How did slavery start in South Africa?
Slavery in South Africa
In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck set up a refreshment station in what is now Cape Town and requested slaves. The first slave, Abraham van Batavia arrived in 1653 ("van Batavia" meaning "from Batavia", the name of Jakarta during the Dutch colonial period), and shortly afterward, a slaving voyage was undertaken from the Cape to Mauritius and Madagascar.
British people
The British arrived in the area which would become the modern-day South Africa during the early 18th century, yet substantial settlement only started end of the 18th century, in the Cape of Good Hope; the British first explored the area for conquests for or related to the Slave Trade. In the late 19th century, the discovery of gold and diamonds further encouraged colonisation of South Africa by the British, and the population of the British-South Africans rose substantially, although there was fierce rivalry between the British and Afrikaners (descendants of Dutch colonists) in the period known as the Boer Wars. When apartheid first started most British-South Africans were mostly keen on keeping and even strengthening its ties with the United Kingdom. The latest census in South Africa showed that there are almost 2 million British-South Africans; they make up about 40% of the total White South African demographic, and the greatest white British ancestry populations in South Africa are in the KwaZulu-Natal province and in the cities of Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth.
Siege of Kimberley
South Africa was initially a Dutch colony after the Dutch East India Company set up a shipping station at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. In 1815, Britain captured the territory at the Battle of Blaauwberg, setting the scene for an influx of English settlers who were culturally at odds with the existing Dutch population, notably with respect to issues such as the abolition of slavery. Many Dutch farmers elected to move away from British influence into the hinterland, which resulted in a mass migration known as the Great Trek. As people moved inland, prospecting for minerals started; in the 1870s, the discovery of diamonds in the area of present-day Kimberley was followed a decade later by the discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand. The discoveries led to a massive influx of "Uitlanders" (Dutch for "foreigners") into the Boer republics of the Orange Free State and Transvaal.
Caste systems in Africa
The caste systems in Africa have been linked to the a pre-developed trading network, invasions from North Africa and the Middle East after the 7th century, followed by a slavery system that targeted the pagans. According to Susan McIntosh – a professor of Anthropology specializing in African societies, archeological evidence shows that Arabs and Berbers had expanded and established an integrated sub-Saharan trade and transport network with West Africa, building upon the pre-existing trade routes through Western Sudan. This trade by 9th to 10th centuries, states McIntosh, included commodities and slaves. The reach of slave trading had extended into Ghana and the western Atlantic coast by the 11th century, and the slave raiding, capture, holding and trading systems became increasingly sophisticated in 13th and 14th century Mali Empire and 16th century Songhai Empire.
Core countries
The 18th century was profoundly marked by the slave trade. Slavery was present in civilizations on all continents throughout post-hunter-gatherer history. The importation of slaves from the Old World started on continental North America in August 1619 as a form of indentured servitude, and continued in the next centuries. Slavery also occurred in Africa previous to Europeans capitalizing on selling slaves. Africans were sometimes hired to collect others off the coast, and bring them back to European ships. Because of this trade, the dependent nations remained dependent as their populations were suffering from the slave trade.
Slavery in the colonial United States
Until the early 18th century, enslaved Africans were difficult to acquire in the colonies that became the United States, as most were sold to the West Indies, where the large plantations and high mortality rates required continued importation of slaves. One of the first major centers of African slavery in the English North American colonies occurred with the founding of Charles Town and the Province of Carolina in 1670. The colony was founded mainly by planters from the overpopulated British sugar island of Barbados, who brought relatively large numbers of African slaves from that island to establish new plantations.
Barbary slave trade
The slave trade had existed in North Africa since antiquity, with a supply of African slaves arriving through trans-Saharan trade routes. The towns on the North African coast were recorded in Roman times for their slave markets, and this trend continued into the medieval age. The Barbary Coast increased in influence in the 15th century, when the Ottoman Empire took over as rulers of the area. Coupled with this was an influx of Sephardi Jews and Moorish refugees, newly expelled from Spain after the Reconquista.
Slave market
Potential buyers made a careful examination of the "merchandise": they checked the state of health of a person who was often standing naked with wrists bound together. In Cairo, transactions involving eunuchs and concubines happened in private houses. Prices varied according to the slave's quality. Thomas Smee, the commander of the British research ship "Ternate", visited such a market in Zanzibar in 1811 and gave a detailed description:
Among many other European slave markets, Genoa, and Venice were some well-known markets, their importance and demand growing after the great plague of the 14th century which decimated much of the European work force.
The maritime town of Lagos, Portugal, was the first slave market created in Portugal for the sale of imported African slaves, the "Mercado de Escravos", which opened in 1444. In 1441, the first slaves were brought to Portugal from northern Mauritania. Prince Henry the Navigator, major sponsor of the Portuguese African expeditions, as of any other merchandise, taxed one fifth of the selling price of the slaves imported to Portugal. By the year 1552 African slaves made up 10 percent of the population of Lisbon. In the second half of the 16th century, the Crown gave up the monopoly on slave trade and the focus of European trade in African slaves shifted from import to Europe to slave transports directly to tropical colonies in the Americas—in the case of Portugal, especially Brazil. In the 15th century, one third of the slaves were resold to the African market in exchange of gold.
New Netherland
The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven black slaves who worked as farmers, fur traders, and builders. Although enslaved, the Africans had a few basic rights and families were usually kept intact. Admitted to the Dutch Reformed Church and married by its ministers, their children could be baptized. Slaves could testify in court, sign legal documents, and bring civil actions against whites. Some were permitted to work after hours earning wages equal to those paid to white workers. When the colony fell, the company freed the first slaves and some others, establishing early on a nucleus of free negros.
Madagascar–South Africa relations
Madagascar and South Africa are two neighboring countries in Southern Africa with a long history. Early known contact between both nations occurred with Bantu migration to Madagascar and during Arab trading between Madagascar and continental Africa. In 1652, Dutch colonists began importing people for slavery from Indonesia and Madagascar to South Africa. In 1766, captured Malagasy's rebelled on a Dutch slave ship called "Die Meermin" on its way to Cape Town. The Malagasy had been sold to the Dutch East India Company on Madagascar to be used as company slaves in its Cape Colony. During the mutiny half the ship's crew and almost 30 Malagasy lost their lives and the two surviving leaders of the mutiny were sent to Robben Island where they remained until their deaths. The incident became known as the Meermin slave mutiny.
History of Western civilization
Much of the land of the Americas was uncultivated, and Western powers were determined to make use of it. At the same time, tribal West African rulers were eager to trade their prisoners of war, and even members of their own tribes as slaves to the West. The West began purchasing slaves in large numbers and sending them to the Americas. This slavery was unique in world history for several reasons. Firstly, since only black Africans were enslaved, a racial component entered into Western slavery which had not existed in any other society to the extent it did in the West. Another important difference between slavery in the West and slavery elsewhere was the treatment of slaves. Unlike in some other cultures, slaves in the West were used primarily as field workers. Western empires differed in how often manumission was granted to slaves, with it being rather common in Spanish colonies, for example, but rare in English ones. Many Westerners did eventually come to question the morality of slavery. This early anti-slavery movement, mostly among clergy and political thinkers, was countered by pro-slavery forces by the introduction of the idea that blacks were inferior to European whites, mostly because they were non-Christians, and therefore it was acceptable to treat them without dignity. This idea resulted in racism in the West, as people began feeling all blacks were inferior to whites, regardless of their religion. Once in the Americas, blacks adopted much of Western culture and the languages of their masters. They also converted to Christianity.
Historiography of Colonial Spanish America
Slave labor was utilized in various parts of Spanish America. African slave labor was introduced in the early Caribbean during the demographic collapse of the indigenous populations. The slave trade was in the hands of the Portuguese, who had an early monopoly on the coastal routes in Africa. Africans learned skilled trades and functioned as artisans in cities and labor bosses over indigenous in the countryside. Studies of the African slave trade and the economic role of blacks in Spanish America have increased, particularly with the development of Atlantic history. Asian slaves in Spanish America have been less well studied, but monograph on Mexico indicates the promise of this topic. One of the few women to achieve fame in colonial Mexico was Catarina de San Juan, a slave in seventeenth-century Puebla.
