Class and Slavery
Although many West Africans lived in stateless societies, most lived in hierarchially organized states headed by monarchs who claimed divine or semidivine status. These monarchs were far more absolute in the power they wielded, but they commanded armies, taxed commerce, and accumulated considerable wealth. Beneath the royalty were classes of landed nobles, warriors, peasants, and bureaucrats. Lower classes included blacksmiths, butchers, weavers, woodcarvers, tanners, and the oral historians called griots.
Slavery had been part of this hierarchiacal social structure since ancient times. Although very common throughout West Africa, slavery was less so in the forest region than on the savannah. It took a wide variety of forms and was not necessarily a permanent condition. Like people in other parts of the world, West Africans held war captives---including men,women and childeren---to be without rights and suitable for enslavement. In Islamic regions, masters had obligations to their slaves similar to those of a guardian for a ward and were responsible for their slaves' religious well-being. In non-Islamic regions, the children of slaves acquired legal protections, such as the right not to be sold away from the land they occupied.
Slaves who served either in the royal courts of a West African kingdom or in a kingdom's armies often exercised power over free people and could acquire property. Also, the slaves of peasant farmers often had standards of living similar to those of their masters. Slaves who worked under overseers in gangs on large estates were far less fortunate. However, even for such enslaved argicultural workers, the work and privileges accorded to the second and third generation become little different from those of free people. Regardless of their generation, slaves retained a low social status, but in many respects slavery in West Africa societies functioned as a means of assimilation
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