congo…in…1682, Churchills', Voyages, vol. 1, at p. 687.Google Scholar

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96 The question of the extent to which Villault may have borrowed from de Marees has already been discussed in n. 17 above. It might here be added that, although his observations on slavery on the Gold Coast are similar to those of de Marees, they are not identical.

97 Pigafetta, and Lopes, , 81.Google Scholar

98 Document no. 8 in Cuvelier, Jean (ed.), Documents sur une mission française au Kakongo (B, 1953), at p. 48Google Scholar. Jean-Joseph Descourvières was a leading member of the French Catholic mission to Kakongo in 1768–70. The contemporary published account of this mission was by the Abbé Liévain Proyart, Bonaventure, Histoire de Loango, Kakongo et autres royaumes d'Afrique (Paris and Lyons, 1776Google Scholar; facsimile, ed. Farnborough, 1968)Google Scholar, but Mgr Cuvelier published many of the original documents upon which this was based.

99 Dalzel, Archibald, The History of Dahomey (London, 1793Google Scholar; facsimile, ed. London, 1967), 124Google Scholar. Cf. Villault, , 334Google Scholar: the king's ‘authority is such that he can do as he likes’.

100 Cadamosto, , 37.Google Scholar

101 Winterbottom, Thomas Dr seems to have been one of the earliest observers to realize that average population densities in West Africa were low compared with those in western Europe (Winterbottom, i, 149).Google Scholar

102 An early statement of this is by Lt R.N., John Matthews, who was a trader in Sierra Leone in 1785–1787Google Scholar. In his A Voyage to the River Sierra Leone… (London, 1788), he wrote, at p. 175Google Scholar: ‘Slaves are the medium, instead of coin, for the purchase of every necessary, and the supplying of every want; and every article is estimated, by its proportion, to the value of a slave.’ This may be compared with the views of Professor Grierson, Philip in his Creighton Lecture (London, 1977), pp. 19–28Google Scholar, that the concept of money derives from such institutions as wergeld, bridewealth and slavery.

103 Rev. Johnson, James to Church Missionary Society, 01 1880Google Scholar (C.M.S. Archives, CA2/056). I owe this reference to Oroge, E. A. Dr and his 1970Google Scholar University of Birmingham Ph.D. thesis, ‘The institution of slavery in Yorubaland, with particular reference to the nineteenth century’.