Originally Posted by GoodMan:
"No they weren't trying to survive..."
We are well aware of the fact that some African sold other Africans into Slavery. We also know that slavery existed in Africa, the same as it did all over the world before, during and after the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and that there were some Africans profiting from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
"They did this for power."
I'm sure that some did, because as with any War, there will always be those who will try to align themselves with the enemy either because they agree with the enemy or as a most cowardice act to survive.
"Africans weren't a united group, actually the concept of "Africans" didn't even exist there was no race consciousness among them. Europeans didn't have to force their way to Africa, European were welcomed in Africa, given status in Africa."
We are well aware of the fact that Africa, the same as it is now, was not a United Group before or during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, nor during the Arab Slave Trade.
"And what the hell is this Women in Africa had to serve men?"
It was a tradition of the most prominent Tribes in West African culture; it's just a simple fact, and not surprising considering that the subjugation of women still exists in Africa. The oppression of women and girls is still the norm in most of Africa to this day, so it shouldn't be such a broad leap to such a "tradition" being common place in African culture centuries ago.
"Africa was is matrilineal, Women had property. Women didn't even allow fathers to do deal with the raising of children, it was mostly done by maternal uncles, aunts, mothers and grandmothers. No different today."
There a some African Tribes that are or always were Matriarchal, but then, there is the rest of the vast majority of Africa, which happens to also be a predominately Islamic. It's only been in recent decades that many African began to see educating girls as important as educating boys, the dominance that African men still try to hold over women in most parts of the continent. Ancient African history depicts a culture neither predominately Patriarchal or Matriarchal, but a more gender homogoneous one than not.
"There was a clear separation of sexes that allowed women to have their own power structure totally independent of men and it is still that way in rural Africa."
I'm sure that this is true sparingly withing certain cultures in Africa, but it is not the norm and Africa, to this day, is predominately Patriarchal. I know of one African Tribe where the woman chooses which man she wants to be with and after a point in time, can just choose to be with another man, but this is not the norm in traditional African cultures.
"So I am pretty sure these women, entered these relationships willingly since Europeans were too damn cowardly to actually go into Africa. They stayed on the coasts. If Europeans went into Africa without the help of Africans they would've died. Same with the Europeans without the help of Native Americans in the Americas, they would've died. "
I'm pretty sure that these women's parents where dictating and orchestrating any matrimonial arrangements, unions, etc., as done for centuries in nearly all African cultures, even to this day in most African cultures. Often it is the Yoruba that seems to have had less oppressive and chauvinistic views and dominance over the lives of women and girls by comparison.
"Europeans weren't a real threat at that time. They just for some reason ran up against cowardly and naive people of color that didn't kill Europeans immediately when they saw them."
Africans were done like the Native Americans were, at first there were not many Europeans coming, and I'm sure some were merely seeking mutual trade, etc., but as time went on more and more came and European realization that they had guns/gun powder while Africans still only had bows and arrows and spears, along with all gained knowledge of the territory and Tribes, seized any and all opportunity to invade, overthrow, occupy and dominate Africans and the continent.
"And these weren't the only biracial African generational family slave traders. And these were elite marriages, not Europeans finding some poor African girl and telling her she gonna get married to him. No, these were carefully arranged marriages between African elites and Europeans merchants."
"There were more of them from all over Europe and Africa. British, Portugese, and Danish. There were some from the Gold Coast all the way to Angola. Actually Angola and Cape Verde still have a strong biracial African Caste. Most of the biggest slave traders were offsprings of these types of unions."
"So Africans willingly intermarried with Europeans and procreated with them and housed them and sold various tribes to Europeans. Very little force involved."
And, I'm sure that some of that happened within some/a few African Tribes, at least before Slavery became racial, but it in no way was any 'norm'.
"African rulers actually had great control of Africa at that time and Europeans were too cowardly to challenge them since they were scared of Africa. Africans did it for the money and goods that were exchanged."
I'm sure they did, up until the point that Africa was being invaded by standing armies of each and every European nation in Europe. But, it had less to do with fear than it did to do with more superior weapons Europeans possessed, especially after Africans Europeans did have contact with had been thoroughly groomed by European deception to be ambushed in future relentless invasions.
