Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing
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The Atlantic slave trade would eventually be by far the largest and have the greatest impact. The first Europeans to arrive on the coast of Guinea were the Portuguese; the first European to actually buy African slaves in the region of Guinea was Antão Gonçalves, a Portuguese explorer. Originally interested in trading mainly for gold and spices, they set up colonies on the uninhabited islands of São Tomé. In the 16th century the Portuguese settlers found that these volcanic islands were ideal for growing sugar. Sugar growing is a labor-intensive undertaking and Portuguese settlers were difficult to attract due to the heat, lack of infrastructure, and hard life. To cultivate the sugar the Portuguese turned to large numbers of African slaves. Elmina Castle on the Gold Coast, originally built by African labor for the Portuguese in 1482 to control the gold trade, became an important depot for slaves that were to be transported to the New World.
The first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World were the Spaniards who sought auxiliaries for their conquest expeditions and laborers on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola, where the alarming decline in the native population had spurred the first royal laws protecting the native population. The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501.
In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce any “Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers” to hereditary slavery. This approval of slavery was reaffirmed and extended in his Romanus Pontifex bull of 1455. These papal bulls came to serve as a justification for the subsequent era of slave trade and European colonialism. The followers of the church of England and Protestants did not use the papal bull as a justification.
Increasing penetration into the Americas by the Portuguese created more demand for labor in Brazil–primarily for farming and mining. Slave-based economies quickly spread to the Caribbean and the southern portion of what is today the United States. These areas all developed an insatiable demand for slaves. As European nations grew more powerful, especially Portugal, Spain, France and England, they began vying for control of the African slave trade, with little effect on the local African and Arab trading. Great Britain’s existing colonies in the Lesser Antilles and their effective naval control of the Mid Atlantic forced other countries to abandon their enterprises due to inefficiency in cost. The English crown provided a charter giving the Royal African Company monopoly over the African slave routes until 1712.
The Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms, such as the Oyo empire (Yoruba), Kong Empire, Kingdom of Benin, Kingdom of Fouta Djallon, Kingdom of Fouta Tooro, Kingdom of Koya, Kingdom of Khasso, Kingdom of Kaabu, Fante Confederacy, Ashanti Confederacy, and the kingdom of Dahomey. Europeans rarely entered the interior of Africa, due to fear of disease and moreover fierce African resistance.
Before the arrival of the Portuguese, slavery had already existed in Kingdom of Kongo. Despite its establishment within his kingdom, Afonso I of Kongo believed that the slave trade should be subject to Kongo law. When he suspected the Portuguese of receiving illegally enslaved persons to sell, he wrote letters to the King João III of Portugal in 1526 imploring him to put a stop to the practice.
The kings of Dahomey sold their war captives into transatlantic slavery, who otherwise would have been killed in a ceremony known as the Annual Customs. As one of West Africa’s principal slave states, Dahomey became extremely unpopular with neighboring peoples. Like the Bambara Empire to the east, the Khasso kingdoms depended heavily on the slave trade for their economy. A family’s status was indicated by the number of slaves it owned, leading to wars for the sole purpose of taking more captives. This trade led the Khasso into increasing contact with the European settlements of Africa’s west coast, particularly the French. Benin grew increasingly rich during the 16th and 17th centuries on the slave trade with Europe; slaves from enemy states of the interior were sold, and carried to the Americas in Dutch and Portuguese ships. The Bight of Benin’s shore soon came to be known as the “Slave Coast”.
Disclaimer:
When I went to school, we were never taught Black History. We never learned about the Black leaders, the long, agonizing history that brought most Blacks to America. Those atrocities were glossed over in favor of mindlessly boring topics like the X Y Z Affair.
This series of cartoons will review Black history as told from a Black mother to an interracial child. This series will be ugly, course, horrific and truthful. I will mostly abandon the commentary for an article on Black history.
This series is not about Obama or Hillary. I want to you to try to imagine how Black families tell their children of the atrocities their ancestors, all of them, suffered because of the color of their skin. Try to imagine how Black families counsel their children when someone calls them “nigger” for the first time. Can you imagine the bone crushing emotion that must well up? Can you imagine the agony, frustration and anger?
Can you imagine being the Black preacher who tries to paint a picture of a just God every Sunday? Especially in a country that claims where the notion of racism is a thing of the past, the job is difficult.
