Slave market
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A slave market is a place where
Slave markets in the Ottoman Empire
In the Ottoman Empire during the mid-14th century, slaves were traded in special marketplaces called "Esir" or "Yesir" that were located in most towns and cities. It is said that Sultan Mehmed II "the Conqueror" established the first Ottoman slave market in Constantinople in the 1460s, probably where the former Byzantine slave market had stood. According to Nicolas de Nicolay, there were slaves of all ages and both sexes, they were displayed naked to be thoroughly checked by possible buyers.[1]
In the early 18th century, the
Slave markets in the East African slave trade
In Somalia, the inhabiting Bantus are descended from Bantu groups that had settled in Southeast Africa after the initial expansion from Nigeria/Cameroon, and whose members were later captured and sold into the Arab slave trade.[4]
From 1800 to 1890, between 25,000–50,000 Bantu slaves are thought to have been sold from the slave market of
Enslaved Africans were sold in the towns of the
Potential buyers made a careful examination of the "merchandise": they checked the state of health of a person who was often standing naked with wrists bound together. In Cairo, transactions involving
'The show' commences about four o'clock in the afternoon. The slaves, set off to the best advantage by having their skins cleaned and burnished with cocoa-nut oil, their faces painted with red and white stripes and the hands, noses, ears and feet ornamented with a profusion of bracelets of gold and silver and jewels, are ranged in a line, commencing with the youngest, and increasing to the rear according to their size and age. At the head of this file, which is composed of all sexes and ages from 6 to 60, walks the person who owns them; behind and at each side, two or three of his domestic slaves, armed with swords and spears, serve as guard. Thus ordered the procession begins, and passes through the market-place and the principle streets... when any of them strikes a spectator's fancy the line immediately stops, and a process of examination ensues, which, for minuteness, is unequalled in any cattle market in Europe. The intending purchaser having ascertained there is no defect in the faculties of speech, hearing, etc., that there is no disease present, next proceeds to examine the person; the mouth and the teeth are first inspected and afterwards every part of the body in succession, not even excepting the breasts, etc., of the girls, many of whom I have seen handled in the most indecent manner in the public market by their purchasers; indeed there is every reasons to believe that the slave-dealers almost universally force the young girls to submit to their lust previous to their being disposed of. From such scenes one turns away with pity and indignation.[10]
Slave markets in Europe
Among many other European slave markets,
Slave markets in Africa
The slave trade had existed in
The Velekete Slave Market established in 1502 in Badagry, Lagos State,[18][19] was significant during the Atlantic slave trade in Badagry as it served as a business point where African middlemen sold slaves to European slave merchants thus making it one of the most populous slave markets in West Africa.[20]
Another historic slave market was
Slave markets in North America
In the
In the 1840s, almost 300,000 slaves were transported, with Alabama and Mississippi receiving 100,000 each. During each decade between 1810 and 1860, at least 100,000 slaves were moved from their state of origin. In the final decade before the Civil War, 250,000 were moved. Historian Ira Berlin wrote:
The internal slave trade became the largest enterprise in the South outside the plantation itself, and probably the most advanced in its employment of modern transportation, finance, and publicity. The slave trade industry developed its own unique language, with terms such as "prime hands, bucks, breeding wenches, and "fancy girls" coming into common use.[23]
The expansion of the interstate slave trade contributed to the "economic revival of once depressed seaboard states" as demand accelerated the value of slaves who were subject to sale.[24]
Some traders moved their "chattels" by sea, with
New Orleans, where French colonists had established sugarcane plantations and exported sugar as the chief commodity crop, became nationally important as a slave market and port, as slaves were shipped from there upriver by steamboat to plantations on the Mississippi River; it also sold slaves who had been shipped downriver from markets such as Louisville. By 1840, it had the largest slave market in North America. It became the wealthiest and the fourth-largest city in the nation, based chiefly on the slave trade and associated businesses.[26] The trading season was from September to May, after the harvest.[27]
One of the most famous remaining slave market buildings in the United States is the
In 1859, an auction master named
See also
References
- ^ "Fischer W. Alan (1978) The sale of slaves in the Ottoman Empire: Markets and state taxes on slave sales, some preliminary considerations. Bogazici Universitesi Dergisi, Beseri Bilimler - Humanities, vol. 6, pp. 150-151" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on January 11, 2012. Retrieved 2016-03-23.
- ^ Darjusz Kołodziejczyk, as reported by Mikhail Kizilov (2007). "Slaves, Money Lenders, and Prisoner Guards:The Jews and the Trade in Slaves and Captives in the Crimean Khanate". The Journal of Jewish Studies: 2.
- ^ "Historical survey > Slave societies". Britannica.com. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
- ^ United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. "Refugees Vol. 3, No. 128, 2002 UNHCR Publication Refugees about the Somali Bantu" (PDF). Unhcr.org. Retrieved 18 October 2011.
- ^ "The Somali Bantu: Their History and Culture" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 October 2011. Retrieved 18 October 2011.
- ^ Refugee Reports, November 2002, Volume 23, Number 8
- ^ Gwyn Campbell, The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia, 1 edition, (Routledge: 2003), p.ix
- ^ Catherine Lowe Besteman, Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery, (University of Pennsylvania Press: 1999), pp. 83-84
- ^ Catherine Lowe Besteman, Unraveling Somalia: Race, Class, and the Legacy of Slavery, (University of Pennsylvania Press: 1999), pp. unknown.
- ISBN 9780060956394
- ^ Bales, Kevin. Understanding Global Slavery: A Reader
- ISBN 978-0-9650493-7-5.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-231-03159-2, pp. 158–60, 362–70.
- ^ Thomas Foster Earle, K. J. P. Lowe "Black Africans in Renaissance Europe" p. 157 Google
- ^ David Northrup, "Africa's Discovery of Europe" p. 8 (Google)
- ^ Klein, Herbert. The Atlantic Slave Trade (1970).
- ISBN 0-02-911574-4.
- ISBN 978-0-558-49759-0.
- ISBN 978-978-163-090-3.
- ^ Njoku, Jude (6 February 2013). "Vlekete: When a slave market becomes a tourist centre". Vanguard Newspaper. Retrieved 16 January 2016.
- ISBN 978-1-107-09485-7.
- ^ a b c Marcyliena H. Morgan (2002). Language, Discourse and Power in African American Culture, p. 20. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
- ^ Berlin, Generations of Captivity, pp. 166–69.
- ^ Kolchin, p. 98.
- ^ Berlin, Generations of Captivity, pp. 168–71.
- ^ Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999.
- ^ Johnson (1999), Soul by Soul, p. 2.
- ^ a b c National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers, Old Slave Mart. Retrieved: 27 May 2010.
- ^ a b Nenie Dixon and Elias Bull, National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form for Old Slave Mart, 12 February 1975. Retrieved: 27 May 2010.