Slavery routes – a short history of human trafficking (1/4) | DW Documentary

this is the story of a world whose borders and territories were drawn by the slave trade where violence subjugation and profit imposed their own roots slavery did not begin in the cotton fields of the u.s. it is a far more ancient tragedy that has been going on since the dawn of humanity from the eighth century onwards for over 1,000 years Africa was the epicenter of a global form of human trafficking marijuana in steez are my parents were abused by those with a fair complexion Nubian Bambara Songhai Fulani Ashanti Yoruba mad Inca Bantu Igbo Sousou malinka over 20 million Africans were deported traded and reduced to slavery this criminal system shaped our history and our world so expansive was its reach that for a long time it seemed impossible to fully explain its mechanisms in this series we will journey back along the routes of the slave trade the thing about the slave trade the key thing about the slave trade and I always would have to explain this to American students who immediately would want to put it into a kind of an ethical Human Rights kind of a content you don't have to look at it in economic terms and so if you have a slew if you're talking about a slave trade if so where's the demand where is there a demand for labor and what is the nature of that demand for labor 2000 years ago slavery became an integral feature of the Roman Empire eventually in 476 Rome collapsed under the pressure of invasions by so-called barbarians on scattered territories a range of peoples and powers fought over the Empire's remains Visigoths and Ostrogoths in the West Slavs in the Northeast Berbers in the south the Byzantine Empire the kingdom of Nubia and Arab tribes in the east just like Rome before them these societies also practiced slavery in every society we see slavery and it doesn't matter where they come from they come from everywhere from the steppes of Central Asia to to Russia to all of Eastern Europe all through the Slavic countries which is where of course the word for slave and in most of the European languages comes from that comes from the word Slav and those were people that in in some conceptions were enslaved for a long time most slaves were white the majority of slaves being black is a relatively recent phenomenon in history so how did a widespread practice evolve into an enormous trade which progressively focused its sights on the African continent one of the starting points of this story is Cairo on the River Nile a 23 million strong megalopolis born from the network of trade routes between the Middle East and Africa today it's the continents most important crossroads for people and goods south of the modern city are the ruins of Fustat the first arab city in egypt these remains are a neglected site and yet this is where the destinies of Africa the Middle East and the Mediterranean converged some 1,400 years ago in 641 a game-changing event would occur with their vast conquest campaign underway the Arab armies established a junction between Africa and the Middle East their expansion into Egypt would change the continents entire economy and intensify the demand for slaves slavery was crucial to the conquest itself and he was crucial to the assistance of the Islamic empire and its expansion from the kumquat itself captives were turned into slaves and those slaves were recruited into army that conquered basically the world at that time Sita voltages to mow and coma it was first and foremost a trade with economic and political stakes the slaves were the essential source of energy back then there was no oil they were in effect the driving force behind these emerging empires he's McGillis the Arab troops pressed ahead as far as the south of Egypt all along the Nile stretched the Christian lands of Nubia their arabs found provisions and above all slaves who they would enlist in their armies to pursue their expansion in 769 they signed a pact with the Nubians stipulating that hostilities would cease in exchange for 360 slaves per year in war and slave Manan chiral a logical thing to do with prisoners and without doubt warfare was the major cause of enslavement and almost everybody who was enslaved was an enslaved that through an act of violence that was related either to war or to kidnapping or this very conscious slave rating which was an extension of war in fact in the beginning it wasn't a trade it was spoils of war the conquest was swift in less than a century the Arabs had occupied the Mediterranean southern shore a border was taking shape separating the Muslim world from the land of the so-called infidels from the kawar Valley in Niger Touma Korea in the east and the phazon desert region the Arabs imposed the same conditions they had established in Nubia they used these agreements to organize the first deportations from Africa to the Middle East entire convoys of captives made their way towards the world's new center Baghdad The Illustrated mikuma manuscripts short tales taken from Arabic literature show how these first African slaves intermingled with Muslim society after two centuries of military conquest the demand for slaves evolved in the ninth century the Abbasid dynasty embarked on a monumental project to transform the swamps around Basra into lush orchards instead of soldiers Baghdad now needed workers to cultivate the Iraqi soil to do so the Empire brought in thousands of slaves on some sites there were between 500 and 5,000 workers and there was considerable turnover because in such conditions their working life barely went