Wait. What? I thought only evil white people invented and practiced slavery.
slavery was institutional in Africa from recorded time, at least 600AD. The Mali/Songhai Empire/Ghana/Ashante people were all slavers, capturing other tribes to work their own fields and mines, or to trade for guns and horses (The Songhai eventually growing to 10,000 horsemen with metal breastplated armour).
“Most captured slaves were taken between 1450 and 1500, from the West African interior with the co-operation of African kings and merchants. “ *
“The Akan people used their gold to buy slaves from the Portuguese... The Portuguese bought the slaves from the kingdom of Benin, near the Niger Delta in Nigeria”..The Akan people needed slaves to work their gold mines and farms **
In a story of the Songhai empire, the going rate for a horse from europe was 5 slaves, which the kings happily traded so all his soldiers and mining overseers could be armoured, armed and mounted.
“In each of the villages situated in the lands that we have listed, without a single exception, the prince had slaves and a fanfa. “ [overseer of slaves] ***
Islam crept in but was largely a religion of the elite. Islam dictated that slavery of infidels was acceptable so it served the purpose of the elite in maintaining power since the majority of the natives were animalists. But the poor figured that game out pretty quickly and started to convert to avoid being enslaved. The Islamic elite responded to the conundrum by changing it’s rules to allow enslavement of ‘lesser’ muslims along with the infidels.
Pre-colonialism slavery in Africa is excused with the claim that only ‘criminals’ and ‘exiles’ were sold into slavery. That could be meant to say they brag they emptied their ‘jails’ of the worst of the worst onto slaver ships. But since children and women were also traded, it’s a bit of post-history whitewashing on their historians’ parts. The truth is closer to the reality that african kings used people as a commodity to build their empires, first through internal trade, and later, with the help of the Portuguese trading horses and armour for gold.
* https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/songhai-african-empire-15-16th-century
** ibid
*** https://kwasikonadu.info/blog/2018/3/18/songhay-empire-and-slavery