Hampton, Virginia
In the latter part of August 1619, an English ship flying a Dutch flag, the "White Lion", appeared off shore from Point Comfort. Its cargo included 20 plus Africans captured from the slave ship "Sao Joao Bautista". These were the first Africans to come ashore on English-occupied land in what would become the United States. John Rolfe, the widower of Pocahontas, wrote in a letter that he was at Point Comfort and witnessed the arrival of the first Africans. Although these first Bantu men from Angola were considered indentured servants, their arrival marked the beginning of slavery in North America. Two of the first Africans to arrive at Old Point Comfort in 1619 were Antoney and Isabella. Their child, the first of African descent born in North America, was born baptized January 1624.
Negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa
Apartheid was a system of racial discrimination and segregation in South African government. It was formalised in 1948, forming a framework for political and economic dominance by the white population and severely restricting the political rights of the black majority.
Apartheid
A codified system of racial stratification began to take form in South Africa under the Dutch Empire in the late-eighteenth century, although informal segregation was present much earlier due to social cleavages between Dutch colonists and a creolised, ethnically diverse slave population. With the rapid growth and industrialisation of the British Cape Colony in the nineteenth century, racial policies and laws became increasingly rigid. Cape legislation that discriminated specifically against Black South Africans began appearing shortly before 1900. The policies of the Boer republics were also racially exclusive; for instance, the Transvaal's constitution barred Black and Coloured participation in church and state.
Slavery in Africa
The Arab slave trade, established in the eighth and ninth centuries AD, began with small-scale movement of people largely from the eastern Great Lakes region and the Sahel. Islamic law allowed slavery but prohibited slavery involving other pre-existing Muslims; as a result, the main target for slavery were the people who lived in the frontier areas of Islam in Africa. The trade of slaves across the Sahara and across the Indian Ocean also has a long history beginning with the control of sea routes by Afro-Arab traders in the ninth century. It is estimated that, at that time, a few thousand enslaved people were taken each year from the Red Sea and Indian Ocean coast. They were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands per year were being taken. On the Swahili Coast, the Afro-Arab slavers captured Bantu peoples from the interior and brought them to the littoral. There, the slaves gradually assimilated in the rural areas, particularly on the Unguja and Pemba islands.
Slavery in Africa
At about the same time, merchants from Oman, India, and Southeast Africa began establishing plantations along the coasts and on the islands, To provide workers on these plantations, slave raiding and slave holding became increasingly important in the region and slave traders (most notably Tippu Tip) became prominent in the political environment of the region. The Southeast African trade reached its height in the early decades of the 1800s with up to 30,000 slaves sold per year. However, slavery never became a significant part of the domestic economies except in Sultanate of Zanzibar where plantations and agricultural slavery were maintained. Author and historian Timothy Insoll wrote: "Figures record the exporting of 718,000 slaves from the Swahili coast during the 19th century, and the retention of 769,000 on the coast." At various times, between 65 and 90 percent of Zanzibar was enslaved. Along the Kenya coast, 90 percent of the population was enslaved, while half of Madagscars population was enslaved.
History of South Africa (1815–1910)
At the tip of the continent, the British found an established colony with 25,000 slaves, 20,000 white colonists, 15,000 Khoisan, and 1,000 freed black slaves. Power resided solely with a white élite in Cape Town, and differentiation on the basis of race was deeply entrenched. Outside Cape Town and the immediate hinterland, isolated black and white pastoralists populated the country.
Slave market
The slave trade had existed in North Africa since antiquity, with a supply of African slaves arriving through trans-Saharan trade routes. The towns on the North African coast were recorded in Roman times for their slave markets, and this trend continued into the medieval age. The Barbary slave trade on the Barbary Coast increased in influence in the 15th century, when the Ottoman Empire took over as rulers of the area. Coupled with this was an influx of Sephardi Jews and Moorish refugees, newly expelled from Spain after the Reconquista. The Barbary slave trade encompassed both African slavery and White slavery.
Slavery in Africa
Pawnship, or debt bondage slavery, involves the use of people as collateral to secure the repayment of debt. Slave labor is performed by the debtor, or a relative of the debtor (usually a child). Pawnship was a common form of collateral in West Africa. It involved the pledge of a person, or a member of that person's family, to service another person providing credit. Pawnship was related to, yet distinct from, slavery in most conceptualizations, because the arrangement could include limited, specific terms of service to be provided and because kinship ties would protect the person from being sold into slavery. Pawnship was a common practice throughout West Africa prior to European contact, including amongst the Akan people, the Ewe people, the Ga people, the Yoruba people, and the Edo people (in modified forms, it also existed amongst the Efik people, the Igbo people, the Ijaw people, and the Fon people).
History of slavery in New York
By 1644, some slaves had earned a half-freedom in New Amsterdam and were able to earn wages. They had other rights in the commercial economy, and intermarriage with working-class whites was frequent. According to the principle of "partus sequitur ventrem" adopted from southern colonies, children born to enslaved women were considered born into slavery, regardless of the ethnicity or status of the father.
Slavery was already well established in the Dutch colonies in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and Southern Africa. For more than two decades after the first shipment, the Dutch West India Company was dominant in the importation of slaves from the coasts of West and Central Africa. While the majority of slaves were sent to the sugar plantations of the Dutch colonies in the Caribbean, a number of slaves were imported directly from the company's stations in Angola to New Netherlands. They were used to clear forests, lay roads, and provide other heavy work and public services to the colony.
Slave narrative
Slave narratives by African slaves from North America were first published in England in the 18th century. They soon became the main form of African-American literature in the 19th century. Slave narratives were publicized by abolitionists, who sometimes participated as editors, or writers if slaves were not literate. During the first half of the 19th century, the controversy over slavery in the United States led to impassioned literature on both sides of the issue.
Slavery in Africa
Multiple forms of slavery and servitude have existed throughout African history and were shaped by indigenous practices of slavery as well as the Roman institution of slavery (and the later Christian views on slavery), the Islamic institutions of slavery via the Arab slave trade, and eventually the Atlantic slave trade.
Slavery was a part of the economic structure of African societies for many centuries, although the extent varied.
Ibn Battuta, who visited the ancient kingdom of Mali in the mid-14th century, recounts that the local inhabitants vied with each other in the number of slaves and servants they had, and was himself given a slave boy as a "hospitality gift." In sub-Saharan Africa, the slave relationships were often complex, with rights and freedoms given to individuals held in slavery and restrictions on sale and treatment by their masters. Many communities had hierarchies between different types of slaves: for example, differentiating between those who had been born into slavery and those who had been captured through war.
Dutch East India Company
Between 1652 and 1657, a number of unsuccessful attempts were made to obtain men from the Dutch East Indies and from Mauritius. In 1658, however, the VOC landed two shiploads of slaves at the Cape, one containing more than 200 people brought from Dahomey (later Benin), the second with almost 200 people, most of them children, captured from a Portuguese slaver off the coast of Angola. Except for a few individuals, these were to be the only slaves ever brought to the Cape from West Africa. From 1658 to the end of the Company's rule, many more slaves were brought regularly to the Cape in various ways, chiefly by Company-sponsored slaving voyages and slaves brought to the Cape by its return fleets. From these sources and by natural growth, the slave population increased from zero in 1652 to about 1,000 by 1700. During the 18th century, the slave population increased dramatically to 16,839 by 1795. After the slave trade was initiated, all of the slaves imported into the Cape until the British stopped the trade in 1807 were from East Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, and South and Southeast Asia. Large numbers were brought from India, Ceylon, and the Indonesian archipelago. Prisoners from other countries in the VOC's empire were also enslaved. The slave population, which exceeded that of the European settlers until the first quarter of the nineteenth century, was overwhelmingly male and was thus dependent on constant imports of new slaves to maintain and to augment its size.
