The coastal slave trade soon became a threat that accompanied colonial successes. Consequences of human trafficking
are still felt today.
Early African civilizations
Colonization of Africa has a long history. The most ancient civilization here arose in Nubia, modern Sudan. Its development ran parallel to the development of Ancient Egypt. And although both cultures benefited from mutual contact, such as trade exchanges and the spread of ideas, their relationship was too burdened by conflict. So Nubia around 2800 BC. e. was occupied for 500 years by Egypt, and the Nubian kingdom of Kush, which 70 years earlier united the scattered parts of Nubia, was until about 770 BC. occupied by Egypt. After gaining independence, the development and flourishing of the Nubian kingdom began. This continued until the 4th century AD. e. and only the growing Christianization and strengthening of the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum finally determined the decline of the Nubian kingdom.
Similar traditions inherent in large civilizations existed in West Africa. In the 4th century AD. The king of Ghana ruled a society in which street systems were already built and there was a set of laws, and the number of soldiers carrying out the defense exceeded 20 thousand people. From 1200, the kingdom gave way to the Mali Empire, and Timbuktu became a center of trade and education.
Further south, on the high plateaus of Zimbabwe, there was also a highly developed culture that acquired its wealth through trade with the countries of the East African coast. The capital was the city of Great Zimbabwe, the founding date of which historians believe is around 1250. It was a relatively large city with stone buildings and conical towers. It is believed that approximately 18 thousand people lived in the city.
Abyssinian slaves in iron chains. Left: Illustration 1835; Before boarding the ship, slaves are shackled.
Beginning of the slave trade
Trade relations between Europe and the countries of North Africa located on the Mediterranean coast have existed for a long time.
Already in Ancient Greece, relations were maintained with some African cultures, and the Romans had close ties with the African continent, especially with Egypt. Until the 15th century, European knowledge of Africa was a mixture of fragmentary knowledge borrowed from classical education, myths and stories, as well as individual facts set out in the Bible.
One by one, European expeditions were sent to the Dark Continent. In 1482, the Portuguese founded a seaport in Elmina on the coast of what is now Ghana. In 1497, Vasco da Gama sailed around the entire continent, and from that moment on, Europeans began to explore Africa with an increasing degree of activity. They exported raw building materials, gold and ivory.
However, the slave trade turned out to be a much more profitable activity. So-called trading posts were established along the west coast from Senegal to Angola, and even at this early stage the trafficking in persons was extremely brutal. For Europeans, human trafficking was initially something new, but in Africa slaves have long been traded - East African rulers sold them to each other and their Arab neighbors. When Europeans joined them, they initially relied on tribal leaders to round up captives and sell them to the Europeans. At first, African slaves were expected to work on island colonies facing the continental coast; some were taken to Europe. The first slave ship bound for America, where the slave trade later became the center of the trade, set sail from Lisbon in 1518. From that moment on, human trafficking acquired enormous proportions. The echoes of this phenomenon are still felt today in politics, economics and demography.
Development of slavery
To traders, slaves were a commodity like any other, and transatlantic shipping carried out by water is recorded in history as the “Triangular Trade.” Slaves were the main component of this trade. European goods were transported by ship to Africa and exchanged for slaves, who were then transported by water to South, Central and North America. From these places, export goods were again brought to Europe. For many traders, transporting slaves was a convenient opportunity to avoid sailing from Europe to America with an empty hold and still earn extra money. From a commercial point of view, this type of trade acquired exceptional importance: significant benefits could be derived from it. This fact, coupled with the fact that slaves were viewed not as people but as cargo, meant that when transporting slaves by sea they were subjected to appalling conditions. For this reason, many slave ships became hotbeds of disease, and high mortality rates were almost the norm.
In addition, if the slave trader got into any serious situations with his ship, the “cargo” was simply thrown overboard.
The subject of the slave trade caused wide discussion in diplomatic circles. The high profits received from the slave trade led to diplomatic scandals, and in some cases to wars and power struggles, as many countries wanted to control this market and make money from it. The wealth of many colonies and the states that arose later in their place is based on the slave trade. Between 1518 and 1650, the Spanish and Portuguese imported approximately half a million slaves into their colonies, and after 1650 there was a booming illegal slave trade. In the colonies, slaves were often used to work on sugar plantations. Spanish slaves were required to work in Mexican silver mines. However, most of the slaves went to Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba, regions where Spain was experiencing economic difficulties. The Portuguese expanded their plantations in Brazil and, from 1700, brought more and more slaves to their South American colonies to fully exploit the silver mines in Minas Guerais. Dutch, British and French slaves were required to work in the Caribbean and Guiana colonies, as well as in North American lands, where a small number of African slaves were employed, among other things, to work on tobacco plantations in Virginia and Maryland.
Riots broke out every now and then in the colonies, which at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries developed into slave uprisings. However, these uprisings were immediately suppressed. This continued until the start of the liberation struggle in 1791 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, led by Toussaint Louverture (“Black Napoleon”). The consequence of this liberation struggle was the emergence of the state of Haiti.
abolition of slavery
In Europe, voices calling for the abolition of slavery have always been heard. These were the voices of people protesting against human trafficking. But the real movement to abolish slavery began only in 1770. It began in England, when a certain Grenville Sharp submitted a petition to the Supreme Court of Justice asking for the grant of freedom to a fugitive slave from America, James Somerset, who was re-arrested in England. Despite the initial success, little changed at first. Therefore, in the 80s of the 18th century, a group of evangelical Christians began a campaign demanding the complete abolition of slavery. After this action, a public movement developed in the country, during which information was collected, which was later made public and transferred to Parliament.
