Spanning for more than a millennium, although incredibly integral, the slave trade was just one component in a complex network of exchange. Though equally effective to the development of Africa as a modern day concept, the Trans-Saharan slave trade, to this day, remains insufficiently covered.
Why is this? Is it simply due to a historical lens of eurocentricity that the trans-Atlantic slave trade has received more academic attention?
Is it simply due to a historical lens of eurocentricity that the trans-Atlantic slave trade has received more academic attention?
Yes, this is the first reason. Access to European and American sources is much easier for European and American historians. The second reason is that racial conflict in the Americas up until the present day provides a motivation for attention to be paid to its origins. Because there is no significant black population in the Arab world there is less popular motivation for its study.
Also note that from an US perspective, there is also unbalance within the study of the Atlantic slave trade, with disproportionate focus on the US trade compared with the numerically more significant Central and South American trade.