beyond ten to fifteen years it required a lot of hard labour to remove the salt in order to get to the soil as well as then to irrigate for this one they needed large-scale labor and they began to import slaves from from all over only where do the Muslim Arabs go to get slaves out of principle they pick non-muslim slaves so from another culture and outside the Empire color wasn't the basis for slavery culture was slaves weren't part of the dominant culture kuromine Oh in the 9th century the Arabs extended their trade networks from the entire Mediterranean to the Caucasus Turkey the Balkans and Russia from the Horn of Africa entire boatloads of Ethiopian and Nubian captives were sailed up the Nile even further out from the high plateaus of Somalia and Tanzania successive waves of slaves referred to as sons streamed into Mesopotamia via the Indian Ocean Zhang Jian appears to be a portion would sank and it meant black and when slaves began to be brought in large numbers to what is now Iraq they were proportionately so many who were from from this part of the coast that ranch began to be used as a name to mean slaves in general little by little the number of slaves grew and became so high that rebellions broke out among the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris in 1869 the sons took up arms and raised an army numbering tens of thousands of men heading the insurrection was Ali Mohammed a former high dignitary of the Abbasid Caliphate what we know about that revolt is that many of the participants perhaps most of them were not actually African or weren't Zam's they may there were some Nubians the most important leader of the revolt was someone who is an Arab whose mother had been an Indian concubine so it gives you a sense of how complicated the the demography was Ali bin Muhammad was quite a learned man but he began to be dissatisfied with the Abbasid regime and when he went to Basra he found that there were a lot of slaves there working on these farms began to actually do investigation and found that the life conditions of the slaves were very very bad there was so much this faction among them that he found that they are the most rebellious group the ones who can be mobilized for a revolution there's kind of a shutdown because it was that slave revolt which lasted for about over a decade was so disruptive it seems to have been one of the contributing factors to a kind of a shrinking of trading in the Indian western Indian Ocean the regime's armies were deployed to brutally put down the rebellion between 500,000 and 1 million slaves were massacred in Mesopotamia the sanch revolt ended in a bloodbath despite its failure the uprising precipitated the decline of Baghdad in favor of another city Cairo the Empire's new capital in the 10th century Cairo was the Mediterraneans greatest trading hub far ahead of Venice Genoa and Constantinople the Empire's center of gravity had shifted towards Africa this new geopolitical situation had far-reaching consequences from then on the slavery routes turned toward inner Africa customs changed as did the slaves position in society slaves in Egypt were reflected the wealth of of Cairo and so we find slaves in all levels of society we find slaves as as concubines to the caliphs as elite courtesans and entertainers but probably the largest number of slaves were in the domestic sphere so these are household slaves and people would purchase slaves of course to perform labor but also because those slaves had a had a symbolic value right that those slaves reflected and owners social status and increase their own prestige in their various communities [Music] for a long time historians had no information on the slaves who were taken to Cairo but the discovery of some extraordinary documents which had been hidden for a thousand years in the city's oldest synagogue has enabled them to find out more about the captives identities and places of origin for almost a millennium the Jews of this synagogue deposited documents worn-out manuscripts into a large chamber ostensibly with the ultimate intention to bury these documents and in a ritual way because those documents might have the name of God written on them and so they weren't to be disposed of casually but the community never buried these documents and amongst these documents are hundreds of documents that relate to slavery there are dozens and dozens of bills of sale for slaves [Music] preserved at the University of Cambridge the Ganesa documents reveal how moving the Empire's capital to Cairo altered trade routes the slave from antiquity this love the Caucasian was replaced by the African I found that roughly 52% of slaves especially domestic slaves in Egypt were from black Africa between the late 10th and the 13th century Africa was exposed and vulnerable Nubians Ethiopians and Sudanese would now make up the majority of slave contingents sold in Cairo here at the eye Muys street market most were women black women who were exhibited as trophies destined to satisfy all of their masters requirements their prices were determined by their age and beauty slave woman have a variety of names they translated into English as things like success prosperity prodigality so these are all names which reflect the way that slavery function is a kind of form of consumption and then we also have have slaves with names like gazelle wild rose musk names that reflect luxury items very often when you have domestic slaves a personal relationship begins to develop between the slave owners and the slaves and it it can become quite intimate for example when a