Africa: A Looser?
Calculating the statistical dimensions of the slave trade,
whether in terms of deaths or number of slaves taken from Africa
since the 15th century is not easy. Figures for the Spanish and
Portuguese colonies are less reliable than those for North
America. The continuation of slavery within Africa in the 19th
century after abolition is also poorly documented.
Alleged Arab Slave Trade Exaggerated
Historical documents containing statistics are not always very
reliable. For example, figures for Arab slavery produced by the
British government after abolition were inflated as part of the
propaganda war against the Arabs in East Africa.
Indeed there remains a great deal of dispute over the figures
for the Arab slave trade. One historian produced a total of 17
million slaves, but this is for a period spanning 13 centuries
and encompassing trade in North Africa, the North East and South
Africa.
A more helpful comparison can be made by looking at the figure
for slaves leaving Africa annually for Arab lands from East
Africa in the first half of the nineteenth century. This figure
exceeds 3,000, compared with the estimate for slaves crossing
the Atlantic in the late 18th century at an annual rate of
44,000.
Reparations
In recent years the slave trade has increasingly been referred
to by African Americans as a holocaust (wholesale destruction),
and comparisons have been made with the fate of Jews under Nazi
rule, as well as the original inhabitants of the Americas at the
hands of the first Europeans.
There are a number of movements calling for reparations
(financial compensation) to be made by the countries that used
to be slave trading nations. These movements are concerned with
not just how many people made the journey, but also the impact
of the slave trade on population growth over the centuries.
The Nearest We Can Get
Shipping records are a central source; there are also documents
relating to the running of plantations and deeds of ownership.
The numbers become clearer in the late eighteenth century as the
slave trade reaches its peak and the movement for abolition
begins to get under way.
Estimates as high as 50 million have been floated, and for a
long time an accepted figure was 15 million, although this has
in recent years been revised down.
Most historians now agree that at least 12 million slaves left
the continent between the fifteenth and nineteenth century, but
ten to twenty percent died on board ships. Thus a figure of 11
million slaves transported to the Americas is the nearest
demonstrable figure historians can produce.
Impact On Population Growth
A number of slaves would have died at the point of capture and
more in course of the journey to the coast. A merchant of Luanda
in the late 18th century, Raymond Jalama, observed that nearly
half of those captured inland were dead by the time they reached
the coast.
The vast majority taken were men and this must have had a huge
effect on the population they left behind particularly in a
polygamous society.
It has been calculated through computerised projections that the
population in Africa in the mid 19th century would have been
double what it was had the slave trade not happened - that means
that if there had been no slave trade the population of Africa
in 1850 would have been 50 million instead of 25 million.
Who And How Many People Were Enslaved
People often became slaves for reasons rooted in local disputes,
and wars; or they became slaves as a demonstration of wealth and
power on the part of a local ruler. However, enslavement at a
local level could often lead to a chain reaction of sales from
merchant to merchant ending up at the coast where the final sale
resulted in being dispatched across the Ocean.
War
A large number of people began the journey into slavery as
prisoners of war. The Baganda in East Africa, for example, often
went to war with their neighbours and took Bunyoro and Basoga
people as slaves.
With the rise of a large commercial slave trade, driven by
European needs, enslaving your enemy became less a consequence
of war and more and more a reason to go to war. This was
particularly so in West Africa where, for example, the conflict
between the kingdoms of Oyo and Dahomey resulted in prisoners of
war being taken as slaves on both sides and then sold on to the
coast.
Punishment
Some people were taken into slavery as a punishment. The crime
might be witchcraft, theft, or adultery.
"Every trifling crime is punish'd in the same manner… They
strain for crimes very hard in order to sell into slavery."
Francis Moore, Royal Africa Company, writing in the 1730's.
Debt Discharge
Selling someone into slavery could be a way of discharging a
debt.
Feeding The Oracle
In Bonny, the largest slave market in the delta of the river
Niger many slaves were sold by order of the oracle, Chukwu. The
slaves were then sold to merchants, but the oracle was said to
have eaten them.
Tribute?
In the area of Senegal, in the 17th century, slaves were given
to the king as part of a village's tribute to him, along with
brandy, tobacco and cloth.
