what was the nature of slavery in africa before the arrival of the spanish?

Answer 1

There are several dimensions to this question.

1 - how were slaves treated, and what was their legal status?
2 - what jobs did the slaves perform?
3 - who were the slaves, and who were the owners?

1:
The people we call "slaves" in Africa before the Atlantic slave trade may most often fit our picture of indentured servants (serving a term of servitude in punishment for a crime or to work off debt). Some were orphans or children of the disposessed, raised as servants by wealthier people. More common were war captives, who in some cases earned their freedom or at least some respect, and in others would have been worked to death. The incidence chattel slavery (the slaves were property, considered less than human) was fairly low, but people captured in battle not intended to be ransomed may have experienced this fate.

Keep in mind that some African slaves in Africa into the 19th century owned property (not allowed for African slaves in the Americas), including land and houses, and even other slaves.

2:
Slaves performed many types of jobs. War captives, orphans and debt or criminal slaves were often given agricultural duties, but then, so were most free Africans.

The oceanic trades in anything, human or otherwise, worsened conditions for slaves in Africa, because the commodities exported could fetch such high prices. Slaves (in the South American silver mines and Caribbean sugar plantations, parallel to the West and Central African mines and plantations) were worked to death on a large scale to provide materials for the export market.

House slaves were common among the wealthiest in some societies, and without quite the stigma of unfairness we might attach. They probably did not have as much of a separation between house and field as slaves in North America. (Recall that child promised to Okonkwo's family in Things Fall Apart? He was exchanged - for a specified number of years - to settle the debt of a death caused by a person of the slave child's biological family. OK, so Okonkwo murdered him, but he's the antihero of the story, not a model of correct Igbo behavior and morals.)

3:
From the Middle Ages through the Early Modern Era, Central Europeans like the Circassians and Southern Slavs (whose name comes from being enslaved) were sold throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa as slaves.

More numerous were the shipments of African slaves, especially from Madagascar and the East African coast and hinterland south of the Upper Nile, to the Middle East, especially the capital region of the Caliphate (the Umayyads, I believe - in Baghdad), but also to other regions of the Caliphate.

In the late 9th century, a great number of African slaves working on irrigation and, I recall, channeling the Tigris and/or Euphrates, rebelled. The Revolt of the Zanj is testimony to the scale of slave trade into Mesopotamia from Africa.

Many Africans were enslaved by other Africans, traded a short distance from home, and many returned after a few years.

Only after the Portuguese visit to the Congo in the mid 15th century did European ownership of African slaves for agricultural export become numerically significant.

At that point, the Atlantic slave trade tapped into and stimulated existing African methods of procuring slaves (tide into African judicial systems, as I've explained). This had the disastrous effect of expanding war for profit. The more wars, the more slaves, the more profit.

Guess what European slave traders carried to Africa in their slave ships?

Yep, guns.

Answer 2

First two answers are essentially correct. Intertribal slavery came first. Arab traders turned slavery into a commercial enterprise by 800, mainly buying slaves from their local captors. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to get into the slave trade [about 1450], followed by the Spanish, then the British around 1700.

Answer 3

There was some slave trade within the African kingdoms, and between West Africa and Middle East. According to About.com, "Nomads living in the Sahara traded salt, meat, and their knowledge as guides for cloth, gold, cereal, and slaves. ...Slaves were wanted by the courts of Arab and Berber princes as servants, concubines, soldiers, and agricultural labourers."

There is a lot of research on pre-slave trade Africa going on in the archaeological community. (see link below)

Encarta has a great article on African slavery:
http://autocww.colorado.edu/~blackmon/E64ContentFiles/AfricanHistory/SlaveryInAfrica.html

Also take a look at pbs.org for a great explanation of slave trade before the Spanish/Portuguese involvement.
http://www.pbs.org/wonders/Episodes/Epi3/slave_2.htm

Answer 4

The Spanish only occupied Morocco and a few other inconsequential bits. In Morocco there were slaves, including many Europeans who were captured in various ways including raids on coastal English towns.

Answer 5

Africans enslaved Africans and even sold them to other African tribes.
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