The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 | Page 3

grievous because of its greater quantity and monotony. The motive to shift the work is, therefore, very strong and the demand for slaves is very great. In fact, the ratio of slaves to freemen is about three or four to one. As land is free and the resources open, the only means of obtaining workers is by coercion. The supply of slaves is kept up by kidnapping, by warfare upon weak tribes, by the purchase of children from improvident parents, and by forfeiture of freedom through crime.
In the cattle zones farther to the north and south, nature is still less bountiful. The labor of maintenance requires a combination of the pastoral art, agriculture and trade. A slave class could not maintain itself and at the same time support a large master class. The labor of a large proportion of the population is, in one way or another, necessary to existence. The nature of the work, so far as it is pastoral or trading, is not especially irksome, but rather fascinating. Tending cattle is full of excitement, and is a kind of substitute for hunting; while trading is an occupation which appeals with wonderful force to all the races of Africa. The impulse to shift labor in the cattle zones is, therefore, very slight, except in the case of a few populations subsisting largely upon agriculture. The ruling classes, therefore, instead of owning many personal slaves, make a practice of subjugating the agricultural groups in such a way as to constitute a kind of feudalism. As land is free the enslaved groups can be made to serve the free class only by coercion.
Similar conditions among the natural races all over the world give rise in the same way to the institution of slavery. Ellis thinks that slavery probably originated under the regime of exogamy where the sons born of captured women formed the slave class because they were considered inferior to the sons born of the women of the group.[2] But it is quite evident that slavery originated primarily from economic conditions. For further sociological explanations of slavery in the several zones the reader is referred to the author's first and second volumes on the Negro races.
II. THE SLAVE TRADE OF WEST AFRICA AND THE DESERT OF SAHARA
The African slave trade goes back as far as our knowledge of the Negro race. The first Negroes of which we have any record were probably slaves brought in caravans to Egypt. They were in demand as slaves in all the oases of the deserts, and along the coasts of the Mediterranean. "Among the ruling nations on the north coast," says Heeren, "the Egyptians, Cyrenians and Carthaginians, slavery was not only established but they imported whole armies of slaves, partly for home use, and partly, at least by the latter, to be shipped off to foreign markets. These wretched beings were chiefly drawn from the interior, where kidnapping was just as much carried on then as it is at present. Black male and female slaves were even an article of luxury, not only among the above mentioned nations, but even in Greece and Italy; and as the allurement to this traffic was on this account so great, the unfortunate Negro race had, even thus early, the wretched fate to be dragged into distant lands under the galling yoke of bondage."[3] Since the introduction of Mohammedanism, slaves have been carried eastward into all of the Moslem States as far as Asia Minor and Turkey, where they are still much valued as domestic servants or as eunuchs to guard the seraglios of Mohammedan princes. In the middle ages many African slaves were carried into Spain through the instrumentality of the Saracens, and from there the first slaves were imported into America. The supply of slaves for the Northern and Eastern States was obtained chiefly from the region of the Sudan. At an early period many caravan routes led northward from this region.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the slaves were obtained by a variety of methods, of which the most common was that of raiding the agricultural Nigritians who lived in towns and cities scattered and unorganized in the agricultural zone, and who were easy victims of the mounted bands of desert Berbers, Tuaregs and Arabs who descended into the region in quest of booty and captives. Robert Adams, an American sailor who was wrecked on the West Coast of Africa in 1810, said of the raiding parties sent out from Timbuktu, "These armed parties were all on foot except the officers. They were usually absent from one week to a month, and at times brought in considerable numbers," mostly from the Bambaras. "The slaves thus brought in were chiefly women and children, who, after being detained a day or two at the king's house, were