Kidnap
A large number of people were quite simply kidnapped while going
about their everyday tasks. Igbos were particularly wary of
being kidnapped and always fortified their houses if they left
their villages; but some like Olaudah Equiano were caught
unawares.
Elsewhere in West Africa Savanna horsemen would sweep down from
the north to launch annual slave raids on agricultural people.
Occasionally Europeans would kidnap people and turn them into
slaves, although by doing this they ran the risk of annoying the
chain of African middlemen which extended from the interior to
the coast.
"It was customary for parties of sailors and coast blacks to lie
in wait near the streams and little villages, and seize the
stragglers by twos and threes when they were fishing or
cultivating their patches of corn."
Richard Drake, recalling life under the command of Captain
Fraley of Bristol, whom he served in 1805.
Vulnerable And Unwanted
In times of famine children might be sold. Orphans, widows and
poor relations were equally vulnerable.
Born Into Slavery
Some slaves were born into slavery in Africa. Traders and
captains of slave ships preferred these because they were less
trouble, having never known anything but slavery.
Remarkable Facts On
Slavery, Exploitation And Racism
· In 1462 Pope Pius II declared baptized Africans should not be
enslaved. Columbus never saw North America. He visited many
Caribbean islands and the northeastern tip of South America, as
well as the Eastern coast of Central America, but never the
mainland.
· The father of Olaudah Equiano, one of the most famous former
slaves and leading abolitionists, kept slaves.
· An English surgeon thought that two thirds of deaths on the
journey were due to melancholy - people captured in slavery just
willed themselves to die.
· A Sonyo prince from the Congo region was captured whereupon
the Sonyo people refused to trade anymore with the Dutch; he was
returned with apologies.
· In 1726 the King of Dahomey suggested Europeans should
establish plantations in his kingdom - he would supply the
slaves.
· One of the few successful on ship slave rebellions took place
in 1840 on the Amistad.
· In 1930, the Liberian government was accused by the League of
Nations of using forced labour to carry out public works.
- BBC's Worldservice
The wealth of the west was
built on Africa's exploitation
Britain was the principal slaving nation of the modern world. In
The Empire Pays Back, a documentary broadcast by Channel 4,
Robert Beckford called on the British to take stock of this
past. Why, he asked, had Britain made no apology for African
slavery, as it had done for the Irish potato famine? Why was
there no substantial public monument of national contrition
equivalent to Berlin's Holocaust Museum? Why, most crucially,
was there no recognition of how wealth extracted from Africa and
Africans made possible the vigour and prosperity of modern
Britain? Was there not a case for Britain to pay reparations to
the descendants of African slaves?
These are timely questions in a summer in which Blair and Bush,
their hands still wet with Iraqi blood, sought to rebrand
themselves as the saviours of Africa. The G8's debt-forgiveness
initiative was spun successfully as an act of western altruism.
The generous Massas never bothered to explain that, in order to
benefit, governments must agree to "conditions", which included
allowing profit-making companies to take over public services.
This was no gift; it was what the merchant bankers would call a
"debt-for-equity swap", the equity here being national
sovereignty. The sweetest bit of the deal was that the money
owed, already more than repaid in interest, had mostly gone to
buy industrial imports from the west and Japan, and oil from
nations who bank their profits in London and New York. Only in a
bookkeeping sense had it ever left the rich world. No one
considered that Africa's debt was trivial compared to what the
west really owes Africa.
Beckford's experts estimated Britain's debt to Africans in the
continent and diaspora to be in the trillions of pounds. While
this was a useful benchmark, its basis was mistaken. Not because
it was excessive, but because the real debt is incalculable. For
without Africa and its Caribbean plantation extensions, the
modern world as we know it would not exist.
Profits from slave trading and from sugar, coffee, cotton and
tobacco are only a small part of the story. What mattered was
how the pull and push from these industries transformed western
Europe's economies. English banking, insurance, shipbuilding,
wool and cotton manufacture, copper and iron smelting, and the
cities of Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow, multiplied in response
to the direct and indirect stimulus of the slave plantations.
Joseph Inikori's masterful book, Africans and the Industrial
Revolution in England, shows how African consumers, free and
enslaved, nurtured Britain's infant manufacturing industry. As
Malachy Postlethwayt, the political economist, candidly put it
in 1745: "British trade is a magnificent superstructure of
American commerce and naval power on an African foundation."
