Why were africans made slaves?

Question

why were only the africans made slaves?

why not, i dunno, indians made slaves?native indians and actual indians

Answer 1

I think yes Eyropean whites did purchase and condone slavery, however one can gets tired of the complete blame for slavery being laid on Americans. The slave trade was going on long before Americans even heard of north America.

The Arabs were the main slave traders, and buyers first. The slave trade in Africa existed for thousands of years. The first main route passed through the Sahara, tying in to the Arab slave trade. After the European Age of Exploration, African slaves became part of the Atlantic slave trade, from which comes the modern, Western conception of slavery as an institution of African-descended slaves and non-African slave owners. Despite its illegality, slavery continues in some parts of the world, including Africa.

Elikia M’bokolo, April 1998, Le Monde diplomatique. Quote:"The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from the ninth to the nineteenth)." He continues: "Four million slaves exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean"

In most African societies, there was very little difference between the free peasants and the feudal vassal peasants. Vassals of the Songhay Empire were used primarily in agriculture; they paid tribute to their masters in crop and service but they were slightly restricted in custom and convenience. These non-free people were more an occupational caste, as their bondage was relative.

There is adequate evidence citing case after case of African control of segments of the trade. Several African nations such as the Ashanti of Ghana and the Yoruba of Nigeria had economies largely depending on the trade. African peoples such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as intermediaries or roving bands warring with other African nations to capture Africans for Europeans. Extenuating circumstances demanding exploration are the tremendous efforts European officials in Africa used to install rulers agreeable to their interests. They would actively favor one African group against another to deliberately ignite chaos and continue their slaving activities.

In Senegambia, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sudan, including Ghana (750-1076), Mali (1235–1645), Segou (1712–1861), and Songhai (1275-1591), about a third of the population were slaves. In Sierra Leone in the 19th century about half of the population consisted of slaves. In the 19th century at least half the population was enslaved among the Duala of the Cameroon, the Igbo and other peoples of the lower Niger, the Kongo, and the Kasanje kingdom and Chokwe of Angola. Among the Ashanti and Yoruba a third of the population consisted of slaves. The population of the Kanem (1600–1800) was about a third-slave. It was perhaps 40% in Bornu (1580–1890). Between 1750 and 1900 from one- to two-thirds of the entire population of the Fulani jihad states consisted of slaves. The population of the Sokoto caliphate formed by Hausas in the northern Nigeria and Cameroon was half-slave in the 19th century. It is estimated that up to 90% of the population of Arab-Swahili Zanzibar was enslaved. Roughly half the population of Madagascar was enslaved

Slavery in Ethiopia

Ethiopian slavery was essentially domestic. Slaves thus served in the houses of their masters or mistresses, and were not employed to any significant extent for productive purposes, slaves were thus regarded as second-class members of their owners' family[10], and were fed, clothed and protected. Women were taken as s*x slaves. They generally roamed around freely and conducted business as free people. They had complete freedom of religion and culture.  First attempt to abolish slavery was made by Emperor Tewodros II (r. 1855-1868), although slave trade was not abolished completely until 1923 with Ethiopia's ascension to the League of Nations.[13] Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2,000,000 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 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 regained its independence in 1942.  On August 26, 1942 Haile Selassie issued a proclamation outlawing slavery.

Sahrawi-Moorish society in Northwest Africa was traditionally (and still is, to some extent) stratified into several tribal castes, with the Hassane warrior tribes ruling and extracting tribute - horma - from the subservient Berber-descended znaga tribes. The so-called Haratin lower class, largely sedentary oasis-dwelling black people, have been considered natural slaves in Sahrawi-Moorish society

The very earliest external slave trade was the trans-Saharan slave trade. Although there had long been some trading up the Nile River and very limited trading across the western desert, the transportation of large numbers of slaves did not become viable until camels were introduced from Arabia in the 10th century. By this point, a trans-Saharan trading network came into being to transport slaves north. It has been estimated that from the 10th to the 19th century some 6,000 to 7,000 slaves were transported north each year.

Frequent intermarriages meant that the slaves were assimilated in North Africa. Unlike in the Americas, slaves in North Africa were mainly servants and soldiers rather than labourers, and a greater number of females than males were taken, who were often employed as servants for the women of harems.  It was also not uncommon to turn male slaves, both African and European, into eunuchs to serve as guardians to the harems.  The Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail "the Bloodthirsty" (1672-1727) raised a corps of 150,000 black slaves, called his Black Guard, who coerced the country into submission.

David Livingstone wrote of the slave trade: "To overdraw its evils is a simple impossibility.... We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body and lying on the path. [Onlookers] said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer. We passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and dead.... We came upon a man dead from starvation.... The strangest disease I have seen in this country seems really to be broken heartedness, and it attacks free men who have been captured and made slaves." Livingstone estimated that 80,000 Africans died each year before ever reaching the slave markets of Zanzibar.  Zanzibar was once East Africa's main slave-trading port, and under Omani Arabs in the 19th century as many as 50,000 slaves were passing through the city each year.

Answer 2

wow nobody wants to touch that question do they? well some of the Africans were what you might call prisoners of war captured by warring tribes and then sold to the white folks so it was easy to use them. Also, whites had already created a slavery system in Africa before America was settled. There were many more Africans than Native Americans who were scattered throught the expanse of America and who for the most part fought to the death against the invading white man. And don't forget the racist aspect, whites may have felt that Indians looked more like them.

Answer 3

As has been pointed out in the wikipedia quote, there was a long standing trade in African slaves long before America was settled.  

In South America, conquistadors did use indigenous people as slaves.  There are two reasons that more Native Americans were not enslaved.  The first reason is that disease was decimating Indian populations, giving settlers the impression that the continent was mostly empty.  

Within decades of European contact millions and millions of native Americans both in what would become the US and throughout Meso and South America were dead from diseases like smallpox, typhus and diphtheria.  In many cases the death rate was as high as 90 percent: http://www.the7thfire.com/Native_America...

The second reason is that most colonists who were inclined to hold slaves were not prepared to subjugate a population (unlike the conquistadors mentioned above), and relied on labor from indentured servants (both white and black ) or purchased slaves from the existing African trade.

Cheers