Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 08.djvu/517

SLAVE COAST 453 SLAVEBY "Why Men Pray" (1916) ; "The Gift of Immortality" (1916) ; "A Churchman's Reading" (1917) ; "Certain American Faces— Sketches from Life" (1918) ; "The Lord's Prayer" (1919). SLAVE COAST, a maritime strip on the W. of Africa, on the Guinea coast, extending between the Volta and Akinga, a stretch of about 240 miles. It consists mainly of long narrow islands. The prin- cipal towns on the coast are Badagry and Whydah. A large traffic in slaves was formerly carried on at the ports of this region, hence its name. SLAVERY, the state or condition of a slave, bondage. Slavery in the full sense of the term implies that the slave is the property or at the disposal of another, who has a right to employ or treat him as he pleases; but the system has been subjected to innumerable limitations and modifications. Slavery probably arose at an early period of the world's history out of the accident of capture in war. Sav- ages, in place of massacring their cap- tives, found it more profitable to keep them in servitude. All the ancient Orien- tal nations of whom we have any records, including the Jews, had their slaves. The Hebrews were authorized by their law to possess slaves, not only of other races, but of their own nation. The latter were generally insolvent debtors who had sold themselves through poverty, or thieves who lacked the means of making restitu- tion; and the law dealt with them far more leniently than with stranger slaves. They might be redeemed, and if not re- deemed became free in the space of seven years from the beginning of their servi- tude; besides which there was every 50th year a general emancipation of native slaves. Serfdom. — A numerous class of the population of Europe known as serfs or villeins were in a state of what was al- most tantamount to slavery during the early Middle Ages. In some cases this serf population consisted of an earlier race which had been subjugated by the conquerors; but there were also instances of persons from famine or other pressing cause, selling themselves into slavery, or even surrendering themselves to churches and monasteries for the sake of the bene- fits to be derived from the prayers of their masters. Different as was the con- dition of the serf in different countries and at different periods, his position was on the whole much more favorable than that of the slave under the Roman law. He had certain acknowledged rights — and this was more particularly the case with the classes of serfs who were at- tached to the soil. In England, prior to the Norman Conquest, a large proportion of the population were in a servile posi- tion, either as domestic slaves or as cul- tivators of the land. The humblest was nearly a slave — the theoiv; the other, the ceorl, an irremovable tiller of the ground. In Scotland as in England serfdom dis- appeared by insensible degrees; but a re- markable form of it continued to survive down to the closing years of the 18th century. Colliers and salters were bound by the law, independent of paction, on entering to a coal work or salt mine, to perpetual service there; and in case of sale or alienation of the ground on which the works were situated, the right to their services passed without any express grant to the purchaser. The sons of the collier and salter could follow no occupation but that of their father. Negro Slavery. — This form existed from the earliest times; the Carthagini- ans seem to have brought caravans of slaves from various parts of north Af- rica; but in this the negroes suffered no more than other contemporary barbari- ans. The negro slavery of modern times was a sequel to the discovery of America. The first part of the New World in which negroes were extensively used was Haiti, in St. Domingo. The aboriginal population had at first been employed in the mines; but this sort of labor was found so fatal to their constitution that Las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa, the cele- brated protector of the Indians, interceded with Charles for the substitution of African slaves as a stronger race. As early as the beginning of the 16th century a good many Africans were already in Hispaniola; the emperor accordingly in 1517 authorized a large importation of negroes from the establishments of the Portuguese on the coast of Guinea. Sir John Hawkins was the first Englishman who engaged in the traffic t in which his countrymen soon largely participated, England having exported no fewer than 300,000 slaves from Africa between the years 1680 and 1700; and between 1700 and 1786 imported 610,000 into Jamaica alone. Most of the English slaving ships belonged first to Bristol, and from 1730 onward to Liverpool. The slave trade was attended with ex- treme inhumanity. Legal restraints were, however, imposed in the various Euro- pean settlements to protect the slaves from injury; in the British colonies courts were instituted to hear their complaints; their condition was to a certain extent ameliorated, and the flogging of women was prohibited. But while slavery was thus legalized in the British colonies, it was at the same time the law of Eng- land (as decided in 1772 by Lord Mans- field in the case of the negro Somerset)