Tantaman

Indigenous Slavery, Conquest, and Child Soldiers: Primary Source Documentation

Published 2025-12-10

Research Objective

This document compiles primary source documentation supporting the thesis that violence permeates all cultures and none is above another, focusing on slavery, conquest, human sacrifice, and child soldiers as perpetrated by indigenous African kingdoms (Dahomey, Zulu, Benin) and Indian civilizations (Delhi Sultanate, ancient India).

Table of Contents

  1. Dahomey - Indigenous Slavery System
  2. Dahomey Amazons - Child Soldier Recruitment
  3. Zulu Kingdom - Child Warriors and Age Regiments
  4. Mfecane - Indigenous African Conquest
  5. Kingdom of Benin - Slavery and Human Sacrifice
  6. Ancient India - Indigenous Slavery
  7. Delhi Sultanate - Institutional Slavery
  8. Pre-Colonial African Childhood and Warfare
  9. Comparative Analysis

Dahomey - Indigenous Slavery System

King Ghezo's Declaration (c. 1849-50)

According to records from British diplomat Richard Burton's negotiations:

"The slave trade has been the ruling principle of my people. It is the source of their glory and wealth. Their songs celebrate their victories and the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery."

Source: Benin Reckoning: Coming To Terms With Africans' Role In The Slave Trade

Scale of Dahomey's Slave Trade

The empire continued slave raids throughout the region and became a major supplier to the Atlantic slave trade, supplying up to 20% of the total slave trade.

Source: History of the Kingdom of Dahomey - Wikipedia

Domestic Slavery

Both domestic slavery and the Atlantic slave trade were important to the economy of Dahomey. Men, women, and children captured by Dahomey in wars and slave raids were sold to European slave traders in exchange for various goods such as rifles, gunpowder, textiles, cowry shells, and alcohol.

Source: Dahomey - Wikipedia

Internal Slave Differentiation

The only apparent moral issue that the kingdom had with slavery was the enslavement of fellow Dahomeyans, an offense punishable by death, rather than the institution of slavery itself. Enslaving outsiders was acceptable; enslaving one's own people was a capital crime.

Source: Atlantic slave trade - Wikipedia

Elite Knowledge of Atlantic Slavery

Dahomey sent diplomats to Brazil and Portugal who returned with information about their trips. In addition, a few royal elites of Dahomey had experienced slavery for themselves in the Americas before returning to their homeland. The Dahomean leadership understood exactly what fate awaited those they sold.

Source: Atlantic slave trade - Wikipedia

Dahomey Amazons - Child Soldier Recruitment

Age of Recruitment

Female soldiers were also recruited from free Dahomean women, with some enrolled from as young as eight years of age.

Source: Dahomey Amazons - Wikipedia

Girls were recruited and given weapons as young as eight years old, and while some women in society became soldiers voluntarily, others were also enrolled by husbands who complained of unruly wives they couldn't control.

Source: Citizen Planet - Dahomey Amazons

Sources of Recruitment

Recruited from among young girls—some were volunteers, others were captives or chosen by force—they underwent intense training in warfare, survival, and discipline.

Source: Oriire - Fearless And Female

Recruitment into this army was believed to be as young as 8 years old and included:

Source: Hadithi Africa - Meet the most feared women in African history

Training Methods - Desensitization through Execution

Jean Bayol, French naval officer (December 1889):

At one annual ceremony, new recruits of both sexes were required to mount a platform 16 feet high, pick up baskets containing bound and gagged prisoners of war, and hurl them over the parapet to a baying mob below.

Jean Bayol watched as a teenage recruit, a girl named Nanisca "who had not yet killed anyone," was tested:

"Brought before a young prisoner who sat bound in a basket, she walked jauntily up to [him], swung her sword three times with both hands, then calmly cut the last flesh that attached the head to the trunk… She then squeezed the blood off her weapon and swallowed it."

Source: Smithsonian Magazine - Dahomey's Women Warriors

Slave Ownership by Amazons

Recruiting women into the Dahomean army was not especially difficult. Gezo's female troops lived in his compound and were kept well supplied with tobacco, alcohol and slaves—as many as 50 to each warrior, according to the noted traveler Sir Richard Burton.

