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. A better comparison would be to the African equivalent of industrial slavery, like in palm oil production or gold mining.
Did African slavery, on the whole, create a new caste of people, who were thoroughly demonized and whose future prospects, even after the end of the slavery, completely damned, because of the degree of stigmatization.
Aside from Arabized societies like Mauritania, and others in the Sahel, can you tell us which discrete populations exist where entire populations, descended from slaves, remain severely stigmatized, and at the bottom of the social ladder? This being easily discernible in places like Brazil, Colombia and the USA.
Because this is the main issue when one discusses the differences between Transatlantic slavery, and that practiced in non Arabized parts of West Africa.
Slaves were often war captives, so obviously many would have been killed, upon capture, and in some instances even used in human sacrifice. No shock. No one is arguing that Africans were saints.
But can I go the Ghana and find descendants of the slaves procured from the Portuguese from Congo existing as a separate and subordinated community, as one can see throughout the Americas?
I'm not sure if you are claiming that Europe got rich only because of slavery or that it wouldn't be as rich without it. Both are valid and defensible questions that could be answered only by someone willing to dig deep.
It is a fact that the wealth generated by the British in the slave trade (they not only supplied their colonies, but also those of Spain) and by the tremendous wealth of their West Indian plantations did much to fund the development of British interests in India, and the industrial revolution itself.
One can argue as to whether these nations would have gotten rich without slavery, and colonization in the Americas, which would NOT have occurred without slavery.
It doesn't seem a coincidence that it was the UK and France where the Industrial Revolution got started, and not Italy, which was considerably more advanced than those nations during the Renaissance. Britain of course being a peripheral and some what impoverished nation prior to its successful colonies in the Americas.
Did African slavery, on the whole, create a new caste of people, who were thoroughly demonized and whose future prospects, even after the end of the slavery, completely damned, because of the degree of stigmatization.
Aside from Arabized societies like Mauritania, and others in the Sahel, can you tell us which discrete populations exist where entire populations, descended from slaves, remain severely stigmatized, and at the bottom of the social ladder? This being easily discernible in places like Brazil, Colombia and the USA.
Because this is the main issue when one discusses the differences between Transatlantic slavery, and that practiced in non Arabized parts of West Africa.
Slaves were often war captives, so obviously many would have been killed, upon capture, and in some instances even used in human sacrifice. No shock. No one is arguing that Africans were saints.
But can I go the Ghana and find descendants of the slaves procured from the Portuguese from Congo existing as a separate and subordinated community, as one can see throughout the Americas?
I would agree with you on this point. Slavery as practiced by the world tend to be less racial and rigid outside of the European colonies in the New World.
It is a fact that the wealth generated by the British in the slave trade (they not only supplied their colonies, but also those of Spain) and by the tremendous wealth of their West Indian plantations did much to fund the development of British interests in India, and the industrial revolution itself.
One can argue as to whether these nations would have gotten rich without slavery, and colonization in the Americas, which would NOT have occurred without slavery.
It doesn't seem a coincidence that it was the UK and France where the Industrial Revolution got started, and not Italy, which was considerably more advanced than those nations during the Renaissance. Britain of course being a peripheral and some what impoverished nation prior to its successful colonies in the Americas.
Industrialization occurred long after peak slave trade, but obviously the money made before that could've been invested in universities, factories and other infrastructures that played important roles later. But I think the fact that England had plenty of easily accessible coal went further toward explaining why industrialization occurred there first than, say, Italy. Spain and Portugal practiced slavery to a greater degree than England and France but these societies did not get rich from it to the same extent. On the other hand Germany and Italy certainly got rich without significant participation in slavery and the slave trade.
The Dutch no doubt got a lot of money from their spice and sugar islands and I think a plausible case can be made that they wouldn't be where they are today without these revenue. Someone should write a book about this if it's not already there.
It's odd that you think I'm dismissing Ahmad Baba's writing because he's a religious figure. I have nothing against religious figures and some of them provide good historical sources. The fact that the "greatest writer, scholar and political theorist in Shongai" needs to tell his people to be nicer to slaves suggest that they weren't, but you wouldn't get that because you seem to turn off your critical reading skill selectively.
I see now that you have a political agenda and reflexively make ad hominem attacks on those who disagree with your political viewpoint. I'm sorry to have waste so much of my time on the like of you. Other posters can easily see that you're no serious scholar who's just interested in a honest debate.
