SSllaavveerryy
Slavery has undoubtedly existed at all times among the Negroes,
although it has been especially developed at the instigation of
foreigners: formerly by the inhabitants of North Africa and nearer
Asia, and at a more recent epoch by European and American
slave traders. Today it has been abolished by the colonising
nations, who have ended by destroying that which they
worshipped; it is still more effectively abolished by the fact of the
disappearance of slave-hunting conquerors and by the cessation
of inter-tribal wars: because, outside of a few miserable groups
among whom parents sometimes sold their own children in order
to procure food for themselves, there have never been other
slaves in Negro Africa than the persons captured in war. These
became the property of their captors, who could keep them for
themselves or sell them.
In law, slaves were indeed but cattle. In fact, with the exception
of those who were destined for the slave traders and who
constituted a veritable merchandise, they were treated by their
master as almost on the same footing as the members of his
family, often becoming his trusted associates and sometimes
being freed by him on his own initiative. As for the children
born of slaves, they could not be sold and they made up an
integral and inalienable part of the family property, and it was
the same with their descendants in perpetuity. These descen-
dants of slaves have become similar to agrarian serfs who,
often much more numerous than their lords, constitute, today,
what one might call the lower classes, while the persons in a
position to prove that their ancestors have always been free are
for the most part a minority and form the nobility.
Statuette (Baoulé).
Ivory Coast.
Wood, iron, 57 x 13 cm.
Centre Pompidou - Musée national d’art moderne, Paris.