William Wilberforce was an influential lawyer who worked tirelessly on this case and turned the public consciousness to the issue of slavery, as slavery increasingly seemed to be an exclusively barbaric anachronism against the backdrop of the free trade ideals of the Industrial Revolution and the ideals of the French Revolution.
In 1808, the English Parliament made the purchase, sale and transportation of slaves illegal. In 1834, owning slaves was also made illegal. In the same year, on the islands of Western India, all children of slaves under 6 years of age were granted freedom, and the slaves themselves were guaranteed six years of free education. However, these regulations carried the same connotation of exploitation as the former slavery, although there were deadlines for their implementation. Slavery was finally abolished in 1838. Meanwhile, British anti-slavery campaigners launched a campaign to abolish slavery in America. A particularly active and stable anti-slavery movement developed in the northern regions of North America. Fugitive or freed slaves, such as Frederick Douglass, gave speeches throughout the country. Many writers supported the abolition of slavery. Thus, the book of the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe “Uncle Tom's Cabin” had some influence on public consciousness. With the end of the Civil War in 1865, slavery ended in America.
The abolition of slavery in America and Europe was made possible by several factors: the abolition movement, economic difficulties and political events of the time. However, in Africa, until the end of the 19th century, traditional forms of slavery were still widespread in many territories. In Nigeria, slavery was abolished only in 1936. To this day, slavery can be found in some remote places on the African continent, and its opponents continue to fight for its abolition.
Consequences
One of the side problems of the African slave trade was population decline. In the Niger Valley, almost all the indigenous tribes were exterminated during the slave hunt. The consequence of this was hunger and disease.
But perhaps the most devastating effect of the slave trade was the recognition of the primacy of power and the creation of a social climate in which white people felt superior to blacks. These consequences can still be seen today.
April 8th, 2015The translation is a little clumsy, but still for me it was new and interesting information...
The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 demanded that Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid-17th century, the Irish were the bulk of the slaves traded in Antigua and Montserrat. By that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves. Ireland quickly became the largest source of human livestock for English merchants. Most of the first slaves sent to the New World were actually white.
From 1641 to 1652 over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland's population dropped from approximately 1,500,000 to 600,000 in just one decade.
Let's remember in more detail how it was...
Families were separated as the British did not allow Irish fathers to take their wives and children with them to the Atlantic. This has led to homeless women and children. The British solution to this problem was also to sell them at auction.
During the 1650s, more than 100,000 Irish children aged 10 to 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves to the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were trafficked to Barbados and Virginia. A further 30,000 Irish men and women were transported and sold to bidders.
In 1656, Cromwell ordered 2,000 Irish children to be sent to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers. Many people today avoid calling the Irish slaves what they really were: Slaves. They came up with the idea of calling them “Indentured Servants” to describe what was happening to the Irish. However, in most cases since the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this very period. It is well documented that African slaves, untainted by the hated Catholic faith and fetching a higher price, were treated far better than their Irish equivalents. African slaves were very expensive at the end of the 17th century (50 sterling), but Irish slaves were cheap (no more than 5 sterling). If a planter whipped, branded, or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. The death of a slave was a monetary problem, but it was much cheaper than killing a more expensive African. English masters quickly began breeding Irish women for both their personal pleasure and greater profit. The children of slaves were themselves slaves who added to the size of the master's labor force.
Even if an Irish woman somehow gained her freedom, her children remained slaves to her master. Thus, Irish mothers, even with this emancipation, rarely left their children and remained in servitude.
Over time, the English figured out a better way to use these women (in many cases girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: settlers began crossing Irish women and girls with African men to produce a special kind of slave. These new "mulatto" slaves were worth more than Irish cattle and also allowed settlers to save money on purchasing new African slaves.
This practice of mating Irish women with African men lasted for several decades and was so widespread that in 1681 a law was passed "prohibiting the practice of mating Irish female slaves with African male slaves for the purpose of producing slaves for sale."
In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company. England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than one century.
Documents show that after 1798, the year of the Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to America and Australia. There were terrible abuses of both African and Irish prisoners.
One British ship even drowned 1,302 slaves in the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have more food. There is little question that the Irish suffered the horrors of slavery just as much (if not more so in the 17th century) than the Africans. Another very small question is that those brown, dark faces that you can see on your trip to the West Indies are most likely a combination of African and Irish ancestors.
In 1839, Britain finally decided on its own initiative to stop participating in this terrible act and stop transporting slaves. Whereas their decision did not stop the pirates.
Why is this so rarely discussed? Do the memory of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims deserve more than a mention by an unknown author?
Or their history, as the English pirates wanted: (unlike the African one) should completely and completely disappear as if it had never existed. Not a single Irish victim was ever able to return to their homeland to talk about the ordeal that befell them. These are the lost slaves, the ones that time and biased history books have conveniently forgotten.
Between 1652 and 1659, it is believed that more than 50,000 men, women and children of Irish descent were forcibly transported to the British Imperial colonies of Barbados and Virginia as plantation slave labor.
Other prisoners of war, as well as political dissidents, captured in the conquered regions of England, Wales and Scotland were also sent to permanent settlement in Barbados as slaves. This essentially allowed Cromwell to purge the population of any opposing elements and also provide a profitable source of income through their sale to plantation owners.
The volume in which White prisoners were transported to Barbados was so great that by 1701, of the approximately 25,000 slaves represented in the island's population, about 21,700 of them were of European origin. Later, as the African slave trade began to expand and prosper, Barbados' Irish slave population rapidly declined over time, partly because many died from work soon after their arrival, and also as a result of racial mixing with Black slaves.
Unlike the small number of White indentured servants present in Barbados, who could at least theoretically hope for eventual freedom, no matter how hard their temporary slavery might have been, White slaves had no such hope.
