Trans-Saharan Slave Trade Essay

Slavery is one of the world’s oldest businesses in existence. With the establishment of agriculture came civilization. With civilization came the establishment of social classes. And with all hierarchies there has to be something at the bottom. The most vulnerable of society were a prime resource for a life of servitude and enslavement by the upper and middle classes. The popular view of slavery is a brutal and inhumane system used by only the most cruel and barbaric of societies. But in truth slavery has been practiced or experienced in some shape or form by almost every society. It actually can be seen as a sign of economic and social advancement, especially during early periods in history. While that idea might seem harsh, if you look slavery is usually a result of conquest and the economic and social surges that follow it. When most people think of slavery, especially in the Western world, they think of the Africans slaves of the New World. They think of the oppression, racial discrimination, and the hardships of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. In actuality, that form of enslavement was new into of itself. It combined ancient features of the institution and recent developments in social thinking to create a new type of horror. If we look back at slavery in history, we would …show more content…
The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade shares many similarities with its counterpart of the West, The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. These forced immigrations and enslavement of blacks are two events that have shaped black culture across the globe. Yet how is it that the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, the enslavement of blacks by Arab Muslims for centuries, has gone unmentioned in the history books? How is it that The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade has been scrutinized, stigmatized and dissected every which way but its eastern counterpart has been lost in the pages of