logoalt Hacker News

graemepyesterday at 4:49 PM1 replyview on HN

It was abolished in western Europe. Even in eastern Europe serfdom was not the same as slavery.

The African slave trade happened between west Africa and the Americas, and Africa and west Asia. Not with Europe.

Slave owners refused to free slves who converted, and tired to prevent them being converted : https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/protestant-slavery


Replies

thelock85yesterday at 6:03 PM

I’m a bit confused by your reply. Pretty sure the rulers of the Dahomey kingdom weren’t trading with people of the “Americas” but with Europeans, before and after its abolishment across Western Europe. In the book Fistful of Shells, historian Toby Green argues the scale of the trade was only made possible by European traders flooding West Africa with cheap currency (shells which had little value to them but that could be collected in the billions from Brazil and the Indo-Pacific).

show 1 reply