History of slavery
Drescher (2009) provides a model for the history of the abolition of slavery, emphasizing its origins in Western Europe. Around the year 1500, slavery had virtually died out in Western Europe, but was a normal phenomenon practically everywhere else. The imperial powers – the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Belgian empires, and a few others – built worldwide empires based primarily on plantation agriculture using slaves imported from Africa. However, the powers took care to minimize the presence of slavery in their homelands. In 1807 Britain and soon after, the United States also, both criminalized the international slave trade. The Royal Navy was increasingly effective in intercepting slave ships, freeing the captives and taking the crew for trial in courts.
Slavery
Slavery, in historical Africa, was practiced in many different forms: Debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa. Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa.
When the Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for chattel slave markets outside Africa. Although the Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M’bokolo wrote in "Le Monde diplomatique":
Abolitionism
At about the same time, France started colonizing Africa and gained possession of much of West Africa by 1900. In 1905, the French abolished slavery in most of French West Africa. The French also attempted to abolish Tuareg slavery following the Kaocen Revolt. In the region of the Sahel, slavery has however long persisted.
Racism in Africa
Apartheid (Afrikaans pronunciation: ; an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness", or "the state of being apart", literally "apart-hood") was a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party (NP), the governing party from 1948 to 1994. Under apartheid, the rights, associations, and movements of the majority black inhabitants and other ethnic groups were curtailed, and white minority rule was maintained. Apartheid was developed after World War II by the Afrikaner-dominated National Party and Broederbond organizations. The ideology was also enforced in South West Africa, which was administered by South Africa under a League of Nations mandate (revoked in 1966 via United Nations Resolution 2145), until it gained independence as Namibia in 1990. By extension, the term is currently used for forms of systematic segregation established by the state authority in a country against the social and civil rights of a certain group of citizens due to ethnic prejudices.
Africa
Slavery had long been practiced in Africa. Between the 7th and 20th centuries, the Arab slave trade (also known as "slavery in the east") took 18 million slaves from Africa via trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean routes. Between the 15th and the 19th centuries, the Atlantic slave trade took an estimated 7–12 million slaves to the New World. In addition, more than 1 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa between the 16th and 19th centuries.
Slavery in the colonial United States
The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven enslaved blacks who worked as farmers, fur traders, and builders to New Amsterdam (present day New York City), capital of the nascent province of New Netherland. The Dutch colony expanded across the North River (Hudson River) to Bergen (in today's New Jersey). Later, slaves were also held privately by settlers in the area. Although enslaved, the Africans had a few basic rights and families were usually kept intact. They were admitted to the Dutch Reformed Church and married by its ministers, and their children could be baptized. Slaves could testify in court, sign legal documents, and bring civil actions against whites. Some were permitted to work after hours earning wages equal to those paid to white workers. When the colony fell to the English in the 1660s, the company freed all its slaves, which created an early nucleus of free Negros in the area.
Caste systems in Africa
The specifics of the caste systems in Africa vary among the ethnic groups. Some societies have a rigid and strict caste system with embedded slavery, whereas others are more diffuse and complex. Countries in Africa that have societies with caste systems include Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Niger, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Liberia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Algeria, Nigeria, Chad, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and others. While it is unclear when and how the caste systems developed in Africa, they are not ancient and likely developed sometime between the 9th century and 15th century in various ethnic groups, probably in conjunction with the institution of slavery.
South America
Indigenous peoples of the Americas in various European colonies were forced to work in European plantations and mines; along with African slaves who were also introduced in the proceeding centuries. The colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labor during the initial phases of European settlement to maintain the subsistence economy, and natives were often captured by expeditions. The importation of African slaves began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries. The Atlantic slave trade brought African slaves primarily to South American colonies, beginning with the Portuguese since 1502. The main destinations of this phase were the Caribbean colonies and Brazil, as European nations built up economically slave-dependent colonies in the New World. Nearly 40% of all African slaves trafficked to the Americas went to Brazil. An estimated 4.9 million slaves from Africa came to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866.
South African property law
The Dutch East India Company had established the Cape colony from 1652. Land was taken by European settlers from native African inhabitants. As the British slowly assumed control from 1795 to 1806, and was pronounced the owner of the Cape Colony at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Descendants of the Dutch moved away into the interior to establish their own colonies, the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic, taking land from native people. Conflicts grew over the later half of the 19th century, as the rich mineral wealth of South Africa became evident. In 1867, diamonds were discovered in the Kimberley and in 1886 gold was discovered in Johannesburg. In 1889, the British South Africa Company was given a Royal Charter to further seek out and exploit areas across Southern Africa where mining could be profitable. Meanwhile, some more simple property rules, such as streamlined land-registration system had been implemented under John Cradock, 1st Baron Howden, and in the early 20th-century registration practices were codified by the Deeds Registries Act.
In 1910, the Union of South Africa Act united the post Boer War British and Afrikaans communities, but excluded black South Africans from political involvement. Indian or "coloured" South Africans were also excluded, prompting a younger Mohandas Gandhi to leave in 1914. From this point a series of laws secured white control of South African land and civic property. The Land Act 1913 reserved 92 per cent of South Africa's territory for whites, and only 8 per cent for blacks. This was enlarged to around 13.6 per cent by the Native Trust and Land Act, 1936, although the population of the country that was black stood around 61 per cent. In the Urban Areas Act 1923, it was decreed that blacks could only enter into towns to work. In the 1930s, ideas of racial supremacy became stronger among many white South Africans, and after the war the Afrikaner National Party won a majority at the 1948 election. From this point, the apartheid system was built up through legislation. In the Group Areas Act 1950 the country was categorised into various race-based regions, leading to forced removals and evictions of black people from their homes. The Group Areas Development Act, 1955 excluded non-white people from living in white areas altogether. The Reservation of Separate Amenities Act 1953 stated that separate toilets, parks and beaches were allocated. As the Apartheid regime continued, the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act 1970 and the Bantu Homelands Constitution Act 1971 purported to "constitutionalise" the separate states within the South African state, where black South Africans had to live. Through the 1980s, the world's condemnation of the regime, the slow recognition of its deep injustice unsustainability, and the mounting civil disobedience led to a referendum and new constitution. By 1991 there had been approximately 17,000 statutory measures implemented to regulate land control and racial diversity. The Discriminatory Legislation regarding Public Amenities Repeal Act, 1990 and the Abolition of Racially Based Land Measures Act, 1991 started a process leading to the constitution.
Abolitionism in the United Kingdom
The abolitionists negotiated with chieftains in West Africa to purchase land to establish 'Freetown' – a settlement for former slaves of the British Empire (the Poor Blacks of London) and the United States. Great Britain had promised freedom to American slaves who left rebel owners to join its cause during the American Revolutionary War. It evacuated thousands of slaves together with its troops and transported 3,000 Black Loyalists to Nova Scotia for resettlement. About a decade later, they were offered a chance to resettle in Freetown and several hundred made the move. Freetown was the first settlement of the colony of Sierra Leone, which was protected under a British Act of Parliament in 1807–08. British influence in West Africa grew through a series of negotiations with local chieftains to end trading in slaves. These included agreements to permit British navy ships to intercept chieftains' ships to ensure their merchants were not carrying slaves.
In 1796, John Gabriel Stedman published the memoirs of his five-year voyage to the Dutch-controlled Surinam in South America as part of a military force sent out to subdue bosnegers, former slaves living in the interior. The book is critical of the treatment of slaves and contains many images by William Blake and Francesco Bartolozzi depicting the cruel treatment of runaway slaves. It was an example of what became a large body of abolitionist literature.
Slavery in Africa
Slave practices in Africa were used during different periods to justify specific forms of European engagement with the peoples of Africa. Eighteenth century writers in Europe claimed that slavery in Africa was quite brutal in order to justify the Atlantic slave trade. Later writers used similar arguments to justify intervention and eventual colonization by European powers to end slavery in Africa.
