Describe The Slave Mode of Production in 19^th Century in Africa

To this day, scholars dismiss the existence of the slave M.O.P. in pre-colonial Africa. T.
Zeleza (1993) and (1996) for instance argues that Africa had no slave M.O.P. What is
seen in the 19th century Africa according to this scholar was merely the capitalist M.O.P.
exploiting cheap slave labour in production.

Most Africanist scholars also dismiss the existence of the so called domestic slavery in
Africa. This is because the primordial/traditional use of captives in king’s courts (in
Africa) was not meant to facilitate capital accumulation. It was merely a strategy of
utilising such victim’s labour power in the interest of the community lest the captives
unite against the kingdom.

However, the kingdom of Dahomey is argued to have had a slave M.O.P. In this
kingdom slaves were used to work in plantations and homesteads of the king and chiefs.
But here the captives were not treated in the same way as slaves were in the 19 th century
E.A.

According to Friedrick Cooper (1985) slavery is but one of the many ways by which the
rich and the powerful exploited the poor and the weak. The slave is an outsider who is
brought into the society by either force or by purchase. A slave is considered as a tool for
economic production i.e. like a machine.

During the 19th century the slave M.O.P. was used in plantation agriculture on the Islands
of East Africa especially Zanzibar and also in Malindi. The clove plantations relied on
slaves as a source of labour. The Arabs and Swahilis who owned the plantations obtained
slaves through raids, negotiations with African chiefs and through luring.

The Arab and Swahili slave owners also signed treaties with some African chiefs who
gave out their most energetic people to go and work on the plantations. The chiefs got
guns, gun powder, bangles, mirrors, cutlery, alcohol etc. in return. The Arabs also used
luring techniques to acquire slaves. They displayed attractive objects and when a crowd
of curious people formed, they produced guns, tied the people in yokes and took them
into slavery. At times people working in the fields or women fetching water were
ambushed and taken into slavery.

In the interior of East Africa, rich and powerful leaders among the Mijikenda and the
Kamba also used slave labour in food production and in the collection and transportation
of commodities from the interior to the Coast.

The slave M.O.P. developed as a result of the need to control labour in order to take
advantage of the expansion in international trade and agricultural exports especially
cloves. This was because the Coast was most incorporated into international commerce
which gave it the best access to slaves. It also provided the greatest incentive to increase
the production of both agricultural and non-agricultural commodities. The slaves were
housed in inhabitable structures and were extremely underfed. Their main food was
cassava. The slaves received no pay for their labour and worked to the satisfaction of
their masters. The slaves did all the work on the plantations from clearing bushes,
digging, planting, weeding to harvesting and transportation of the produce to the markets.
There was no division of labour on any basis. Men, women and children did all types of
work in the fields.

The slaves worked from dawn to dusk. High mortality rates characterized the slave
M.O.P. This was compensated through intensification of raids for more slaves. The slave
population on the Zanzibar clove plantations etc. were controlled by the Arab/Swahili
masters. Men and women were housed separately to control reproduction. In cases where
they were housed together e.g. for purposes of increasing child slave labour the decision
as made solely by the master. For all slaves, weakness or sickness was not acceptable.
The victims were often thrown into the sea, fed to wild animals or tied to trees and left in
the bushes to die etc.

The slave M.O.P. was limited to the plantations established during the mid and late 19th
century. In fact slavery never matured into a M.O.P. par excellence because it was
organized for and based on capitalist economic activities. This M.O.P. came to an end by
the mid 1890’s with the European transition from slave to wage-labour economy.

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Titany answered the question on December 8, 2021 at 06:30