What main African tribes sold other Africans into the

slave trade?
quora.com/What-main-African-tribes-sold-other-Africans-into-the-slave-trade

Daniel Baker, studied at The George Washington University Law School

Answered Feb 10, 2017 · Author has 1.9k answers and 3.3m answer views
A2A. This is very hard to answer accurately because of the paucity of written records by
most of the African slavers. My favorite source, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database,
can only give us hints, and even the hints are good only for the Atlantic slave trade; it has
no information at all about the Red Sea and trans-Saharan trades, through which anywhere
from 7 million to 20 million Africans were sold.

What we do know from the Database is this: by far the busiest slave port in Africa was
Luanda, the capital city of Portuguese Angola. A staggering 1.4 million people were sold
onto the slave ships at this one city over about 350 years.A further 373,521 were sold at
Benguela, and 368,000 at Cabinda, both nearby. (By contrast, fewer than 35,000 people
are known to have passed through the infamous “Door of No Return” at Goree in Senegal).
If you meet one of the 14+ million black people who live in Brazil, many of her ancestors
likely passed through Luanda, Benguela, or Cabinda.

Most of the people who sold these slaves to the Portuguese were probably subjects of the
Kingdom of Kongo. While some of the kings of Kongo tried to regulate or even abolish the
slave trade, for most of its history Kongo was a willing participant in the trade. Kings who
tried to halt the flow of slaves across the ocean were sometimes deposed and murdered by
greedier relatives. Kongo was not just one tribe; it was a multiethnic empire that included
Bakongo, Chokwe and Mbundu. But many of these same ethnic groups lived in neighboring
kingdoms like Matamba and Ndongo, which were often at war with each other. There might
be Mbundu on both sides of a battle, so at the end of the war a Mbundu from Kongo might
sell a Mbundu prisoner from Matamba in Luanda; if the next war had a different result, the
opposite might then occur.

Also involved as allies of the Portuguese slavers were a very nasty group called the
Imbangala, who may have started as a sort of mercenary or bandit confederation who only
later developed into a genuine tribe, after their usefulness to the Portuguese ended.

After Luanda, the next largest sources of slaves for the Atlantic trade were Bonny, now in
Nigeria, and Ouidah, in modern Benin. 432,000 and 404,000 slaves were embarked in
each respectively. The kings of Bonny were Igbo, but their rule only encompassed a tiny
part of the Igbo people; a great many of their victims were Igbo too in language and culture,
but lived beyond the king’s borders and thus outside his protection (Olaudah Equiano was
one of them, and may well have started the Middle Passage at Bonny or Calabar). Ouidah
was initially dominated by the Akwamu people, but Dahomey captured it in 1727; Dahomey
was largely a Fon kingdom.

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So a reasonable guess is that Bakongo, Mbundu, Chokwe, Igbo, Akwamu and Fon peoples
were among the largest suppliers of slaves to the Europeans. But many of these same
ethnic groups would also be among the main victims, depending on which kingdom they
were in and which king had won the most recent wars. It makes more sense to think of the
African slave sellers as kingdoms rather than tribes, much as it makes more sense to think
of the European buyers in terms of their kingdoms too (i.e. Spanish subjects rather than
Basques or Galicians; British subjects rather than Irish or Cornishmen).

Related QuestionsMore Answers Below

Thomas Musselman
Answered Feb 9, 2017 · Author has 11.9k answers and 3.6m answer views
Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, and Songhai Empire all exported slaves northwards on the
gold export route. The Mossi tried to take over the route but failed; they turned toward the
Atlantic route instead.

The Ashanti and the Yoruba were involved in Atlantic slave-trading and the Imbangala of
and the Nyamwezi would serve as intermediaries or bands,waging war on African states to
capture people for export. per wikipedia ”West African empires thriving on slave trade.
These included the Oyo empire (Yoruba), Kong Empire, Imamate of Futa Jallon, Imamate
of Futa Toro, Kingdom of Koya, Kingdom of Khasso, Kingdom of Kaabu, Fante
Confederacy, Ashanti Confederacy, and the kingdom of Dahomey. “

1 to 1.25 million Europeans were sold into North African slavery by Muslims (whose tribal
identity is unknown, if they used one).

Export to Oman, India and China of slaves goes back before 1000 AD. What tribal groups
helped in the export is unknown.

Both Ethiopian and Somalis exported slaves from their hinterlands to Muslim countries.

per wikipedia: “In Senegambia, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the
population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sudan, including Ghana
(750–1076), Mali (1235–1645), Segou (1712–1861), and Songhai (1275–1591), about a
third of the population were enslaved. In Sierra Leone in the 19th century about half of the
population consisted of enslaved people. In the 19th century at least half the population
was enslaved among the Duala of the Cameroon and other peoples of the lower Niger, the
Kongo, and the Kasanje kingdom and Chokwe of Angola. Among the Ashanti and Yoruba a
third of the population consisted of enslaved people. The population of the Kanem (1600–
1800) was about a third-enslaved. It was perhaps 40% in Bornu (1580–1890). Between
1750 and 1900 from one- to two-thirds of the entire population of the Fulani jihad states
consisted of enslaved people. The population of the Sokoto caliphate formed by Hausas in
the northern Nigeria and Cameroon was half-enslaved in the 19th century. When British
rule was first imposed on the Sokoto Caliphate and the surrounding areas in northern
Nigeria at the turn of the 20th century, approximately 2 million to 2.5 million people there
were enslaved.” So generating cash by exporting already enslaved people was just as
alluring as setting out to enslave people just for export.