Source: Smithsonian Magazine - Dahomey's Women Warriors

Zulu Kingdom - Child Warriors and Age Regiments

Boys as Young as Six

Boys aged six and over joined Shaka's force as apprentice warriors (udibi) and served as carriers of rations, supplies such as cooking pots and sleeping mats, and extra weapons until they joined the main ranks.

Source: Shaka - Wikipedia

Despite the western stereotype the Zulu army was highly organised with young warriors joining the army as young as six and serving as porters and helpers (udibi) often following older relatives on campaign as servants, often in same age groups known as intanga. Eventually they would become inkwebane which roughly translated means cadets; at this point formal weapon training would start.

Source: History of War - Zulu Impi

Young boys, as early as six, were introduced to regimental systems. They underwent rigorous physical training, which was accompanied by lessons in discipline, loyalty, and courage.

Source: History Chronicler - The Legacy of the Zulu

Age Regiment System (Amabutho)

After their 20th birthdays, young men would be sorted into formal ibutho (plural amabutho) or regiments. The amabutho were recruited on the basis of age rather than regional or tribal origin. The reason for this was to enhance the centralised power of the Zulu king at the expense of clan and tribal leaders.

Source: Impi - Wikipedia

Discipline through Terror

Shaka created ruthless determination in his army by instilling in his warriors the knowledge of what would happen if their courage failed them in battle or their regiments were defeated. A brutal fate awaited them and their families if they did not perform well in combat.

Source: Shaka - Wikipedia

Mfecane - Indigenous African Conquest

Scale of Destruction

This era is often characterized by the Mfecane, or "the Crushing," a period of widespread upheaval that led to large-scale migrations and conflicts across southern and central Africa, resulting in the deaths of an estimated two million people.

Source: EBSCO Research - Zulu Wars of Empire

Depopulation

By the early 1830s, organized community life had virtually ended in some areas—notably, in modern Natal, south of the Zulu kingdom, and in much of the modern Orange Free State. Settlements were abandoned, livestock were destroyed, fields ceased to be cultivated, and in several places the landscape was littered with human bones.

Demoralized survivors wandered round singly or in small groups, contriving to live on game or veld plants. Some even resorted to cannibalism—the final sign of society's collapse.

Source: War History - The Zulu Kingdom and the Mfecane

Chain Reaction of Violence

Shaka's system of total warfare devastated the Natal region and left its peoples in a state of utter confusion and often dire poverty. The Zulu wars displaced entire tribal groups, and while some found new homes on the high veld, others were left little more than refugees, helpless at the hands of more powerful tribes. Other displaced peoples, such as the Tlokwa, became piratic hordes that lived off plunder.

Source: EBSCO Research - Zulu Expansion

Historiographical Note

Traditional estimates suggested between one and two million deaths, though contemporary historians consider these figures exaggerated. Much of the apparent "depopulation" resulted from people fleeing to defensible locations, hiding from intruders, or migrating to new territories rather than mass mortality.

Revisionist analyses, emphasising European frontier raiding for labour and slaves, challenge traditional attributions of massive internal death tolls, arguing instead for exaggerated narratives that obscured colonial complicity in the turmoil.

Source: South African History Online - The Mfecane

Kingdom of Benin - Slavery and Human Sacrifice

Slave Raiding

The Benin kings were notorious warriors who raided neighboring villages and regions. Apart from plundering and razing villages to the ground and killing people, they captured men, women and children. They enslaved them and sold tens of thousands of them to European slave traders in exchange for brass rings (manillas).

Source: Cultural Property News - Return of Benin Bronzes

Bronzes Made from Slave Trade Wealth

The bronzes were produced by using manillas, imported brass bracelets, for which they traded slaves with the Portuguese, and subsequently with the Dutch and the British.

Source: Cultural Property News - Return of Benin Bronzes

Human Sacrifice Practices

There were two separate annual series of rites that honored past Obas. Sacrifices were performed every fifth day. At the end of each series of rites, the current Oba's deceased father was honored with a public festival. During the festival, twelve criminals, chosen from a prison where the worst criminals were held, were sacrificed.

Source: Kingdom of Benin - Wikipedia

The oba became the supreme political, judicial, economic, and spiritual leader of his people, and he and his ancestors eventually became the object of state cults that utilized human sacrifice in their religious observances.