"Europeans didn't even have to manage the posts or even guard it, Africans did it for them. Then on top of that, Europeans had their little biracial African children be the middlemen so that Europeans just pulled up their ships, but the slaves on them and take them to the New World."
Why would WAR On Africa be any different than War anywhere else in the world, where once you have invaded and conquered a nation, you quickly start to assimilate as much of willing the population into your fold, and holding the power of whether people would starve to death or be murdered is a great motivator to get people to join up with you.
"So the African side Trans Atlantic slave trade was mostly African managed and operated."
This simply is not true, especially beyond a certain point in time and it's also not true beyond a few African Tribes [in comparison to thousands of African Tribes that existed (and still exist)]
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http://www.theroot.com/article...s_who_were_they.html
The African elites brought their victims to the coast and sold them to slave traders who operated through a variety of trading places, as David Eltis explained to me by email. Some were sold at "factories," the residence of a European or African trading agent or agents (or factors) of a slaving company, established in strategic locations along the African coast. Some were sold at coastal forts, in Senegal, the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau. "South of the latter (Guinea-Bissau) to the Gold Coast (Ghana), there was a large number of small, but fortified, trading posts." Then from Ghana east to the Togo boundary today there were about 40 castles of varying size.
Further east, from Little Popo in Dahomey [Benin] to Lagos, Nigeria, "the flow of slaves was controlled by African polities, and the Europeans had agents and storehouses under the protection of an African ruler," Eltis continued. "From the Niger Delta to Northern Angola, there were no permanent European posts at all, so each slave ship would negotiate with the African polity, and Europeans would not have had a permanent land-based presence, though the Congo River had a lot of European-controlled barracoons [enclosures to hold the enslaved] in the last 25 years of the trade." The exception to all of this was Luanda, in Angola. It was "the biggest trading site of all, which was Portuguese-controlled, as was Mozambique island," where there would be warehouses and holding yards.
If African elites controlled the capture of the slaves in the interior, who controlled these factories and trading places along the coasts? Europeans, right? Here's where things get interesting. Surprisingly, some of the largest traders in slaves were actually "mulattos," the offspring of European traders and the daughters of African rulers. They were connected to both the European merchants and the African elites by marriage, clientage and trade alliances.
As Eltis explained to me, "from very soon after the start of the slave trade, there would have been traders on the coast with mixed African and European origins. Thornton and Heywood have identified several Afro-Brazilians and Afro-Portuguese mulatto traders, including Joaquim d'Almeida, Francisco Olympia da Silva, Ambrosio Gomes in Guinea-Bissau, Isidoro Felix de Sousa in Dahomey and Anna Joaquina dos Santos Silva in Luanda, and Afro-British traders in Sierra Leone such as James Cleveland, Thomas Gaffery Curtis, John Pearce (the "King of Rio Nunez") and William Skelton Jr., among many others. Historian Bruce Mouser also has compiled charts distinguishing slave traders by location and background, including Africans, in his current book, American Colony on the Rio Pongo. The most prominent of a group of about half a dozen mulatto traders in Sierra Leone in the early 19th century was a man named John Ormond Jr., whose life helps to explain how this curious mixed-race caste of slave traders came to be.
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And even here, you still have to keep it all in perspective; there were about a billions African, and thousands of tribes in Africa; naming 2 or 4 or 15 or 20 African Tribes is not ALL Africans. Also has to be considered is the fact that most of even these "Tribes"/regions were really being occupied by European forces by the time any 'Africans selling other Africans into Slavery' was really happening in astronomical amounts.
Trans Atlantic Slave Trade:
"By the end of the 15th century, Europeans had superseded their Arab and African counterparts and established a modern trans-Atlantic slave trade. A commercial revolution in Europe led to the rise of powerful nations such as Spain, Portugal, Britain, France and Holland. This created new ideas featuring competition, commodity exploitation, and the accumulation of wealth. The importing and exporting of slaves became an acceptable and profitable part of European commerce.
