The BBC is failing impartiality with its history documentaries, The failure of several BBC programmes to mention the role of African rulers in slavery

[Litwin]

there are too many myths about Atlantic slavery, BBC has been promoted them for ages , why our mainstream media promote American Black activists highly mythological worldview on the history ?

The BBC is failing impartiality with its history documentaries

It is incumbent on the BBC to represent a variety of viewpoints. That means understanding ‘diversity’ properly, so as to embrace diversity of opinion.

www.spectator.co.uk

Our researcher identified several programmes where serious problems arose. Turning briefly to radio, a programme fronted by Kit de Waal and Zeinab Badawi devoted to Sarah Forbes Bonetta mentioned slave revolts in Jamaica in the 1860s. Slavery had been abolished across the British Empire in 1833....Similar objections arise to Enslaved with Samuel L. Jackson, where Afua Hirsch interviewed Dr Wilhelmina Donkoh, who opined that in Africa there were no slaves, only ‘unfree people’. This betrays deep ignorance about the nature of slavery. It has taken many forms, from agricultural serfdom to slave sultans in medieval Egypt. But there certainly were slaves in the despotically ruled Kingdom of Benin,...
King Ghezo in Dahomey. The king is supposed to have said: ‘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.’


The failure of several BBC programmes to mention the role of African rulers in the acquisition and export of slaves,

 

[Pellinore]

Professor Abulafia here is, I think, overlooking some important context in order to further his political views.

'Slavery' had different meaning in different societies. If we were to ask King Ghezo, for example, to describe what he meant by "slavery," he would not describe the same institution as we learned about. Slaves in Africa at the time were mostly prisoners of war or placed there due to unpayable debt, and often earned their own freedom; they were treated as objects, stacked in cargo holds like cordwood and shipped overseas, and were almost never born into multi-generational slavery.

I haven't watched the show, but I would wager that Dr. Donkoh called them "unfree people" to underscore that point, while Prof. Abulafia was more than happy to lump them under the same "slavery" umbrella as Western-style chattel slavery, even though King Ghezo's understanding of the term was something else.

 

[Grumblenuts]

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