In The Great Divergence, Kenneth Pomeranz asked why Europe,
rather than China, made the breakthrough first into a modern
industrial economy. To his two answers - abundant coal and New
World colonies - he should have added access to west Africa. For
the colonial Americas were more Africa's creation than Europe's:
before 1800, far more Africans than Europeans crossed the
Atlantic. New World slaves were vital too, strangely enough, for
European trade in the east. For merchants needed precious metals
to buy Asian luxuries, returning home with profits in the form
of textiles; only through exchanging these cloths in Africa for
slaves to be sold in the New World could Europe obtain new gold
and silver to keep the system moving. East Indian companies led
ultimately to Europe's domination of Asia and its 19th-century
humiliation of China.
Africa not only underpinned Europe's earlier development. Its
palm oil, petroleum, copper, chromium, platinum and in
particular gold were and are crucial to the later world economy.
Only South America, at the zenith of its silver mines, outranks
Africa's contribution to the growth of the global bullion
supply.
The guinea coin paid homage in its name to the west African
origins of one flood of gold. By this standard, the British
pound since 1880 should have been rechristened the rand, for
Britain's prosperity and its currency stability depended on
South Africa's mines. I would wager that a large share of that
gold in the IMF's vaults which was supposed to pay for Africa's
debt relief had originally been stolen from that continent.
There are many who like to blame Africa's weak governments and
economies, famines and disease on its post-1960 leadership. But
the fragility of contemporary Africa is a direct consequence of
two centuries of slaving, followed by another of colonial
despotism. Nor was "decolonisation" all it seemed: both Britain
and France attempted to corrupt the whole project of political
sovereignty.
It is remarkable that none of those in Britain who talk about
African dictatorship and kleptocracy seem aware that Idi Amin
came to power in Uganda through British covert action, and that
Nigeria's generals were supported and manipulated from 1960
onwards in support of Britain's oil interests. It is amusing,
too, to find the Telegraph and the Daily Mail - which just a
generation ago supported Ian Smith's Rhodesia and South African
apartheid - now so concerned about human rights in Zimbabwe. The
tragedy of Mugabe and others is that they learned too well from
the British how to govern without real popular consent, and how
to make the law serve ruthless private interest. The real
appetite of the west for democracy in Africa is less than it
seems. We talk about the Congo tragedy without mentioning that
it was a British statesman, Alec Douglas-Home, who agreed with
the US president in 1960 that Patrice Lumumba, its elected
leader, needed to "fall into a river of crocodiles".
African slavery and colonialism are not ancient or foreign
history; the world they made is around us in Britain. It is not
merely in economic terms that Africa underpins a modern
experience of (white) British privilege. Had Africa's signature
not been visible on the body of the Brazilian Jean Charles de
Menezes, would he have been gunned down on a tube at Stockwell?
The slight kink of the hair, his pale beige skin, broadcast
something misread by police as foreign danger. In that sense,
his shooting was the twin of the axe murder of Anthony Walker in
Liverpool, and of the more than 100 deaths of black people in
mysterious circumstances while in police, prison or hospital
custody since 1969.
This universe of risk, part of the black experience, is the
afterlife of slavery. The reverse of the medal is what WEB
DuBois called the "wage of whiteness", the world of safety,
trustworthiness, welcome that those with pale skins take for
granted. The psychology of racism operates even among those who
believe in human equality, shaping unequal outcomes in
education, employment, criminal justice. By its light, such
all-white clubs as the G8 continue to meet in comfort.
Early this year, Gordon Brown told journalists in Mozambique
that Britain should stop apologising for colonialism. The truth
is, though, that Britain has never even faced up to the dark
side of its imperial history, let alone begun to apologise.
Dr Richard Drayton is a senior lecturer in imperial and
extra-European history since 1500 at Cambridge University. His
book The Caribbean and the Making of the Modern World will be
published in 2006.