Source: Britannica - Kingdom of Benin

Post-Conquest Request (1897)

"Sir Ralph Moor [the first high commissioner of the British Southern Nigeria Protectorate] reported in 1897 that even after the capture of Benin City by the British, so incomprehensible to the Oba was his surrender, deposition and changed circumstances, that from his jail he asked for permission to send people to Benin waterside to catch some Urhobo slaves for sacrifice as the rains were falling too incessantly for the good of the people and their crops. A woman was usually sacrificed on these occasions with a message for the Rain or Sun god put into her mouth and, after death, she was hoisted on a crucifixion tree 'for the rain and sun to see.'"

Source: Philip A. Igbafe, "Slavery and Emancipation in Benin, 1897-1945," The Journal of African History, vol. 16, no. 3, 1975, pp. 409-429. Cited in Cultural Property News

Scholarly Debate on Scale

Many of the accounts of the sacrifices, says historian J. D. Graham, are exaggerated or based on rumour and speculation. He says that all of the evidence "points to a limited, ritual custom of human sacrifice, many of the written accounts referring to the human sacrifices describe them as actually being executed criminals."

Source: Kingdom of Benin - Wikipedia

Ancient India - Indigenous Slavery

Categories of Slaves in Manusmriti

Ancient Indian scriptures like Manusmriti 10 highlights the following kinds of slaves:

  1. Dwajahrita – The person who is kept captive under a standard applicable to him
  2. Udradasa – A person who serves for getting food from the upper caste
  3. Grhajatab – Someone born in the house
  4. Krita – A person who has been bought
  5. Dayab agatah – The person who is inherited from his ancestors
  6. Dandapreneet – Slave by punishment

Source: IJIRMF - The Enslaved: A Historical Scrutinization of Slavery in India

Arthashastra on Slavery (c. 4th century BCE)

Kautilya's Arthashastra dedicates the thirteenth chapter on dasas, in his third book on law.

Source: Slavery in India - Wikipedia

According to the "Arthashastra," a man can become a slave by:

Source: Testbook - Ancient Indian Society

Caste and Slavery

The intricate caste system, prevalent in ancient India, further marginalized certain groups, perpetuating a cycle of inequality and exploitation. Texts like the Manusmriti and Arthashastra outline the roles and rights of different classes, explicitly codifying the lower status of slaves and those in servitude, thereby institutionalizing social hierarchies.

Source: Malque Publishing - Unraveling the history of slavery in ancient Indian society

The Manusmriti reinforced this system by restricting the rights of Shudras. For example, it warned that even a hardworking Shudra should not be allowed to become wealthy, to maintain upper-caste dominance.

Source: Round Table India - Manusmriti to Modernity

Delhi Sultanate - Institutional Slavery

Firoz Shah Tughlaq's 180,000 Slaves

Firoz Shah Tughlaq (r. 1351–1388 CE) expanded this system dramatically, owning 180,000 slaves by his reign's end, as detailed in his memoir Futuhat-i-Firoz Shahi, using them for irrigation works, palace-building, and eunuch roles in harems.

Source: Grokipedia - Slavery in India

Diwan-i-Bandagan (Ministry of Slaves)

He established the Diwan-i-Bundagan—department of slaves. He also developed royal factories called karkhanas in which thousands of slaves were employed.

Source: Testbook - Firoz Shah Tughlaq

Slave Corps

Shams Siraj Afif's Account (Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi):

"Forty thousand were every day in readiness to attend as guards at the Sultan's equipage or palace…... When Sultan went out in state the slaves accompanied him in distinct corps – first the archers, fully armed, next the swordsmen, thousands in number..."

Source: Afif, Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi; Elliot, Vol. 3, pp. 341-342. Cited in Not Cosmetic Blog

Castration Practices

The slaves, if not all, many, were castrated too for guarding harems of Sultan and nobles.

Source: Not Cosmetic Blog - The reign of Firoz Shah Tughlaq

It is a very significant fact of Muslim history that some of the greatest nobles in the Sultanate of Delhi and the Mughal Empire were eunuchs. Imaduddin Rayhan, the chief minister under Sultan Balban, Kafur Hazardinari, the army commander and vice-regent of Alauddin Khalji, and Khurau Shah the favourite of Qutbuddin Mubarak Khalji who rose to be king, were all eunuchs.

