From Hearts of Darkness by Frank McLynn
Slavery was a fact of life in nineteenth-century Africa, and the explorers came to terms with it in different ways. Fundamentally their attitude was ambivalent: on the one hand they hated the 'peculiar institution' and used it as unique evidence that Africa was a benighted country, in need of deliverance by European capital, institutions and religion; on the other hand, it was something they could at the very least coexist with in their daily lives, and it was often something from which they could derive considerable advantage. This ambivalence in the explorer's attitude was made more complex by a fundamental ambiguity within slavery itself. African slavery was subdivided into domestic thraldom and the trade in human flesh for export. These two were as distinct as the Papal Inquisition and the much more sinister Spanish Inquisition, yet were often confused, sometimes by the explorers themselves. It is one of the sources of the many conflicting reports on African slavery. The different accounts by the explorers reflect a differential experience of domestic slavery and slavery for export.
Yet even in this neat division of slavery into two types masks all kinds of nuances. The missionary-explorer Edward Coode Hoore, one of the great pioneers in Tanganyika, said that slavery was 'a most complicated system, the details of which require years to understand'. At its deepest level slavery involved a complex symbiosis of the African and Arab types. Whereas slavery for export was overwhelmingly an Arab affair, domestic slavery had been a feature of Africa from time immemorial. As Lugard scathingly remarked: 'Slavery has been an African institution for a thousand years...you could not send three men on a mission, or two would combine to enslave the third.' Lugard was inclined to regard the domestic kind of slavery as merely a sort of feudal system, or a natural stage in the evolution from savagery to civilisation. From the viewpoint of the colonial ruler (which Lugard was) slavery even had certain advantages: it enforced respect for rank and thus facilitated adminstration and government.
Livingstone, who had seen something of the horrors of slum life in the industrial cities of Britain, entered another argument for condoning domestic slavery: that the saving grace of the 'no-growth' pre-capitalist African economy was its prevention of extremes of inequality and class hatred:
The Arabs are said to treat their slaves kindly, and this may also be said of native masters; the reason is, master and slave partake of the general indolence, but the lot of the slave does not improve with the general progress in civilisation. While no great disparity of rank exists, his energies are little tasked, but when society advances, wants multiply; and to supply these the slave's lot grows harder. The distance between man and master increases as the lust of gain is developed, hence we can hope for no improvement in the slave's condition, unless the master returns to or remains in barbarism.
There were many different contexts which could act as the genesis of domestic slavery. The most common was war, when prisoners were enslaved. British conflict with Bunyoro came to a head in the 1890s when Lugard tried to extinguish the practice of making slaves out of prisoners of war. It was Kabbarega's refusal to toe this line which, more than anything, precipated British occupation of his country.
Yet even in this neat division of slavery into two types masks all kinds of nuances. The missionary-explorer Edward Coode Hoore, one of the great pioneers in Tanganyika, said that slavery was 'a most complicated system, the details of which require years to understand'. At its deepest level slavery involved a complex symbiosis of the African and Arab types. Whereas slavery for export was overwhelmingly an Arab affair, domestic slavery had been a feature of Africa from time immemorial. As Lugard scathingly remarked: 'Slavery has been an African institution for a thousand years...you could not send three men on a mission, or two would combine to enslave the third.' Lugard was inclined to regard the domestic kind of slavery as merely a sort of feudal system, or a natural stage in the evolution from savagery to civilisation. From the viewpoint of the colonial ruler (which Lugard was) slavery even had certain advantages: it enforced respect for rank and thus facilitated adminstration and government.
Livingstone, who had seen something of the horrors of slum life in the industrial cities of Britain, entered another argument for condoning domestic slavery: that the saving grace of the 'no-growth' pre-capitalist African economy was its prevention of extremes of inequality and class hatred:
The Arabs are said to treat their slaves kindly, and this may also be said of native masters; the reason is, master and slave partake of the general indolence, but the lot of the slave does not improve with the general progress in civilisation. While no great disparity of rank exists, his energies are little tasked, but when society advances, wants multiply; and to supply these the slave's lot grows harder. The distance between man and master increases as the lust of gain is developed, hence we can hope for no improvement in the slave's condition, unless the master returns to or remains in barbarism.
There were many different contexts which could act as the genesis of domestic slavery. The most common was war, when prisoners were enslaved. British conflict with Bunyoro came to a head in the 1890s when Lugard tried to extinguish the practice of making slaves out of prisoners of war. It was Kabbarega's refusal to toe this line which, more than anything, precipated British occupation of his country.
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