Franco Alemán at Barcepundit quotes Susan Llewelyn Leach, a Christian Science Monitor hack, who writes that:

I would be interested to know how Ms Leach has calculated slave prices for 2000 BC, how she reached the figure of 27 million currently enslaved, and whether liberal estimates are higher or lower than conservative ones. I wonder also whether Mr Bales isn’t overstating his case; although anti-slavery policies and other factors drove prices up in the mid-19th century, my (doubtless naive) impression is of a strange consistency in slave pricing. For example, Lawrence R Tenzer notes that

and a very interesting article in the Accra Mail records that in Salaga in 1889 a male slave fetched 300 cowries while a horse brought in 1000. Looking back on my Kingdom of Aragon ready reckoner, it turns out that these are very close to the ratios that applied in these parts in the late thirteenth century (ie 1 male slave = 4.7872 manual workers pa = 0.45 horses), and I will be happy to find more examples if required.

How about Mr Bales’ price of $30 a slave on the Ivory Coast? I suspect this is an invention, or that it applies to an isolated case up-country. I was talking last weekend to a Catalan club owner and ex-merchant seaman who told me (in a rich Glaswegian accent) that the going rate for a young woman in the Niger delta in the mid-80s was $250–it should be said that I don’t know on what contractual basis this kind of slavery was undertaken–and there is no reason to believe that prices on the open market will have dropped since that time of extreme lawlessness.

However, while $250 may conceivably have been 4-5 times the annual income of workers up river, it is more difficult to estimate horse prices. Horse racing continues to be a popular sport in West Africa–Jerry Rawlings would have had few problems in maintaining conversation over sherry with our ex-Queen Mother–but it is difficult to find market prices for slightly less exalted beasts. The closest I have got is in the Nigerian Horse Scam, for which the going rate seems to be $3-7000:

Again, I think that this supports my hypothesis of fairly inelastic relative pricing. (The above page also details the Nigerian Cow Scam, of which the Nigerian Hot Dog Scam is a sad but inevitable development, but which as yet should not cause undue concern to you or your ferret, bless her.)

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1. Suzanne Wales
   September 7th 2004 19:04

   Dear Trevor,

   The figure of 27 million comes from the UN. I think perhaps your idea of ’slave’ is a tad out of date. Slavery does indeed exist today, just in different forms: debt bondage, unpaid domestic workers, sexual slavery (of which your Glaswegian friend seems to know a bit about) etc. Have a look at http://www.benetton.com/colors/issues/slavery53/index.html although the online edition is by no means as comprehensive as the printed one.

2. Trevor
   September 7th 2004 20:19

   Benetton says “Models are modern slaves” which is clearly a long way away from the OED definition upon which historical estimates of the slave population are based (“One who is the property of, and entirely subject to, another person, whether by capture, purchase, or birth; a servant completely divested of freedom and personal rights.”)

   Even if you believe the 27 million figure (have you got a URL with numbers instead of a crap Flash presentation?), then I think that any serious consideration would lead you to the conclusion that slavery has not been so low in numerical terms since total world population was around 28 million, and that it has never been lower proportionally.

3. Geoff
   September 7th 2004 22:20

   Ooh, grumpy grumpy! It’s funny because even Marx said that capitalism was better for humans than feudalism and someone else probably said that at least being a wage slave was better than being a real slave.

4. Trevor
   September 7th 2004 23:58

   (Me? Grumpy? Sorry…) The British Anti-Slavery Society only arrives at 2.7 million; I can’t find any documentation that supports the “most” or “cheapest” in history claim, and I suspect they’re rubbish. (For example, unpaid domestic workers are not slaves if they have the option (as most have) to walk out the door, and neither are indentured labourers if there is a meaningful prospect (as there often is) of them completing their contract.) Exaggerating numbers of 3rd world oppressed is an established means of making careers and funding nice meals and exotic travel, and I think that’s what’s going on here.

5. kalebeul » Walter Raleigh and Nigerian scammers
   June 14th 2005 21:52

   [...] Being yet more foolish speculation. As you know, the Nigerian 419 fraud and the Nigerian horse scam are descendants of the Spanish prisoner swind [...]