Ap World History Dbq Slavery

The use of slaves has always been present in the world since the beginning of civilization, although the use and treatment of those slaves has differed widely through time and geographic location. Different geographies call for different types of work ranging from labor-intensive sugar cultivation and production in the tropics to household help in less agriculturally intensive areas. In addition to time and space, the mindsets and beliefs of the people in those areas affect how the slaves will be treated and how “human” those slaves will be perceived to be. In the Early Modern Era, the two main locations where slaves were used most extensively were the European dominated Americas and the Muslim Empires. The American slavery system and the

Document 2, written by Ahmed Baba, a Muslim cleric of Mali, says, “…he should be set free directly…” referring specifically to Muslim slaves, but still expressing concern with slavery imposed on some people. Baba, while considering slavery imposed on non-Muslim African to be acceptable, still shows reservation on the institution as a whole because Muslims can be slaves. Document 3, written by an African slave and addressed to the Bishop of London, is a plea to the Bishop to grant more rights to the slaves to worship God more effectively and to let the slaves’ children be educated and taught to read the Bible. Overall, this document documents the harsh reality of slavery and shows an attempt at getting a Bishop across the Atlantic Ocean to realize this reality. This document’s validity could be tainted because of the audience, which is the Bishop of London, who has a high chance of responding to a letter appealing to God and His worship. The slave who wrote this letter references how slaves cannot worship God so that the Bishop would have a higher chance of doing something about it. In Document 7, Alfred von Kremer, an Austrian scholar-diplomat, writes about the difference between slavery in the Americas and slavery in the Orient (Middle East). He outlines how slaves in the Middle East are not discriminated against nearly

Document 1 shows the year of emancipation in various countries in the Americas and Muslim world; it can be seen that most of the American countries emancipated slavery about a century before most of the Muslim countries did so. As most of the countries eventually emancipated slavery because of internal pressures from the public, it can be deduced that the American countries had greater public pressure on slavery earlier on than did the Muslim countries. This could be because of the difference in treatment of slaves where slaves in the Americans were treated significantly more harshly than their counterparts in the Muslim world. Document 4 is a table showing the usage of slaves in Cuba in 1825 and it can be seen that the majority was used for rural farming while the minority was used for urban occupations. This is opposite to slave use in the Muslim world, where the majority was used for urban work and the minority was used in the rural fields. There is a very general similarity in this however; in both sides, slaves were not free and they had to obey their masters and work. Document 9 outlines observations by Hans Sloan concerning punishment of slaves on the island of Barbados. The punishments were very cruel, ranging from whippings for the smallest offenses to burning alive for