Indeed, they were treated like slaves of African descent in every way imaginable. Irish slaves in Barbados were viewed as property to be bought, sold, and treated as the slave owner pleased. Their children also inherited slavery for life. Punitive violence, such as whipping, was used liberally against Irish slaves, and was often used immediately upon their arrival to brutalize their status as slaves, and as a warning against future disobedience.
Dehumanizing and humiliating bestial body examinations were used to evaluate and demonstrate the "qualities" of each captive to future buyers, something that reached disgrace in the Black slave markets and was also practiced on White slaves and indentured servants in the West Indian and North American colonies.
Irish slaves were separated from their free White relatives by being branded with their master's initials, which was applied with a hot iron to the forearm of women and the buttocks of men. Irish women in particular were viewed as superior commodities by White slave owners, who purchased them as sexual concubines. The rest ended up being sold to local brothels.
This degrading practice of sexual slavery made Irish men, women and children potential victims of the perverted whims of many disgusting buyers.
In fact, the fate of White slaves was no better than that of captive Africans. At times, due to economic conditions, they were treated even worse than their Black fellow sufferers. This was especially true throughout much of the 17th century, as White captives were much cheaper on the slave market than their African equivalents, and were therefore treated much worse as they were seen as convenient, disposable labor.
Only later did Black slaves become a cheaper commodity. A report dating back to 1667 mercilessly describes the Irish of Barbados as: "poor people who are simply allowed to not die, ... they are ridiculed by the Negroes, and called by the Epithet white slaves."
A 1695 report written by the island's governor frankly states that they worked "under the scorching sun without shirts, shoes, or stockings" and were "ruthlessly oppressed and used like dogs."
The Irish of that era were well aware that being deported or "Barbadosed" to the West Indies meant a life of slavery. In many cases it was actually common for White slaves in Barbados to have mulatto or Black overseers who often treated captive Irish slaves with extreme cruelty. Indeed:
The mulatto drivers took pleasure in whipping the whites. It gave them a sense of power and was also a form of protest against their white masters.
Existing public records in Barbados relate that some planters went so far as to codify this process of miscegenation through the establishment of special "breeding farms" for the express purpose of breeding the children of mixed-race slaves. White slave women, often starting at age 12, were used as "breeders" while being forcibly mated to Black men.
The chained Irish of Barbados played a major role as instigators and leaders of the various slave revolts on the island, which became a widespread threat facing plantation aristocrats.
This kind of rebellion occurred in November 1655 when a group of Irish slaves and servants fled along with several Blacks, and attempted to foment a general rebellion among the slaves against their masters.
This was a serious enough threat to justify the deployment of the militia, which ultimately defeated the rebels in fierce battle. Before their deaths, they inflicted significant damage on the ruling plantation class, cutting several slave owners to pieces in revenge for their slavery. They did not succeed in their strategy of completely devastating by fire the sugar cane fields where they were forced to work to enrich their masters.
Those captured were made an example of, as a cruel warning to the rest of the Irish, when those captured were burned alive and their heads were then mounted on pikes for everyone to see in the market.
As a result of the dramatic increase in Black slave migration to Barbados, coupled with high Irish mortality rates and racial mixing, the number of White slaves, who once formed the majority of the population in 1629, declined to an increasingly smaller minority by 1786.
There remains now only a miniature but still significant community within the indigenous population of Barbados which includes the descendants of the Scots-Irish slaves who continue to bear witness to the tragic legacy of their chained Celtic ancestors. This small group within the predominantly Black island of Barbados is known locally as the "Red Legs" which was originally a derogatory nickname understood in the same context as the slur "redneck" and derived from the sunburned skin of the first White slaves who were unaccustomed to to the Caribbean tropical climate.
To date, a community of about 400 people still lives in the north-eastern part of the island in the church parish of St. John, and vigorously resists racial mixing with the numerically superior Black population, despite living in extreme poverty. They make their living primarily from subsistence agriculture and fishing, and are indeed one of the most impoverished groups living in modern Barbados.
None of the Irish slaves returned to their homeland and were unable to talk about their ordeals. These are the forgotten slaves. Popular history books avoid mentioning them.
Documentary - They Were White and They Were Slaves
sources
http://snippits-and-slappits.blogspot.ru/2012/05/irish-slave-trade-forgotten-white.html
The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten “White” Slaves, John Martin, globalresearch.ca, popularresistance.org, March 17, 2015.
Here are a few more similar topics: for example or, here are interesting materials like. And of course everyone has already read where it first appeared The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy was made -CONCLUSION
The slave trade was an unprecedented economic, social and political disaster in the history of mankind... Caused by the demand of America and Europe, it bled the whole of Africa and placed it outside of civilization.
William Edward Burghardt DuBois
I’m thinking about Othello again: what a brilliant idea to create Othello as black, mulatto, in a word, destitute.
Alphonse Daudet
The transatlantic slave trade - the forced removal of African slaves from Africa to the plantations and mines of the colonies of the New World and some other colonies of European powers - lasted more than 400 years in total. Its beginning dates back to the middle of the 15th century, when the first Portuguese sailors reached the West African coast. The end of the era of the European-American slave trade - the 70s of the 19th century. - coincides with the beginning of the colonial division of the African continent.
It is wrong to talk about the place of the slave trade only in the history of Africa. She is part of the history of Africa, Europe and the Americas.
The slave trade was one of the “main moments” of primitive accumulation; it had a great influence on the development of capitalism in Europe and America. Its role in the history of Africa is extremely complex and tragic. Its consequences are still not fully understood. They are also evident today, and therefore the history of the slave trade does not belong to the past, but is one of the pressing problems of today.
