
The Red Sea slave trade, sometimes known as the Islamic slave trade,
Arab slave trade, or Oriental slave trade, was a slave trade across the
Red Sea
The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; T ...
trafficking Africans from the African continent to slavery in the
Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate ...
and the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...
from antiquity until the mid-20th-century.
The Red Sea slave trade is known as one of the longest enduring slave trades in the world, as it is known to have existed from Ancient times until the 1960s, when
slavery in Saudi Arabia and
slavery in Yemen
Although slavery is recognized as being illegal around the world by international treaties and conventions, evidence has shown that there is still existing slavery in Yemen, and the number of slaves is in fact growing. Slavery affects and inhibits ...
was finally abolished. When other slave trade routes were stopped, the Red Sea slave trade became internationally known as a
slave trade
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
center during the
interwar period
In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the World War I, First World War to the beginning of the World War II, Second World War. The in ...
. After
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, growing international pressure eventually resulted in its final official stop in the mid 20th-century.
The
Red Sea Slave Trade
The Red Sea slave trade, sometimes known as the Islamic slave trade, Arab slave trade, or Oriental slave trade, was a slave trade across the Red Sea trafficking Africans from the African continent to slavery in the Arabian Peninsula and the ...
was, together with the
Trans-Saharan Slave Trade
During the Trans-Saharan slave trade, slaves were transported across the Sahara desert. Most were moved from Sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa to be sold to Mediterranean and Middle eastern civilizations; a small percentage went the other ...
and
Indian Ocean slave trade, one of the arenas comprising what has been called the "Islamic slave trade", "Oriental slave trade", or "Arab slave trade" of enslaved people from East Africa to the Muslim world.
Overview history
The slave trade from Africa to Arabia via the Red Sea had ancient roots. While in Pre-Islamic Arabia, Arab war captives were common targets of slavery, importation of slaves from Ethiopia across the Red Sea also took place. The Red Sea slave trade appears to have been established at least from the
1st-century
The 1st century was the century spanning AD 1 ( I) through AD 100 ( C) according to the Julian calendar. It is often written as the or to distinguish it from the 1st century BC (or BCE) which preceded it. The 1st century is considered part o ...
onward, when enslaved Africans were trafficked across the Red Sea to Arabia and Yemen.
[The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery Throughout History. (2023). Tyskland: Springer International Publishing. 143]
In the 9th century, slaves were transported from the Red Sea slave trade to Jeddah, Mecca, and Medina, and by caravan over the desert to Baghdad and
slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
. The slave trade was still going on a many centuries later, when it was noted by Western travelers.
Richard Francis Burton
Sir Richard Francis Burton (; 19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British explorer, writer, orientalist scholar,and soldier. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary kn ...
described the slave market in
Medina
Medina,, ', "the radiant city"; or , ', (), "the city" officially Al Madinah Al Munawwarah (, , Turkish: Medine-i Münevvere) and also commonly simplified as Madīnah or Madinah (, ), is the Holiest sites in Islam, second-holiest city in Islam, ...
in the 1850s:
:"The bazar at Al-Madinah is poor and as almost all the slaves are brought from Meccah by the Jallabs or drivers after exporting the best to Egypt the town receives only the refuse.... some of these slaves come from Abyssinia: the greater part are driven from the Galla country and exported at the harbours of the Somali coast, Berberah, Tajoura and Zayla. As many as 2000 slaves from the former place, and 4000 from the later, are annually shipped off to Mocha, Jeddah, Suez and Maskat.
..It is a large street roofed with matting and full of coffee-houses. The merchandise sat in rows parallel with the walls. The prettiest girls occupied the highest benches. Below were the plainer sort and lowest of all the boys. They were all gaily dressed in pink and other light-colored muslins with transparent veiles over their heads; and whether from the effect of such unusual splendor or from the re-action succeeding to their terrible land-journey and sea-voyage, they appeared perfectly happy." According to a British report, 320 slaves were shipped via the Red Sea slave trade to Jeddah in May 1879.