child is born a girl she would be given a slave servant of her age who would grow up with her but almost like a friend although the status is quite different sooo veloute coup on Islam discovered we're often told that in Islam slavery was very paternalistic with a tight relationship between slave and master and that the slave was always sure they would eventually be freed and integrated into the Masters family loves Coco name I believe it's misleading to consider slavery this way as something that had a soft side hold you can't understand slavery if you don't relate it to the violence at its heart so soft slavery or domestic slavery no that's nonsense slavery is the negation of being human through the use of violence as the Empire expanded more and more slaves adopted their masters religion since Islam forbade the enslavement of Muslims the newly converted thought they could now escape the violence of these domineering relations these conversions post a contradiction for the Arabs on the one hand they had to enfranchise these new Muslims on the other hand they would not give up their slaves thinking from the Islamic perspective it's only through unbelief that you get slaves that's the legal you know principle basically you know the frontiers of Islam is considering the people and there are unbelievers that's the legitimate area where slaves can be produced as the number of converts grew the Arabs had to find new sources of slaves conversion in turn created demand having become Muslims certain groups such as the barbers sided with the Arabs and help them find captives beyond the Empire's borders the peppers themselves were enslaved by dollops although they convert to Islam they were treated as inferior and vassals there all of the Berbers in the trans-saharan trade it's a fundamental the first knowledge we have its from the Arabic sources they talk about Berbers having established the Saharan network with sub-saharan Africans what we know is that the use of the camo helped basically increase the trade and that knowledge was transmitted to the Arabs the Berbers support was of crucial value they were masters of desert survival techniques beginning with the use of camels the only rideable animals capable of doing without water for weeks thanks to this means of transportation the Arabs were able to cross the daunting Saharan barrier Sahara in some ways as a barrier but so are the oceans in some ways you have to develop a technology an ability to cross it it was only a barrier in the in the sense and in that political issues affected movement of people trade routes formed between the north and south of the Sahara to connect both ends of the desert merchants had to follow the caravan route ride along Babur territory and passed through the sea wa oases gaddama s-- reagan sija massa before arriving in Timbuktu the deserts last stop and the Gateway to the Mali Empire [Music] heading this immense Empire Weston John Takata King of Kings and its founding father victory in the great battle of korrina in 1235 enabled him to unite all of the region's peoples and form a massive commercial network along the banks of the Niger Arabs and Berbers established a trading post in Timbuktu from where they maintained trade relations with this centralized Empire they bartered salt fabric jewelry and Mediterranean dates in return for ivory copper slaves and most importantly gold Sundiata reorganized trade tried to build up into regional relations in order to protect his empires interests so organising regional and inter-regional trade was one of his greatest accomplishments it may even have provided the foundations for the Mali Empire for I could remember from the model a pyramid timbuktu x' importance stemmed from its geographical location on the banks of the Niger River its port became a center for transferring luggage and goods to and from the north this natural crossroads occupied a strategic position in the trans-saharan trade the Mali Empire which the barbers traded with enjoyed abundant wealth thanks to the bamboo k-- and beret mines it possessed the world's largest gold reserves more than half of the precious metal circulating in the Mediterranean originated from these deposits throughout the history of the trade between north and south for this our slaves were wait there and gold was always you know sought after one feeds the other not associate the African gold mining in African societies was mainly done by captives the gold trade and slavery were closely linked while I believe that gold may have predated slavery the chronology isn't clear it's usually said that both grew in significance at the same time slavery was in fact hidden behind the gold trade the decimally loot fatigue that should sum up Sundiata Keita generals never gave up this lucrative business ethic but the fact is Sundiata did make a number of efforts to intervene he reminded his fellow countrymen of the threat that slavery posed to the survival of the malinka country philosophy men comparison apart comparisons are questionable but I do remember that Charlemagne himself prohibited slavery but that didn't stop it you know men will be men laid off only long oral tradition credits Sanjay Takata as the founder of Malian identity and the symbol of the country's prosperity for a century the Mali Empire reigned over all of western Africa leaving behind the deserts greatest library in Timbuktu history inhabits the homes where over 360,000 medieval manuscripts are preserved these treasures are owned by wealthy local families they pass them down from generation to generation often hiding