Remembering Slavery: A Thing of the Past?

On UNESCO International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, read around the subject with Think Africa Press.

By Rosie Hore

Today marks the UNESCO International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, designated to commemorate the transatlantic slave trade and its victims. On this day, 23 August, in 1791, an uprising in what is now Haiti began, setting in motion a series of events which would lead to the eventual abolition of the slave trade in 1807.

Africa’s coerced integration into the international system from the 16th century was in large part down to the transatlantic slave trade, in which Africans, mainly from Central and West Africa, were sold to European traders and shipped to North and South America to be exploited for forced labour. For almost three centuries, an international economic system remained precariously balanced on the carefully constructed myth of racial inferiority.

It was slavery that enabled the industrial revolutions of the European and American nations to flourish as quickly as they did, and patterns of global inequality today cannot fail to mention the continued impact of the slave trade. Economic gain had a vast human cost. In total, between 10 million and 30 million Africans were traded, transported or killed.

On this day of remembrance, Think Africa Press has compiled a selection of articles examining both Africa’s historical place in the slave trade and ongoing newer forms of slavery that still prevail in the modern day.