Note 1. Dedjasmach, often contracted to Dedjach, signifies “the warrior of the door,” and is the title of governors under the puppet emperor of Ethiopia. As in the Ottoman empire the Pacha is distinguished by the number of his tails, so is the Dedjasmach by the number of his kettle-drums. He is entitled to one for each province under his control, and loses no opportunity of finding his account in the troubled waters by asserting independence.
Volume Three—Chapter Thirty Five.
Slavery and the Slave-Trade in Shoa.
The annals of slavery point clearly to war as the principal cause of the monstrous crime of selling our fellow-creatures like cattle in the market. One nation having taken from another a greater number of captives than could be exchanged on equal terms, it is easy to comprehend how the victors, finding the maintenance of their prisoners expensive and inconvenient, first compelled them to work for their daily bread. Emerged from the limited wants of savage life, man next saw productions of art, which he eagerly coveted; and lacking habits of industry by which to earn them for himself, he compelled all whom his superiority enabled him to bring under subjection to pass their lives in labouring for his advantage.
In Africa especially, where the human passions are unbridled, and man emulates the ferocity of the beast of prey, war proves a never-drying spring of misery and bondage, and slavery is the inevitable lot of all who are not slain on the battlefield, or massacred in the sacking of towns and villages. The weak and unsuccessful warrior, who sues for mercy beneath the uplifted spear of his opponent, purchases existence at the expense of liberty; and in time of famine the freeman often becomes a voluntary slave, in order to avoid the greater calamity of inevitable starvation. By the philosophic and reflecting mind death would doubtless be esteemed the lighter evil of the two, but the untutored savage, fainting with hunger, thinks with Esau of old, “Behold, I am at the point to die—what profit shall this birthright do to me?”
Crime, necessity, insolvency, the inhumanity of a harsh creditor, a spirit of retaliation in petty disputes, and the sordid love of gain, for which parents will even sell their own children, severally assist in feeding the demand for slaves—the law of every African state either tolerating or directly sanctioning the evil; and wherever the Mohammadan faith prevails, frequent predatory incursions, characterised by the most atrocious violence, are made into the territories of all neighbouring infidels, who are systematically hunted down and entrapped as a religious duty.
Slaves in Africa are thus in proportion to the freemen of about three to one; but although the number of individuals reduced to a state of bondage by the operation of the above causes, and the destruction created, both as regards life and property, is immense, the whole combined are but as a single grain of dust in the balance, when compared with the slavery, the destitution, and the desolation, that is daily entailed by the unceasing bloody struggles betwixt state and state. Towns and villages are then obliterated from the face of the earth, and thousands upon thousands of the population, of whatever age or sex, are hurried into hopeless captivity.
In a country reft into ten thousand petty governments, the majority of which are independent and jealous one of the other; where every freeman, inured to arms from the first hour that he is capable of bearing them, pants for an opportunity of displaying his valour in the field; where the cherished recollection of hereditary feuds; the love of plunder inherent in every savage breast, and the bigoted zeal of religious enthusiasts, all conspire to afford hourly pretexts for war—the sword of desolation is never suffered to rust within the scabbard. The fact of one nation being stronger than another is even sufficient; and whilst hostilities, originating frequently in the most frivolous provocations, are prosecuted with relentless fury, robbery on a great and national scale, forming one of the chief features of African character, is almost universally prevalent. Here it is perpetrated by no concealed or proscribed ruffian; neither is it limited to those poorer tribes who are exposed to the temptation of rich caravans skirting their borders in progress to distant lands. Each needy soldier seeks with his sword to redress the unequal distribution made by the hand of fortune. The most distinguished warrior chieftains consider it a glory to place themselves at the head of an expedition undertaken solely for purposes of plunder; and the crime of stealing human beings in order to sell them into foreign markets, which, with all its attendant cruelty, is so widely practised throughout the benighted continent, is one in which the greatest of her sovereigns do not hesitate to participate.