Slavery in Africa
Slavery as practiced in Ethiopia was essentially domestic. Slaves thus served in the houses of their masters or mistresses, and were not employed to any significant extent for productive purpose. Slaves were thus regarded as second-class members of their owners' family. The first attempt to abolish slavery in Ethiopia was made by Emperor Tewodros II (r. 1855–68), although the slave trade was not abolished legally until 1923 with Ethiopia's ascension to the League of Nations. Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of between 8 and 16 million. Slavery continued in Ethiopia until the Italian invasion in October 1935, when the institution was abolished by order of the Italian occupying forces. In response to pressure by Western Allies of World War II, Ethiopia officially abolished slavery and involuntary servitude after having regained its independence in 1942. On 26 August 1942, Haile Selassie issued a proclamation outlawing slavery.
History of South Africa (1815–1910)
The gap between the British settlers and the Boers further widened with the abolition of slavery in 1833, not because the slaves were freed, but the way in which they were freed (compensation for freed slaves, for example, had to be fetched personally in London). Yet the British settlers' conservatism and sense of racial superiority stopped any radical social reforms, and in 1841 the authorities passed a Masters and Servants Ordinance, which perpetuated white control. Meanwhile, British numbers increased rapidly in Cape Town, in the area east of the Cape Colony (present-day Eastern Cape Province), in Natal and, after the discovery of gold and diamonds, in parts of the Transvaal, mainly around present-day Gauteng.
Slavery in Sudan
Slavery in Sudan began in ancient times, and recently had a resurgence during the 1983 to 2005 Second Sudanese Civil War. During the Trans-Saharan slave trade, many Nilotic peoples from the lower Nile Valley were purchased as slaves and brought to work elsewhere in North Africa and the Orient by Nubians, Egyptians, Berbers and Arabs.
Racism in South Africa
Apartheid (Afrikaans pronunciation: ; an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness", or "the state of being apart", literally "apart-hood") was a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party (NP), the governing party from 1948 to 1994. Under apartheid, the rights, associations, and movements of the majority black inhabitants and other ethnic groups were curtailed, and white minority rule was maintained. Apartheid was developed after World War II by the Afrikaner-dominated National Party and Broederbond organizations. The ideology was also enforced in South West Africa, which was administered by South Africa under a League of Nations mandate (revoked in 1966 via United Nations Resolution 2145), until it gained independence as Namibia in 1990. By extension, the term is currently used for forms of systematic segregation established by the state authority in a country against the social and civil rights of a certain group of citizens due to ethnic prejudices.
History of South Africa
Racist legislation during the apartheid era was a continuation and extension of discriminatory and segregationist laws forming a continuum that had commenced in 1856, under Dutch rule in the Cape, and continued throughout the country under British colonialism.
History of South Africa
The VOC had settled at the Cape in order to supply their trading ships. The Khoikhoi stopped trading with the Dutch, and the Cape and the VOC had to import Dutch farmers to establish farms to supply the passing ships as well as to supply the growing VOC settlement. The small initial group of free burghers, as these farmers were known, steadily increased in number and began to expand their farms further north and east into the territory of the Khoikhoi. The free burghers were ex-VOC soldiers and gardeners, who were unable to return to Holland when their contracts were completed with the VOC. The VOC also brought some 71,000 slaves to Cape Town from India, Indonesia, East Africa, Mauritius, and Madagascar.
Asian Africans
The first Indians in South Africa arrived on the Cape of Good Hope as slaves brought by the Dutch East Indies Company in 1654. The slaves were bought from Muslim ruled regions on the Indian subcontinent. However the most significant migrations of Indians came when the Natal become a British colony and large numbers were brought as Indian indenture system.Often serving as labourers on sugar plantations, but also in coal mines. More than 150,000 Indians were brought to the Natal over the course of 5 decades. The long term result was that by 1904 the Indian presence in the Natal outnumbered the white presence. The Indian community has faced legal discrimination, and such discrimination was considered a justification for the Second Boer War.
Slavery at common law
However, the initial opposition of the courts of England to the status of slavery began to change with the rising importance of the African slave trade. An extensive traffic in black slaves from Africa began in the 17th century, primarily to supply labour for the sugar and tobacco plantations in British colonies abroad. In 1660, what became the Royal African Company was chartered by the King with a monopoly in the trade, and in 1698, an act of parliament opened the trade to all English subjects. In the Caribbean, Barbados became an English Colony in 1624 and Jamaica in 1655. These and other Caribbean colonies became the center of wealth and the focus of the slave trade for the growing English empire. English merchants were prominent in the slave trade, and in commercial disputes slavery soon presented the English courts with novel legal questions. Under the "lex mercatoria" slaves were treated as chattels, with few if any rights, but the English courts did not always recognise mercantile custom as law. The question arose in English courts because personal actions could be laid in England even if the cause of action arose abroad. In the 18th century, owners in England would advertise their sales of African slaves and also for the return of runaway slaves.
Slavery in the United States
Barbary pirates from North Africa began to seize North American colonists as early as 1625, and roughly 700 Americans were held captive in this region as slaves between 1785 and 1815. Some captives used their experiences as a North African slave to criticize slavery in the United States, such as William Ray in his book "Horrors of Slavery".
Slavery in Africa
Like most other regions of the world, slavery and forced labor existed in many kingdoms and societies of Africa for hundreds of years. According to Ugo Kwokeji, early European reports of slavery throughout Africa in the 1600s are unreliable because they often conflated various forms of servitude as equal to chattel slavery.
History of slavery
The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth…the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery…
In 1807, under internal and external pressures, the United Kingdom made illegal the international trade in slaves. The Royal Navy was deployed to prevent slavers from the United States, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, West Africa and Arabia. The King of Bonny (now in Nigeria) allegedly became dissatisfied of the British intervention in stopping slave trading.
History of South Africa
Scientists researching the periods before written historical records were made have established that the territory of what is now referred to generically as South Africa was one of the important centers of human evolution. It was inhabited by Australopithecines since at least 2.5 million years ago. Modern human settlement occurred around 125,000 years ago in the Middle Stone Age, as shown by archaeological discoveries at Klasies River Caves. The first human habitation is associated with a DNA group originating in a northwestern area of southern Africa and still prevalent in the indigenous Khoisan (Khoi and San). Southern Africa was later populated by Bantu-speaking people who migrated from the western region of central Africa during the early centuries AD.
History of slavery
The Spaniards were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola, due to a shortage of labor caused by the spread of diseases, and so the Spanish colonists gradually became involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501; by 1517, the natives had been "virtually annihilated" mostly to diseases.
The problem of the justness of Native American's slavery was a key issue for the Spanish Crown. It was Charles V who gave a definite answer to this complicated and delicate matter. To that end, on 25 November 1542, the Emperor abolished slavery by decree in his Leyes Nuevas New Laws. This bill was based on the arguments given by the best Spanish theologists and jurists who were unanimous in the condemnation of such slavery as unjust; they declared it illegitimate and outlawed it from America—not just the slavery of Spaniards over Natives—but also the type of slavery practiced among the Natives themselves Thus, Spain became the first country to officially abolish slavery.
British diaspora in Africa
Although there were earlier British settlements along the West African coast to facilitate the British Atlantic slave trade, British settlement in Africa only began in earnest at the end of the eighteenth century, at the Cape of Good Hope. British settlement in the Cape gained momentum following the second British occupation of the Dutch Cape Colony in 1806, and the subsequent encouragement of British settlers in Albany ("Settler Country") in order to consolidate the British Cape Colony's eastern frontier during the Cape Frontier Wars against the Xhosa. Natal in southeastern Africa was proclaimed a British colony in 1843. Following the defeat of the Boers in the Second Boer War in 1902, Britain annexed the Boer Republics of the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State.
