On Feb 10, 2018, at 4:40 PM, jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
Most slaves were enslaved in black Africa by black African authorities for minor crimes.
On 10/02/2018 22:59, John Newman wrote: Bullshit. There were massive profits and raiding parties
There were raiding parties, but where we have data, which we generally don't, most slaves were purchased from the local authorities, not captured in raids. So who were the local authorities selling?
Are you being purposely disingenuous? There were obviously also raiding parties and the sale of “prisoners of war” between and within different black Africans themselves, divisions exploited by European slavers anxious to fill the gaping maw hungry for free labor to subsidize the colonization and exploitation of the “new world”. They had to keep that slave market (the “Meal Market”) on Wall Street going some how.
Until recently, very few societies used imprisonment (and I would argue imprisonment is a very bad idea and we should not use it either.) If someone caused problems, you beat him or killed him. Suppose you beat him, and later he causes problems some more. What are you going to do? You can kill him, or you can sell him into slavery.
Early colonialists and explorers report executions, lots of executions, lots and lots of executions, rather than enslavement.By and large, there seem to have been more executions than selling people into slavery. Black societies had more people that they did not want around, than they had purchasers for slaves.