How the Fall of Rome Led to the Global Explosion of Slavery

Slavery Routes: A Short History of Human Trafficking

Part 1 476 AD -1375 AD: Beyond the Desert

DW (2020)

This series explores slave trading that followed the fall of the western Roman empire in 476 AD. Although debt and conquest-related slavery clearly occur in ancient Greece and prehistoric civilizations, wholesale slave trafficking to remote locations only began after the fall of Rome.

Following the fall of Rome, the barbarian societies that replaced Roman civilization (the Goths, Visigoths, Slavs in the Northeast, Byzantine Empire, Berbers and Nubian and Arab tribes). For several centuries Slavs from Eurasia were the preferred slaves. This would cause their ethnic label to be confused with the Greek word for slave.

As Arab armies began expanding into Egypt after 641, the economy and demand for slaves increased exponentially. As oil wouldn’t be discovered for another 1200 years, slaves would serve as an essential source of energy for territorial and economic expansion.

In less than a century, the Islamic Empire would occupy the entire southern coast of the Mediterranean. When Baghdad became its capital (762 AD) thousands of slaves were needed to remove the coating of salt* that covered the soil around Basra to enable cultivation. It was during this period Muslims first began using African slaves. Under Islamic law, only non-Muslims could serve as slaves. Slaves who converted to Islam had to be freed.

Over the eighth century, the Islamic Empire expanded into the Caucasus, the Balkans, Turkey and Russia.

After Cairo became the new capitol of the Islamic Empire in the tenth century, Berber slaves taught their Muslim masters how to use camels for transportation. This enabled  military and political leaders to cross the Sahara Desert for the first time to the rich capitol of the  the Mali Empire Timbuktu. The Mali emperor employed more than 12,000 slaves from sub-Saharan Africa to work his gold mines – representing, at the time, the world’s largest gold reserves.

Once he he declared Islam the official religion, more than 1000 slaves would leave Mali every year for distant outposts of the Islamic World. Mali rulers also enslaved more than 12,000 natives of sub-Saharan Africa to work the emperor’s goldmines.

By the end of the Middle Ages, there were six main trading routes for exporting sub-Saharan slaves to territories north of the Mediterranean and in some cases as far as China and Japan. Between the 7th and 14th century (when Europe entered the slave trade), it’s estimated a total of 3.5 million Africans were captured and sold into slavery by Islamic traders.

Ironically in the 21st century, light skinned Tuaregs in North Africa still enslave sub-Saharan Africans who become prey to traffickers trying to flee economic oppression and violence in southern Africa.

The Lost Civilizations of Africa

Africa

Directed by Basil Davidson (1984)

Film Review

Africa is a 1984 documentary exploring the great civilizations of Africa. In it, late historian Basil Davidson demolishes the myths Europeans concocted about Africa to justify the 400 year slave trade – these myths concerning a continent of subhuman savages persist to the present day. Davidson reviews archeological evidence, ancient African and Europeans artwork and historical records and contemporary tribal traditions that survive from past civilizations.

The documentary is divided into 8 episodes of approximately 25 minutes each.

Episode 1 Different But Equal – studies the depiction of blacks in medieval and renaissance European paintings to show how the concept of race was created in the 16th century to justify the immensely profitable enslavement of human paintings. He starts with an examination of cave paintings that point to a highly advanced Saharan civilization prior to the Sahara’s desertification (around 7,000–8,000 years ago   and the prominence of black-skinned the 3,000-year  civilization Egypt enjoyed under the pharaohs.

Episode 2 Mastering a Continent – focuses on Kushites and the great Nubian civilization to the south of Egypt. The latter converted to Christianity and persisted until the 11^th century when it was destroyed (by Saracens) during the Crusades.

Episode 3 Caravans of Gold – discusses the vast commercial trade network (extending as far as India) centered in Timbuktu (Mali) and the Ashanti civilization (in modern day Ghana). In the 14^th century, Mali converted to Islam. Under the guidance of Muslim scholars, Timbuktu became a global center of Islamic scholarship in law, literature and science.

Episode 4 The King and the City Within – describes the civilizations of Huaser, Benin and Ethe in modern day Nigeria.

Episode 5 The Bible and the Gun – covers the arrival of the Europeans and the devastating of slavery on long established African civilizations. Over 400 years, the African continent lost approximately 15 million skilled craftsmen and farmers. As the slave trade declined in the 18^th and 19^th century, Europeans opened up Africa’s interior in order to exploit its rich natural resources. As in Latin American and Asia, Christian missionaries played a fundamental role in this process.

Episode 6 The Magnificent African Cake – gives an overview of the extensive European military campaigns that flattened African resistance to colonization. By 1914, Liberia and Ethiopia were the only two countries not under European military control.

Episode 7 The Rise of Nationalism – relates how forced conscription in World War I and World War II radically changed Africans’ view of Europeans and fueled demands for independence. The Gold Coast (later renamed Ghana by President Dr Kwame Nkrumah) would launch the first independence struggle in 1945. Davidson contrasts this with the more bloody independence struggles in Kenya, Algeria and other countries with substantial(European) settler populations.

Episode  8 Legacy – explores how the adoption of European-style Parliamentary systems proved disastrous for many African countries. Davidson blames this on the fact that Parliamentary government is based on a well established class divisions. It worked poorly in Africa owing to the continent’s historic tendency towards egalitarianism.