Portugal was the first European country to see the profitability of slave trading. They exploited the rivalries between the more than 200 different ethnic groups in West Africa. Christian Europeans who believed that enslaving other Christians was immoral had no qualms about enslaving pagan or Muslim Africans. As early as 1502 Portugal was shipping enslaved Africans to the Caribbean and Brazil to work on sugar cane plantations. As these plantations grew in size more and more slaves were needed to do the hard work in the fields. With new slaves constantly arriving from Africa it became more profitable for planters to import newer, fresher slaves than to care for those already working the fields of Cuba, Jamaica, and Barbados. With new slaves constantly arriving planters and overseers devised a system to break in newcomers. After being broken in spirit as well as in the habits of freedom, new slaves were often re-exported to North America.
The slave trade quickly exploded into a multi-million dollar enterprise, employing thousands of people and beginning the largest forced migration in the history of man. The coast of West Africa was soon filling up with an extensive network of European forts. The Gold Coast, which is now Ghana had dozens of European castles, some able to hold up to 1500 slaves. Local rulers were easily paid off in rent and protection fees. Slaves were prisoners of wars, prisoners convicted of crimes, and kidnap victims. African traders usually marched their victims in chains to the forts along the coast, many times in groups as large as 150 people. After purchase the slave's skin was branded with the insignia of their purchaser. Their teeth, genitals, limbs and stature were inspected and defects reduced the price. The slaves were held in the dungeons until the ship arrived to take them to their next destination. Many slaves died before they departed Africa." . . .
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he 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.
British colonial official with Islamic slave traders in Zanzibar. On the far right is Hamad bin Mohamed bin Jumah bin Rajab bin Mohamed bin Said al-Murghabi, more commonly known as Tippu Tip. He was the most notorious Islamic slaver. al-Murghabi died in 1905.
This singular short tart claim, that "We sold each other into slavery", has maintained in a state of continual flux our historical basis for Black-on-Black self love and mutual cooperation at the level of Class.
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.
Even the case of Tippu Tip may well fall into a category that we might call the consequences of forced cultural assimilation via White (or Red) Arab Conquest over Africa. Tippu Tip s father was a White (or Red) Arab slave raider, his mother an unmixed African slave. Tip was born out of violence, the rape of an African woman. It is said that Tip, a "mulatto", was merciless to Africans.
The first act against Africa by Whites was an unilateral act of war, announced or unannounced. There were no African Kings or Queens in any of the European countries nor in the U.S. when ships set sail for Africa to capture Africans for profit. Whites had already decided to raid for slaves. They didn't need our agreement on that. Hence, there was no mutuality in the original act. The African so-called slave "trade" was a demand-driven market out of Europe and America, not a supply-driven market out of Africa. We did not seek to sell captives to the Whites as an original act. Hollywood s favorite is showing Blacks capturing Blacks into slavery, as if this was the only way capture occurred. There are a number of ways in which capture occurred. Let s dig a little deeper into this issue.
Chancellor Williams, in his classic work, The Destruction of Black Civilization, explains that after the over land passage of African trade had been cut off at the Nile Delta by the White Arabs in about 1675 B.C. (the Hyksos), the Egyptian/African economy was thrown into a recession. There is even indication of "pre-historic" aggression upon Africa by White nomadic tribes (the Palermo Stone).. This culminated as an unfortunate trade, in that, when the White Arabs attacked, they had the benefit of the knowledge and strength of Africans on their side, as their slaves. This is a significantly different picture than the propaganda that we sold our immediate family members into slavery to the Whites.
It becomes a kind of racism; that, while all ethnic groups have sold its own ethnic group into slavery, Blacks can't do it. When Eastern Europeans fight each other it is not called tribalism. Ethnic cleansing is intended to make what is happening to sound more sanitary. What it really is, is White Tribalism pure and simple.
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).