Slaves where marched in shackles from the West Lakes to the coasts of Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, placed upon dhows and trafficked across
the Indian Ocean to the Gulf or Aden, or across the Red Sea to Arabia and Aden, while weak slaves being thrown in the sea.
After
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, the East coast of the Red Sea formed an independent nation as the
Kingdom of Hejaz
The Hashemite Kingdom of Hejaz ( ar, المملكة الحجازية الهاشمية, ''Al-Mamlakah al-Ḥijāziyyah Al-Hāshimiyyah'') was a state in the Hejaz region in the Middle East that included the western portion of the Arabian Penins ...
(1916–1925). Hejaz did not consider itself obliged to obey the laws and treaties signed by the Ottoman Empire in regard to slavery and slave trade. During the
Interwar period
In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the World War I, First World War to the beginning of the World War II, Second World War. The in ...
, the Kingdom of Hejaz was internationally known as a regional slave trade center.
Supply sources
The sources that supplied the slave trade across the Red Sea was mainly situated in Africa. They included routes directly across the Red Sea from mainland Africa, as well as a route connected to the Indian Ocean slave trade, in which the slaves were originally trafficked via the Indian Ocean slave trade and then in to the Red Sea past yemen. The origin of the slaves were mainly African, but there were a minority of other ethnicities provided via the Indian Ocean slave trade, mainly Asians.
East Africa
East Africa came to act as a supply source for slaves to the Arabian Peninsula via the Indian Ocean slave trade since at least the middle ages. While the majority of these slaves appear to have been shipped to the Arabian Peninsula via Oman and Muscat rather than via the Red Sea, the Red Sea was also a route for the slave trade between East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. It also acted as a route for slaves to Egypt.
In the 12th century,
Muhammad al-Idrisi trafficked African children from present day Kenya to Arabia.
Ethiopia
The slave trade had two major routes to Hejaz. African slaves were trafficked from primarily Sudan and Ethiopia. Primarily children and young women were bought or given as tribute by their parents to Ethiopian chiefs, who sold them to slave traders.
The parents were told that their children were going to be given a better life as slaves in Arabia.
The slaves were delivered to Arabian slave traders by the coast and shipped across the Red Sea to Jeddah.
Eunuchs, female concubines and male laborers were the occupations of slaves sent from Ethiopia to Jidda and other parts of Hejaz. The southwest and southern parts of Ethiopia supplied most of the girls being exported by Ethiopian slave traders to India and Arabia. Female and male slaves from Ethiopia made up the main supply of slaves to India and the Middle East.
Egypt and Hejaz were also the recipients of Indian women trafficked via Aden and Goa.
Since Britain banned the slave trade in its colonies, 19th century British ruled Aden was no longer a recipient of slaves and the slaves sent from Ethiopia to Arabia were shipped to Hejaz instead.
India
India was supply source of slaves to the Arabian Peninsula since Ancient times, although it was to a lesser exctent than slaves from Africa.
During the 13th century, Indian boys, women and girls intended for
sexual slavery
Sexual slavery and sexual exploitation is an attachment of any ownership rights, right over one or more people with the intent of Coercion, coercing or otherwise forcing them to engage in Human sexual activity, sexual activities. This include ...
, were trafficked from India to Arabia and to Egypt across the Red Sea via
Aden
Aden ( ar, عدن ' Yemeni: ) is a city, and since 2015, the temporary capital of Yemen, near the eastern approach to the Red Sea (the Gulf of Aden), some east of the strait Bab-el-Mandeb. Its population is approximately 800,000 people. ...
.
Madagascar and the Indian Ocean islands
Slaves were also trafficked to Red Sea ports from Madagascar and adjacent Indian Ocean islands, such as the Comorian Archipelago, after Arab Muslim traders, along with their Swahili allies, gained control of Zanzibar and the Swahili Coast in the 9th century. From the 9th to the 17th centuries, an estimated 2,000-3,000 East African and Malagasy slaves were trafficked annually from the Indian Ocean coast to slave ports along the Red Sea and other parts of Arabia. By the mid-17th century, this number had surged to over 3,000 to 6,000 slaves trafficked each year from just Madagascar (not including the Comoros Islands) to the Red Sea by non-European Muslim slave traders (Swahili, Comorian, Arab and Hadrami).
