Peter Espeut | Slavery and chattel slavery

I recommend that you watch the video recording of a seminar by John Shorter, held Thursday (October 8) by the African-Caribbean Institute of Jamaica/Jamaica Memory Bank titled ‘Asante Goldweights and Slavery’. It is an excellent lecture by a young academic outlining the extraction and trade in gold in what today is called Ghana (then called “The Gold Coast”). It may be viewed on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/live/LBFJnED9mDg.

I found the talk most enlightening, and I hope you enjoy these short extracts which I have transcribed.

“Before Europeans arrived at the start of the 16th century, or the Asante Empire centralized in the late 17th century, Akan-speaking states in the sub-Saharan rainforest of present-day Ghana traded gold mined from deep shafts and alluvial deposits panned from riverbeds. …

“Control over these incredibly auriferous basins fuelled the rise of regional powers, culminating in the formation of the Asante Empire at the start of the 18th century. Gold-rich tropical rainforest areas such as Adanse and Amansee have mining traditions stretching back thousands of years and represent the cradle of Akan civilisation. “The Asante maintained strong religious taboos against mining, however, so consequently, enslaved people typically purchased from northern markets such as Bonduku, Wagadugu, Salaga and Timbuctoo constituted the primary workforce in Adanse, Amansee and other Asante goldfields until Emancipation in the Gold Coast in 1874.

“While historians lack the exact total number of enslaved people kept within the Asante Empire at any single point, studies estimate that enslaved people made up potentially one-third of the population in many Akan West African states, and during its 19th-century peak, the Asante Empire was inhabited by roughly three to four million people; so you can just imagine just under a million or about a million people being enslaved by the Asante at any given point.”

And so Europeans did not introduce slavery to West Africa; slavery had already been there for hundreds of years, being practised by black Africans against black Africans. Europeans eventually came to buy slaves, and black Africans sold black Africans to the white Europeans who transported them across the Atlantic to the so-called New World.

When this is pointed out, especially in the debate about reparations, the usual rejoinder is that the kind of slavery practised in Africa was not chattel slavery. This, I suppose, is to try to make the distinction between the “good” slavery practised by Africans and the evil, wicked chattel slavery practised by Europeans.

In pre-colonial Africa, people generally became enslaved through capture in local warfare, judicial punishment for serious crimes, or debt default, a similar situation to white slavery in Europe, and slavery in pre-Columbian North and South America, and the Orient.

In Africa, enslaved people often lived within the household or extended family of their owners, and often worked alongside free persons, ate the same food, and could gradually assimilate into the lineage or community over generations.

European-style chattel slavery was a large-scale industrial labour-recruiting operation where race became an important factor: persons of one race were herded onto plantations by persons of another race, branded to indicate their owners, and their labour was exploited, often encouraged by the whip. Punishments included the thumbscrew, the bilboes and the stocks.

It is likely that, when the Europeans arrived on the West African coast looking to buy African slaves, the African vendors might not have been aware of the difference between African slavery, which had been part of African culture for centuries, and the chattel slavery practised on plantations in places like Jamaica.

Is there such a thing as “good slavery”, to be excused, and “bad slavery”, to be condemned? Or is all slavery to be condemned, all extraction of forced labour by anyone who claims to own other human beings? Why do I get the impression that traditional African slavery, which continued long after Emancipation ended chattel slavery in the Caribbean, is not considered a crime against humanity by some? I think that is disgraceful!

The British put an end to local slavery in Ghana on September 19, 1874, at the same time that the Gold Coast became a British colony. Black indigenous rulers and slaveholders (such as in the Fante region) strongly opposed freeing their slaves and submitted petitions to the Colonial Office asking for Emancipation to be reversed. African Emancipation did not bring an immediate or total end to unfree labour; many former slaves continued for decades working under customary arrangements.

An interesting development was that black African slaveowners demanded to be paid compensation for the loss of their human property, just as white and brown (and black) slaveowners in the Caribbean had been compensated by 1838. The British refused to pay Africans financial compensation for emancipated slaves, a move that was met with great protest by African slaveowners. It was not until 1928 that slave-trading and slave-owning were brought to an end in all of West Africa, thanks to the Europeans.

Ethics demands that the damage which slavery wreaked on Africans at home and their descendants abroad be repaired. There is a lot of guilt and responsibility to go around. I do not think that making fine distinctions between traditional African slavery and chattel slavery is helpful. I would like to see much more honesty in the public discussions around reparations.

Peter Espeut is dean of studies at St Michael’s Theological College. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com