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My great-grandfather, Nwaubani Ogogo Oriaku, was what I prefer to call a businessman, from the Igbo ethnic group of south-eastern Nigeria. He dealt in a number of goods, including tobacco and palm produce. He also sold human beings. "He had agents who captured slaves from different places and brought them to him," my father told me.
Nwaubani Ogogo's slaves were sold through the ports of Calabar and Bonny in the south of what is today known as Nigeria. People from ethnic groups along the coast, such as the Efik and Ijaw, usually acted as stevedores for the white merchants and as middlemen for Igbo traders like my great-grandfather. They loaded and offloaded ships and supplied the foreigners with food and other provisions. They negotiated prices for slaves from the hinterlands, then collected royalties from both the sellers and buyers. (Read more.)
Islam played a huge role in the African slave trade. From Thought.com:
The Qur'an prescribes a humanitarian approach to slavery: free men could not be enslaved, and those faithful to foreign religions could live as protected persons, dhimmis, under Muslim rule (as long as they maintained payment of taxes called Kharaj and Jizya). However, the spread of the Islamic Empire resulted in a much harsher interpretation of the law. For example, if a dhimmi was unable to pay the taxes they could be enslaved, and people from outside the borders of the Islamic Empire were considered an acceptable source of slaves.
Although the law required owners to treat slaves well and provide medical treatment, a slave had no right to be heard in court (testimony was forbidden by slaves), had no right to property, could marry only with permission of their owner, and was considered to be a chattel, that is the (moveable) property, of the slave owner. Conversion to Islam did not automatically give a slave freedom nor did it confer freedom to their children. Whilst highly educated slaves and those in the military did win their freedom, those used for basic duties rarely achieved freedom. In addition, the recorded mortality rate was high -- this was still significant even as late as the nineteenth century and was remarked upon by western travelers in North Africa and Egypt.
Slaves were obtained through conquest, tribute from vassal states, offspring (children of slaves were also slaves, but since many slaves were castrated this was not as common as it had been in the Roman empire), and purchase. The latter method provided the majority of slaves, and at the borders of the Islamic Empire vast number of new slaves were castrated ready for sale. The majority of these slaves came from Europe and Africa -- there were always enterprising locals ready to kidnap or capture their fellow countrymen. (Read more.)
The National Park Service has an interesting article on the ethnography of Maryland. From NPS:
From the beginning, the Maryland population was religiously, socially and racially diverse. Unlike the Virginians, the Maryland colonists brought Africans with them. At least two men of African descent were aboard the Ark and the Dove, ships that brought Leonard Calvert, son of George Calvert, first Lord of Baltimore, up the Chesapeake Bay in 1634. One of these first African Marylanders was Mathias de Sousa. A passenger on the Ark, De Sousa was of African and Portuguese descent and, like the Calvert family, he was a Catholic.
As the colony’s charter did not expressly prohibit the establishment of non-Protestant churches, the Calverts encouraged fellow Catholics to settle there. Maryland’s first town, St. Mary’s, was established in 1634 near where the Potomac River flows into the Chesapeake Bay. Maryland never experienced protracted Indian warfare or a “starving time” like its neighbor Virginia. Maryland was able to trade with Virginia for needed items and the Calvert family personally supported the settlers’ early financial needs. However, like Virginia, Maryland suffered from a labor shortage. In order to stimulate immigration, in 1640 Maryland adopted the head-right system that Virginia had instituted earlier.
While interested in establishing a refuge for Catholics, who were facing increasing persecution in Anglican England, the Calverts were also interested in creating profitable estates. To this end, they encouraged the importation of Africans and to avoid trouble with the British government, they encouraged Protestant immigration. Indentured laborers, mostly white, dominated the Maryland workforce throughout the 17th century. As the laws infringing upon the rights and status of servitude for Africans grew more stringent in Virginia in the late 17th century, free Africans from Virginia, like Anthony and Mary Johnson and their family, migrated to Maryland. Enslavement was not absent in 17th century Maryland but it was not the principal form of servitude until the early 18th century (Yentsch 1994). (Read more.)
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