Some historians estimate that during the 17th century as many as 150,000 Malagasy slaves were exported from Boeny in northwest Madagascar to the Muslim world including the Red Sea Coast (Jeddah), Hejaz (Mecca), Arabia (Aden), Oman (Muscat), Zanzibar, Kilwa, Lamu, Somalia (Barawa), and possibly Sudan (Suakin), Persia (Bandar Abbas), and India (Surat). Given the racial diversity of Madagascar, which was populated by a mix of Austronesian and Bantu settlers, the Malagasy slaves included people with Southeast Asian, African and hybrid phenotypes.
European traders also took part in the lucrative slave trade between Madagascar and the Red Sea. In 1694, a Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship transported at least 400 Malagasy slaves to an Arabian port on the Red Sea (presumably Jeddah) where they were sold to Arab Muslim traders to be enslaved in Mecca, Medina, Mocha, Aden, al-Shihr, and Kishn. To varying degrees, Portuguese, French, Dutch, English and Ottoman merchants were known to have participated in the Malagasy slave trade as well.
Pilgrimage route
A major slave route were connected to the
Hajj
The Hajj (; ar, حَجّ '; sometimes also spelled Hadj, Hadji or Haj in English) is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city for Muslims. Hajj is a mandatory religious duty for Muslims that must be carried ...
pilgrimage. Already in the Middle ages, the Hajj played a role in the slave trade. In 1416,
al-Maqrizi
Al-Maqrīzī or Maḳrīzī (Arabic: ), whose full name was Taqī al-Dīn Abū al-'Abbās Aḥmad ibn 'Alī ibn 'Abd al-Qādir ibn Muḥammad al-Maqrīzī (Arabic: ) (1364–1442) was a medieval Egyptian Arab historian during the Mamluk era, kn ...
told how pilgrims coming from
Takrur
Takrur, Tekrur or Tekrour ( 800 – c. 1285) was an ancient state of West Africa, which flourished roughly parallel to the Ghana Empire.
Origin
Takrur was the capital of the state which flourished on the lower Senegal River. Takruri was ...
(near the
Senegal River
,french: Fleuve Sénégal)
, name_etymology =
, image = Senegal River Saint Louis.jpg
, image_size =
, image_caption = Fishermen on the bank of the Senegal River estuary at the outskirts of Saint-Louis, Senegal ...
) brought 1,700 slaves with them to
Mecca
Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red ...
.
The annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the
Hajj
The Hajj (; ar, حَجّ '; sometimes also spelled Hadj, Hadji or Haj in English) is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city for Muslims. Hajj is a mandatory religious duty for Muslims that must be carried ...
, was biggest vehicle for enslavement.
[Emancipating "The Unfortunates": The Anti-slavery Society, the United States, the United Nations, and the Decades-Long Fight to Abolish the Saudi Arabian Slave Trade. DeAntonis, Nicholas J. Fordham University ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2021. 28499257. p. 1-3] When the open
Trans-Saharan slave trade
During the Trans-Saharan slave trade, slaves were transported across the Sahara desert. Most were moved from Sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa to be sold to Mediterranean and Middle eastern civilizations; a small percentage went the other ...
died out, Muslim-African Hajj pilgrims across the Sahara were duped or given low-cost travel expenses by tribal leaders; when they arrived at the East Coast, they were trafficked over the Red Sea in the dhows of the Red Sea slave trade or on small passenger planes, and discovered upon arrival in Saudi Arabia that they were to be sold on the slave market rather than to perform the Hajj.
Slave traders trafficked primarily women and children in the guise of wives, servants and pilgrims to Hejaz, where they were sold after arrival.
The victims of this trafficking route were sometimes tricked, and taken on Hajj under false pretenses. Slave traders trafficked women to Hejaz by marrying them and then taking them on the Hajj, where they were sold: afterwards, their families were told that their women had died during the journey.
In a similar fashion, parents entrusted their children to slave traders under the impression that the slave traders were taking their children on Hajj, as servants, or as students.
