African Slavery: The Other Side09/25/2025
Mises Wire
Lipton Matthews
Many Americans today mistakenly believe that slavery was invented by America or that it existed only in the context of the transatlantic slave trade. This narrow view—often echoed in modern demands for reparations—paints white societies as uniquely responsible for slavery’s horrors. Yet long before European ships reached Africa’s coasts, Africans were capturing, owning, and exploiting slaves in systems that were brutal and widespread. To confront the full truth about slavery, we must acknowledge African complicity in its expansion and persistence. Slavery was not simply imposed on Africans from outside—it was also defended by African elites, embedded in political and social institutions, and violently protected by rulers who depended on it for their power.
In precolonial Africa, slavery was not marginal. It was central to the economic structure of many societies. In Asante, for example, slaves were the backbone of agricultural production. From the 18th century onward, villages of slaves worked the land to feed armies and the aristocracy. These slave villages were located far from the capital, Kumasi, and produced the food and raw materials that sustained the ruling class.
Slave labor was used not only in farming but also in gold mining and kola nut cultivation. After the end of the transatlantic slave trade, when selling slaves to Europeans became difficult, Asante elites simply redirected their slaves into domestic economic production. Instead of trading them abroad, they put them to work in the countryside. The scale was significant: the state redistributed these slaves to lineage leaders and chiefs, who used them to fuel new agricultural enterprises, including the early cocoa plantations that would later define Ghana’s export economy.
Contrary to the claim that African slavery was more humane than its Atlantic counterpart, the reality was often starkly brutal. In the Sokoto Caliphate—one of the largest slave-owning societies in 19th-century Africa—slaves could be tied up in the sun, beaten, or placed in irons for disobedience. Those who worked on plantations were expected to feed themselves, but only after laboring on their master’s land. Women were frequently burdened with longer working hours due to their dual roles in farming and domestic labor. Furthermore, while some slaves were allowed to cultivate their own food or marry, this was not an act of generosity. It was a pragmatic strategy to prevent rebellion or escape, and it allowed slave owners to avoid the full costs of maintenance. Children born to slaves remained the property of the master, further reinforcing the cycle of bondage.
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In Africa, slavery was not a moral question. It was a question of survival, power, and control. Kings needed slaves to build armies. Merchants needed slaves to carry goods. Farmers needed slaves to clear land. Without slavery, these systems collapsed. A person’s wealth was measured in people rather than land. As such, slaves were the currency of power. That is why African rulers—whether in Asante, Igboland, or Sokoto—fought to preserve the institution. Some may have used spiritual language to justify it. Others used legal customs or religious courts. But at its heart, slavery remained a calculated, self-interested system of exploitation, maintained by political power, as brutal and systematic as anything in the Americas.
If we are to talk honestly about slavery and its legacy, we must include the African dimension. Slavery in Africa was not passive or accidental, it was deliberate. African elites captured, sold, and enslaved their neighbors—and they fiercely defended the system when Europeans tried to end it. This does not excuse the crimes of the transatlantic slave trade or the racism that developed from it, but truth demands context. Slavery was not invented by white people. It was a human institution, practiced on every continent and in every society, and sustained in Africa for centuries by Africans themselves.
If we want a future rooted in justice, it must be built on the whole truth—not just the convenient parts.
Source:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/african-slavery-other-side