Sam Ray, Business Executive at Business

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Answered Jul 21, 2018 · Author has 434 answers and 44.6k answer views
The Fon, from Dahomey. Today, the Republic of Benin. They used the proceeds of the
Slave Trade to finance their wars into present day Nigeria to capture more slaves. Sadly,
most of the slaves sent from Dahomey were Yoruba. That is why the largest number of
Yorubas outside Nigeria are in Brasil. Today they come in all colours. Yet, detached crom
their roots for over 200 years, they still speak Yoruba, maintain the same traditional
cultures & deities.

JJ Cohn
Answered Feb 10, 2017 · Author has 1.7k answers and 3m answer views
Among others, the Ashanti people were prominent slavers and traffickers (to Europeans
primarily, but to other Africans as well). Ashanti Empire/ Asante Kingdom (18th to late 19th
century)

“The Ashanti Empire was a pre-colonial West African state that emerged in the 17th
century in what is now Ghana. The Ashanti or Asante were an ethnic subgroup of the
Akan-speaking people, and were composed of small chiefdoms.

The Ashanti established their state around Kumasi in the late 1600s, shortly after their first
encounter with Europeans. In some ways the Empire grew out of the wars and dislocations
caused by Europeans who sought the famous gold deposits which gave this region its
name, the Gold Coast. During this era the Portuguese were the most active Europeans in
West Africa. They made Ashanti a significant trading partner, providing wealth and
weapons which allowed the small state to grow stronger than its neighbors. Nonetheless
when the 18th Century began Ashanti was simply one of Akan-speaking Portuguese
trading partners in the region…

“If the early Ashanti Empire economy depended on the gold trade in the 1700s, by the
early 1800s it had become a major exporter of enslaved people. The slave trade was
originally focused north with captives going to Mande and Hausa traders who exchanged
them for goods from North Africa and indirectly from Europe. By 1800, the trade had shifted
to the south as the Ashanti sought to meet the growing demand of the British, Dutch, and
French for captives. In exchange, the Ashanti received luxury items and some
manufactured goods including most importantly firearms.

The consequence of this trade for the Ashanti and their neighbors was horrendous. From
1790 until 1896, the Ashanti Empire was in a perpetual state of war involving expansion or
defense of its domain. Most of these wars afforded the opportunity to acquire more slaves
for trade. The constant warfare also weakened the Empire against the British who
eventually became their main adversary…in 1900, the British deposed and exiled the
Asantehene and annexed the Empire into their Gold Coast colony in 1902.”

It's Time to Face the Whole Truth About the Atlantic Slave Trade

“In Ghana, politician and educator Samuel Sulemana Fuseini has acknowledged that his
Asante ancestors accumulated their great wealth by abducting, capturing, and kidnapping
Africans and selling them as slaves. Likewise, Ghanaian diplomat Kofi Awoonor has
written: “I believe there is a great psychic shadow over Africa, and it has much to do with
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our guilt and denial of our role in the slave trade. We too are blameworthy in what was
essentially one of the most heinous crimes in human history.”5

“In 2000, at an observance attended by delegates from several European countries and the
United States, officials from Benin publicized President Mathieu Kerekou’s apology for his
country’s role in “selling fellow Africans by the millions to white slave traders.” “We cry for
forgiveness and reconciliation,” said Luc Gnacadja, Benin’s minister of environment and
housing. Cyrille Oguin, Benin’s ambassador to the United States, acknowledged, “We
share in the responsibility for this terrible human tragedy.” 6″

“The historical record is incontrovertible—as documented in the PBS Africans in America

series companion book:

The white man did not introduce slavery to Africa . . . . And by the fifteenth century, men
with dark skin had become quite comfortable with the concept of man as property . . . . Long
before the arrival of Europeans on West Africa’s coast, the two continents shared a common
acceptance of slavery as an unavoidable and necessary—perhaps even desirable—fact of
existence. The commerce between the two continents, as tragic as it would become, developed
upon familiar territory. Slavery was not a twisted European manipulation, although Europe
capitalized on a mutual understanding and greedily expanded the slave trade into what would
become a horrific enterprise . . . . It was a thunder that had no sound. Tribe stalked tribe, and
eventually more than 20 million Africans would be kidnapped in their own homeland. 10″

Caleb Rodreguez
Answered Dec 5, 2017
I wouldn’t call them tribes, a tribe implies in today’s world a nomadic peoples or small
groups of substance farmers with a chief. In all the answers people gave you like the
Ashanti, Akan, Benin empire and Mossi kingdoms those were all fully sovereign fulling
fictional kingdoms and empires with their own set of rules, architecture, traditions and
histories and to be demoted to “ a tribe “ is near insulting to the rich and forgotten history of
west Africa. To compare it to Europe that’s like my calling all the city states of pre United
Italy tribes or like me calling Castile, Portugal and Aragon tribal kingdoms. My favourite of
all the west african empires was the Malian empire and although that empire had tribes in
it, so did everyone in Europe. Sorry about the rant I just don’t think the demotion of our
heritage was right and I mean no offence by any of my statements and with good hope I
prey you listen to the plee of not using tribal to describe great empires

Charles Fout, former Intel & Counterintel at U.S. Army (1988-2006)

Answered Aug 27, 2018 · Author has 1.6k answers and 295.5k answer views
All of them.

No, seriously. All of them.

Some still do today.

Slavery is a part of the human condition, like war. England was the first major country in the
history of the world to take steps to outlaw slavery, beginning in 1807.

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