Scottish medical missionary David Livingstone famously explored Africa, and it is believed he was the first European to set eyes on Victoria Falls in 1855. He is a key character in African history, being one of the first well-known Britons to believe his heart was in Africa.
In the late nineteenth century, the discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand and diamonds in Kimberley encouraged further settlement by the British, Australians, Americans and Canadians. The search for mineral resources also drove expansion north. Mining magnate Cecil Rhodes dreamed of a British Africa linked from Cape Town to Cairo, and the British South Africa Company he founded in 1889 controlled the territory named Rhodesia after him, which later became known as (Southern) Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Simultaneously, British settlers began expansion into the fertile uplands (the "White Highlands") of British East Africa (now Kenya).
As a result of the ideological rise of anti-colonialism throughout the British Empire and the post-World War II decolonisation of Africa, British colonies and protectorates in Africa eventually became self-governing, but not necessarily with majority rule. Often aided by Soviet expertise and weapons, black nationalist guerrilla forces such as the Mau Mau in Kenya, ZANU in Rhodesia and MK in South Africa fought for majority rule, which normally meant "one man, one vote".
Slavery
The Netherlands abolished slavery in Suriname, in 1863, under a gradual process that required slaves to work on plantations for 10 transition years for minimal pay, which was considered as partial compensation for their masters. After 1873, most freedmen largely abandoned the plantations where they had worked for several generations in favor of the capital city, Paramaribo.
History of slavery in New Jersey
The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven black slaves to New Amsterdam, capital of the nascent province of New Netherland. They worked as farmers, fur traders, and builders. It later expanded across the North River (Hudson River) to Pavonia and Communipaw, eventually becoming Bergen, where slaves worked the company plantation. Settlers to the area later held slaves privately, often using them as domestic servants and laborers. Although enslaved, the Africans had a few basic rights and families were usually kept intact. They were admitted to the Dutch Reformed Church and married by its ministers, who also baptized their children. While enslaved Africans could be admitted to the Church, the church itself did not prohibit their enslavement. In fact, the Church did not even find that enslavement sinful. Slaves could testify in court, sign legal documents, and bring civil actions against whites. Some were permitted to work after hours, when they earned wages equal to those paid to white workers. When the colony fell, the company freed all its slaves, establishing early on a nucleus of free negros.
African-American history
From the 1750s, American-born slaves of African descent already began to outnumber African-born slaves. By the time of the American Revolution, a few of the Northern states had begun to consider abolishing and slavery, and some Southern states like Virginia had produced such large and self-sustaining locally-born slave populations by natural increase, that they stopped taking in, direct imports of slaves from Africa altogether (but still kept slavery, which continued in the South). However, other Southern states like Georgia and South Carolina still relied on constant, fresh supplies of slave labour to keep up with the demand of their burgeoning plantation economies, so they continued to allow the direct importation of slaves from Africa right up to 1808, only stopping for a few years in the 1770s, because of a temporary lull in the trade brought on by the American Revolutionary War. The continued, direct importation of slaves from Africa ensured that for most of the eighteenth century, South Carolina's black population remained very high, with blacks outnumbering whites three to one, unlike in Virginia, which had a white majority, despite its large black slave population. It was said that South Carolina in the eighteenth century as a British colony looked much more like an extension of West Africa than it did of Britain. All legal, direct importation of slaves from Africa had stopped by 1808, when the now, newly formed United States finally banned its citizens from participating in the international slave trade altogether by law. Despite the ban, small to moderate cargoes of slaves were occasionally being illegally shipped into the United States directly from Africa for many years, as late as 1859.
Christian views on slavery
The first African slaves arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, when a Dutch slave trader bartered his African 'cargo' for food. These Africans became indentured servants, possessing a legal position similar to many poor Englishmen. It was not until around the 1680s that the popular idea of a racial-based slave system became reality.
History of South Africa
By 1860, with slavery having been abolished in 1834, and after the annexation of Natal as a British colony in 1843, the British colonialists in Natal (now kwaZulu-Natal) turned to India to resolve a labour shortage. Men of the local Zulu warrior nation were refusing to adopt the servile position of labourers. In that year, the SS "Truro" arrived in Durban harbour with over 300 Indians on board.
History of West Africa
Following the collapse of the Songhai Empire, a number of smaller states arose across West Africa, including the Bambara Empire of Ségou, the lesser Bambara kingdom of Kaarta, the Fula/Malinké kingdom of Khasso (in present-day Mali's Kayes Region), and the Kénédougou Empire of Sikasso. European traders first became a force in the region in the 15th century. The transatlantic African slave trade resumed, with the Portuguese taking hundreds of captives back to their country for use as slaves; however, it would not begin on a grand scale until Christopher Columbus's voyage to the Americas and the subsequent demand for cheap colonial labour. As the demand for slaves increased, some African rulers sought to supply the demand by constant war against their neighbours, resulting in fresh captives. European, American and Haitian governments passed legislation prohibiting the Atlantic slave trade in the 19th century, though the last country to abolish the institution was Brazil in 1888.
Racism in Africa
Slavery in South Africa was officially abolished in 1833 with the Slavery Abolition Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Arab slave trade
The Arab slave trade, across the Sahara desert and across the Indian Ocean, began after Muslim Arab and Swahili traders won control of the Swahili Coast and sea routes during the 9th century (see Sultanate of Zanzibar). These traders captured Bantu peoples (Zanj) from the interior in present-day Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast. There, the slaves gradually assimilated in the rural areas, particularly on the Unguja and Pemba islands.
History of South Africa
Indian slaves from the Dutch colonies had been introduced into the Cape area of South Africa by the Dutch settlers in 1654.
History of slavery
Prior to the 16th century, the bulk of slaves exported from Africa were shipped from East Africa to the Arabian peninsula. Zanzibar became a leading port in this trade. Arab slave traders differed from European ones in that they would often conduct raiding expeditions themselves, sometimes penetrating deep into the continent. They also differed in that their market greatly preferred the purchase of female slaves over male ones. 
The increased presence of European rivals along the East coast led Arab traders to concentrate on the overland slave caravan routes across the Sahara from the Sahel to North Africa. The German explorer Gustav Nachtigal reported seeing slave caravans departing from Kukawa in Bornu bound for Tripoli and Egypt in 1870. The slave trade represented the major source of revenue for the state of Bornu as late as 1898. The eastern regions of the Central African Republic have never recovered demographically from the impact of 19th-century raids from the Sudan and still have a population density of less than 1 person/km². During the 1870s, European initiatives against the slave trade caused an economic crisis in northern Sudan, precipitating the rise of Mahdist forces. Mahdi's victory created an Islamic state, one that quickly reinstituted slavery.
1650s in South Africa
The Dutch East India Company gave van Riebeeck authority to bring slaves to South Africa in 1654. The "Roode Vos" ship sailed to Mauritius and Anongil Bay, Madagascar in search of slaves, but brought back none. In 1658, the "Amersfoort" ship stole 250 slaves from a Portuguese slave trading trafficking slaves from Angola to Brazil. The ship arrived in South Africa on 28 March with 170 slaves. 80 died during the trip. Later that year, the "Hassalt" ship brought 228 out of an initial 271 slaves from the Gulf of Guinea to South Africa on 6 May. 43 died at sea. After these two shipments, the Dutch East and West companies agreed to stop enslaving natives from lands controlled by the other company. Slave traffickers brought 63,000 slaves to South Africa between 1658 and 1808, when the British abolished the slave trade.
Slavery in contemporary Africa
Slavery in the Sahel region (and to a lesser extent the Horn of Africa), exist along the racial and cultural boundary of Arabized Berbers in the north and darker Africans in the south.
Slavery in the Sahel states of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan in particular, continues a centuries-old pattern of hereditary servitude.
Other forms of traditional slavery exist in parts of Ghana, Benin, Togo and Nigeria.
There are other, non-traditional forms of slavery in Africa today, mostly involving human trafficking and the enslavement of child soldiers and child labourers, e.g. human trafficking in Angola, and human trafficking of children from Togo, Benin and Nigeria to Gabon and Cameroon.
