African Slavery: The Untold Story

In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks to former BBC journalist Martin Plaut about his new book Unbroken Chains: A 5,000-Year History of African Enslavement (amzn.eu/d/0fZ6covW), which tells the whole story of African slavery, a story far older and more global than the one that focuses only on the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Martin explains:

• How Africa’s slavery story begins in the Nile Valley around 2900 BC

• Why the trans-Saharan slave routes remain less examined than Atlantic slavery

• What Islam did — and didn’t — change about slavery in practice

• Indian Ocean slavery

• Oman’s slave market in Zanzibar and its caravans that penetrated deep into central Africa

• Indigenous African slavery in Ethiopia and the Sokoto Caliphate

• The role of racial hierarchies and ‘slave blood’ stigma within societies

• Barbary corsairs and European so-called ‘white slavery’

• Contemporary chattel slavery in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Sudan, and Libya

• Why major institutions still prefer commemorating slavery in the past to confronting it in the present

Follow Martin on X: x.com/martinplaut

And his personal website: martinplaut.com

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

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