Britain has never faced up to the dark
side of its imperial history - Richard Drayton The
Guardian
RHDrayton@yahoo.co.uk
Slavery Timeline -
BBC
1444 - first slaves brought to Portugal from northern
Mauritania
1444-5 - Portuguese make contract with Sub-Saharan Africa
1471 - Portuguese arrive in the Gold Coast
1482 - Portuguese begin building Elmina Castle on the Gold
Coast
1488 - Bartholomew Diaz goes round the Cape of Good Hope
1490 - first Portuguese missionaries go to Congo
1500 - sugar plantations established on island of Sao Tome two
hundred miles from coast of West Africa
1510 - first slaves shipped to Spanish colonies in South America
via Spain
1516 - Benin ceases to export male slaves, fearing loss of
manpower
1518 - first direct shipment of slaves from Africa to the
Americas
1780's - slave trade at its peak
1652 - Dutch establish colony at Cape of Good Hope, South
Africa
1700 - Asanti begin to consolidate power
1720's - Kingdom of Dahomey expands
1776-1783 - American War of Independence
1787 - 'Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery' by
Quobna Ottobah Cugoano published by the Foundation of the
Society for the Abolition of Slave Trade
1789 - French Revolution. 'Life of Olaudah Equiano' published
1791 - slave uprising in Haiti (Saint Domingue) led by Toussaint
L'Ouverture
1804 - -Danes pass law against slave trade Haitian independence
1807 - British law passed declaring buying, selling and
transporting slaves illegal (ownership continues)
1808 - North America abolish slave trade
1814 - Dutch outlaw slave trade
1823 - founding of Anti-slavery Committee London
1834 - British law passed declaring ownership of slaves illegal
1839 - Amistad slave ship rebellion
1848 - French abolish slavery
1860-65 - American Civil War
1865 - 13th Amendment abolishes slavery in America
1869 - Portugal abolishes slavery
1886 - slavery abolished in Cuba
1888 - slavery abolished in Brazil
1873 - slave market in Zanzibar closed
1936 - slavery made illegal in Northern Nigeria
US Capitalist Exploitation
and Wars
Uncle Sam has installed a puppet regime
in Iraq. The victims in this war have been, and are, ordinary
people that have been suffering wars, sanctions and a brutal
Iraqi dictatorship. The United States has a supreme military
machine, but the hegemonic power of capitalism is vulnerable
economically. It's fighting on many fronts, and there are
because of this more desperate capitalist wars to come.
The economic problems became visible in the aftermath of the
economical boom in the 90s. This boom grew from new technology
that facilitated faceless, speculative stock, bond and currency
traders sitting behind computer screens moving money to the
parts and fields of the globe. The multinational corporations
spread their factories around the world, constantly shifting
them to the most efficient, low cost producers. The United
States became the global economy's buyer, soaking up the goods
from factories as in Indonesia, Brazil, South Korea and China,
besides their deliveries from Germany and Japan.
One important part of the economical foundation of the US
hegemony lies in this management of the finance capital, not in
the mercantile production. It relies on the world's financial
centres, transnational corporations, rating agencies, auditing,
accounting and consulting firms, and, politically on the United
States special relationship with the United Kingdom. Most major
credits must be granted with reference to US- and UK-
based rating agencies. The auditing firms are indispensable in
the evaluation of assets in the case of major mergers or
large-scale privatisation.
Another part of the economical hegemony is the US position as
the most powerful member of the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
and as a powerful centre of alliances within the World Trade
Organisation (WTO). Great Britain has an important role also in
this by preventing the European Union (EU) from bringing its
full weight to bear against US positions.
In monetary terms, the US superiority also rest highly on the US
dollar acting as the world`s main currency as a store of value,
a medium of exchange and a unit of account for official and
private users. It serves as the main currency for world trade,
bank loans, bond issues, international bank loans and bank
currency reserves. This brings considerable advantages to the US
as it attracts international assets and investments, the US
authorities gets a larger range of fiscal policy options, and as
long as the system functions, the foreign governments themselves
see an interest in the stability of the dollar.
The system functioned according to the US intentions during the
Cold War when Japan and Germany were "protected" by the United
States against the external threat of the Soviet Union. But,
when the Soviet Union was disintegrated in late 1991, it left a
"black hole" of countries, and some of them were possessing
nuclear weapons. The first task of the US was then, as it was
written in a draft plan made by the Pentagon in 1992: "To
prevent the re-emergence of a new rival either on the territory
of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere".