Slavery in Africa
Chattel slavery is a specific servitude relationship where the slave is treated as the property of the owner. As such, the owner is free to sell, trade, or treat the slave as he would other pieces of property and the children of the slave often are retained as the property of the master. There is evidence of long histories of chattel slavery in the Nile river valley and Northern Africa, but evidence is incomplete about the extent and practices of chattel slavery throughout much of the rest of the continent prior to written records by Arab or European traders..
Slavery in Africa
Various forms of slavery were practiced in diverse ways in different communities of West Africa prior to European trade. With the development of the trans-Saharan slave trade and the economies of gold in the western Sahel, a number of the major states became organized around the slave trade, including the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, and Songhai Empire. However, other communities in West Africa largely resisted the slave trade. The Mossi Kingdoms tried to take over key sites in the trans-Saharan trade and, when these efforts failed, the Mossi became defenders against slave raiding by the powerful states of the western Sahel. The Mossi would eventually enter the slave trade in the 1800s with the Atlantic slave trade being the main market.
Slavery in Africa
Historian Walter Rodney identified no slavery or significant domestic servitude in early European accounts on the Upper Guinea region and I. A. Akinjogbin contends that European accounts reveal that the slave trade was not a major activity along the coast controlled by the Yoruba people and Aja people before Europeans arrived. In a paper read to the Ethnological Society of London in 1866, the viceroy of Lokoja Mr T. Valentine Robins, who in 1864 accompanied an expedition up the River Niger aboard , described slavery in the region: With the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade, demand for slavery in West Africa increased and a number of states became centered on the slave trade and domestic slavery increased dramatically. Hugh Clapperton in 1824 believed that half the population of Kano were enslaved people.
Slavery in Africa
Oral tradition recounts slavery existing in the Kingdom of Kongo from the time of its formation with Lukeni lua Nimi enslaving the Mwene Kabunga whom he conquered to establish the kingdom. Early Portuguese writings show that the Kingdom did have slavery before contact, but that they were primarily war captives from the Kingdom of Ndongo.
Slavery in Africa
This was most significant in the Nile valley (primarily in Sudan and Uganda), with slave military units organized by various Islamic authorities, and with the war chiefs of Western Africa. The military units in Sudan were formed in the 1800s through large-scale military raiding in the area which is currently the countries of Sudan and South Sudan.
Indian diaspora in Southeast Africa
Today, the Indian community in Southeast Africa is largely affluent and play leading roles in the region's business sector and dominate the economies of many countries in the region.
In the British Empire, the labourers, originally referred to as "coolies", were indentured labourers who lived under conditions often resembling slavery. The system, inaugurated in 1834 in Mauritius, involved the use of licensed agents after slavery had been abolished in the British Empire. The agents imported indentured labour to replace the slaves. The labourers were however only slightly better off than the slaves had been. They were supposed to receive either minimal wages or some small form of payout (such as a small parcel of land, or the money for their return passage) upon completion of their indentures. Employers did not have the right to buy or sell indentured labourers as they did slaves.
Slavery in South Africa
Slavery in South Africa existed until the abolition of slavery in 1834.
Black Southerners
The history of African-Americans in the South dates back to 1619, when the first ship containing African-Americans for slavery was headed towards San Juan, Mexico was intercepted by two pirate ships expecting to steal precious metals like gold and silver. To their surprise, the ship had 350 Africans from The Kingdom of Ndongo, on the Kwanza River in north central Angola. The Pirates took 60 of the best and healthiest slaves to the English colony of Jamestown with the hopes of selling them to the manpower-deprived city. The settlers of Jamestown purchased 32 (17 men and 15 women) people with the hopes that the free labor would help expand the colony. They worked wherever they were needed up until 1705. Between this time and the American Revolutionary War in 1775, more African-Americans were brought to the colonies as they expanded rapidly.
History of South Africa
Van Riebeeck considered it impolitic to enslave the local Khoi and San aboriginals, so the VOC began to import large numbers of slaves, primarily from the Dutch colonies in Indonesia. Eventually, van Riebeeck and the VOC began to make indentured servants out of the Khoikhoi and the San. The offspring from miscegenation between the Dutch settlers and the Khoi-San and Malay slaves became known officially as the Cape Coloureds and the Cape Malays, respectively. A significant number of the offspring from the white and slave unions were absorbed into the local proto-Afrikaans speaking white population. The racially mixed genealogical origins of many so-called "white" South Africans have been traced to interracial unions at the Cape between the European occupying population and imported Asian and African slaves, the indigenous Khoi and San, and their vari-hued offspring. Simon van der Stel, the first Governor of the Dutch settlement, famous for his development of the lucrative South African wine industry, was himself of mixed race-origin.
Slavery in Africa
The Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. The increase of demand for slaves due to the expansion of European colonial powers to the New World made the slave trade much more lucrative to the West African powers, leading to the establishment of a number of actual West African empires thriving on slave trade.
These included the Oyo empire (Yoruba), Kong Empire, Imamate of Futa Jallon, Imamate of Futa Toro, Kingdom of Koya, Kingdom of Khasso, Kingdom of Kaabu, Fante Confederacy, Ashanti Confederacy, and the kingdom of Dahomey. These kingdoms relied on a militaristic culture of constant warfare to generate the great numbers of human captives required for trade with the Europeans. It is documented in the Slave Trade Debates of England in the early 19th century: "All the old writers concur in stating not only that wars are entered into for the sole purpose of making slaves, but that they are fomented by Europeans, with a view to that object." The gradual abolition of slavery in European colonial empires during the 19th century again led to the decline and collapse of these African empires. When European powers began to stop the Atlantic slave trade, this caused a further change in that large holders of slaves in Africa began to exploit enslaved people on plantations and other agricultural products.
Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa
In 1652 the Dutch formed a halfway station at the Cape, which was approximately halfway between the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies, and introduced slavery by whites.
Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (NGK)
The colony had expanded a long way beyond the Cape Peninsula in the preceding two centuries, both to the north and the east, and on the eastern frontier the Dutch farmers came into contact with Xhosa-speaking cattle herders. There were conflicts over grazing and water and cattle rustling across the frontier. The frontier farmers did not like the way the government in Cape Town handled the situation, and the ending of slavery in 1834 was another bone of contention.
Caste systems in Africa
As the practice of slavery grew, so did the caste system. Tamari suggests that a corollary of the rising slavery system was the development and growth of the caste system among numerous ethnic groups of Africa by about the 13th century. McIntosh concurs with Tamari's reasoning approach, but disagrees with the dating. McIntosh states that the emergence of caste systems likely occurred much earlier in the West African societies such as Soninke, Mande, Malinke, Wolof, Serer, and others. She places the development and spread of castes in these societies to about the 10th-century, because the slave capture, slave trade and slave holding by elite families was an established institution in West Africa by then, and slavery created a template for servile relationships and social stratification of human beings.
Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa
Shortly after the Dutch formed a halfway station at the Cape in 1652, they introduced slavery. They started a school for slaves, with the purpose of transferring the Dutch language and culture. To encourage slaves to learn the Dutch language and prayers, they were rewarded with tobacco and brandy.
African independence movements
Although anti-slavery efforts became organised in Europe in the 18th century, the slave trade only came to an end in the early 19th century, thanks in large part to English efforts to block shipping to the French during the Napoleonic Wars. Portugal was one of the first countries in the world to outlaw slavery, and did it so in mainland Portugal during the 18th century. The Portuguese government ended colonial slavery in stages with a final decree in 1858 that outlawed slavery in the overseas empire. The gradual pace of abolition was due to the strength of pro-slavery forces in Portuguese politics, Brazil and in Africa, they interfered with colonial administrators who challenged long-established and powerful commercial interests.