Eric A. Walker, in A History of Southern Africa, Longmans, London, 1724, chronicles the manner in which the Dutch entered South Africa at the Cape of Good Hope. Van Riebeeck anchored at the Cape with his ships in 1652 during a time that the indigenous Khoi Khoi or Khoisan (derogatorily called Hottentots) were away hunting. The fact of their absence is the basis of the White "claim" to the land. But there had been a previous encounter with the Khoi Khoi at the Cape in 1510 with the Portuguese Ship Almeida. States Eric A. Walker, "Affonso de Albuquerque was a conscious imperialist whose aim was to found self-sufficing colonies and extend Portuguese authority in the East&He landed in Table Bay, and as it is always the character of the Portuguese to endeavor to rob the poor natives of the country, a quarrel arose with the Hottentots, who slew him and many of his companions as they struggled towards their boats through the heavy sand of Salt River beach." (Ibid. p. 17). Bartholomew Diaz had experienced similar difficulties with the indigenous Xhosa of South Africa in 1487, on his way to "discovering" a "new" trade route to the East. The conflict ensued over a Xhosa disagreement over the price Diaz wanted to pay for their cattle. The Xhosa had initially come out meet the Whites, playing their flutes and performing traditional dance.
In 1652, knowing that the indigenous South Africans were no pushovers, Van Riebeeck didn't waste any time. As soon as the Khoi Khoi returned from hunting, Van Riebeeck accused them of stealing Dutch cattle. Simply over that assertion, war broke out, and the superior arms of the Dutch won. South African Historian J. Congress Mbata best explains this dynamic in his lectures, available at the Cornell University Africana Studies Department. Mbata provides three steps: 1) provocation by the Whites, 2) warfare and, 3) the success of a superior war machinery.
There are several instances in which Cecil Rhodes, towards the end of the 19th Century, simply demonstrated the superiority of the Maxim Machine Gun by mowing down a corn field in a matter of minutes. Upon such demonstrations the King and Queen of the village, after consulting the elders, signed over their land to the Whites. These scenarios are quite different from the Hollywood version, and well documented.
It has been important to present the matters above to dispel the notion of an African slave trade that involved mutuality as a generalized dynamic on the part of Africans. If we can accept the documented facts of our history above and beyond propaganda, we can begin to heal. We can begin to love one another again and go on to regain our liberties on Earth.
Respectfully,
Oscar L. Beard, B.A., RPCV
slavery at the dawn of capitalism and the ideology of white supremacy
Slaves were denied any rights. Throughout the colonies in the Caribbean to North America, laws were passed establishing a variety of common practices: Slaves were forbidden to carry weapons, they could marry only with the owner's permission, and their families could be broken up. They were forbidden to own property. Masters allowed slaves to cultivate vegetables and chickens, so the master wouldn't have to attend to their food needs. But they were forbidden even to sell for profit the products of their own gardens.
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Africa Queen Nzinga Resistance
Ann Nzinga "Queen of Ndongo" (1582-1663)In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese stake in the slave trade was threatened by England and France. This caused the Portuguese to transfer their slave-trading activities southward to the Congo and South West Africa. Their most stubborn opposition, as they entered the final phase of the conquest of Angola, came from a queen who was a great head of state, and a military leader with few peers in her time.
The important facts about her life are outlined by Professor Glasgow of Bowie, Maryland:
"Her extraordinary story begins about 1582, the year of her birth. She is referred to as Nzingha, or Jinga, but is better known as Ann Nzingha. She was the sister of the then-reigning King of Ndongo, Ngoli Bbondi, whose country was later called Angola. Nzingha was from an ethnic group called the Jagas. The Jagas were an extremely militant group who formed a human shield against the Portuguese slave traders. Nzingha never accepted the Portuguese conquest of Angola, and was always on the military offensive. As part of her strategy against the invaders, she formed an alliance with the Dutch, who she intended to use to defeat the Portuguese slave traders."
In 1623, at the age of forty-one, Nzingha became Queen of Ndongo. She forbade her subjects to call her Queen, She preferred to be called King, and when leading an army in battle, dressed in men's clothing.
In 1659, at the age of seventy-five, she signed a treaty with the Portuguese, bringing her no feeling of triumph. Nzingha had resisted the Portuguese most of her adult life. African bravery, however, was no match for gun powder. This great African woman died in 1663, which was followed by the massive expansion of the Portuguese slave trade.
Some colonies encouraged religious instruction among slaves, but all of them made clear that a slave's conversion to Christianity didn't change their status as slaves.