It is often written that the slave trade slowed down the development of Africa, throwing it back compared to the level of development at which African peoples were before the arrival of Europeans. This is not entirely accurate. The slave trade really slowed down the development of Africa and interrupted its independent development, but at the same time it directed this development largely along an ugly, unusual path that had no prerequisites in African society. In addition, the slave trade subjugated the general process of development and adapted it to the “slave trade” needs.
Africa, as already mentioned, knew slavery and the slave trade before the arrival of Europeans. Slavery here was domestic, patriarchal in nature. The slave trade, especially on the west coast, where it was not associated with the trans-Saharan and Arab trade, was internal in nature and determined by local demand for slaves. There is no data for the 15th–16th centuries. about a sharp increase in the export of slaves from the West Coast. The subsequent monstrously rapid development of the slave trade was a direct consequence of European policies aimed at developing the slave trade. This is especially clear in the example of the development of the slave trade in Angola and the Congo.
The slave trade before its official prohibition at the beginning of the 19th century. was a legal, universally recognized and profitable branch of trade, with a clear organization by European and American trading houses. The Africans, for their part, also created a fairly organized system of buying and selling their compatriots on the coast. The chaos of the slave trade should only be discussed in relation to those areas of the hinterland where slaves were captured.
At the same time, the rapid increase in the volume of the slave trade, due solely to external reasons, did not lead to the development or strengthening of the slave system among the peoples of Africa.
There were no changes in the African economy during this time that would require greater use of slave labor than was the case before the arrival of Europeans.
Before the arrival of the slave traders, all slaves were kept in a state of complete “readiness” for sale - chained and locked in special rooms. Only in some areas, such as the Congo or Angola, were slaves awaiting shipment overseas used by local slave traders. It is incorrect to talk about the expansion of local slavery, meaning slaves awaiting sale.
It is sometimes argued that the consequence of the slave trade was the so-called secondary development of the slave system after the prohibition of the slave trade. This is not entirely true. After the prohibition of the slave trade, or rather, after the export of slaves from West Africa began to really decrease, some large slave traders for some time turned into slave owners. Indeed, in the interior of the continent, the slave trade continued. Slaves were captured, sent to the coast, and here, due to the impossibility of sending overseas, they “settled” with slave traders. The most enterprising traders purchased these slaves and used them in their households. However, this process has not been widely developed. The struggle to prohibit the export of slaves grew into the seizure of colonies, and the influx of slaves to the coast gradually ceased.
The development of the slave trade with Europeans everywhere led to a worsening of the situation of “house slaves.” By threatening slaves with sale to Europeans for the slightest disobedience, slave owners intensified their exploitation.
The slave trade contributed to property stratification and social differentiation. It led to the disintegration of community ties and undermined the intra-tribal organization of Africans.
Chiefs, priests and other members of the tribal nobility, enriched by the slave trade, formed part of the new nobility. In an effort to get more weapons, various goods and strengthen their power, they were interested in developing the slave trade and strengthening trade relations with Europeans.
Gradually, all power was concentrated in the hands of slave traders, and the lives of Africans largely obeyed the demands of the slave trade.
By pitting one tribe against another, fueling endless internecine wars, the slave trade led to the isolation of African peoples, to aggressiveness and mistrust.
The slave trade was one of the factors that hampered the development of agriculture and some crafts. The widespread import of European goods, especially manufactured goods, which were exchanged for slaves, interrupted the development of a number of crafts, for example, weaving, weaving, jewelry and others, and contributed to the deterioration of the quality of manufactured goods.
In some areas (for example, the ocean coast of modern Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Tanzania, areas near Lake Tanganyika), which were large transshipment points for the purchase and sale of slaves, Africans abandoned their traditional crafts and were actively involved in the slave trade, which gave them the opportunity to “easy by selling their fellow tribesmen to obtain the necessary goods. D. Livingston talked about how Africans stopped, for example, cultivating cotton. It was much easier to catch some passer-by and, having sold him, get the necessary fabrics and other products from the Europeans or Arabs.
The slave trade undoubtedly contributed to the development of trade and exchange. Through it, Africa was drawn into the world market. However, receiving various goods from slave traders (we will not discuss their value here), Africa gave in exchange a “good” whose value is incomparable to anything else - people. For more than four centuries, West and East Africa were areas for the export of a single “monoculture” - slaves.
And at the same time, the slave trade tightly isolated Africa from the rest of the world. For centuries, what came from outside was associated, as a rule, only with the slave trade. Nothing else could have broken through the stockade of the slave trade, and Africa could not have interested the world in those centuries in anything other than slaves for export.
In general, the slave trade undoubtedly acted as a hindrance to the creation of local statehood. It accelerated the collapse of, for example, Benin, the state of Congo, etc. But, having arisen at the intersection of trade routes, city-states such as Vidah, Ardra, Bonny, Old Calabar and others grew up around slave markets during the slave trade - intermediaries between Europeans and slave traders interior of Africa. Some state formations, for example in the Yoruba lands, owed their emergence to the slave trade, and after some time their population themselves became victims of slave hunters. Dahomey and the Zanzibar Sultanate grew rich from the slave trade, making profits from the sale of their compatriots and neighboring peoples the main source of state income.
According to W. Dubois, who relied on Dunbar’s figures, it was generally accepted that the entire slave trade cost Africa 100 million human lives, including people who died during the slave trade wars, in slave caravans, during the “middle transition,” etc. d. Of these 100 million, according to Dubois, 40 million are victims of the Muslim slave trade and 60 million of the European one; The calculations of R. Kuczynski are close to the figures of W. Dubois. Other researchers brought the death toll from the slave trade to 150 million people.
Of course, there is no demographic or statistical information about the population of Africa in the past. There are only some conditional calculations, which, although not fully reflecting reality, still give some idea of the dependence of the population of the African continent on the slave trade.