This category of traffic victims came from all over the Muslim world, as far away as the East Indies and China. Some travelers sold their servants or poor travel companions in the Hajj, in order to pay for their travel costs.
The English traveler Charles M. Doughty, who visited Central Arabia in the 1880s, noted that African slaves were brought up to Arabia every year during the hajj, and that "there are bondsmen and bondwomen and free negro families in every tribe and town".
In the 1920s, action was taken against the Red Sea slave trade by the British during their campaign against
slavery in Sudan
Slavery in Sudan began in ancient times, and recently had a resurgence during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005). During the Trans-Saharan slave trade, many Nilotic peoples from the lower Nile Valley were purchased as slaves and brought ...
by taking better control of the Hajj pilgrimage, establishing a clearinghouse in Port Sudan for slaves repatriated by the British from slavery in the Kingdom of Hejaz, resulting in over 800 slaves resettled between 1925 and 1935.
In the 1950s, in connection to the
Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery and the
Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery,
Barnett Janner commented:
The shipping of slaves occurs in only one particular area of the world, in the seas around Arabia. The warships most likely to search such slavers would be British, and I feel sure that there would not be any abuse of the right to search. I am sorry that we gave up the fight for that right. As far as I know, Saudi Arabia and Yemen are the only States in the world where chattel slavery is still a legal institution. Only a year or so ago a French Deputy—the person, I assume, to whom my hon. Friend referred—investigated the situation and found that every year ignorant Africans are lured on by agents to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. They are not told, of course, that they need a Saudi Arabian visa. When they arrive in Saudi Arabia without a visa they are arrested and put into prison for a few days and then handed over to licensed slave dealers. In addition, raids are made in Baluchistan and the Sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf and people are captured and carried off by land and sea, taken to small Saudi Arabian ports and sold in slave markets.
Activism against the slave trade
Before World War II
Ottoman anti slavery laws where not enforced in the late 19th-century, particularly not in Hejaz; the first attempt to ban the Red Sea slave trade in 1857, the
Firman of 1857, resulted in a rebellion in the Hejaz Province, which resulted in Hejaz exempted from the ban.
The
Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1880 formally banned the Red Sea slave trade, but it was not enforced in the Ottoman Provinces in the Arabian Peninsula.
The British fought the slave trade by patrolling the Red Sea. In 1880, the Ottoman Empire conceded to Britain the right to search and seize any vessel to Ottoman territories suspected of carrying slaves. However, these controls were not effective, since the slave traders would inform the European Colonial authorities that the slaves were their wives, children, servants or fellow Hajj pilgrims, and the victims themselves were convinced of the same, unaware that they were being shipped as slaves.
Since the British consulate had opened in Jeddah in the 1870s, the British had used their diplomatic privileges to manumit the slaves escaping to the British Consulate to ask for asylum.
Royal slaves were exempted from this right. The French, Italian, and Dutch consulates also used their right to manumit the slaves who reached their consulate to ask for asylum. However, the activity of France and Italy was very limited, and only the Dutch were as willing to use this right as much as Britain. The right for manumission by seeking asylum could be used by any slave who managed to reach the consul office or a ship belonging to a foreign power. Most slaves who used this right were citizens of these nations' colonies, who had traveled to Arabia without being aware that they would be sold as slaves upon arrival. The manumission activity of the foreign consuls was met with formal cooperation by the Arabian authorities but greatly disliked by the local population, and it was common for slaves seeking asylum to disappear between seeking asylum and the moment the consul could arrange a place for them on a boat.
The slavery and slave trade in the Arabian Peninsula, and particular in Saudi Arabia (Kingdom of Hejaz), attracted attention by the
League of Nations
The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...
and contributed to the creation of the
1926 Slavery Convention
The 1926 Slavery Convention or the Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery is an international treaty created under the auspices of the League of Nations and first signed on 25 September 1926. It was registered in ''League of Nations ...
, obliging the British to combat the slave trade in the area.