This task described in the Pentagon draft has since been the
subordinate policy of the United States. The plans made in the
1990s till today have come far in the planning, but shorter in
the implementation and the challenges are: 1. To develop the
economical, technological and military supremacy in the New
Century. 2. To prevent the emerging of rivals by having a New
Common Enemy, and by using a split and rule policy. 3. To use
oil as a central issue and weapon in the geo-political play.
It seems that the following problems toppled for the US in the
turn of the millennium, and it explains why we lately have seen
an increasingly more aggressive and militarist capitalism:
Firstly, the US economy went wrong as the speculative economic
boom was a bubble bursting, and the US got the scandals with
Enron, WoldCom, Arthur Andersen etc. The world`s confidence in
the dollar declined with the huge US deficits, and the alleged
terrorist attacks September the 11th 2001 worsened the economic
situation.
Secondly, the US got a rival with European Monetary Union`s
(EMU) implementation of the euro in 1999. Numerous articles in
international policy and economic magazines discussed the
significance of this step. The main conclusions were that the
euro was the biggest challenge to the economic, and as a result,
political hegemony of the United States since the dollar
replaced the British sterling as the leading international
currency. Foreign states and capital got an alternative currency
for trade, bonds, reserve currency and investments, and
gradually the US would have to renounce their advantages.
Thirdly, the prospects for the future energy demand showed a
rise, while the US own production of oil would decline. The US
policy of being less dependent of the oil from the Middle East,
has made a world wide hunt for new resources and pipelines. And
while Afghanistan and Iraq have been in the media: Russia
continues the war in Chechnya to secure an oil pipeline, and the
United States increases the support and participation in the
bloody Vietnam style war in Colombia. This war "mission" is
extended to be the Andean Regional Initiative. (ARI)
The market share of the Oil Producing and Exporting Countries
(OPEC) has decreased from 70% in 1970 to 40% in 2002. But, soon
it will rise again, and OPEC still has the main mechanism for
adjusting the oil prices by rising and cutting the production.
This spare capacity is today in the Persian Gulf, with cheap,
high quality oil and the world`s largest oil reserves.
If we look at the OPEC countries Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran,
Libya, Algeria, Venezuela, Nigeria, Indonesia, Kuwait, United
Arab Emirates and Qatar, we see that most of them are blinking
lights on the US geo-political highway. Saudi Arabia is
considered as an unreliable partner, especially after September
the 11th. Iraq, Iran and Libya were put on the list of the "Axis
of the Evil States". The President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela
suffered a coup attempt in April 2002, and actions of the
opposition in the end of the year.
And when Iraq in November 2000 made the decision to have the oil
transactions in euros instead of dollars, the dictatorship hit
the nerve centre of the United States. Who would follow this
move, and perhaps withdraw the enormous petrodollar investments
in the US? Had the euro became the link between the "Axis of the
Evil States" and the EU?
When the alleged terrorist attacks hit the US September the 11th
2001, hard discussions appeared in the US administration if Iraq
should be the first target, but the Taliban in Afghanistan and
the hunt for Bin Laden were chosen. The war against "terrorism"
was used by the US to accomplish the plan in the "Silk Road Act
of 1999": By implementing economic and military influence in a
corridor of East-European and Central- and East Asian countries
the US could reduced German, French, Russian and Chinese
influence.
These plans were based on the book "The Grand Chessboard"
(1997), written by the former Security Advisor of Carter,
Zbigniew Brzezinski. He also recommended an enlargement of EU
and NATO to undermine French, German and Russian influence.
France and Germany should also be balanced against each other so
neither of them dominated Europe.
The US used the war against "terrorism" to deploy troops in the
Eurasian corridor, Philippines and the Persian Gulf, and Iraq
became the next target. The wrangling in the UN Security Council
about the weapons inspections were only the cover of the
underlying roots of the conflict: The imperialist battle of
present and future oil resources, the control of competitors,
the price mechanism, and the currencies of oil transactions and
investments.
Iraq is now occupied by the US and the UK, and the imperialist
battle continues. Britain, Italy and Spain and several smaller
EU countries, most of them Eastern Europeans in the "Eurasian
corridor", backed the US on Iraq. The United States will punish
France for their opposition to the Iraq war. The "Old Europe"
France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg have initiated an open
mini-summit April the 29th to discuss common military plans.
