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

yields enough, when coaxed by the hoe, to permit of a large
class of parasites. The labor of maintenance is more onerous than in the
banana zone. While the heat and humidity are not so great the work is
more 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