West African Slavery

The West African countries participated in slavery, too. But they didn’t engage in trading slaves; they used them in a different way. In West Africa slaves were a symbol of the wealth of a family in which they had to work. But being a slave was only like being a temp worker. That means that a slave was free after some years of work. Additionally the West African slaves had many rights, for instance they were allowed to own property and their children were born in freedom. But in the late 15th century, a European slave trading network had developed which enslaved West Africans. Later on those were the slaves shipped to America to work on cotton fields for example.