How was the continent of Africa enslaved from the 15th to 19th century? Was it because the technology of the Europeans was that much better for them to be able to do that?
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Are you talking about slavery or colonization? Slavery was a common practice in Africa during that period, and many tribes kept members of other tribes the conquered in battle as slaves.
Colonization was driven by a quest for materials, and a widespread belief in Westphalian government structures with sovereignty over a geographic boundary. In Africa they found migratory tribes, which they found “not as good a government” than the one they could impose. In their mind, they were “helping” Africans.
It is complicated, local tribes in Africa often were in conflict with each other and occasionally prisoners were kept after and used as slaves, these handful of slaves were then sold to the first visiting Europeans in exchange for metal, weapons and other items which gave the tribe an advantage over others. The tribes then went on raids with their new equipment and took more slaves, the Europeans then set up trading posts n the coast where substantial number of slaves were sold in exchange for equipment and encouraged the tribes to seize more slaves..
So firstly slavery already existed in Africa – Europeans upped the stakes significantly though. Secondly much of Africa was not populated or developed – Europeans using the African coastline to get to India would setup trading posts which in turn grew and grew. Thirdly Europeans got the African populations to work with them and treat with them by exchanging goods which included firearms and alcohol. Lastly when Africans fought back the Europeans brought out the canons. Attacking colonial powers armed with artillery pretty much never went in favor of the natives.
African kingdoms and tribes went to war with each other, just like anywhere else, and sometimes the winners would capture prisoners to sell into slavery, as the “spoils of war”.
The Europeans came to African port cities looking to sell guns and buy gold and spices and cloth. Some of these cities had slave markets. The Europeans who had just founded colonies in the Americas had a desperate need for *labor* to work the sugar plantations they’d set up there. It was nearly impossible to get Europeans to come work those plantations voluntarily, as the conditions were so miserable, so the only way to get labor was to buy slaves.
The Europeans bought all the slaves they could get their hands on. It spurred the African kingdoms to go to war *more* so they could capture even more slaves and make even more money selling the slaves to the Europeans.
That’s how it worked for 300-400 years, from the late 1400s to the 1800s. The Europeans didn’t *conquer* sub-Saharan Africa for most of that period. The Portuguese captured a few port cities around the continent, and the Dutch conquered some bits of South Africa and settled there. But for the most part Africa remained independent. It was only in the mid-to-late 1800s that two technological inventions allowed Europe to completely dominate Africa. The drug *quinine* was discovered to be a cure for malaria, which used to kill nearly every European soldier sent to Africa. And then the *Gatling gun* gave European empires a huge military advantage that the Africans couldn’t beat. So by the 1890s all of Africa was colonized by European empires, except for Ethiopia.
I think it would be wrong to say that Africa was enslaved.
Two different things happened.
Europeans bought enslaved people mostly from other Africans to ship to the Americas and elsewhere.
Europeans also colonized most of Africa. While some of the ways that European colonizer lorded over the locals qualified as slavery, much of it was not quite there.
For the most part Europeans had the advantage of more advanced military tech similar to how they had that advantage over the native Americans. Unlike with the Americas, Africa actually had the advantage when it came to diseases, especially in the tropical regions.
So outside of the North and very south of the continent. Europeans never settled in large numbers. they had skeleton crews that ruled the lands with the help of native proxies who did most of the work and who in turn ruled over the other natives.
The often exploited tribal and ethnic rivalries or created new ones to have a class of loyal subject who would help them exploit the others.
Are you talking about colonization or slavery? Because the continent of Africa was colonized, but not enslaved.
The continent of Africa wasn’t colonized from the 15th to the 19th century. The first European colonies in Africa were from the 17th century and they were small and mostly by Spain alone. By the 18th Century Portugal took over those colonies and expended them, but only on a thin strip on the coast. During the 19th century, several European countries started some colonies, but it was not until the very end (last 20 years or so) of the 19th century that vaccine allowed the European to go deeper in the interior of Africa and that most of Africa become colonized.
As for Slavery. Like I said before, the European were limited to the coast because of all the disease. European and Muslim were buying slaves from Africa, but it was powerful African tribes that enslaved other tribes to sell on the coast.