This is an unprecedented case in the history of mankind, when over 200 years the population of an entire continent, where no cataclysms occurred, remained at the same level or even decreased.
According to our calculations, at least 16–18 million people were taken from Africa to the countries of the New World during the entire period of the slave trade by European and American slave traders, and the total number of deaths as a result of the Atlantic slave trade was at least one hundred and fifty million people.
In recent decades, foreign researchers have been inclined to name other, much smaller numbers of deaths from the slave trade, this has already been discussed above. However, African scientists believe that more than 200 million people became victims of the slave trade in Africa.
The loss of such a number of people meant the destruction of productive forces, traditional cultural skills and connections and, as it seems to us, the worst thing - a violation of the gene pool of the race.
The slave trade required the strongest, healthiest, and most resilient. Many other Africans also died during the capture of slaves, but still the slave trade demanded the best from Mother Africa. Let's hope that major research by African historians, ethnographers, anthropologists, and geneticists on the consequences of the slave trade for Africa is ahead.
The psychological consequences of the slave trade turned out to be the most difficult for Africa and Africans both in Africa and beyond.
The slave trade led to a terrible devaluation of human life. Its consequences were moral decay, disfigurement of the psyche, consciousness of complete security for the evil caused to other people, degradation of both slave traders and slaves.
The most terrible legacy left by the slave trade is racism.
In the 18th century With the beginning of the struggle to prohibit the slave trade, a theory about the inferiority of Africans compared to white people was invented to justify it - racism arose. It was needed in order to legalize the continuation of the slave trade and establish the slavery of Africans in the American colonies.
The slave trade led to the fact that from the sphere of social differences the definition of “slave”, belonging to slavery, moved into the sphere of racial differences. “A slave not because he was captured and sold into slavery, but because an African cannot be anything other than a slave” - this racist position became the creed of planters and defenders of slavery.
One of the distinctive features of Africans is their dark skin color. It was declared a sign of an inferior race. The black man was denied the right to human dignity and could be insulted and humiliated with impunity.
At a certain level of social development, slavery existed among most peoples of the globe. We know about the slaves of Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome. There were white Christian slaves in the Muslim countries of the East and Africa, and, conversely, in the economies of European countries until the 16th century. Slaves were used quite widely, among whom were natives not only of African and Eastern countries, but also of neighboring European states. Pirates and slave traders of the Mediterranean captured and sold people into slavery, regardless of the color of their skin or religion.
And yet, to this day, when most people hear the word “slave,” they conjure up an image of a black African. And this is also one of the consequences of the slave trade.
For generations, people have known Africa through the lens of the slave trade. The world has not heard of the magnificent wealth of ancient Ghana, or the power of medieval Benin and Songhai. Africa was known for slave traders and slaves. This is where the concept of the unhistoricity of African peoples largely originated, and in the minds of millions of people, far from having racist views, there was a belief that Africans were people of low mental capacity, capable of doing only unskilled work.
The formalization of racial prejudices into the theory of racism occurred at the end of the 18th century, when in almost all European countries and the United States there was a struggle to ban the slave trade.
From the very beginning of its existence, racism had an “office” character. Its emergence was caused by the desire to justify the oppression of one race by another and prove the necessity of it.
At the beginning of the 19th century. racism did not particularly manifest itself. The beginning of the colonial division of the world served as a new impetus for its further development. Particularly fertile ground for racist ideology and practice was created by the activities of colonialists in Africa and the struggle of slave-owning planters to maintain slavery in the United States. During the territorial division of Africa, racism was adopted by the colonialists to justify the now colonial slavery of Africans.
Modern science, if approached from a truly scientific point of view, easily refutes any speculation of racists. And yet racism - this, in the words of W. Du Bois, “the most terrible legacy of Negro slavery” - still exists.
In 1967, the issue of race and racism was discussed at a UNESCO meeting. The Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice was adopted, which, in particular, noted that “racism hinders the development of those who suffer from it, corrupts those who profess it, divides nations among themselves, increases international tension and threatens world peace.” .
In 1978, UNESCO returned to the debate on race and racism and adopted the New Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice. It states, in particular: “All peoples of the world have equal abilities that allow them to achieve the highest intellectual, technical, social, economic, cultural and political development.”
“Racism is a social phenomenon,” says G. Aptheker. “It has its own history, that is, a beginning, development and, I am convinced, an end.” Indeed, racism is not eternal, but if the times of the slave trade are a thing of the past, then racism lives on today.
The slave trade, which had such dire consequences for Africa, contributed to the development and prosperity of the countries of Europe and America.
There was a close connection in the era of primitive accumulation between slavery, the colonial system, the development of trade and the emergence of large-scale industry. “Like machines, credit, etc., direct slavery is the basis of bourgeois industry. Without slavery there would be no cotton: without cotton, modern industry is unthinkable. Slavery gave value to the colonies, the colonies created world trade, world trade is a necessary condition for large-scale industry.
Without slavery, North America, the country of the most rapid progress, would have turned into a patriarchal country." “In general,” wrote K. Marx, “for the hidden slavery of wage workers in Europe, slavery sans phrase (without reservations) in the New World was necessary as a foundation.”
The fabulous wealth of the planters of the West Indies and America was created by the hands of Africans, hundreds of thousands of whom died in the cruelest conditions of plantation slavery.
Both Americas benefited the most from the slave trade. The foundations of today's US economic power were laid during the slave trade on the bones of hundreds of thousands of Africans.
“We owe everything that is good in America to Africa,” said one of the American public figures of the 18th century. “Negroes are the main support of the New World,” his contemporaries supported.