Psalm 123:2 (New International Version (NIV)): As the eyes of slaves look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid look to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the LORD our God, till he shows us his mercy.
Ephesians 6:4-6: Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.
Ephesians 6:5:Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.
Ephesians 6:9:And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.
Colossians 3:22:Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.
Colossians 4:1:Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
Titus 2:9:Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them,
1 Peter 2:18:Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.
Slaveowners would read these verses to slaves as part of the worship services that they allowed (and controlled) as a means of encouraging the proper attitude among their slaves. Based upon these isolated verses, slaveowners claimed that the Bible supported slavery and taught slaves to be obedient to their masters.http://www.reunionblackfamily.com/apps/blog/show/7183511-biblical-verses-used-by-slave-masters-to-justify-slavery
Slavery Wasn't a Trade, It Was a Robbery and Genocide.Just like colonization.
Congolese women reality: Shackled together, enslaved in their own homeland, held as hostages until their men returned with enough rubber to make King Leopold and the Belgium people rich beyond their wildest dreams. While impoverishing and enslaving the native people.
Slave Runners
Zanzibar men ca 1900
The Belgians, under orders of King Leopold II hung thousands of Congolese citizens.
"Africans did not enslave themselves in the Americas. The European slave trade was not an African venture, it was preeminently a European enterprise in all of its dimensions: conception, insurance, outfitting of ships, sailors,factories,shackles, weapons, and the selling and buying of people in the Americas.
Not one African can be named as an equal partner with Europeans in the slave trade.
Indeed, no African person benefited to the degree that Europeans did from the commerce in African people...no African community used slavery as its principal mode of economic production. We have no example of a slave economy in West Africa.
The closest any scholar has ever been able to arrive at a description of a slave society is the Dahomey kingdom of the nineteenth century that had become so debauched by slavery due to European influence that it was virtually a
hostage of the nefarious enterprise. However, even in Dahomey we do not see the complete denial of the humanity of Africans as we see in the American colonies.
Slavery was not romantic; it was evil, ferocious, brutal, and corrupting in all of its aspects. It was developed in its greatest degree of degradation in the United States.
The enslaved African was treated with utter disrespect. No laws
protected the African from any cruelty the white master could conceive.
The man, woman, or child was at the complete mercy of the most brutish of people.
For looking a white man in the eye the enslaved person could have his or her eyes blinded with hot irons. For speaking up in defense of a wife or woman a man could have his right hand severed. For defending his right to speak against oppression, an African could have half his tongue cut out. For running away and being caught an enslaved African could have his or her Achilles tendon cut. For
resisting the advances of her white master a woman could be given fifty lashes of the cowhide whip. A woman who physically fought against her master's sexual advances was courting death, and many died at the hands of their masters. The
enslaved African was more often than not physically scarred, crippled, or injured because of some brutal act of the slave owner. Among the punishments that were favored by the slave owners were whipping holes,wherein the enslaved was buried in the ground up to the neck; dragging blocks that were attached to
the feet of men or women who had run away and been caught; mutilation of the toes and fingers; the pouring of hot wax onto the limbs; and passing a piece of hot wood on the buttocks of the enslaved. Death came to the enslaved in vile, crude ways when the angry, psychopathic slave owner wanted to teach other
enslaved Africans a lesson. The enslaved person could be roasted over a slow-burning fire, left to die after having both legs and both arms broken,oiled and greased and then set afire while hanging from a tree's limb, or being killed slowly as the slave owner cut the enslaved person's phallus or breasts.
A person could be placed on the ground, stomach first, stretched so that each hand was tied to a pole and each foot was tied to a pole. Then the slave master would beat the person's naked body until the flesh was torn off the buttocks and the blood ran down to the ground."
Molefi Kete Asante
"The African American Warrant for Reparations: The Crime of European
Original bedwrenches? Ok. Lemme sell you the Brooklyn bridge, K?
First of all, let clear something up. Marriages of any kind during those days were not WILLING from the African female point of view. Marriages are a patriarchal arrangement that came from Asian and European cultures. Africans did not believe or take part in marriage....they participated in MATRIMONY. Apple and oranges. 
Marriages i.e. forced....matrimony i.e. free will. 
But!