I don’t know much about the slaves bought by Muslim countries, but for European/American it went from 13 thousand in the early 16th century to 1 million in the early 18th century, then 2 million by the end of the 18th century. After that date, Slavery remained relatively stable until the British abolished Slavery in 1833. It took about 20 more years or so before the effect started to really impact Slavery. Going from 1.8 million slaves in 1826-1850 to 225 thousand in 1851-1875, period in which the US Civil war happened.
So if you are talking about Colonization it was mostly in late 19th to mid 20th century. And if you are talking about Slavery it was mostly in the 18th to mid 19th century.
In the 15th to 18th century, both problem existed, but in small scale. In that period, most of Africa was independent and the trans-Atlantic slavery trade was barely existing or not at all depending on the exact year. But keep in mind that no trans-Atlantic slavery, doesn’t mean no Slavery. Slavery inside of Africa existed and like I said, I don’t know the numbers or period for the Muslim buying slaves.
Chinese discovered how to pew pew with guns.
Europeans copied it. Then Europeans decided to keep killing eachother as usual. And as usual, war promotes weapon innovation. The entire Europe is surrounded by sea, so they also brought the pew pew to the sea. After 3 centuries of pew pew, they got pretty good at it.
Then the pew pew people decided to take control of the money, which was made by controlling the trade. Europeans started grabbing any land on the silk way, then tried a sea route to India and China, then tried to go around the world for a shortcut. They got filth rich and this allowed to purchase or make a lot more pew pew items.
At that point, European countries could show up in any point of the globe with a gigantic amount of cannons and guns that were 2-3 centuries more evolved than any pew pew in the rest of the world, and even more advanced compared to sword and shield of non pew pew people.
So yes, they were really advanced. The luck was to be in war non stop at the beginning of pew pew era. That gave ‘em a superb starting point just when sea exploration became possible. And sea exploration was possible because pew pew ships needed to be strong, so they had an enormous shipbuilding advantage too. You need a lot of food supply to cross the sea so only big strong ships could do it.
Just imagine a 74 gun ship of the line having to fight war canoes… pretty unfair.
Last, In case Europeans can’t conquer a land, Europeans can simply sit out of the coast and starve the land people from any commerce, until they give up and start pay tribute.
It continued down the line. To make a lot of cannons you need foundries. To do foundries you need ore. Then Europeans started streamlining and standardizing the manufacture and mining. It sparked the industrial Revolution. At that point the pew pew people were running around the globe with infinite money and ironclad warships. At this point the pew pew people were armored against any cannon shorter than 6 meters and less than 100 tons, can shoot lui from kilometers away and can run around at 20 knots vs 12 if a sail ship.
For some colonies, it was like the movie “Independence Day”, that was the tech gap.
Now the gap is 100 times narrower. But it used to be crazy.
Not really. The Europeans used division and propaganda to take over nations. For instance, how did the British take over India, with all of their people, hundreds of millions, and soldiers, with just 80,000 troops (that number may be off)?
They would create division within their societies. Once they convinced tribes to attack each other, they would arm one side, or both sides and watch them kill each other. Then they’d pick an ally tribe and use them. It’s very similar to what the west still does to this day to maintain power. They create false dichotomies, they flood the world with propaganda, they get involved in foreign disputes, and send weapons to one side or the other.
Slavery was a thriving business in Africa long before the Europeans arrived. The Europeans were just new and lucrative customers of the slave trade. They did make it worse to an extent because they would also trade guns for slaves, which would allow tribes to capture more slaves to sell.
Some parts of Africa were colonized, mainly near the coasts. This isn’t only due to the Europeans having better technology, but because Africa was often a bunch of tribes that already often warred with each other. So it’s not like the Dutch arrived in South Africa and met unified resistance from all of the inhabitants.
However, sometimes the Europeans ran up against large kingdoms, and often in those cases they preferred to set up trade. The Italians tried colonizing Ethiopia in the late 1800s, and the kingdom drove them out. Mussolini succeeded in the mid 1900s, but it only lasted five years when international support for his colonization dried up with his entry into WWII.
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