More piffle.
Of course I have an agenda, I never said I didn't. As a Nigerian man, my desire is to undo the propaganda that prior to the arrival of Europeans in Western Africa, West Africans and Africans in general had no history. I have already done that, much to the surprise of many posters here who quietly disappeared after I refuted their weak assertions.
I also wanted to dispel some myths that slavery and the whole conceptualisation of it in Africa and the west was the same. It wasn't and I proved that with good examples from European and African sources. No one including yourself was able to do the same. I also showed how Europe profited from this trade and from Colonialism. In truth as remarked upon by another poster I never said Africans were saints, I have discussed war and slavery between different African nations quite openly.
Unlike you and a lot of other posters here, I look at all available data and present a position. This position is based on facts, not prevailing notions of what Africans are. I demolished you and others during this exercise. You likewise have a position, one based on the prevailing Western opinions/bigotry around Africa, which is slowly crumbling as more facts emerge about pre-colonial history of my continent. You had a chance to defend your assertions and largely couldnt.
I can tell you were surprised I could cite older black african sources. I rarely cite contemporary sources written by black writers as the counter from sadly most Caucasian people is often that they are afro centrists trying to make themselves feel better about racism.
We are at an impasse and I am more than happy to leave it here, so good day to you sir..
When you start your post harping on about me claiming that Battuta wasn't an African I know you aren't up for serious discussion. I would admit there was an initial typo, where I meant to state he was not a "Black African" and nothing more.
Later on I wrote
"As I said Ibn Battuta was not a black African, the Moroccans were in geo political competition with the Malian and Shonghai empires. In fact I believe it was a Moroccan army that brought an end to the Shonghai empire. " clarifying this. Is someone cherry picking???
I sense you and other largely western posters really want to win this discussion, its is really palpable but I am afraid you cant.
You haven't addressed any of the points I raised, so we are done here. Anyone except for any of your fellow bigots knows you failed to counter any of the main points I gave you.
With points like "Africans raped their own" I don't even need to try. Men across the world have sadly raped women so what is your point?
I even used your own quote from Zayde Antrim against you and somehow you brazenly think you are dominating this debate Then you come up with some nonsense that the individual went back on this later..
One of your sources miraculously disappears and you failed to acknowledge my European sources noting the difference between the general African conception of slavery compared to its European counterpart. At this point I cant discuss this with you as you are wilfully ignoring information that doesn't suit you.
Also please show me your sources showing that the main bulk of the Ashanti army was made up of slaves. That is the first time I have ever heard that and I would be very interested to see that info.
"Trafficking is illegal and not a state endorsed institution", during the world cup thousands of women were trafficked to Germany where prostitution is legal to service visitors. Some argued that Germany was complicit in this, so the line is more blurred than you think
I have said it many times in posts before, slavery was and is an evil practice. All of the associated acts that comes with it likewise. It is you and other white posters here who have gone down the road of X other culture did this and that. Just acknowledge western slavery for what it was, show some humility and move on.
The rest of your post is comprised of ad hominem attacks and further assertions not backed up by any evidence. So I am proud to say we are done here.
Your ethnicity is very important as it shows where you are coming from. In fairness I know you aren't that bright, because you weren't smart enough to lie. What we can assume is that you are another white bigot, with a white washed history of the world. Who dislikes a brown person refuting some untruths with his narrative of history.
As for me not knowing European history with my reference to the Republic of Macedonia, you are aware that the Greek Minister Michael Papacostaninou raised the issue with the name of the republic of Macedonia with the UN (see here)
I will leave other posters to reflect upon your supposed intelligence with that one.
It is very amusing when a man from a foreign culture and people tries to tell a man the facts about his own region, culture and history.
Go relax and take your furious bigotry elsewhere.
Please. You are the racist here, and you have not said a damn thing that has countered anything that I have written and sourced. I am going to repeat so taht all interested can see and research. In Africa:
Slaves were given to cannibals to eat
Slavers were castrated en masse to create eunucs. They were left to bleed out, and most died.
