The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917Various
History
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917
Various
African Americans -- Periodicals
In the cattle zones farther to the north and south, nature is still
less bountiful. The labor of maintenance requires a combination of
the pastoral art, agriculture and trade. A slave class could not
maintain itself and at the same time support a large master class. The
labor of a large proportion of the population is, in one way or
another, necessary to existence. The nature of the work, so far as it
is pastoral or trading, is not especially irksome, but rather
fascinating. Tending cattle is full of excitement, and is a kind of
substitute for hunting; while trading is an occupation which appeals
with wonderful force to all the races of Africa. The impulse to shift
labor in the cattle zones is, therefore, very slight, except in the
case of a few populations subsisting largely upon agriculture. The
ruling classes, therefore, instead of owning many personal slaves,
make a practice of subjugating the agricultural groups in such a way
as to constitute a kind of feudalism. As land is free the enslaved
groups can be made to serve the free class only by coercion.
Similar conditions among the natural races all over the world give
rise in the same way to the institution of slavery. Ellis thinks that
slavery probably originated under the regime of exogamy where the sons
born of captured women formed the slave class because they were
considered inferior to the sons born of the women of the group.[2] But
it is quite evident that slavery originated primarily from economic
conditions. For further sociological explanations of slavery in the
several zones the reader is referred to the author's first and second
volumes on the Negro races.
II. THE SLAVE TRADE OF WEST AFRICA AND THE DESERT OF SAHARA
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