Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Because they needed fighters, not because they thought Africans were equal.
Maybe they did know about their capable commands in the Egyptian Armies during the years of the sixth dynasty. If they did, then they would want to confiscate as many of them as they could before the Civil War, least they be put into that fight --- America is the land that got away from them. The Brits were not happy about that. If they could do anything to screw up this land and its government, they did it.
Britain banned the slave trade in 1807 and then banned slavery altogether throughout it's Empire in 1833, and it used it's Navy to enforce the ban on the high seas.
It's also worth noting that British people generally didn't have the vote or any voice at the time, and the trans-atlantic slave trade was carried out by private chartered companies, and most people were not even aware of it, never mind engaging in it, whilst slavery based on race was never legal in the UK, and this is very different to US history.
As for much of the enabling, that was often down to the Africans themselves, and as already pointed out the largest slave trades were actually in Trans-Saharan East Africa and in the Islamic world and Middle East, and had nothing to do with white Europeans.
That's a rather convenient point to make when slavery by race was perfectly legal within much of the British Empire, to include in British colonies in North America (later to be the United States).
You point to Britain banning the slave trade in 1807 and then throughout the empire in 1833 (and noting efforts by its Navy to enforce the ban on the seas) but then in the same breath try to further rosy up the situation by noting that British people generally didn't have a vote or voice at the time; newsflash, the same is true for the colonists (e.g. British subjects) and later Americans. The people who implemented the slave trade in the American colonies were British and remained subjects of the crown until the American Revolution. Pointing out that such practices were limited to the reaches of the empire and not within the British Isles doesn't take away from this point or someone make one's position more noble.
Still, just as the British government took steps later to ban the slave trade and enforce this ban, it could have done so from the very beginning. Instead, the British government was complicit in the horrors of the slave trade, among many other governments and peoples.
Note, I don't bring these points up to somehow single the UK out, but rather to push back on what seems to be an effort on your part to minimize the role that Britain had in these horrors.
Without the service providers (African chiefs), there is no transatlantic African slaves. Just like without the drug producers, there are no drug users.
Europeans were grossly outnumbered every time they stepped 1 foot onto an African country, and would never be able to ship millions of slaves with 10 white guys on a ship and some pistols.
Remember the Haitian revolution? The part where a bunch of black people realized they outnumbered the white people? That would've been the transatlantic slave trade without Africa's willful involvement: a bunch of white people running for their lives back onto their own ships.
True. The narrative that we are taught far too often about whites going into the jungles of Africa and kidnapping Africans for shipping to the new world is complete nonsense. The slave trade without the participation of Africans would have never been possible.
Slavery was a nightmare and the repercussions have been devastating....the Caribbean nations
are making great points.
Can this be logically shown? - a person is descended from the combined history of their forebears, and there is no reason to assume that any person would exist if any of their forebears didn't exist.
I see millions of people living their lives in former slave countries that seem no happier/sadder than people anywhere else, and with their own unique culture - I don't see those individuals or countries as devastation, and the cultures that descended from those transatlantic slaves have certainly made the world a more interesting place.
True. The narrative that we are taught far too often about whites going into the jungles of Africa and kidnapping Africans for shipping to the new world is complete nonsense. The slave trade without the participation of Africans would have never been possible.
The podcast I linked to earlier address some really interesting aspects of this.
The expansion of the ottoman empire and banning of enslaving whites by the Catholic church diverted a lot of slaves to the middle east.
So, that lead to the slave trade for the Americas and Carribean turning to the west coast of Africa because you couldn't enslave the natives in those places because disease (mostly) wiped them out.
Roots and Gone With The Wind were fiction, just FYI.
Roots was based on a factual story that was sensationalised for TV wasn't it? Besides this and the fact that Gone With the Wind was fiction is irrelevant to the point I was making. They were BOTH based on real events, trying to deny slavery in the USA is pointless there were millions of slaves in the USA and that guy trying to 'whitewash' (excuse the pun) US history is absurd.
You'll be banging your head against the wall arguing with a British person about Britain's role in Slavery.
In my experience the Brits have been heavily conditioned to reflexively stick to the Approved Narrative.
The Royal Navy would cruise around the Caribbean, boarding vessels to free slaves, according the narrative.
And never you mind they supported the Confederate States of America that was trying to preserve the right to own slaves.
Its not the British that are trying to deny their role in slavery!! That would be our American 'friends' across the pond! The fact is there were millions of slaves in the USA, slavery DID carry on in the US right through to 1865 and astonishingly the Jim Crow Laws were in affect right up until the second half of the 20th Century!
The British are far from innocent when it comes to slavery but there ARE a couple of points that makes the US trying to blame the British for US slavery laughable! Slavery didn't happen within the UK, The Slavery Abolition Act was brought about in 1833. Royal Naval ships DID police the seas looking for slave ships.
Nobody is denying the role the British had in slavery but to try and lay the blame square on the British is laughable!
Roots was based on a factual story that was sensationalised for TV wasn't it? Besides this and the fact that Gone With the Wind was fiction is irrelevant to the point I was making. They were BOTH based on real events, trying to deny slavery in the USA is pointless there were millions of slaves in the USA and that guy trying to 'whitewash' (excuse the pun) US history is absurd.
No one is whitewashing anything. The facts are what they are. The US was a comparatively very small player (3.9%) in the 1501-1866 Atlantic Slave Trade, according to the documented historical records of nearly 36,000 slave ship voyages researched and archived by the Slave Voyages: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database project.
And from those same records:
THIS is why the Caribbean nations are seeking reparations from EUROPEAN countries.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