them from view in secret places [Music] threatened with destruction tens of thousands of manuscripts are now being restored this 11th century Koran reveals how Islam spread throughout western Africa thanks to merchant contacts between Arab barbers and African elites Muslim culture gradually spread among inhabitants of the Sahel region south of the Sahara to the point where Sundiata Keita declared Islam to be the official religion of the Mali Empire so they're now part of the Islamic Ummah Islamic nation and they can benefit from the Islamic empire which is access to that big market that was controlled by the Islamic empire and so that's this disconnection benefited both the Malians as well as the people in the Islamic community at large the conversion of people in the Sahel region prompted merchants and chieftains to seize slaves even further away the slave trade expanded south of the Mali Empire to animist populations who the arab geographer adam ascii relegated to the fringes of humanity political Arabic abraded almost all Arab writers since al-bukhari in al-idrisi and the others speak of LOM nom it's often dum-dum sometimes Miam Miam they don't really see them as humans they consider them to be cannibals outside of the civilized world are the lowest black men and practically not human sabatello logistics and a lovely remark you know these descriptions I'm sure that reducing them to slavery was not really a problem from a theological or moral point of view a nice guavas need to turn an individual into a slave an important element as portray them as an other to construct an other nests and human societies have a broad range of criteria for doing that you can use the difference in skin complexion difference in religion in the trans-saharan trade both were combined in need the history of Timbuktu is intertwined with that of slavery according to legend the city took its name from an old female slave who would watch over the well where their herds drank Timbuktu supposedly comes from the word Tim which means well into Iraq and this woman's first name book too today northern Mali remains a caste based society in Timbuktu ancestry determines rank whether somebody is free or captive depends on their name and lineage at the top of the social ladder are the light-skinned two are eggs former warriors who have always owned land and weapons at the very bottom are the Bellas descendants of slaves who have nothing apart from their capacity for physical work to rely on for survival many still cultivate their former masters fields aware of their family's slave origins my name is al Jamaat along to the a mere did RN tribe my parents were abused by those with a fair complexion my father worked for them but not today he was their herdsmen but those with a fair complexion abused Lindt Elizabeth cinephile who are the landowners have an interest in communicating to the workers that they are slaves not because of an old balance of power that can be turned around but because its nature they are destined to be slaves it's a very powerful ideology if your blood is considered to be servile you pass this nature on to your descendants what the Sun does it becomes impossible to escape slavery as the slave trade expanded certain people's were forever reduced to slave status many internalized their condition and ended up viewing their situation as inevitable by creating entire lineages of slaves the trans-saharan trade continually produced workers without resorting to physical violence throughout the thirteenth century more than a thousand slaves left the Mali Empire every year they were joined by contingents from cannonbaugh new idea Pia and Nubia all of the routes in in that period to really are focusing on the Islamic world and so the roots come from the from the peripheries and they go into the centers and very often along these routes that that brought slaves into the Islamic world you see slaves going actually in both directions as well and they they tend to go in greater numbers toward the center of the Islamic world but people are bought and sold everywhere along the way so that slavery itself is everywhere [Music] the padishah for PC busking we don't have precise figures there are no statistics and no systematic studies but it seems that many more people died and disappeared during the crossing of the desert then of the sea polakov axilla per second Zapata according to some hypotheses and some contingents it was 30 percent so one in three of those slaves being transported never made it to the other side the Attar unabie market in cairo it was at this fruit and vegetable market on the banks of the nile that ships used to unload their goods today no one remembers that thousands of captives arrived in Egypt at this location after a 4,500 kilometer trek through the desert it said Mowgli doulas cleavage this long period of slavery and its memory are a problem today because they've yet to be addressed by historians so there's widespread misunderstanding and ignorance of history and it seems this black presence is considered awkward for example the Maghreb region is called northern Africa but not Africa we're told it's a white Africa totally white and that black Tunisians Algerians and Moroccans are strangers men although they've been here for centuries in Tunisia they have dreadful sayings like they may God not blacken our wombs spunky's what xnl Mosley appeal : in high school I was taught this horrible poem in which black slaves are described as people born from the most appalling of all races committed on FA the desert issue Dara's me please