In order to combat the Red Sea slave trade, which was strongly connected to the Hajj pilgrimage, the Inter-Sanitary Conference in Alexandria of 1927 declared that pilgrims were to travel only by steamers or motorboats in order to avoid the dhow slave boats, but this regulation proved to be difficult to enforce in practice, and pilgrims continued to cross the Red Sea by dhow to land at places difficult to control.
In 1930 ''Le Matin'' published an article about the Red Sea slave trade from French Djibouti, describing how Arab slave traders dumped slaves alive in the Red Sea to avoid the anti slavery patrol ships, aware that they would stop to pick up the slaves rather than keep pursuing the slave ships (dhows); the article attracted a lot of attention and contributed to French support for the foundation of the
Committee of Experts on Slavery.
In 1933 Nigeria introduced a new passport system that required Hajj pilgrims to deposit funds to cover the expenses and return fares in order to prevent their enslavement during the Hajj.
Between 1928 and 1931, the British consulate in Jeddah helped 81 people to be manumitted, 46 of whom were repatriated to Sudan and 25 to Massawa in Ethiopia.
The vast majority of slaves originated from Africa, but the fact that the majority of them had been trafficked as children posed a problem for the authorities. They could not remember exactly where they had come from or where their family lived, could no longer speak any language other than Arabic, and thus had difficulty supporting themselves after repatriation, all of which in the 1930s had caused a reluctance from the authorities to receive them.
In 1936, Saudi Arabia formally banned the import of slaves who were not already slaves prior to entering the kingdom, a reform which was however on paper only.
After World War II
After
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, there was growing international pressure from the United Nations to end the slave trade. In 1948, the United Nations declared slavery to be a crime against humanity in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal De ...
, after which the
Anti-Slavery Society pointed out that there was about one million slaves in the Arabian Peninsula, which was a crime against the
1926 Slavery Convention
The 1926 Slavery Convention or the Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery is an international treaty created under the auspices of the League of Nations and first signed on 25 September 1926. It was registered in ''League of Nations ...
, and demanded that the UN form a committee to handle the issue.
The
British Anti-Slavery Society actively campaigned against the slavery and slave trade in the Arabian Peninsula from the conclusion of World War II until the 1970s, and particularly publicized Saudi Arabia's central role in 20th-century
chattel Slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
within the United Nations, but their efforts was long opposed by the lack of support from London and Washington.
[Emancipating "The Unfortunates": The Anti-slavery Society, the United States, the United Nations, and the Decades-Long Fight to Abolish the Saudi Arabian Slave Trade. DeAntonis, Nicholas J. Fordham University ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2021. 28499257. p. 3] The
British Foreign office's internal reports noted an upswing in the slave trade to Saudi Arabia after WII, but preferred to turn a blind eye to it to avoid international exposure of their own Gulf Sheikh allies’ complicity in the slave trade.
The US
Eisenhower administration
Dwight D. Eisenhower's tenure as the 34th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1953, and ended on January 20, 1961. Eisenhower, a Republican from Kansas, took office following a landslide victory ov ...
sought to undermine the
Bricker Amendment by a retreat from the UN, and made Saudi Arabia a cornerstone of the
Eisenhower Doctrine
The Eisenhower Doctrine was a policy enunciated by Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 5, 1957, within a "Special Message to the Congress on the Situation in the Middle East". Under the Eisenhower Doctrine, a Middle Eastern country could request Amer ...
, and therefore abstained from the ''United Nations Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery''. The British Anti-Slavery Society failed to pass stricter enforcement at the 1956 UN Supplementary Convention on Slavery, but the issue started to attract international attention.
[Emancipating "The Unfortunates": The Anti-slavery Society, the United States, the United Nations, and the Decades-Long Fight to Abolish the Saudi Arabian Slave Trade. DeAntonis, Nicholas J. Fordham University ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2021. 28499257. p. 4-5]
Abolition
When President
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...
took office, the issue of slavery within the US ally Saudi Arabia had caused growing domestic and international attention and caused damage to the Kennedy administration's liberal world-order rhetoric and the US-Saudi partnership, and Kennedy pressed Saudi leaders to "modernize and reform" if they wished US military assistance during the
Yemeni Civil War Yemeni Civil War may refer to several historical events which have taken place in Yemen:
*Alwaziri coup, February – March 1948
*Yemeni–Adenese clan violence, 1956–60
*North Yemen Civil War, 1962–70
*Aden Emergency, 1963–67
*South Yemen#Di ...
