Combative Labor in African and New World Slave Systems During the Early Modern Period

The paper investigates the unique relationship between labor and combat in Africa and the Americas during the early modern era, and it compares and contrasts the forms and outcomes of combative labor among enslaved populations for whom fighting was an occupation. Combative labor have hardly figured in labor historiography. We propose to advance discussion about this form of labor within the fields of labor history and slavery. Scholars of combative systems among enslaved populations of the Americas generally limit themselves to the artistic, symbolic and rebellious dimensions of slave combat. Africanists, on the other hand, have sometimes seen the service of slave armies in terms of productive - particularly the sourcing of war captives - but they stop short of situating it explicitly within labor historiography or “following” slave combat into the diaspora. The comparative approach, proposed here, reveals both continuities and differences in combative labor between Africa and the Americas, despite the great variations that existed between slave systems in either side of the Atlantic. Defending and bolstering establishments responsible for their enslavement as a means of gaining status and rewards was a widespread feature of slave systems in both Africa and the Americas.