Slaves were made into human sacrifices, sometimed killed hundreds at a time, sometimes burned alive
Slaves were worked to death--the average lifespan of a slave in Kanem-Bornu was seven years
Sexual slavery was pervasive
Slaves were forced to fight in slave armies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nograviti
You asked for sources, I gave you them now you are asking me about their content. So be it
Ahmad Baba a black man in Mali wrote in 1612
‘Your slaves are your brothers’, adding as follows: ‘God orders that slaves must be treated with humanity"
"one must pity their sad luck, and spare them bad
treatment, since just the fact of becoming the owner of another person bruises the heart, because servitude is inseparable from the idea of violence and domination, especially when it
relates to a slave taken far away from his country’ "
I think his views on how to conduct slavery are pretty clear dont you?
Uh, no. Actually, this man talks about the violence and domination of African slavery. He seems very similar to an American abolitionist, although, notably, he does nto go that far and is less interested in human rights. In any event, this quote does not mean that the atrocities of African slavery did not happen. Indeed, there is not doubt that they did. It only means that someone was appalled by them and tried to curb them.
Other texts are still being translated and more will be revealed in time..
Quote:
Originally Posted by nograviti
The Kano Chronicles only mention the creation of plantations starting during the reign of abdullah burja and that they were run in line with Islamic principles. So one can assume a serf type system more typical to African or Arab slavery was applied.
You simply aren't listening. There were all kinds of slavery in Africa, because Africans loved slavery. Some were miled, others far more unimaginably cruel that Western planation slavery.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nograviti
Sure I would love if more efforts were made to understand the Timbuktu Manuscripts which number up to 700,000 individual texts covering art, philosophy, history and science.
Other associated texts like the Kano Chronicles. There are also other books in Oyo and other Yoruba regions that should also be translated.
Assuming this is a genuine question, one of the biggest issues still afflicting Africa as we know is money or lack of. A lot of populations in these regions just want to survive they have little interest in the preservation of these books.
If more resources could be found then, then these texts could be preserved and translated for future generations.
Overwhelmingly, they are Islamic texts, with a smatterng of other subjects.
Quote:
Originally Posted by caribny
Did African slavery, on the whole, create a new caste of people, who were thoroughly demonized and whose future prospects, even after the end of the slavery, completely damned, because of the degree of stigmatization.
Two small points here:
A) It didn't have to. West Africa was already composed of competeing ethnic goups that looked at each other as inferior: the Asanti to the Fante, etc.
B) This is your differance and you are welcome to it. I say capturing each other for the purpose of human sacrifice is far more terrible.
At the end of the day, it take some intellectual courage. Africans sacrificed slaves, sometimes ate slaves, raped slaves, castrated slaves, and in the end, willfully sold their own into platation slavery. Those are facts.
Last edited by cachibatches; 07-06-2016 at 01:55 PM..
On the other hand Germany and Italy certainly got rich without significant participation in slavery and the slave trade.
.
Those nations got rich long after the French and the British. In fact Italy remained poor well into the 20th C. Millions of Italians fled to Latin America in the 19th C. They went to work as laborers, not as colonists.
In fact the British and French were bigger slave traders than were the Spanish. Their American colonies, especially those in the wealthier Caribbean locations (Jamaica, Barbados, Haiti, Martinique), were more intensely dominated by slavery than were the Spanish colonies.
The Spanish remained poor as they squandered their cash on their religious based wars and failed to utilize the wealth generated from their colonies to develop an industrial base. Instead they purchased manufactured product from other parts of Europe.
The commercial infrastructure (banks, insurance companies, etc.,) that eventually set the stage for the accelerated Industrial Revolution, developed during the peak periods of the slave trade and British West Indian sugar. It is hard to deny that the emergence of Britain/France as dominant economic powers during the 18th C wasn't directly connected to their involvement in the slave trade, and in the lucrative sugar industry.
This is not to say that slavery/British West Indian colonization was solely responsible for the Industrial Revolution, but to claim that the involvement by Britain in the 18th C in this activity didn't help fund the tremendous economic boom of the 19th (both the East Indian operations and the industrial revolution) is wrong.
A) It didn't have to. West Africa was already composed of competeing ethnic goups that looked at each other as inferior: the Asanti to the Fante, etc.
B) This is your differance and you are welcome to it. I say capturing each other for the purpose of human sacrifice is far more terrible.
At the end of the day, it take some intellectual courage. Africans sacrificed slaves, sometimes ate slaves, raped slaves, castrated slaves, and in the end, willfully sold their own into platation slavery. Those are facts.
