SOCIETY
The Brutal Truth About Slavery Nobody Wants to Hear
Where would you have stood on slavery in the 19th Century?
We passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and dead, the people of the country explained that she had been unable to keep up with the other slaves in a gang, and her master had determined that she should not become anyone’s property if she recovered.
The above excerpt and image are taken from the journals of 19th-century missionary David Livingstone. As shocking as such disregard for human life is today, Livingstone’s account of his travels in Africa makes it clear that such scenes were far from unique. Just a week later he came across a similar situation:
We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body and lying on the path: a group of men stood about a hundred yards off on one side, and another of the women on the other side, looking on; they said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer.
These brief extracts bring home just how completely human beings were treated as nothing more than commodities, goods and chattels. Not only were these slaves denied human rights, the very idea would have been seen as laughable. They were not even…
