CONFLICTED African Slavery: The Untold Story
Feb 26, 2026
Martin Plaut, veteran BBC journalist and historian of African affairs, and author of Unbroken Chains. He traces slavery’s roots to ancient Nile civilizations and maps vast trans-Saharan, Indian Ocean, Omani/Zanzibari and internal African systems. He discusses how religion, race, regional powers and modern institutions shaped and often obscured both historical and present-day chattel slavery.
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Slavery Begins Within Africa
- African slavery originates within Africa, with evidence like Nile Valley inscriptions dating to 2900 BC, so the story must be rooted on the continent.
- Martin Plaut argues scholars should start from the slave perspective and not only from European involvement beginning in the 1440s AD.
Trans‑Saharan Trade Was Deeply Extractive
- The trans‑Saharan and Islamic slave trades were older, larger, and more extractive than often remembered, relying on constant removal rather than assimilation.
- Death rates on Saharan marches reached 30–40%, leaving little visible descendant population in North Africa.
Why Indian Ocean Slavery Is Overlooked
- Historical focus on the Atlantic slave trade overshadowed Arabic and Indian Ocean slavery because African‑American research prioritized Atlantic origins.
- Arabic scholars and Gulf states have shown little institutional interest, and some archives remain closed.