Along with the Indians - the only autochthonous race of America, along with the descendants of Europeans who once immigrated to the New World, the descendants of former slaves Africans can rightfully consider the American continent their native land. Like Indians and Indians, like “white” inhabitants of the American continent, African-Americans were and are the creators of the history of the countries of which they are citizens.
The descendants of African slaves became outstanding scientists and public figures: the names of William Dubois, Paul Robeson, Martin Luther King and others are named among the best representatives of humanity.
Africans, torn from their homeland, sold into slavery and brought to a foreign, harsh land for them, gave their stepmother America not only their labor. They brought their culture, their customs and beliefs, their art to the New World.
It can be assumed that around the beginning of the 19th century. Gradually, in the process of working together on plantations, mines, and fighting against planters, some tribal differences began to be overcome. The languages of the colonialists helped overcome the language barrier, since the slaves were natives of different regions of Africa and did not always understand each other. The subsequent abolition of slavery, the departure of slaves from plantations in some colonies, and the resulting migration within the country contributed to the growth of a sense of ethnic community. Perhaps from this time we can talk about the beginning of the process of the formation of the Afro-Cuban, Afro-Guyanese people, etc.
Of all the peoples who appeared in the New World after it became known to Europeans, Africans brought with them the most profound cultural traditions. The influence of African rhythms and melodies on the music of the peoples of both Americas and the West Indies is undeniable. Some traditional dances of the Yoruba in Brazil and the Mina and Coromantine in Cuba exist almost unchanged. Baya women borrowed some jewelry and elements of festive clothing from the Yoruba.
The folklore of Brazil was enriched by the folklore of slaves from Angola, Congo, and Mozambique. To a lesser extent, the influence of Yoruba folklore can be seen here. In Cuba, the descendants of Africans - Ibo, Coromantine, Yoruba - have preserved the traditions of their peoples. The modern language of Brazil includes many Yoruba and Quimbundu words.
Some Western scholars said that centuries of colonial slavery in the New World led to the almost complete disappearance of African traditions, both in the field of social relations and in the field of traditional art and religious cults.
This is not true. Rather, it should probably be said that in the conditions of the cruelest plantation slavery, slaves kept their religious rituals, cultural traditions, and folklore in the strictest secret from the whites, passing on from generation to generation. Research will show where the truth is. Such work requires field research and joint efforts of scientists from different specialties. Now there are works devoted to the history of slavery of Africans in individual American countries. Perhaps they will answer these questions too.
Encounters with European civilization were disastrous for many peoples of the world. The discovery of new lands and territorial conquests were accompanied by the suppression of resistance of the local population, often leading to the extermination of the aborigines, an example of this is the American Indians, Australians, and Tasmanians. Africa (we are talking here about the areas that were the site of the slave trade) suffered a different fate.
For four centuries, while the slave trade continued, Europeans did not try to penetrate deep into the continent: they did not need it. The struggle for the African continent began when, at a new stage in the development of capitalism, Africa was supposed to become and became a source of raw materials and a sales market for the metropolises, and Africans turned into colonial slaves in their native land.
The slave trade - transatlantic and Arab - and the fight against it, along with other factors, prepared and made it easier for the European powers to carry out the colonial partition.
The slave trade divided and bled Africa, brought colossal destruction to the African peoples, weakened the resistance of Africans to colonial conquest, and gave the colonialists various pretexts and reasons for interfering in the internal affairs of Africans.
The fight against the slave trade was used in various ways by colonialists when conquering Africa. So, under this pretext, expeditions were sent into the depths of Africa. Sometimes they were led by enthusiastic researchers, sometimes by outright colonialists. In both cases, such expeditions prepared the way for further colonial expansion.
And the slave trade, having weakened the resistance of African peoples to Europeans, was also an important factor that slowed down the development of the national liberation movement.
In many areas of Africa, where Europeans acted as the “saviors” of Africa from the horrors of the slave trade, where the slave trade was used as an excuse to seize African territories, they were opposed by local African slave traders who did not want to part with their profits. They were supported by Africans dependent on them, attracted by the promise of a certain reward, and simply lovers of profit and robbery. A paradoxical situation developed.
Capturing, for example, Lagos and other areas of modern Nigeria, the interior regions of Tanzania, Sudan, the British colonialists acted as real champions of the prohibition of the slave trade (it’s another matter what ultimate goals they pursued!). African slave traders and their allies fought in this case to maintain their right to engage in the slave trade. This struggle, outwardly directed against the European invasion, had nothing in common with the liberation movement against the Europeans.
In some areas of modern Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania and other countries, the slave trade served as one of the factors that prevented the formation of the nation, as it brought with it wars and hostility between individual tribes.
In the last decade, publications by African authors have appeared, where African historians give their assessment of the Atlantic and Arab slave trade. They sharply criticize the work of West Africanists who try to prove that the slave trade was only an unfortunate episode in the history of Africa and did not have significant consequences for the African peoples. In February 1992, Pope John Paul II, while touring African countries, visited Senegal. Here, on the island of Gore, near the buildings that still survive, where slaves were once kept, prepared for sale overseas, Pope John Paul II, on behalf of all Christians on Earth, asked the Africans for forgiveness for centuries of the slave trade...
Slave trading is a thing of the past. But to this day, even after going through the suffering of colonial oppression, Africans remember with horror the years when, “numb in a bloody nightmare,” Africa gave its best children to overseas slave traders.
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Judging by the number of countries involved in the slave trade, for Europeans this business must have been both a profitable business and, given its long duration, a familiar way of life. But even so, in some ports, such as Nantes, the slave traders themselves were in no hurry to call a spade a spade - instead they used veiled terms, such as “deed”. What about Africans? Were they simply victims, or were they conscientious and accommodating partners in organizing a business under the terms of which they were well aware?
CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES
There has always been heated debate about the place of Africans in the slave trade. For a long time, slave traders clung to what they believed to be irresistible evidence that among Africans the sale of their young men was commonplace, and that if the Europeans refused to buy slaves from them, other people - meaning the Arabs - would also practiced black slavery - they would have done it immediately. In modern times, African intellectuals and statesmen argue that this exchange was always unequal (people were bought for small change), and Europeans always resorted to violence to induce Africans to cooperate against their will.
For historians, all this does not look so simple, and primarily because our modern criteria differ from those of 500, and even 150 years ago. We believe that it was enough to transport one slave by ship across the Atlantic, and that is already a lot. But did Africans think the same way? Secondly, trade, which lasted almost four centuries, was a very complex process, which involved a whole variety of power relations and relevant participants; the interests of the latter and their reactions could not but change over time. All this prompted the British historian Basil Davidson to say that “the idea of a slave trade imposed by Europe on Africa is not based on anything in history ... it is as baseless as the European assertion that the institution of slavery was to some extent specific to Africa."
FROM ATTACK ON SLAVES TO SLAVE TRADE
The first way Europeans began to capture African slaves was through simple kidnapping. Striking examples can be found in the famous Cronica dos Feitos da Guine (Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea), written in the mid-fifteenth century by the Portuguese Gomez Ines de Zurara. When the Europeans landed on the African shores, they began to stop in places that seemed suitable for their business, and from there they went to hunt people. However, this action in itself was quite dangerous, as evidenced by the massacre in which almost all members of the expedition led by Nuno Tristao died near the Ken Vert peninsula in the territory of modern Senegal. This is not the only case of such a massacre, but it certainly proves that Africans fought resolutely against their enslavement.
The disadvantage of such attacks was probably that enslavement was not predictable; Thus, it was not possible to satisfy the growing need for slaves, because the plantations and mines of America required more and more slave power.
The Portuguese were the first to move from simply capturing prisoners to actively trading in slaves, following instructions given by Prince Henry the Navigator in 1444; after them, the Portuguese sovereigns resorted to this practice until the end of the fifteenth century. However, even as this trade became commonplace, attacks continued, providing slave traders with an additional source of supply. The so-called "pirate" trade - in which slave ships cruised along the coast and captured more and more slaves until a certain batch was completed - often took the form of armed attacks on villages located near the sea. Countries involved in the slave trade often began by organizing such actions - this was the case in the first half of the seventeenth century with the first ships arriving from the “twelve colonies” (in the future - the United States of America).
However, at the time, leading European nations placed certain ethical restrictions on the slave trade. The British, Portuguese and French agreed to develop a common declaration according to which the slave trade would be considered legal only when it came to slaves duly sold by Africans. Forts were built along the coast to facilitate trade while instilling a healthy sense of fear among Africans. The idea they embodied was quite unambiguous: “Sell us slaves - and then we will let you choose them at your discretion - otherwise we will take the slaves we need at random.”
So, the slave trade was a type of one-sided relationship that arose and developed under the threat of force. Once again we agree with Basil Davidson when he says: “Africa and Europe were involved together... But Europe dominated, it formed and accelerated the slave trade and constantly turned the matter back to the benefit of the Europeans and to the detriment of Africa.”
AFFAIRS OF STATE AND FAMILY SOCIETIES.
The slave trade, in its heyday, was perceived by Africans as a kind of diabolical conspiracy, dooming them to either be accomplices or die. Thus, almost all the tribal or state societies of the African coast were forced to become involved in the slave trade. They did this in different ways and under different conditions, which differed significantly in different areas and during different periods of time.
Social history in colonial Africa shows that slavery was a common institution in those states that sometimes already had their own domestic slave trade, for military or economic reasons. However, one must understand a certain difference between those states that maintained connections with the outside world and those that did not. The former were quicker and better prepared to enter into the slave trade. This was the case with the states surrounding the Sahara Desert; they already had experience selling slaves - along with other goods - to their Arab and Barbary partners, who actually continued to resell some of them to Europeans.
The chronicler Alvise de Cada Mosto, who participated in the Portuguese expedition to Senegambia in 1455-1456, wrote that local sovereigns were great masters of taking advantage of the new competition that spread between trans-Saharan and Atlantic traders for the sale of slaves to Arabs and Barbaries in exchange for horses, and other slaves to the Portuguese in exchange for European goods.
The situation was completely different in those states that did not have trade relations with the outside world; their role in the slave trade indicates an incorrect and contradictory attitude towards the problem and the difficulties they faced. A typical example is the Kingdom of Kongo, one of the most powerful in Africa at the time of its clash with the Portuguese at the end of the fifteenth century. From the point of view of modern historians, the economic, political and social position of the Congo was on par with Portugal. From the time of the first contacts, the Congolese aristocracy began to embrace Christianity, and the king considered it necessary to address the Portuguese king as “my brother.” But the fact is that the slave trade has already begun, in violation of the agreements, both conditional and formal, that these two states concluded between themselves. And many letters have still been preserved in which the King of the Congo protested against the capture of slaves, in particular members of noble families.
But even now there are certain contradictions in determining the real motive of such protests. Some historians perceive them as an outburst of national feelings, while others look at them more as a manifestation of the determination of the aristocracy, refusing to let such a profitable business out of its own hands. One way or another, the kingdom did not last long under the blows of the slave trade. A similar drama - to one degree or another - will be repeated throughout Africa.