History of slavery
Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations, because it is developed as a system of social stratification. Slavery was known in the very first civilizations such as Sumer in Mesopotamia which dates back as far as 3500 BC. The Byzantine–Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe resulted in the taking of large numbers of Christian slaves. Slavery became common within much of Europe during the Dark Ages and it continued into the Middle Ages. The Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, British, Arabs and a number of West African kingdoms played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade, especially after 1600. David P. Forsythe wrote: "The fact remained that at the beginning of the nineteenth century an estimated three-quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom." The Republic of Dubrovnik was the first European country to ban the slave trade in 1416, and in modern times Denmark-Norway in 1802.
Fort Monroe
In the latter part of August 1619, a Dutch ship, the "White Lion", appeared off the coast of Old Point Comfort. Its cargo included more than 30 Africans captured from the slave ship "Sao Joao Bautista". Traded for work and supplies from the English, they were the first Africans to come ashore on British-occupied land in what would become the United States. Although the Bantu Africans from Angola were considered indentured servants, their arrival is considered to mark the beginning of slavery in America.
Freemasonry in South Africa
Freemasonry was brought to South Africa by members of the Grand Orient of the Netherlands in 1772. Today there are lodges chartered under the United Grand Lodge of England, the Grand Lodge of Scotland, the Grand Lodge of Ireland, as well as the Grand Lodge of South Africa.
Early history of South Africa
The first historical records begin in the late 15th century, with the beginning of European exploration. The first historical record of South Africa dates to 1488, by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias. 
In November 1497, a fleet of Portuguese ships under the command of the Portuguese mariner Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Historical records of the interior begin significantly later, with the foundation of the Dutch Cape Colony in 1652.
Slavery in Africa
The best evidence of slave practices in Africa come from the major kingdoms, particularly along the coast, and there is little evidence of widespread slavery practices in stateless societies. Slave trading was mostly secondary to other trade relationships; however, there is evidence of a trans-Saharan slave trade route from Roman times which persisted in the area after the fall of the Roman empire. However, kinship structures and rights provided to slaves (except those captured in war) appears to have limited the scope of slave trading before the start of the Arab slave trade and the Atlantic slave trade.
Slavery
Throughout history, slaves were clothed in a distinctive fashion, particularly with respect to footwear, or rather the lack thereof. This was due to economic reasons, as well as a distinguishing feature, especially in South Africa and South America. For example, the Cape Town slave code stated that ""Slaves must go barefoot and must carry passes.""
Have You Heard from Johannesburg?
The first film begins in 1948 when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That same year South Africa implemented a system of laws called apartheid to racially segregate its people in every aspect of life. The black majority in South Africa, led by the African National Congress, mounted the Defiance Campaign, attracting the attention of activists in places like England, Sweden, and the United States - and sowed the seeds of an international anti-apartheid movement. The world reacted with horror when peaceful protesters were shot in the South African township of Sharpeville and the entire African National Congress leadership was forced underground or imprisoned. At the end of "Road To Resistance" Nelson Mandela is jailed for life and the movement in South Africa is effectively shut down as hundreds escape into exile.
Soninke people
As the practice of slavery grew, so did the caste system. Tamari suggests that a corollary of the rising slavery system was the development and growth of the caste system among numerous ethnic groups of Africa by about the 13th century. McIntosh concurs with Tamari, but states that the emergence of caste systems likely occurred much earlier in West African societies such as Soninke, Mande, Malinke, Wolof, Serer, and others. She places the development and spread of castes in these societies to about the 10th century, because the slave capture, slave trade and slave holding by elite families was an established institution in West Africa by then, and slavery created a template for servile relationships and social stratification of human beings.
Economy of the Western Cape
Slavery played a large role in the early economy of the province until the British takeover of the Cape Colony in 1806 and the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833. Slaves from across the Dutch Empire, in addition to political prisoners from the Dutch East Indies, were imported to work on the farms, homes and workshops in the area of the colony closest to Cape Town. At the beginning of the 18th century, labour relations between Dutch colonists—particularly the Trekboers in the interior—and the native Khoisan was largely characterised by semi-cooperative symbiosis. By the beginning of the 19th century, the majority of the Khoisan had been turned into a class of wage labourers whose status and situation was similar to serfs. After 1833, the resistance of free burghers to the creation of a permanent wage-labour force as a result of the abolition of slavery as well as the 'resistance of freed slaves and Khoi to full proletarianization' produced labour relations characterised by a greater degree of dependency.
History of slavery in Pennsylvania
When the Dutch and Swedes established colonies in the Delaware Valley of what is now Pennsylvania, in North America, they quickly imported African slaves for workers; the Dutch also transported them south from their colony of New Netherland. Slavery was documented in this area as early as 1639. William Penn and the colonists who settled Pennsylvania tolerated slavery, but the English Quakers and later German immigrants were among the first to speak out against it. Many colonial Methodists and Baptists also opposed it on religious grounds. During the Great Awakening of the late 18th century, their preachers urged slaveholders to free their slaves. High British tariffs in the 18th century discouraged the importation of additional slaves, and encouraged the use of white indentured servants and free labor.
Slavery in Africa
Chattel slavery had been legal and widespread throughout North Africa when the region was controlled by the Roman Empire (145 BC – ca. 430 AD and by the Eastern Romans from 533 to 695). A slave trade bringing Saharans through the desert to North Africa, which existed in Roman times, continued and documentary evidence in the Nile Valley shows it to have been regulated there by treaty. Chattel slavery persisted after the fall of the Roman empire in the largely Christian communities of the region. After the Islamic expansion into most of the region, the practices continued and eventually, the chattel form of slavery spread to major societies on the southern end of the Sahara (such as Mali, Songhai, and Ghana).
Atlantic slave trade
The trade of enslaved Africans in the Atlantic has its origins in the explorations of Portuguese mariners down the coast of West Africa in the 15th century. Before that, contact with African slave markets was made to ransom Portuguese who had been captured by the intense North African Barbary pirate attacks on Portuguese ships and coastal villages, frequently leaving them depopulated. The first Europeans to use enslaved Africans in the New World were the Spaniards, who sought auxiliaries for their conquest expeditions and labourers on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola. The alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting them (Laws of Burgos, 1512–13). The first enslaved Africans arrived in Hispaniola in 1501. After Portugal had succeeded in establishing sugar plantations ("engenhos") in northern Brazil ca. 1545, Portuguese merchants on the West African coast began to supply enslaved Africans to the sugar planters. While at first these planters had relied almost exclusively on the native Tupani for slave labour, after 1570 they began importing Africans, as a series of epidemics had decimated the already destabilized Tupani communities. By 1630, Africans had replaced the Tupani as the largest contingent of labour on Brazilian sugar plantations. This ended the European medieval household tradition of slavery, resulted in Brazil's receiving the most enslaved Africans, and revealed sugar cultivation and processing as the reason that roughly 84% of these Africans were shipped to the New World.
As Britain rose in naval power and settled continental North America and some islands of the West Indies, they became the leading slave traders. At one stage the trade was the monopoly of the Royal Africa Company, operating out of London. But, following the loss of the company's monopoly in 1689, Bristol and Liverpool merchants became increasingly involved in the trade. By the late 17th century, one out of every four ships that left Liverpool harbour was a slave trading ship. Much of the wealth on which the city of Manchester, and surrounding towns, was built in the late 18th century, and for much of the 19th century, was based on the processing of slave-picked cotton and manufacture of cloth. Other British cities also profited from the slave trade. Birmingham, the largest gun-producing town in Britain at the time, supplied guns to be traded for slaves. 75% of all sugar produced in the plantations was sent to London, and much of it was consumed in the highly lucrative coffee houses there.
