ABSTRACT
Moses Finley has written that there have been only five slave societies: ancient Greece and Rome, Brazil, the West Indies, and the United States. Administrators were ill-informed about the societies they ruled and lacked the personnel to do a really efficient job of data collection. Furthermore, slavery was a touchy question. Africans had good reason not to report fully their slave holdings for they feared the French reaction. The major slave users in the area were largely intrusive groups of Juula or Fulbe. Slavery exists in a wide range of human societies. The existence of slavery made possible the evolution of a slave mode of production in those areas where labor was scarce or where for political reasons it was difficult to extract surpluses from free people. The process was economic. In slave-using societies, most slaves were purchased. The purchase was not necessarily for productive purposes. A rich man might want the services of a concubine, a servant, or an artisan.