.
Kennedy wished to strengthen the UN, which in turn also strengthened the long going abolition campaign of the British Anti Slavery Society within the UN and gave it gravitas.
The Kennedy administration also experienced international pressure from influential secular Middle East regional leaders like
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein, . (15 January 1918 – 28 September 1970) was an Egyptian politician who served as the second president of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970. Nasser led the Egyptian revolution of 1952 and introduced far-re ...
, as well as from the newly decolonized African states, whose own citizens were the most common victims of the slave trade to the Arabian Peninsula,
and whose good will was necessary Kennedy's anti Soviet
New Frontier agenda in the Global South.
[Emancipating "The Unfortunates: The Anti-slavery Society, the United States, the United Nations, and the Decades-Long Fight to Abolish the Saudi Arabian Slave Trade. DeAntonis, Nicholas J. Fordham University ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2021. 28499257. p. 17] The Kennedy administration therefore put pressure on Saudi Arabia to introduce "modernization reforms", a request which was heavily directed against slavery.
In 1962, Saudi Arabia abolished slavery officially; however, unofficial slavery is rumored to exist.
The same year, 1962, slavery was banned in Yemen as well, followed by Oman in 1970.
Legacy
Research has indicated links between the Red Sea slave trade and
female genital mutilation
Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and female circumcision, is the ritual cutting or removal of some or all of the external female genitalia. The practice is found ...
.
[Corno, Lucia and La Ferrara, Eliana and Voena, Alessandra, Female Genital Cutting and the Slave Trade (December 2020). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP15577, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3753982] An investigation combining contemporary from data on slave shipments from 1400 to 1900 with data from 28 African countries has found that women belonging to ethnic groups historically victimized by the Red Sea slave trade were "significantly" more likely to suffer genital mutilation in the 21st-century, as well as "more in favour of continuing the practice".
Women trafficked in the Red Sea slave trade were sold as concubines (sex slaves) in the Islamic Middle East up until as late as in the mid 20th-century, and the practice of
infibulation was used to temporarily signal the virginity of girls, increasing their value on the slave market: "According to descriptions by early travelers, infibulated female slaves had a higher price on the market because infibulation was thought to ensure chastity and loyalty to the owner and prevented undesired pregnancies".
See also
*
Comoros slave trade
*
Zanzibar slave trade
*
Slavery in Saudi Arabia
*
Afro-Saudis
*
Treaty of Jeddah (1927)
*
History of slavery in the Muslim world
*
Human trafficking in Saudi Arabia
With respect to human trafficking, Saudi Arabia was designated, together with Italy, Japan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Germany, Greece, Croatia, Israel, Iceland, Norway, and Angola, as a Tier 2 country by the United States Department ...
*
History of concubinage in the Muslim world
*
Slavery in Oman
*
Slavery in Mauritania
Slavery has been called "deeply rooted" in the structure of the northwestern African country of Mauritania, and "closely tied" to the ethnic composition of the country, despite the ending of slavery across other African countries and colonial owne ...
*
Human trafficking in the Middle East
*
Kafala system
*
Baqt
Gallery
File:Slavery and the slave trade in Africa (1893) (14590725929).jpg, Slave Market, 1893
File:Boarding a Slave Dhow, W L Wyllie RA.jpg, Boarding a Slave Dhow
File:Slaves released RMG E9094.tiff, Freed Slaves
File:Slaves captured from a dhow RMG E9081 (cropped).tiff, Slaves captured from a dhow
File:A Group of slave children RMG E9140.tiff, A group of freed children
References
{{Africa in topic, Slavery in
25th-century BC establishments
African slave trade
Slavery in Asia
Slavery in Yemen
1960s disestablishments
Forced migration
Slave trade
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
Trade routes
Anti-black racism in Asia
Asian slave trade
Slavery in Ethiopia
Slavery in Sudan
Red Sea slave trade