Slavery in the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

In the early 1840s and following the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade by several European nations and the United States, European humanitarians—particularly the British—embarked on an earnest campaign to outlaw the vigorous enslaving activities thriving in the Middle East and North Africa. This chapter examines the extent to which the marked increase of enslavement activities and their suppression through the pressure of European abolitionism fits into the saga of the nineteenth-century transformation processes characterized by the rise of European domination of the region. Focusing on the enslavement of Black Africans, the chapter examines the impact of state modernization schemes and the rise of European capitalism on the expansion of enslaving activities and their suppression and argues that no prior historical development has shaped the contours of African slavery in the Middle East and North Africa more than the effects of the nineteenth-century transformation process.