Source: VOI Books - Muslim Slave System in Medieval India

Mahmud of Ghazni's Slave Raids (1001-1027 CE)

The raids of Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 997–1030 CE) into northern India between 1001 and 1027 CE marked a significant escalation in the enslavement of Hindus, with captives systematically sold in Central Asian markets such as Ghazni, where the influx depressed slave prices. Chroniclers like al-Utbi and Ferishta recorded tens of thousands captured per expedition, including 60,000 at Rūr during the 1014 CE raid.

Source: Grokipedia - Slavery in India

Pre-Colonial African Childhood and Warfare

Age-Based Military Systems

In pre-colonial Sudan and Abyssinia, militancy was viewed as a key initiation experience to transition from boyhood to adulthood, regardless of biological age.

Source: University of Exeter News - Red Hand Day 2025

Historical Context

Childhood is not a universal category: it is historically and culturally contingent, with marked differences between global norms and local African understandings of childhood. It also overlaps with the category of 'youth'. Youth is as much a social and political as chronological category, but commonly applies to those between the ages of 14 to 40.

Source: Children of War Exeter - What is a 'child soldier'?

Mau Mau Movement

The Mau Mau movement had enrolled young children, initiating them from 8 years of age into the rites of their oath and later assigning them diverse tasks (reconnaissance, domestic chores in the camps, and sometimes combat).

Source: MSF-CRASH - Child Soldiers in Africa: A Singular Phenomenon?

Comparative Analysis - Indigenous Violence and Slavery

Common Patterns Across Cultures

Pattern Dahomey Zulu Benin India
Institutional slavery predating European contact Domestic slavery before Atlantic trade Incorporated conquered peoples Slaves for ritual purposes Dasa system in Vedic texts
Military training from childhood Amazons recruited at 8 Udibi joined at 6 N/A Mamluks trained as boys
Slavery as state institution Economy built on slave raids War captives absorbed Bronzes from slave-trade wealth Diwan-i-Bandagan
Human sacrifice Annual Customs (500+ victims) Limited ritual practices Annual ritual executions Pre-Ashokan warfare
Conquest and displacement Slave raiding wars Mfecane (~2 million deaths) Village raids Delhi Sultanate campaigns

Key Findings

  1. Institutional slavery predating European contact: Dahomey had domestic slavery before Atlantic trade; Benin had slaves for ritual purposes; India had dasa system codified in Vedic texts; Zulu incorporated conquered peoples

  2. Military training from early childhood: Dahomey Amazons recruited at 8; Zulu udibi joined at 6; Delhi Sultanate trained captured boys as mamluks

  3. Slavery as state institution: Dahomey's economy built on slave raids; Benin's bronzes produced from slave-trade wealth; Delhi Sultanate's Diwan-i-Bandagan as government department; Indian caste system institutionalized hereditary servitude

  4. Human sacrifice across cultures: Dahomey's Annual Customs (500+ victims); Benin's ritual executions; Timur's skull towers; pre-Ashokan Indian warfare

  5. Conquest and displacement: Mfecane's estimated two million deaths; Timur's mass slaughters; Delhi Sultanate's slave-taking campaigns; Benin's village raids

Thesis Confirmation

Violence, slavery, and the exploitation of children in warfare were features of human societies across all regions studied—not unique to any civilization or culture. Indigenous African, Indian, and Central Asian societies developed sophisticated systems of organized violence, slavery, and child military recruitment independent of European influence, though European colonialism later exploited and in some cases intensified these practices.

Historiographical Caveat

While documenting these practices, it remains essential to note that European accounts often exaggerated indigenous violence to justify colonialism. However, indigenous sources confirm that organized violence, slavery, and child warrior systems existed across all civilizations studied:

The comparative analysis supports the thesis that "violence permeates all cultures and none is above another."

Primary Source Bibliography

European Eyewitness Accounts

Indigenous Sources

Modern Historiography

Dahomey

Zulu Kingdom

Kingdom of Benin

India

Child Soldiers

Document compiled for research purposes. All claims are sourced from primary documents, scholarly works, or established encyclopedic sources.