old out of the society, or, as among the Margi, were moved into a special social category. Some were tricked into slavery, as among the Vai; or were victims of kidnapping. A kidnap victim was more readily bought far from his home, where he could not be claimed by his kinsmen or find his way back.
One of the first accounts of slave raids was from the Portuguese fort, built in 1448, at Arguin, off the Mauritanian coast of West Africa (Hargreaves 34). Initially, the aim was to obtain information or recruit interpreters for future voyages, but by 1450 it became apparent that captives could be profitably sold for domestic service or general labor in Europe, and that a greater supply could be obtained by barter with Moorish and African authorities than by violent raids. In 1455, the exportation of slaves from Arguin was estimated at 100 per year, and the slave trade was beginning to overshadow the gold trade for which the fort had been established.
In this period, Christians and Muslims alike saw in enslavement of infidels an opening of the doors of salvation, rather than a breach of moral law. In Mauritania and Senegal, the demands of the Saharan trade seem already to have legitimized the practice of selling certain people out of the community: prisoners of war, felons, debtors, and witches. Although the raids of the early slavers may temporarily have introduced a new element of violence, the immediate effects of Europe's entry into the commercial slave markets of these areas must have been mainly to increase demand, raise prices, and to encourage African slave brokers to seek new sources of supply. Only by degrees did the scale of demand increase so drastically as to involve a total transformation in the life of some of the coastal African peoples (Hargreaves 34).
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