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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The Horse and Slave Trade between the Western Sahara and Senegambia
Author:Webb (Jr), James L.A.ISNI
Year:1993
Periodical:The Journal of African History
Volume:34
Issue:1
Pages:221-246
Language:English
Geographic terms:Western Sahara
Senegal
Gambia
Subjects:slavery
Cayor polity
Waalo polity
trade
horses
History and Exploration
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/182427
Abstract:Following the late 15th and 16th-century cavalry revolution in Senegambia, the horse and slave trade became a major sector of the desert-edge political economy. Black African States imported horses from North Africa and the western Sahara in exchange for slaves. The evidence assembled on the horse trade into northern Senegambia raises the issue of the relative quantitative importance of the Atlantic and Saharan/North African slave trades and calls into question the assumption that the Atlantic slave trade was the larger of the two. Most available evidence concerns the Wolof kingdoms of Waalo and Kajoor. It suggests that the volume of slaves exported north into the desert from Waalo in the late 17th century was probably at least ten times as great as the volume of slaves exported into the Atlantic slave trade. For both Waalo and Kajoor, this ratio declined during the first half of the 18th century as slave exports into the Atlantic markets increased. The second half of the 18th century saw an increase in predatory raiding from the desert which produced an additional flow of north-bound slaves. For Waalo and Kajoor the flow of slaves north to Saharan and North African markets probably remained the larger of the two export volumes over the 18th century. This northward flow of slaves continued strong after the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and was only shut down with the imposition of French colonial authority. Notes, ref., sum.
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