Funny this. Northern Europeans, even in 2016, think that they are tremendously superior to southern Europeans. I use as exhibit 101 the attitudes of the Germans to the Greeks, Italians and the Spanish, which might well even end the EU, now that the UK is leaving.
So I don't understand your point about Asante vs. Fante. The Asantes did NOT create among the Fantes a subordinated caste of peoples due to enslaving them as did Europeans do to Africans in almost every single society in the Americas.
When one looks at the tremendous cruelties, which did involve castration and mutilation in the slave plantations of the Americas, or the callousness that slaves were killed, or allowed to die, I really don't think that you can argue that the Europeans were any better.
I also doubt that Africans engaged in slavery mainly for human sacrifice, and I am not even sure how pervasive such practices were. I am willing to bet that these were captives of war, and not chattel slaves.
At the end of the day Europeans killed the males who they captured just as did the Africans. The fact that their death wasn't part of a ritual is moot. Dead is dead, and in both cases the methods used would have been quite cruel. Just look at how easily the Spanish put Indians to the sword, because they didn't accept Christianity. That seems to be a religiously based human sacrifice. In fact the slavery of the Spanish was so savage, that it contributed to virtually wiping out the Taino societies of the Greater Antilles. And so they had to turn to Africa as a source of tropical labor.
Those nations got rich long after the French and the British. In fact Italy remained poor well into the 20th C. Millions of Italians fled to Latin America in the 19th C. They went to work as laborers, not as colonists.
In fact the British and French were bigger slave traders than were the Spanish. Their American colonies, especially those in the wealthier Caribbean locations (Jamaica, Barbados, Haiti, Martinique), were more intensely dominated by slavery than were the Spanish colonies.
The Spanish remained poor as they squandered their cash on their religious based wars and failed to utilize the wealth generated from their colonies to develop an industrial base. Instead they purchased manufactured product from other parts of Europe.
The commercial infrastructure (banks, insurance companies, etc.,) that eventually set the stage for the accelerated Industrial Revolution, developed during the peak periods of the slave trade and British West Indian sugar. It is hard to deny that the emergence of Britain/France as dominant economic powers during the 18th C wasn't directly connected to their involvement in the slave trade, and in the lucrative sugar industry.
This is not to say that slavery/British West Indian colonization was solely responsible for the Industrial Revolution, but to claim that the involvement by Britain in the 18th C in this activity didn't help fund the tremendous economic boom of the 19th (both the East Indian operations and the industrial revolution) is wrong.
The Spanish did enslave en mass the native Americans, but I guess for the purpose of this discussion that's not relevant. Portugal on the other hand imported more African slaves to Brazil than any other country, yet it remains one of the poorest countries in Europe.
You may be right about Italy but where did you get the idea that Germany got rich long after Britain and France?
Britain's per capita GNP did take off somewhat dramatically in the early part of the 19th century due to industrialization, but the per capta GNP of Germany and France were very comparable for most of the 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._.28Bairoch.29
The fact that there are poor immigrants coming out of both countries doesn't mean that these are impoverished societies. It may also have to do with population pressure and inequality. In any case, wealth is relative. By the 18th century pretty much all of Europe was wealthier than other parts of the world.
There is no doubt that the sugar trade was very lucrative and was a big enough part of the revenue to give the French Republic pause in banning slavery. However to make the claim that Britain and France became dominant powers from this one income source you need to show more numbers.
The Spanish did enslave en mass the native Americans, but I guess for the purpose of this discussion that's not relevant. Portugal on the other hand imported more African slaves to Brazil than any other country, yet it remains one of the poorest countries in Europe.
You may be right about Italy but where did you get the idea that Germany got rich long after Britain and France?
Britain's per capita GNP did take off somewhat dramatically in the early part of the 19th century due to industrialization, but the per capta GNP of Germany and France were very comparable for most of the 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._.28Bairoch.29
The fact that there are poor immigrants coming out of both countries doesn't mean that these are impoverished societies. It may also have to do with population pressure and inequality. In any case, wealth is relative. By the 18th century pretty much all of Europe was wealthier than other parts of the world.
There is no doubt that the sugar trade was very lucrative and was a big enough part of the revenue to give the French Republic pause in banning slavery. However to make the claim that Britain and France became dominant powers from this one income source you need to show more numbers.
I already gave some numbers in earlier posts
Along with a poster called chiatldal who provided some very good numbers.
I will admit I have lost patience with you, go back to the beginning of the thread have a read before posting again..
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