abominable Lester Arab de la la semana en la Vida a gentleman Aikido man alumel a swaddle Marcia Mac rahmatan ello pseudo and Odin who were feared acidemia this left a lifelong mark on many in the year 1324 Mansa Musa the new Malian Emperor and son John takata's grandnephew undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca via Egypt he followed the caravan routes all the way up to Cairo this journey marked the completion of a long process the establishment of a massive commercial trading zone between Timbuktu and Cairo for the first time a leader from the South met those in power in the north the Egyptian historian Alan Amma crazy reported on Mansa Musa's spectacular arrival in Cairo on the night of Sunday 15th jamala first the moon rose completely eclipsed then came Mansa Musa King octa-core to make the pilgrimage he stayed for three days at the feet of the pyramids as a guest he entered Cairo on Thursday 26 Raja ascended the Citadel but declined to kiss the ground and wasn't forced to do so however he was not allowed to sit in the presence of the Sultan the Sultan commanded that he be equipped for the pilgrimage Mansa Musa was accommodated and spent so much gold for what he designed slave girls garments that the range of the Dina fell by sixty Rams nobody has actually before or after done any trip like that on that scale and with that kind of visibility and that's amount of gold do have documents that they say that he took with him about twelve thousand slaves just for his personal service and eighty loads of gold and every load weighs like three can't ours which is missing a lot of gold Mansa Musa's voyage marked a turning point in history word of the mercantile power of the Mali Empire traveled back to the Europeans through the Mediterranean the Catalan atlas from 1375 is the first representation of the known world in its entirety it shows the seas the rivers and the deserts of Africa we see a camel ridden by a barber and another one being driven on by a black man following him on foot in the east near the Nile and the Red Sea is the sultan of cairo at the bottom of the parchment sits mansa musa holding all of the gold in the world in his hands said that less noble metals like context this Atlas brings us back to the great African empires of the medieval era we tend to forget the riches that were produced back then in Africa so the Catalan atlas maps this commercial power which had also become known to the Europeans DePauw the news or a diesel pin [Music] towards the end of the Middle Ages sixth-grade slave trade routes crossed the sub-saharan African desert all the way up to the Mediterranean each was connected to a major port Algiers Tunis Tripoli Cairo all were departure points for shipments to the markets of southern Europe Venice Genoa Marseilles and Grenada some captives were even deported as far as China and Japan in all three and a half million African captives were traded on the slavery routes between the 7th and the 14th centuries [Music] the impact of the trans-saharan slave trade has left a deeply rooted legacy mali mauritania niger and libya are today home to two million Bella's of slave descent the war raging in the Sahel region has enabled the light-skinned 2rx to reassert their authority over the Bellas many had to flee to the capital of Mali Bamako among them intimate and his wife Aisha two who have tried to free themselves from slavery today they hide in the suburbs her father told us his children had been abducted by a Tuareg named sadhu dune I've been through terrible things I had to leave because I couldn't bear it anymore my younger brothers and a few relatives are still there I lived there as a servant that was my job I couldn't live with my family I did everything they wanted and you got money or animals in return I didn't get anything only suffering nothing but suffering [Music] their freedom remains fragile without the protection of their former masters they often live in absolute poverty even living in anonymity in the large southern cities a mere surname can betray an individual's ancestry this difficulty to free themselves from their caste perpetuates a thousand-year-old social order even if you are a member of government you'd still be a captive even if you're a fair skinned minister and they'll still call you a slave that's what you are they strip away your dignity you have no dignity time has redrawn the frontiers of states yet thousands of Malians eretrians Sudanese and Libyans continue to crisscross the great trans-saharan routes every year fleeing poverty persecution or armed conflicts nearly 200,000 sub-saharan head towards the Mediterranean once in Cairo these people become easy prey for traffickers the war in the Sahel region has reawakened the slave trades legacy and with it practices that ought to have been banished to the past the history of slavery is a tragedy that keeps on repeating itself in the 14th century a new perpetrator entered the stage europe's thirst for conquest would plunge africa into a new era the slave trade would now assume unprecedented dimensions

Channel: DW Documentary

Views: 1,056,363

Rating: 4.757884 out of 5

Keywords: Documentary, Documentaries, documentaries, DW documentary, full documentary, DW, documentary 2020, documentary, slave trade, slavery, Africa, Arab caliphate, human trafficking

Id: InQvC9c-3K8

Length: 42min 26sec (2546 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 04 2020

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Where can I find these docs in english? I tried to search for them but I can't find them anywhere