The Kingdom of Dahomey also suffered the bitter experience of the slave trade. In the mid-eighteenth century it moved to the port of Oida, one of the leading centers of trade in the Gulf of Guinea. The king of Dahomey considered this port - there was an increasing accumulation of firearms there - as a point that posed a definite threat to the security of his possessions since the slave trade gave him a tactical advantage over his neighbors. Having once taken control of Oida, the leaders of Dahomey found themselves in a vicious circle: to maintain a strong state they needed guns and gunpowder, but to obtain these latter they had to sell slaves to Europeans. The solution was simple: since it was strictly forbidden to sell objects that were the property of the kingdom, they gathered powerful troops to attack neighboring nations; all this is with the goal of capturing slaves.
Unlike state societies, tribal societies did not have any means of obtaining slaves by force. In this case, slavery was built on a complex practice in which various categories of social outcasts, such as criminals, misfits, witches, and victims of natural and economic disasters, were reduced to the category of slaves. And even this would not have been enough to turn the slave trade into the extensive and time-consuming business that it became. Therefore, other means were found to satisfy the needs of the Europeans. For example, in the city of Arochukwu (“the voice of Chukwu”, the deity himself), in the Nile Delta, a famous oracle was summoned, whose authority was recognized by all segments of the population, and he appointed those who - for one reason or another - became doomed to be sold into slavery. This practice continued until the beginning of the 19th century.
In other regions, especially in central Africa, trade networks gradually formed, stretching from the coast inland. All goods that were exported or imported through this network, mostly slaves, passed through the heads of the clan. In Gabon, and especially in Loango, in the societies that were located along the coast and formed the key links in these trading networks, a social order reigned with a high degree of subordination; the basis was the degree of participation of society members in the slave trade. Family relationships, the foundation of clan societies, were gradually replaced by relationships based on wealth earned through trade, and it was such relationships that began to dictate people's place in the social hierarchy.
ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE
On the African side, however, the foundations of the slave trade were very precariously balanced. It is impossible to discuss the role that Africans played in the slave trade without sometimes referring to their role in the abolition of the latter. A one-sided view of history often emphasized the roles of Europeans - philosophers, thinkers, clergy and businessmen - while the influence of Africans remained undervalued. Some went so far as to blame Africans for being the main obstacle to the collapse of this type of trade in the 19th century. It is difficult to imagine an opinion that is further from the truth.
Outside Africa, resistance by victims of the slave trade—and it took various forms, such as the Back to Africa movement, the founding of Maruun communities, and even armed uprising, as in Santo Domingo in 1791—was primarily a means question the entire institution of slavery. Those who managed to escape its clutches took a very active, if often unacknowledged, part in the campaign for the abolition of slavery. One such person was Ottoba Cuguano, who was born in Fentilendi, now modern Ghana, was enslaved in the West Indies, and published his Thoughts and Feelings on the Pernicious and Sinful Advancement of Slavery in 1787 in London.
In 1789, another African, Oloda Equiano, surnamed Gustavus Wassa, who was born in Aiboleni, Nigeria, published, again in London, An Interesting Narrative of the Life of Oloda Equiano or Gustavus Wassa, an African, Written by Himself. These books played an important role in the development of public opinion that led to the abolition of the slave trade.
In Africa itself, throughout the “years of trial”, when the slave trade was rampant, blacks, along with slaves, continued to sell what their land provided, namely: timber, ivory, spices, gold, vegetable oils and the like. It was enough for the needs of Europeans to change - and the Africans switched to an “easy” form of commerce.
Slavery is one of the most unpleasant and shameful pages in human history. It is worth noting that, although slavery itself appeared a long time ago, it became widespread from the moment when Europeans in colonized territories needed cheap labor and decided to use dark-skinned slaves from Africa. Here are a few facts about slavery and the slave trade from which you can see the scale of this phenomenon.
15 PHOTOS
1. One of the first mentions of slavery is found in the Mesopotamian Code of Hamurabi, dating back to approximately 1860 BC. 
2. Since the beginning of the development of civilization, slavery has played a huge role in the life of society. Many of the ancient structures, such as the Egyptian pyramids, were built by slaves, and the slave trade was one of the sources of the financial power of the British Empire. 
3. The first large-scale slave trade in history was the Arab slave trade. It began in the 7th century, when slaves were brought from West Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. 
4. The most famous is the Transatlantic slave trade, which began in the 15th century and continued until the 19th century. 
5. The Portuguese first joined the slave trade in the 16th century and have been its most active participants since then. In fact, half of all slaves sold in the Transatlantic Slave Trade were sent to Portuguese colonies such as Brazil. 
6. Historians estimate that about 12 million African slaves were sold during the Transatlantic Slave Trade from the 16th to the 19th centuries. During this time, about 1.5 million people died on ships during transportation, and 10.5 million were sold into slavery. 
7. About 4 million slaves died during the grueling marches as they were transported from remote parts of the country to the coast of Africa to be loaded onto ships. 
8.On the coast, slaves were kept in large forts. Historians estimate that out of the 20 million slaves who passed through these forts, at least 800 thousand people died. 
9. The captains of the ships transporting slaves took on board from 350 to 600 people of “living goods”. The quarters where the slaves were kept were so cramped that the victims could barely move during the two-month voyage across the Atlantic. Many died from disease, others, unable to withstand the terrible conditions, committed suicide by jumping overboard the ship. 
10. Upon arrival in America, slaves were sent to “seasonal camps.” Almost 5 million people died in these camps due to dysentery. 
11. Approximately 84% of slaves were brought to the New World to work on sugar plantations. Most of them ended up in Brazil. 
12. Plantations in the North American South pale in comparison to those in South America and the Caribbean. The hard work on the huge plantations led to high mortality rates and slave owners constantly had to buy new slaves from Africa. 14. Despite the emancipation of black slaves, they still faced restrictions on their rights for many decades, a clear example of which was the ban on interracial marriages. 
15. Although every government in existence today has officially banned slavery, it still remains a huge problem. By some estimates, up to 50 million people are enslaved or in slavery-like conditions.