[Marxism] Muslim Vs Atlantic slave trade - comparative apocalyptics 101

[Louis Proyect]

J.M.P.Cloke at lboro.ac.uk wrote:
> Some critical scholars maintain, however, that right to 
> the end of the Ottoman Empire, slavery in some countries 
> and regions was conducted with unequalled savagery. Jay 
> Spaulding, for instance (in “Slavery, Land Tenure, and 
> Social Class in the Northern Turkish Sudan," International 
> Journal of African Historical Studies 15/1 (1981): 1-10) 
> reckons that in Ottoman-Egyptian Sudan slaves were 
> considered to be nothing more than ‘talking animals’ 
> (al-hayawan al natiq); that slaves were given different 
> names to prevent their integration with free people; that 
> slaves in some districts were not even buried in order to 
> save money, instead they were either left for animals to 
> eat or dumped in rivers; that the Ottoman government 
> demanded slaves as taxes, and that household slaves were 
> frequently sold and very rarely manumitted.

But this is the problem.

Slavery in the Sudan was CHATTEL slavery. The Sudan was colonized by 
Egypt (and indirectly by Great Britain) in the mid-1800s as a way to 
compete with American cotton-production. I dealt with this here:

If Egypt was to be bled dry while satisfying its creditors, it was only 
natural that it would make its colony Sudan share the pain. Since Sudan 
was not part of the cash economy and had few natural resources that 
could generate foreign revenues, Egypt resorted to a time-tested method, 
one that in fact had been pioneered in Europe. By imposing a tax, the 
Sudanese tribesmen would be forced to enter the cash economy. But except 
for ivory what did the Sudan have that could yield currency on the world 
market? The answer was human bodies. By imposing taxes on the ethnically 
mixed Arab-black Beggara pastoralists of the north and east, they would 
naturally be pressured into capturing black Africans of the Dinka tribes 
who lived in the south and who could be sold for hard currency.

The male slaves ended up as soldiers or cotton-picking fellaheen in 
Egypt, while the women became domestic servants or consigned to the 
harems of North Africa and Turkey. In order to line up British support 
for its initial foray into the Sudan, Egypt made all sorts of verbal 
commitments to ending slavery. The real solution to the problem was not 
in codes, nor in proper enforcement. As long as Egypt put pressure on 
Sudan to help meet its financial obligations to European creditors, 
there would be a slave trade. It was the world capitalist system that 
created a market for slaves, just as capitalist immiseration has created 
a market for prostitutes from the former Soviet Union and Eastern 
Europe. To end prostitution or slavery, you need to end want and the 
commodity it generates: cash.

full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/fascism_and_war/mahdism.htm

Now the revolt against Egyptian/British colonialism was led by the 
Mahdi, who held slaves but NOT on a chattel basis. This was used 
demagogically by the British as an excuse to intervene in the Sudan.

Basically, unless you look at modes of production, any discussion of 
slavery soon becomes detached from historical materialism and goes down 
the road of moralism.