- Mar 11, 2015
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What lie? Where do you think the Europeans got their slaves? Do you REALLY think they would go to all the trouble, expense, and loss of life to waltz down to Africa, fight wars against the native Africans, and haul millions of them off on slave ships? Seriously? And you think that's racist. Odd.See, that's where the wheels fall off your tricycle. Who do you think rounded up African slaves to sell to Europeans? Who do you think kept African slaves in Africa in the first place? Slavery was quite common in the world in those days, and in some of those areas, still is. Not in European areas, however.
Here is a classic example of your racism hadit. This tale as you tell it, is a lie. And I was created by white racists but you repeat this ad nauseum like the other racists. We do not see the non racist whites here doing this.
Okay, so what is your tale about how the Europeans so easily got so many African slaves if not from the locals?
It didn't really happen all that easily and the locals just were not handing over slaves.
The single most effective White propaganda assertion that continues to make it very difficult for us to reconstruct the African social systems of mutual trust broken down by U.S. Slavery is the statement, unqualified, that, "We sold each other into slavery." Most of us have accepted this statement as true at its face value. It implies that parents sold their children into slavery to Whites, husbands sold their wives, even brothers and sisters selling each other to the Whites. It continues to perpetuate a particularly sinister effluvium of Black character. But deep down in the Black gut, somewhere beneath all the barbecue ribs, gin and whitewashed religions, we know that we are not like this.
The period from the beginning of the TransAtlantic African Slave so-called Trade (1500) to the demarcation of Africa into colonies in the late 1800s is one of the most documented periods in World History. Yet, with the exception of the renegade African slave raider Tippu Tip of the Congo Arabs(Muslim name, Hamed bin Muhammad bin Juna al-Marjebi) who was collaborating with the White Arabs (also called Red Arabs) there is little documentation of independent African slave raiding. By independent is meant that there were no credible threats, intoxicants or use of force by Whites to force or deceive the African into slave raiding or slave trading and that the raider himself was not enslaved to Whites at the time of slave raiding or "trading". Trade implies human-to-human mutuality without force. This was certainly not the general scenario for the TransAtlantic so-called Trade in African slaves. Indeed, it was the Portuguese who initiated the European phase of slave raiding in Africa by attacking a sleeping village in 1444 and carting away the survivors to work for free in Europe.
The fact of African resistance to European Imperialism and Colonialism is not well known, though it is well documented. Read, for instance, Michael Crowder (ed.), West African Resistance, Africana Publishing Corporation, New York, 1971. Europeans entered Africa in the mid 1400 s and early 1500 s during a time of socio-political transition. Europeans chose a favorite side to win between African nations at a war and supplied that side with guns, a superior war instrument. In its victory, the African side with guns rounded up captives of war who were sold to the Europeans in exchange for more guns or other barter. Whites used these captives in their own slave raids. These captives often held pre-existing grudges against groups they were ordered to raid, having formerly been sold into slavery themselves by these same groups as captives in inter-African territorial wars. In investigating our history and capture, a much more completed picture emerges than simply that we sold each other into slavery.
The Ashanti, who resisted British Imperialism in a Hundred Years War, sold their African captives of war and criminals to other Europeans, the Portuguese, Spanish, French, in order to buy guns to maintain their military resistance against British Imperialism (Michael Crowder, ed., West African Resistance).
Reunion Black Family.
Did We Sell Each Other Into Slavery: Misconceptions About the African Involvement in the Slave Trade
There are many misconceptions about African history and nowhere is this more true than the topic of the slave trade. Very often I see comments by people who argue that Africans sold each other into slavery. There is some element of truth to this, but to speak of the slave trade solely as Africans selling each other t is a gross oversimplification of what was a complex historical event. This also seems to be an attempt to shift the burden of the slave trade on the victims of that very trade. In How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney mentions how the white author of a book on the slave trade admitted that he was encouraged by other scholars to blame the slave trade solely on the Africans. This narrative helps to lessen European guilt by making Africans seem just as or even more guilty of being involved in the slave trade. This piece is not an attempt to ignore the African role in the slave trade or to absolve those that were involved, but to to provide a more complete picture of the African involvement in slave trade.
In the first place, the Portuguese initiated what eventually became the Trans-Atlantic slave trade mainly through slave raids along the coasts of Africa. The first of these raids came in 1444 and was led by Lançarote de Freitas. The problem with raiding for slaves was that it was extremely dangerous. For instance, the slave trader Nuno Tristão was killed during an ambush. Slave raiding proved to be an extremely dangerous way to obtain slaves, but buying slaves was much safer and took less effort on the part of the Europeans. Therefore, the first phase of the slave trade began not with a trade, but with a series of raids. This point is especially important because although the slave trade was on some levels based on a partnership between European buyers and African traders, the slave trade did not begin as such.
Moreover, the partnership between the traders and buyers was an uneasy one. The European slave traders often betrayed those who supplied them with slaves. A famous case of this was the African slave trader Daaga who was tricked and captured by slave traders. He was taken to Trinidad where he would eventually lead a mutiny. Another example is given by Anne Bailey in her book African Voices in the Atlantic Slave Trade. She mentions the story of Chief Ndorkutsu who had been providing captives to the European traders. Eventually some of the Ndorkutsu’s own relatives were tricked into boarding a slave ship and then taken as slaves to Cuba. In some cases, such as that of Madam Tinubu in Nigeria and Afonso of the Kongo Kingdom, those Africans that initially gave African captives to the Europeans came to resist the slave trade. Tinubu had a change of heart when she realized how inhumanely the slaves were treated. Afonso was almost assassinated by the Portuguese after he demanded an end to the slave trade in his kingdom.
Typically wars in West Africa were relatively short affairs that left a small number of causalities. The introduction of European weapons made these wars more drawn out and destructive affairs. Moreover, the only way Africans could acquire these firearms was through the trade of slaves. A king of Dahomey once requested that Europeans establish a firearms factory in his nation, but this request went ignored. Firearms became necessary for African nations to defend themselves both from African rivals as well as from European intrusion, but the only way to acquire these weapons was through the slave trade. This situation only benefited the competing European powers that were able to play Africans against each other.
Did We Sell Each Other Into Slavery: Misconceptions About the African Involvement in the Slave Trade | HuffPost
Africans started to fight the transatlantic slave trade as soon as it began. Their struggles were multifaceted and covered four continents over four centuries. Still, they have often been underestimated, overlooked, or forgotten. African resistance was reported in European sources only when it concerned attacks on slave ships and company barracoons, but acts of resistance also took place far from the coast and thus escaped the slavers’ attention. To discover them, oral history, archaeology, and autobiographies and biographies of African victims of the slave trade have to be probed. Taken together, these various sources offer a detailed image of the varied strategies Africans used to defend themselves from and mount attacks against the slave trade.
The Africans’ resistance continued in the Americas. They ran away, established maroon communities, used sabotage, conspired, and rose against those who held them in captivity. Freed people petitioned the authorities, led information campaigns, and worked actively to abolish the slave trade and slavery.
In Europe, black abolitionists launched or participated in civic movements to end the deportation and enslavement of Africans. They too delivered speeches, provided information, wrote newspaper articles and books.
Using violent as well as nonviolent means, Africans in Africa, the Americas, and Europe were constantly involved in the fight against the slave trade and slavery.
African Resistance - The Abolition of The Slave Trade