These strips may at times be entertaining and sometimes they may not.
I don’t want you to laugh so hard you cry, I want you to cry so hard you do something about it.
If anyone wants to know the mindset of how many Americans think of black people-no doubt a more sizable number than I would like- they need go no further than Pat Buchanan’s reply to Obama concerning Rev. Wright.
He wrote in his brief on March 21 that over 600,000 black people were brought from Africa on slave ships and they grew into a community of some 40 million people, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity that blacks had ever known. No people have done more to lift up black people than white Americans…untold trillions have been spent on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Pell Grants, etc etc and of course affirmative action giving blacks(unqualified)precedence over whites…he goes on like this but he ends with even more sickeningly..”Where’s the gratitude?”
It’s almost impossible to respond to the racist bullshit because it’s so breathtaking in it’s scope and why this bigoted sickminded mfucker continues to be a revered analyst on MSNBC is beyond me.
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We have seen what a prominent part Parentucelli had taken in the Council of Florence. The submission of the Greek bishops had not been sincere. On their return to Constantinople most of them openly rejected the decrees of the council and declared for the continuance of the schism. Eugene IV vainly endeavoured to stir up the Western nations against the ever-advancing Turks. Some help was given by the Republics of Venice and Genoa; but Hungary and Poland, more nearly menaced, supplied the bulk of the forces. A victory at Nish (1443) had been followed by two terrible defeats (Varna, 1444, and Kosovo, 1449). The whole of the Balkan peninsula, except Constantinople, was now at the mercy of the infidels.
The emperor, Constantine XII, sent messages to Rome imploring the pope to summon the Christian peoples to his aid. Nicholas sternly reminded him of the promises made at Florence, and insisted that the terms of the union should be observed. Nevertheless the fear that the Turks would attack Italy, if they succeeded in capturing the bulwark of the east, induced the pontiff to take some action – especially as the emperor professed his readiness to accept the decrees of the council. In May, 1452, Cardinal Isidore, an enthusiastic Greek patriot, was sent as legate to Constantinople. A solemn function in honour of the union was celebrated on 12 Dec., 1452, with prayers for the pope and for the patriarch, Gregorius. But the clergy and the populace cursed the Uniates and boasted that they would rather submit to the turban of the Turk than to the tiara of the Roman Pontiff.
After many obstacles and delays a force of ten papal galleys and a number of vessels furnished by Naples, Genoa, and Venice set sail for the East, but before they reached their destination the imperial city had fallen and the Emperor Constantine was no more (29 May, 1453). Whatever may have been the dilatoriness of Nicholas up to this point – and it must be acknowledged that he had good reason for not helping the Greeks – he now lost no time. He addressed a Bull of Crusade to the whole of Christendom. Every sort of inducement, spiritual and temporal, was held out to those who should take part in the holy war. Princes were exhorted to sink their differences and to unite against the common foe. But the days of chivalry were gone: most of the nations took no notice of the appeal; some of them, such as Genoa and Venice, even solicited the friendship of the infidels.
Vatican official says human trafficking now is worse than African slave trade
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Two things I recently learned about slavery in the Caribbean and North America. First, it was a business. Shipping across the Atlantic was a brand new and expensive technology, so the ship owners needed high margin cargoes.
Sugar was the first such high-margin cargo, and since the European diseases had killed off so many natives of the Americas, slaves who were able to deal with the European diseases were required. The resulting triangular trade was highly profitable, leading to rapid development of both the technology of high-seas shipping (compare it to what the Vikings had done earlier) and to the development of iron-working for cannons.
Slavery had previously been quite local, and generally there were ways for slaves to be freed. The Portuguese did not have the individual entrepreneurs making fortunes with ships, so the slaves they took soon were assimilated into the Portuguese society. I read somewhere that 40% of modern Portuguese are descendants of those African slaves.
Which brings me to my second point.
Plantations and slavery were an economic thing, providing labor needed to meet the never before seen demand for sugar that the new sailing technologies created in Europe. It was class-based. Slaves and indentured servants were an investment made by the owners of those plantations to service that demand, and later the demand for cotton and indigo. Global trade required it.
The Caribbean plantation owners calculated that it was cheaper to buy slaves,work them to death, and buy replacements than it was to provide any care for them. That required a heavy military presence, especially in those islands which were populated mostly be slaves. