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Thank you for posting these videos. Dr. Gates has 50% of European DNA, according to his genealogy report, and his history report. I've been interesed in finding out which slave kingdoms in Africa were part of the slave trade to the Americas, but not excluding the Arab slave trade. These videos are most helpful.
Nothing new and it was a trade. Meaning that there was something established with/by Europeans(forts by the Dutch, Portuguese, French, English, etc) to give some Africans guns and other items for human and natural resources. Nothing that hasn't happened in other parts of the world.
With that said, aspects of socialization, treatment, irony/contradiction and forced assimilation has to be considered when discussing the topic in the Americas/Western Hempishere.
Nothing new and it was a trade. Meaning that there was something established with/by Europeans(forts by the Dutch, Portuguese, French, English, etc) to give some Africans guns and other items for human and natural resources. Nothing that hasn't happened in other parts of the world.
With that said, aspects of socialization, treatment, irony/contradiction and forced assimilation has to be considered when discussing the topic in the Americas/Western Hempishere.
The question isn't world slavery happening in other parts of the world throughout history, but the larger point is Africans who participated in profitting off the slave trade and deflecting responsibility in order to place blame on European colonists. Unlike other societies participating in slavery throughout different parts of the world, enslaved Africans lost everything and suffered immeasurable losses uncomparable to their counterparts. There is absolutely no amount of dismissive and deflection downplaying certain African tribes and kingdoms larger roles played in the slave trade will never diminish those facts.
The blood is on the hands of European colonies AND African tribes and kingdoms who participated, benefited, and prospered off the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and will never, ever wash off.
The blood is on the hands of European colonies AND African tribes and kingdoms who participated, benefited, and prospered off the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and will never, ever wash off.
There is indeed blame on both sides but it clearly obvious the Europeans were the ones who benefited in the long run in regards to the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. One of the key factors to the success of the European explorers in the slave trade in Africa was that they were able to take advantage of tribal/ethnic wars that had already existed long before European arrival to West Africa. They would make deals with various tribes by paying them to capture their enemies and deliver them to the slave ships so that European slave trader could ship them across the Atlantic Ocean. Many Africans at that time didn't see it as a big deal because they were capturing enemies and not their family members. Of course the Europeans would go on to Colonize Africa itself and the rest was history.
West Africans in general were never really racist towards European Explorers because if they were, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade would have not been successful in West Africa. There had to have been corroboration on both sides. Either way it doesn't change the fact that the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade was horrific for the slave captives and their descendants. Even to this day, we are still dealing the effects of that times period.
In the first part of the documentary between at around 8:15 minutes, Dr.Gates asks Dr. Aka Sua Perbi (I’m just spelling it as it sounded, so I’m sure her name is spelled wrong):
“So, if Africans had not sold other Africans to the Europeans, there wouldn’t had been a slave trade?”
And her response was:
“I think so because the Africans [kingdoms/political systems, etc] were strong enough that if they had said no, perhaps the Europeans themselves would had tried to go inland and that would had been very very difficult."
Then on the second part of the documentary, the guide says (from 3:17 minute):
“Yes, he knew, they knew how bad it was; that was why they didn’t entered their own people, they would trade people from the wars and battles they did all around the country.”
Then from 7:50 minute, Dr. Gates says:
"Almost 20% of all the slaves that came to the New World, came from the Bight of Benin, from this very region. And the slave trade here was run by the kings of Dahomey, run far longer than any other aspect of the slave trade all the way to 1885, so they knew what they were doing…”
Then, on 15:30 the guy talking on behalf of the royal family says:
“I’m glad of what he [San Francisco] did, because he saved the lives of thousands of people. The king would had sacrified all of them [the war prisoners], so he had done a good thing by sending them away from the country [into slavery to the New World].”
What am I trying to say with this?
Lets not sugar coat things or try to minimize anything. When it comes to the enslavement of Africans and their descendants in the New world, the blame falls equally on both sides, Africans and Europeans.
The story that has been told to many descendants of the slaves (and also those that descend from families that were neither enslaved nor had anything to do with slavery) is nothing more than a half truth. We need to tell the story exactly as it was.
I also think that in the following video Dr. Gates touches the issue as for why many people try to diminish the role the Africans played in the slave trade, when in fact, if the Africans had never accepted to get into that business, there would had been no slave trade to begin with:
Lets see things as they were and not as how we want for them to had been, even if it hurts. The truth sometimes is not pretty or easy to swallow, but it is the truth and it must be accepted.
No more myths, no more buts, no more ignoring a very important aspect of the history of the world and especially the Western Hemisphere.
Lets accept what happened as it happened, lets forgive all sides, and lets move on.
Slavery will never be erased from the history books and it will always be that shameful chapter in our collective memory, but we can't continue to harbor resentments along racial lines and expect that will be good for all of our societies in North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
We have to accept the truth as it was and as messed up as it was, we have to equally forgive both sides, and we have to look forwards towards a brighter and better future, where our children will be able to live side by side with everyone else from our countries and build greater nations based on honesty, goodness, and real human greatness.
We need to create stronger bonds and less divisions. More trust and less resentments. We have to see ourselves as people from these American lands, that where any of our ancestors came from and how they got here is nothing more than a thing of the past. That what matters is the now and the future.
There are two unassailable historical facts that need to be kept in mind through all this.
1. Slavery, in that era, was the global norm, not an exception to the way things were in those centuries. Slavery was not abolished anywhere until about the tenth century, Papal bulls still endorsed it until the 17th century, and it still prevailed in much of Europe well through the 19th. Slaves were a commodity, and slavery in the entire world was treated as casually as strip mining or big game hunting, with an occasional voice of protest from an emerging liberal fringe.
2. Kings, throughout history, had a strong tendency everywhere to be despots, and there is no moral accounting for anything that they did according to their pleasure. Slave trading, in their time, was the least of their sins and excesses.
People everywhere need to get off their high horse about slavery, etc., and give some consideration to their own culture's common practices of today that will be seen by future historians as unconscionably barbaric.
There is indeed blame on both sides but it clearly obvious the Europeans were the ones who benefited in the long run in regards to the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. One of the key factors to the success of the European explorers in the slave trade in Africa was that they were able to take advantage of tribal/ethnic wars that had already existed long before European arrival to West Africa. They would make deals with various tribes by paying them to capture their enemies and deliver them to the slave ships so that European slave trader could ship them across the Atlantic Ocean. Many Africans at that time didn't see it as a big deal because they were capturing enemies and not their family members. Of course the Europeans would go on to Colonize Africa itself and the rest was history.
West Africans in general were never really racist towards European Explorers because if they were, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade would have not been successful in West Africa. There had to have been corroboration on both sides. Either way it doesn't change the fact that the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade was horrific for the slave captives and their descendants. Even to this day, we are still dealing the effects of that times period.
Yes, European colonists did benefit from the slave trade by seizing the opportunities presented to them by different rival African and Arab tribes competiting for wealth and power against each other. However, slave raids and kidnappings of vulnerable rival Africans increased to gain greater power and wealth through the slave trade to the new world by African and Arab slave raiders, traders, chiefs, and sultans. Just because the perpetrators failed to capitalize off their part in human chattel of innocent enslaved Africans does not absolve them of their complicity in one of the greatest crimes in human history.
Essentially, the practice of dehumanizing enslaved Africans were formed by certain African and Arab slave traders, and the majority if not all of the racist doctrine can be found in Arab Islam slavery system predating Trans-Atlantic slavery by European colonists. White supremacy gained more power towards oppressing enslaved Africans, and later descendants of those enslaved based by African and Arab supremacy. European colonists capitialized off white supremacy by expanding their global partnerships through economic growth of their colonies, controlling resources, and free labor bought from slave merchants in Africa. It all goes back to Africa. European Colonization of certain Africa nations is a small price to pay for Africa and Arab's damaging role in the slave trades.
And while most west African nations aren't racist towards Europe, most west Africans have an inexplicable disdain for Black Americans that have not gone unnoticed by most Black Americans perplexed by this attitude. I mean it's not like Black America sold west Africa to the new world for profit. It's not like Black America hasn't tried to reconnect to their ancestry that was lost to them during the Middle Passage and slavery. And, it's not like Black America taught European to dehumanize them. But those issues are for another thread.
There is no amount of blame shifting will ever change Africa's impact of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
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