African Slavery and Slavery in the Americas

The Thornton article we read this week, “Slavery and African Social Structure”, was for me quite fascinating.  My learning up to this point about slavery and slave-holding (what little that was) had up to this point been limited to learning about slavery in the United States.  I guess I always knew that there was some form of slavery in Africa, but beyond that and the idea that it was somehow “different”, I didn’t know anything.

Thornton points out that slavery “functioned quite differently from the way it functioned in European societies.”  He gives it’s origins as economic; with no land held in private hands, labor (other people’s as well as one’s own) became the only source of wealth (ultimately, of course, labor is the source of all wealth everywhere under capitalism).  It was different from the slavery practiced by Europeans in that slaves were treated somewhat better and more was invested in them.  I guess with less distance between themselves and their slaves, Africans felt more compelled to treat them somewhat decently.

Its hard at first to wrap my head around the idea that there were different forms of slavery.  I think part of that comes from a resistance to believing that my ancestors or others of my peers, were part of such an ugly ugly system.  Its easier to think that they were only doing something that might have been done in Africa, not doing something qualitatively worse.  ”If the Africans did it to each other, we’re no worse than they are.”

But from a materialist perspective, it makes sense that institutions vary in accordance with the conditions under which they arrive.  A pre-capitalist Africa would develop a different form of slavery than a European society, fresh from conquering a continent, would.  Dr. Black mentioned in class that the development of capitalism as a world system was based in part on the enslavement of black Africans.  Slavery in the Americas intensified the slave trade in Africa, as they both became part of this same system.  Viewed this way, the European involvement in slavery is neither some sickness in European nor is it the same as in Africa.  It was part of a qualitative evolution in the world economy.