The East African Slave Trade Routes Essay Example for Free

The East African Slave Trade Routes Essay Slavery is a systematic exploitation of labor in human. It involved trading of human or capturing of human as a source of free or cheap labor aimed at working in military, in plantations, mines and as domestic servants. Slave trade was mainly in Africa. Africans were traded to other continents to work in large scale enterprises, mines, in the fleets and in the drainage of marshes. Slaves were treated like non humans and were seen as property. Therefore they didn’t enjoy equal rights like their masters. In East Africa, slave trade was dominated by Arab and Africa traders. It was mainly in the coastal cities of East Africa such as Mombasa, Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam. Captured or purchased African men were taken to the Middle East where they were enslaved. They faced brutal treatment along the way and in their place of work. They were overworked, abused sexually and insulted physically. They were exported annually into Mecca and Medina via the Indian Ocean giving the trade the name Indian Ocean Slave Trade. The Portuguese were also involved . Generally, it took the slaves a long time before reaching to their destination which was mainly the Arab countries, India and Middle East. The ships were too slow and overloaded thus could not move fast enough. The journey was thousand of miles between the coast of East Africa and Southern Arabia the Persian Gulf. They were traded along with gold, ivory, perfumes and exotic woods. African tribes’ men and women along the coastal line were brutally captured in their habitats. The prisoners of war were not lucky too as they were sold off by there own chiefs in exchange for money. Pawning was common in this trade and the slaves were used as such. It was traumatizing for the slaves moment as it usually involved physical abuse. They were beaten especially if they resisted capture. Their families could mourn as they knew that their captured members would never return. This separation by itself was traumatizing. The selection was inhuman. They were undressed publicly to check for any disability in front of there wives and children. The healthy and strong ones were picked living back the weak, sick and the old. They were chained and were forced to carry heavy merchandise such as the tusks of elephants on there way to the cells and dungeons where they awaited their sale. The cells were overcrowded. Men, women and children were kept in tiny cells with small windows. Some did not survive this far and died of suffocation and body weakness. There were no toilets and the place was filthy. They were whipped in front of their buyers as a show to how strong they were so that they could cost higher . For the purchased, immediately after they were bought they became the property of their masters. They were transported in overcrowded ship. They were chained together and packed into the cargo hold below dock. They were denied the freedom to move and were only allowed up on the dock sometimes in good weathers. The women and children enjoyed limited movement freedom. The food they ate was rotten if not bad and the water was foul. There were typically two meals a day. Their diet depended on what was the cheapest in the market at the particular time. The ship crews sometimes whipped the slaves for no reason at all. They were generally brutal. Sexual abuse was common especially among the female and child slaves. Severe punishment like death was common especially if there was disobedience. Their bodies would be thrown into the sea and sometimes they were thrown alive and left to die. All this time of sexual and physical abuse, starvation and sickness, some slave became traumatized and committed suicide by leaping overboard while others fell in state of shock. As a result of overcrowding, the condition in the ship was filth and diseases were common. They were the major cause of death. There were literally no toilets and the only available wooden buckets were meant to serve all the slaves on board. Dangerous diseases like small pox, dysentery, measles, malaria and scurvy plagued these ships. They affected even the ship crews. There were no drugs and much of the infected slaves were thrown into the sea to avoid transmission to the healthy. In cases of interception by war ships in search of illegal slave smugglers, the captain would throw the slaves in the ocean aimed at destroying the evidence. This was to avoid being poisoned or hanged if found guilty . After they reached to their destination, they were marketed where they now were possessed by new masters. They were assigned responsibilities but brutality still continued. The women worked as domestic servants and junior house wives while the men worked in the fields. The whip was the major impetus to work in the fields. It was the major fuel to make them work more. They were allowed little time to rest. They were merely viewed as a unit of production in the fields and mines rather than contributors. It was characterized by strong racism which dominated even there share in the society. African slaves were viewed as less human and were treated like property. Killing with impunity was common especially in cases of disobedience and sickness. They were given less attention on their humanitarian’s rights. The master or the slave owner had the powers to discipline to the point of death of all the members of the households. These included the children, kinsmen, housewives. Most of them were castrated to avoid reproduction. They were never taken back to their mother land. Therefore, as time went by they died and reduced in numbers. They had no right to own property whatsoever. Though some became leaders of the larger groups in the field, they were denied rights and would never be equal to their owners . In general, the slave trade was characterized by inhuman and brutal treatment of the slaves. The purchasing, transportation and deportation had very minimal humanitarian standards. Many continued to suffer the loss of their loved one who would never return back and who died on the hand of other human beings. Afterwards, there was abolishment of this trade though much of the African salves didn’t survive. The lucky ones went to extinction as reproduction was not possible as many males had been castrated. This trade was succeeded by legitimate trade which involved export of raw materials rather than labor. In recent years, slavery has been a world crisis with some evolutions like the American evolution putting strict measures on it but even in the modern world there still remains some traces of slave trade especially for the women and children. References Clarence-Smith, G. W. (1989) Slavery and abolition.The Economics of the Indian Ocean Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century: Routledge, Patterson, O. (1982) a Comparative Study Slavery and Social Death: Harvard University Press. Watkins, R. R. (2001) Slavery: Bondage throughout History. HMCo Childrens Books, Collins, R. O and Burns, M. J. (2007)A History of Sub-Saharan Africa: Cambridge University Press. Total travel (2007) helping my friends teach my children about the word. Retrieved from http://www. tototravels. com/2006/10/chapter_20_zanz. html on Wednesday, October 08, 2008