NOTES ON THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE
According to the Goray (I think they said Goray) Island (one of the major slaving centres in Africa) Bureau of Tourism, it was African tribes warring on each other, selling each other to the African slave traders on the coast, who sold them to European ships. The island slave trade was run mostly by black women in the eighteenth century.
All along the Slave Coast, as it was called back then, you can see the European coastal settlements. These towns are fortified. And you may notice that thier gun emplacements are ALL pointed out to sea. All the forts were designed to protect against the sea. They were not fighting any locals for slaves. They needed arms only to fight rival European factions. Almost without exception, these fortified towns were set up with the permission of the local African rulers. The Europeans were there on the sufference of the local African rulers. Documents granting trading rights to specific European nations were signed by the local African rulers; and no, they weren't forced into it; the locals had entire nations, while the Europeans had only a few people, and the local rulers were paid very well for the rights (Yes, just like everyone else, they wanted wealth, nice things, power, et cetera).
Most European traders were too damn scared to go inland. They often took enough water and food to make the whole round trip, because they were too scared to make forays into the forest to find stuff while in Africa.
From Professor Elisee Soumonni, Universite Nationale du Benin: "People often don't realise that Africans themselves took part in the trade. That's why, when looking at the question of responsibility, one must admit that there is a responsibility or a complicity within Africa. Because it would have been impossible for Europeans to ship out so many people without the benefit of some internal collaboration at one level or another. There was a deep involvement of Africans in the trade."
When Europeans were actually buying slaves, there was a network of trade trails throughout the area which carried slaves, all tied in lines in ropes, bought and sold from one African trader to the next until some eventually reached the coast. Such convoys could take as long as a year to reach the coast.
From Professor John Fynn, University of Ghana: "People were coming down, as it were, in relays. It was simply trade. Trading with people who wanted our gold, or our slaves. And we want their guns, their gin, their rum, their crops, and so on. So Africans were bringing down the trade, and the Europeans were recieving them. And this was what they called the Castle Trade. Castle Trade - Europeans don't have to venture inland. Trade was brought to them, by the Africans themselves. Whether it is gold, or slaves, it was an African affair."
Slaves had been part of many African cultures long before Europeans arrived. They fought in armies, served in homes, worked as farmers and labourers and such.
One African king executed two of his slaves every single morning in gratitude for a good night's sleep. Another king decorated his palace walls with the heads of his slaves; at one time he had 127 of them executed to complete the line, fill a gap. Some slaves were executed to stop or start rain, bring better crops, et cetera.
Slaves have been exported from Africa, by Africans, for thousands of years, to Cairo, Constantinople, Baghdad, and so on. The trans-Saharan slave trade alone over the few centuries prior to Europeans joining in swallowed over three million slaves, according to estimates based on surving contracts and skeletal remains.
From Akosua Perbi, University of Ghana: "There were other slave markets in Ghana. In the northern part of Ghana where we are right now, there were about four markets, including Salaka. And yet Salaka became the most famous, because of its position. So Salaka was blessed, if you like, geographically, strategically. There were professional merchants who traded all over West Africa, across the trans-Saharan trade. And we find them in Salaka market. Then there were the individual merchants, somebody wanting a wife, or perhaps the wife is barren. The person would come as an individual, and come and purchase one female slave to marry, to bear him children. So it was predominantly an African market, predominantly an African enterprise, predominantly an African setting... So far as they were concerned, it was profitable business, and that was all that mattered, at that time of the trade."
The trans-Atlantic trade was only possible at all because the slave trade was already an ingrained part of Africa. Making war, and selling the losers into slavery was a very common part of life in Africa.
From Venture Smith (the name was obviously given by his eventual owners, his adventures written down by them too), an African slave, who was forced to march four hundred miles to the coast by African slavers after they tortured his father to death in front of him: "I was obliged to carry on my head a large flat stone, weighing twenty-five pounds. These burdens were very grievous to me, being only about six and a half years old."
From another slave taken as a child: "There came a merchant who told me that if I would go with him I should see houses with wings walk upon the water, and should also see the white folks. And should bring me back again soon."
Kwane Nyki the 12th, Paramount Chief of the Assins. His ancestors wiped out heaps of other tribes in their area, selling many into slavery. He said: "What I learnt from my ancestors, or my predecessors, was that this place was that this place was a slave market. Here became the centre, or the last stop, where they had plenty of water, plenty of land to bury their dead. And they fattened them here, and sell them. For us, a day's walk to Cape (couldn't understand his next word, the name of the place)."
Once a year the Assins have a ceremony to remember the slaves they caught themselves or passed on through their lands. They pray for the slaves' souls to be at rest and such. The Assin traded slaves for guns, gunpowder, Jamaican rum, sugar, bananas, et cetera.
Europeans shipped twenty million guns into Africa as payment for slaves. These guns went to the African nations who supplied the slaves.
In the Homi nation, the King saw the European merchants as subordinates under his own rule, a part of his own slave exporting business. You could not trade in these places without the permission of the local African authorities. The African who acted as the go-between in the Homi land would not allow a European to trade until every person even slightly related to the business to come had been thoroughly bribed.
From Martine De Souza (she works now as a tour guide), a black woman who is a descendent of Fransisco De Souza, a rather bad European man who had more than 40 black wives and fathered more than ninety sons there: "With the African-Americans whose ancestors suffered and who still live with discrimination today, the reaction is completely different. They become furious. They weep and wail. They even thump the walls. And they say 'I didn't know Blacks contributed so much to the slave trade.' And I tell them 'You shouldn't always blame the Whites, because Blacks also took part in it. Without them, the trade wouldn't have been so easy.'"
Many of the African suppliers of slaves went to North America to live for short periods with their European business-associates. They went to school there, lived the good life, then went home and improved their own slave business.
Letter from a Nigerian (in Calabar) slave-trader to his associates in England: "Dear Gentlemen. Captain John Burrow arrived at this river on the fourth day of May with a very fine cargo. I hope his ships carry four hundred and sixty slaves. I don't keep him long, and I think he'll get to Liverpool fifteen or twenty day March. I am your dear Eyboyoung Effyoung."
Another letter from an African slave trader in Calabar: "I want two gun for every slave I send. Send me some writing paper, and two sheep. PS: remember me to your wife."
Another letter from an African slave trader in Calabar: "Send plenty of ship's guns. Send me one looking glass six feet long and six feet wide. And send two pewter pistols."
In 1807, Britain abolished the trans-Atlantic slave trade; several other European nations followed suit. Many African rulers lodged official protests. In 1820, a white delegation reached the Ashanti king, who told them: "The white men do not understand my country, or they would not say the slave trade was bad. But if they think it bad now, why did they think it good before?"
After that decision by Britain and others, the internal and trans-Saharan African slave markets continued. They died out only at the start of the twentieth century.
Well, there's some notes on slavery in and from Africa. To blame it solely on Europeans is plain old racism. The Europeans buyers were slaving scum, true, but so were the African suppliers of slaves. These are some of the facts of the issue.