History of slavery in New York
These first 11 slaves in New Netherland, owned by the Dutch East Indies Company ( called the VOC ), had a life different from that of other slaves in other colonies. By definition, they were owned by a master, could not leave their master, and could be bought and sold. This is different than an indentured servant who may have chosen to "indenture" themselves. This is usually when the indentured servant contracts themselves to a master for a specific length of time, after which they would be free to lead their own lives. Slaves do not have contracts, only their master determines when they will be freed. These first 11 slaves were "originally captured by the Portuguese along the West African coast and on the islands in the Gulf of Guinea..." They were on a Spanish slave ship which would transport them to the West Indies when the VOC's navy had taken them as prizes. Many of the original New Netherland slaves have Iberian (Portuguese) names. They were given living quarters 5 miles north of the town of New Amsterdam, after which they were moved to a large building at the southern end of William Street next to the fort. "The men were employed as field hands by the Company, as well as in building and road construction and other public works projects." Women were placed as domestic servants in homes of company officials. "Their servitude was involuntary and unremunerated..."
Debt bondage
Important to both East and West Africa, pawnship, defined by Wilks as "the use of people in transferring their rights for settlement of debt," was common during the 17th century. The system of pawnship occurred simultaneously with the slave trade in Africa. Though the export of slaves from Africa to the Americas is often analyzed, slavery was rampant internally as well. Development of plantations like those in Zanzibar in East Africa reflected the need for internal slaves. Furthermore, many of the slaves that were exported were male as brutal and labor-intensive conditions favored the male body build. This created gender implications for individuals in the pawnship system as more women were pawned than men and often sexually exploited within the country.
Racism in South Africa
Although slavery was formally abolished in 1833 with the Slavery Abolition Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, slaves were continued to be imported from Britain's established settlements in India and the East Indies. The practice of importing slaves from India stretches back to the 1600s when the Dutch bought slaves from various parts of India who were sold by the then Muslim rulers. By the early part of the 18th century, 80% of the slaves were South Asians who were not just from the Indian subcontinent but also those South Asians who were living in South-East Asian countries such as Java.
History of slavery
African states played a role in the slave trade, and slavery was a common practice among Sub Saharan Africans before the involvement of the Arabs, Berbers and Europeans. There were three types: those who were slaves through conquest, those who were slaves due to unpaid debts, or those whose parents gave them as slaves to tribal chiefs. Chieftains would barter their slaves to Arab, Berber, Ottoman or European buyers for rum, spices, cloth or other goods. Selling captives or prisoners was commonly practiced among Africans, Turks, Berbers and Arabs during that era. However, as the Atlantic slave trade increased its demand, local systems which primarily serviced indentured servitude expanded. European slave trading as a result was the most pivotal change in the social, economic, cultural, spiritual, religious, political dynamics of the concept of slave trading. It ultimately undermined local economies and political stability as villages' vital labour forces were shipped overseas as slave raids and civil wars became commonplace. Crimes which were previously punishable by some other means became punishable by enslavement.
Before the arrival of the Portuguese, slavery pre-existed in Kingdom of Kongo. Despite its establishment within his kingdom, Afonso I of Kongo believed that the slave trade should be subject to Kongo law. When he suspected the Portuguese of receiving illegally enslaved persons to sell, he wrote letters to the King João III of Portugal in 1526 imploring him to put a stop to the practice.
Slavery in Sudan
Slavery in the region of the Sudan has a long history, beginning in the ancient Nubian and ancient Egyptian times and continuing up to the present.
Apartheid
Apartheid (South African English: ; , segregation; lit. "separateness") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on "baasskap" (or white supremacy), which encouraged state repression of Black African, Coloured, and Asian South Africans for the benefit of the nation's minority white population. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day.
Slavery in Africa
With sea trade from the eastern African Great Lakes region to Persia, China, and India during the first millennium AD, slaves are mentioned as a commodity of secondary importance to gold and ivory. When mentioned, the slave trade appears to be of a small-scale and mostly involve slave raiding of women and children along the islands of Kilwa Kisiwani, Madagascar and Pemba. Historians Campbell and Alpers argue that there were a host of different categories of labor in Southeast Africa and that the distinction between slave and free individuals was not particularly relevant in most societies. However, with increasing international trade in the 18th and 19th century, Southeast Africa began to be involved significantly in the Atlantic slave trade; for example, with the king of Kilwa island signing a treaty with a French merchant in 1776 for the delivery of 1,000 slaves per year.
Slavery
The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501. England played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade. The "slave triangle" was pioneered by Francis Drake and his associates.
History of slavery
Somersett's case in 1772 was generally taken at the time to have decided that the condition of slavery did not exist under English law in England. In 1785, English poet William Cowper wrote: "We have no slaves at home – Then why abroad? Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs receive our air, that moment they are free. They touch our country, and their shackles fall. That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud. And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then, And let it circulate through every vein." In 1807, following many years of lobbying by the abolitionist movement, led primarily by William Wilberforce, the British Parliament voted to make the slave trade illegal anywhere in the Empire with the Slave Trade Act 1807. Thereafter Britain took a prominent role in combating the trade, and slavery itself was abolished in the British Empire with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. Between 1808 and 1860, the West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade. Akitoye, the 11th Oba of Lagos, is famous for having used British involvement to regain his rule in return for suppressing slavery among the Yoruba people of Lagos in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers. In 1839, the world's oldest international human rights organization, Anti-Slavery International, was formed in Britain by Joseph Sturge, which worked to outlaw slavery in other countries.
Sons of Africa
Equiano had learned about the 1783 insurance claim trial related to the Zong massacre and contacted abolitionist Granville Sharp, who helped bring the case to public attention. The group held public meetings to lecture about slavery. They wrote letters, for example to the MP Sir William Dolben. They often sent letters opposing slavery and detailing conditions of the Middle Passage to newspapers, to help provoke debate. Shortly after his correspondence with them and a visit to see a slave ship being fitted out, Dolben proposed a Parliamentary bill to improve the conditions on slave ships. The Slave Act 1788 was the first law passed to regulate the slave trade, establishing standards of how many slaves could be carried in relation to ship size.
Slavery in South Africa
In April 1657, there were ten slaves in the settlement, from a population of 144. That increased greatly the next year, when the Dutch captured a Portuguese slaver with 500 Angolan slaves, and 250 were taken to the Cape. Two months later, a further 228 slaves arrived from Guinea.
Belgian Anti-Slavery Society
The Belgian Anti-Slavery Society (, ) was a 19th-century organization, with the goal of putting an end to the Arab slave trade in the African continent. The "Belgian Anti-Slavery Society" was founded in 1888, mainly by catholic intellectuals, led by count Hippolyte d'Ursel. The founders were inspired by the preaching of Charles Lavigerie, a French Cardinal, held at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in August 1888. By January 1889 the society counted 700 members and had a working capital of 300.000 francs at its disposal. The abolitionist ideology of the Anti-Slavery Society was, however, closely linked with imperialism. From 1890 to 1899 the "Société antiesclavagiste de Belgique" organized and funded four military expeditions, sent to fight the Arab/Zanzibari slavers of the eastern Congo Free State regions.The "Belgian Anti-Slavery Society" published the journal "Le mouvement antiesclavagiste" (redaction by Louis Delmer), in 1899 it merged with the "Oeuvre des Missions Catholiques au Congo". The society was also a close supporter of the internationally attended Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889–90 which eventually led to the Brussels Conference Act of 1890. They also organized a follow-up conference at the Academy Palace to put pressure on the countries that had rejected the anti-slavery act thus far, mainly the Netherlands and the Ottoman Empire.
The Voëlvry Movement
The Voëlvry movement () in South Africa was genre of anti-apartheid music sung in Afrikaans. The term Voëlvry meant "outcast" or "free as a bird". This movement has been said to have started on April 4, 1989 in Johannesburg in a packed club. This marked the beginning of what some have called a "rock and roll uprising". The Voëlvry movement used music in the Afrikaans language to show pride. The movement focused on Afrikaner youth. The main goal of the movement was to get Afrikaner youth to see the changes that had to occur in the “authoritarian, patriarchal culture”.
South Africa lived under Apartheid—the separations of race enforced by law. Non-white race were barred from political office or even removed from the country. Uprising and protests increased in number and lead to major anti-apartheid movements. One of these movements, in 1989, was called the Voëlvry movement.