The Ideology of Slavery and Culture

“In Africa, there were few slaves and certainly no epoch of

slavery. Most of the slaves were in North African and other

Moslem societies, and in those instances a man and his family

could have the same slave status for generations, within the

overall feudal structure of the society. Elsewhere in Africa,

communal societies were introduced to the concept of owning

alien human beings when they took captives in war. At first, those

captives were in a very disadvantaged position, comparable to

that of slaves, but very rapidly captives or their offspring became

ordinary members of the society, because there was no scope for

the perpetual exploitation of man by man in a context that was

neither feudal nor capitalist.”

Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Howard

University Press, 1982, p. 38.