The three sections of the essay address each of these points, giving particular attention to the last two. While the argument reviews the rise and decline of export slave trades - across the Atlantic, the Sahara, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean - it focuses on the nature and extent of slavery within sub-Saharan Africa.

Before the Transatlantic Slave Trade

In ancient Egypt and Nubia slavery existed but not as a dominant institution. The enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt and Babylonia was a si

In coastal West Africa, slavery expanded on plantations producing export commodities such as palm oil. The result was social turmoil, as slaves revolted in several regions from Calabar to Dahomey during the 1850s. Although the revolts were suppressed, they also set new limits on the exploitation of slaves. In the Republic of the Congo and Angola, exports finally halted around 1850, though enslavement for local purposes continued. In the northern savanna, exports of slaves peaked in the mid-nineteenth century, but the number of captives exceeded what could be explained as a by-product of export trade. In regions of the upper Niger Valley, there were repeated reports that the majority of the region's population was in slavery, and that the slaves were principally female: they produced grains and textiles for the domestic market and leather goods for export. Captive workers in the Sahara mined salt and produced dates and grains in oases. Slave labor forces in Senegal produced peanuts for export.

Portuguese and Spanish holdings of African slaves expanded with the maritime voyages of the fifteenth century, then grew moderately until, after 1650, the transatlantic trade exceeded the slave trade across the Sahara and Red Sea. Portuguese and then Dutch purchasers focused in Senegambia, Kongo, Angola, and Sierra Leone. Africans' willingness to participate in the export of slaves varied. The kingdom of Benin, for example, eventually withdrew from the slave trade, but in Kongo and Senegambia those willing to profit from capture and export of slaves became dominant. These and then other African societies developed the means to capture, feed, finance, and transport captives for sale to European buyers.

The distinction between slave and master in Africa was not, as in the Americas, typically based on a distinction in race. But indicators such as name, language, scarification, dress, and manners all distinguished the identity and social status of slaves from those of their masters. Thus, while the heritage of slavery was kept alive in the Americas through discrimination by race, the heritage of slavery remained alive in Africa through discrimination by class. African countries, though millions of their inhabitants are descendants of slaves, have no holiday to celebrate the emancipation of slaves. The lack of a clear act of emancipation helped to propagate relations of servility into the mid- and late twentieth century

Between 1700 and 1800, for the western coast of Africa from Senegal to Angola, the export of massive numbers of primarily male slaves led to both overall population decline and the dramatic increase in female slavery. Thus the transatlantic slave trade had not only demographic consequences for African societies but also economic and social ones.

With the establishment of colonial rule, slavery was reformed but not abolished. Slave owners, no longer able to hope for new captives, put higher value on infant and child slaves; both the prices and the level of nourishment of children increased. Workloads for adult slaves decreased accordingly, as their survival now became more important. In Ethiopia, for instance, the abolition of slave trade during World War I (when Ethiopia sought European approbation of its regime in order to avoid conquest) brought a rapid rise in prices of child slaves. The accounts of colonial ethnographers who visited African societies after 1900 describe systems that protected the rights of slaves; these rights had been expanded just as slave raiding had ended. The colonial era African system of slavery without slave raiding corresponded in many ways to antebellum slavery in the United States.

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Some common words found in the essay are:
Bight Benin, Congo Angola, , Horn Africa, Africa Americas, West Africa, Kongo Senegambia, Berlin Conference, North Africa, War Ethiopia, slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave, indian ocean, slavery africa, african societies, slavery existed, eighteenth century, export slaves, slave raiding, west africa, european conquest africa, sahara red sea, republic congo angola, africa systems slavery,
Approximate Word count = 2469
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)