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Unequal memory
When we talk about African slavery, the image that comes to mind immediately is that of the nether ships crossing the Atlantic.
LAmerica Today, millions of African-descendants are visible communities.
But another, older and just as violent trade, has marked the African continent for more than a millennium: Eastern Treaty.
It sent millions of men, women and children to the Maghreb, Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula,Ottoman Empire, the Persia,India and even up to Asia. Yet this part of history remains little taught, little debate, and often reduced to quick evocations.
This silence is partly explained by the difference in demographic traces : If the descendants of African slaves are numerous in America, they are much less visible in Arab countries.
This paradox calls for an explanation that is due to the very nature of trafficking, to the uses that were made of captives, and to the role of African intermediaries such as the Pells and Tuaregs, often forgotten in the story.
Roads and flows
Three large circuits structured this process:
- The Trans-Saharan : linking the Sahel areas (Hausa, Bornou, Gao, Sokoto, Kanem) in the markets of Tripoli, Tunis, Fez or Cairo.
- The Red Sea From the coasts of Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan, towards Jeddah, Mecca, Aden.
- Indian Ocean From Zanzibar, Kilwa, Mombasa or Mozambique, to Oman, Persia, India, the Mascareignes.
These roads functioned as real roads. Trade corridors, where slaves were transported alongside gold, ivory or salt.
The role of African intermediaries
The oriental treatises were not imposed from outside without local relays. They were based on a network of African actors.
- The Tuaregs They controlled caravans, provided camels, provided guidance and collected taxes. Their hierarchical society itself relied on the exploitation of Ikelan (or Bella), domestic and pastoral slaves. So they were both transporters, convoy protectors and slave owners.
- The Peuls In the 18th and 19th centuries, their jihads (Sokoto, Fouta Toro, Fouta Djallon) institutionalized slavery. The captives of holy wars were used locally, but also sold on the Sahelian markets to feed trans-Saharan flows.
- The Hausa, Kanouri and Toubou They captured, transported and sold thousands of men and women.
- Maghreb merchant houses In Ghadamès, Tripoli or Fez, they provided the final outlet for the major markets in the North.
Thus, the oriental treatises were a system Multi-ethnic, where African actors played a structuring role at each stage.
African sovereigns were also essential partners in this trade.
- In the Eastern Treatythe kings of the Sahel (Kanem-Bornou, Mali, Songhai) practised or tolerated the capture of captives, often exchanged for horses, weapons or tissues. Later, the Peul leaders incorporated slavery as a pillar of their jihad states.
- In the Atlantic Treaty, kings like those of Dahomey or d made razzias a real industry. They sold their prisoners to European negriers in exchange for firearms, powder, alcohol and manufactured goods.
The major difference is that the Atlantic trade was more directly governed by commercial treaties the Europeans and that it aimed mass and permanent deportation to plantations in the Americas.
The Eastern trade, on the other hand, was more diffuse, linked to caravan circuits, and often integrated slaves into Arab or Ottoman societies.
What were these slaves for?
Unlike the Atlantic, Eastern milking has not focused solely on plantations:
- Women : domestics, concubines, sometimes secondary wives. Muslim law provided for children of recognized concubine to be free and legitimate.
- Men : agricultural workers (plantations in Zanzibar in the 19th century), porters, craftsmen, sometimes soldiers.
- Eunics : a particular and dramatic case. Often cast into Ethiopia or Egypt, these men served in harems and palaces. The mortality of the operation was very high, making it impossible to reproduce.
Numbers: the extent of a bleeding
Estimates converge around 5-6 million people deported to the Arab and Asian world for more than a millennium.
- 2.4 million Between the year 800 and 1600.
- $2.45 million Between 1600 and 1900.
- ≈ 400 000 by the Red Sea in the 15th-17th century.
These figures, although lower than those in the Atlantic, show a longer and more diffuse.
Why so few visible descendants?
The current low visibility of Afro-descendants in Arab countries is explained by:
- The status of "dumm al-walad" : absorption of children of concubines into local lines.
- The castration of eunuchs : suppression of all offspring for a significant part of men.
- Common postage and social mobility in urban areas.
- Rapid Métisage and integration into highly mobile societies.
Nevertheless, Afro-descendant communities remain: African-Iranian, Afro-Turks, Sheedis Pakistan, Siddis India, Afro-Omanese, etc.
Late abolition
While slavery was abolished in the West in the 19th century, it lasted until 20th on the Arabian Peninsula:
- 1962 Saudi Arabia and Yemen,
- 1970 Oman.
This makes it one of the most persistent slave systems in modern history.
A past that enlightens the present
Calling the oriental trade, that's fill a blind spot world memory.
The eastern trade, with its trans-Saharan, maritime and caravan roads, Tuareg intermediaries, populists, hausa or kanouri, concubines, eunuchs and kings accomplices, was one of the great African tragedies.
If it has left fewer visible demographic traces than the Atlantic trade, it is because of mechanisms of integration, castration and mixedness.
But her legacy remains embedded in discriminatory attitudes and practices that are still present. To recall this story is to do justice to millions forgotten, and give meaning to the current struggles for equality and recognition. For slavery, whether Atlantic or Eastern, was a universal experience of dehumanization, and his memory must be assumed to build more just societies.
For more than a millennium, Africans were deported not only to the Americas, but also to the Maghreb, the Middle East and Asia.
This past also explains part of the contemporary racism in some Arab countries.
Black or darker populations are still marginalized: Akhdam of Yemen, Afro-Iranians, Sub-Saharan migrants from the Maghreb.
The idea, inherited from centuries of trafficking, that blacks occupy a lower rank, continues to influence mentalities.
Understanding the eastern trade is therefore:
- Rehabilitate a hidden memory.
- Deconstruct still alive stereotypes.
- To give Afro-descendants in these regions the recognition which is due to them.
Africa's history is not just about colonization or the Atlantic trade: it also includes this large oriental network, which has marked millions of lives, and whose echoes still resonate today in the realities of racism and the marginalization.