In the economy there is an open question if, or when, the OPEC
will switch transactions to euro. In April 2002, Javad Yarjani,
Head of OPEC`s Petroleum Market Analysis Dept, gave a speech in
Spain (Oviedo) where he said that the OPEC closely observes if
the oil producer Britain implements the euro, and if Norway
joins the EU and the eurozone. He said also that the momentum
for OPEC to consider switching to euros grows with the
enlargement of EU with 10 new member states in 2004.
Besides this, there is a development going on concerning the use
of currencies. The "BusinessWeek Online" reported on February
the 17th 2003, that Russia, Canada, Taiwan, Hong Kong and all
the Eastern European states that will join the European Union
next year, have increased their holdings in euros. It still
rests to see to how this "euro-virus" will be spreading, but is
obvious that it can be a gradual threat to the hegemony of the
United States.
The capitalist rule is "expand or die", and the struggle goes on
for new markets, resources and control of other countries
economies. Privatisations and deregulations of services are also
expansion of markets. These attacks come with the
flexibilisation and casualisation of work conditions in order to
split and divide the workers. While the world`s attention is
directed towards the Persian Gulf and the next step of the
United States, the EU and the US are preparing a major assault
on worker`s rights through the negotiations on the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).
The services are 72% of Gross National Product (GNP) in the EU
and 76% in the United States. The EU is the world`s largest
exporter of services, with the US not far behind, and we can
only imagine the consequences of the coming proposals of the
GATS. A leaked document reveals the EU draft plans for opening
up essential service sectors in 29 countries including postal
services, water supplies, finance and banking, electricity
generation and supply, and telecommunications services.
Social and economic attacks are followed by repression. The
so-called "anti-terrorist" laws are used to be implemented
against demonstrations, strikes and generally against everyone
that wants to fight against the social, economical and military
wars made by the capitalists. There are unfortunately many
examples: We will mention the killings in Colombia, the
murder of the anti-fascist Davide Cesari in Milan, and the
criminalizing of squatters- and social movements in Spain, but
also the threats and intimidations of comrades in Serbia, Italy
and Colombia.
And be sure, other laws and repression will follow. We must
remember that the First of May is in the commemoration of the
Haymarket Martyr`s. These anarchists were persecuted to stop the
strike movement for the 8 hours day in Chicago in 1886. They
were unjustly accused of having exploded a provocatory bomb, and
this can happen again with today`s aggressive and militarist
capitalism.
As anarchosyndicalists we are convinced that we as workers must
liberate ourselves. What totally differs the working class from
the capitalists is that we don`t need them, but they desperately
need us for the death machine called capitalism. The world is
divided in classes, and we don`t support any capitalism,
imperialism or dictatorship.
Because of this, it's suicide to support the EU against the US
hegemony, as some anti-war persons have done lately. The Social
Democratic parties in Europe support the EU capitalist project,
and it`s important to follow their positions about the anti-war
and anti-globalisation movements. It must also be noticed that
the "anti- Iraq war" church, the Vatican, implemented the euro
as its currency in 1999.
Contrary to the reformist unions, the International Workers
Association (IWA) rejects integration into the capitalist
system. We don't class collaborate, have no paid union
officials, and we don't receive any subsidies from our enemies.
Our coherence is essential as the struggle against the
capitalist exploitation and wars, also is a fight for a new
system: The IWA`s goal is to replace the capitalism and the
state by the free federation of workers free associations - the
libertarian communism.
The Sections and Friends of the IWA have been active against the
capitalist wars in general, and specifically against the war and
occupation of Iraq. Information has been passed. Actions have
been taken and supported. General strikes, as in Italy and
Spain, have been organised. Saying this, does not mean that we
have forgotten the fight against the social- and economic
exploitation, as in Latin America. The URGENT ACTIONS in support
of strikes and for reinstatement of sacked comrades are also
parts of the same
struggle!
Finally, we will in this First of May statement, made in the
80th Anniversary of the IWA, maintain the importance of seeing
the possibilities. Hundreds of thousands of people have marched
against the Iraq war, and awareness about direct actions and
ways of resistance are exchanged through all continents of the
globe!
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