African Slavery and New World Slavery
One of the justifications for slavery in the New World was this idea that slavery at the time was a global institution which was practiced in Africa as well. The purpose of this claim is to suggest that European slave owners in the Americas were not doing anything different than what was already being done in Africa.
The problem with this narrative is that it is that it assumes that the institution of slavery was the same everywhere, but this was not the case. Olaudah Equiano, who was born in Africa and enslaved in the Americas, gave a description of the difference:
Those prisoners which were not sold or redeemed, we kept as slaves: but how different was their condition from that of the slaves in the West Indies! With us, they do no more work than other members of the community, even their master; their food, clothing and lodging were nearly the same as theirs, (except that they were not permitted to eat with those who were free-born;) and there was scarce any other difference between them, than a superior degree of importance which the head of a family possesses in our state, and that authority which, as such, he exercises over every part of his household. Some of these slaves have even slaves under them as their own property, and for their own use.
The difference was that in many African societies, people who were held in bondage still had basic human rights. In Mali, for example, the Kouroukan Fouga stated: “Do not ill treat the slaves. We are the master of the slave but not the bag he carries.”
American law often upheld the view that slaves were mere property which could be treated as a master saw fit. There was a particular case which I mentioned A Legally Created People which illustrated this point. That case was State v. Mann.
State v. Mann was a case in which the defendant was indicted for an assault and battery upon Lydia, the slave of a woman named Elizabeth Jones. The battery occurred during the period in which Lydia was hired by the defendant to work as a slave. The court held that under the principle of bailment, the defendant had all of the same rights as the slave owner did, which included the right to beat the slave.
What I found noteworthy about the case was that this case was essentially treated as a property case. After all, bailment is a principle of property law which refers to the transfer or possession of a property. This case is a typical example of how dehumanizing chattel slavery in the Americas truly was.
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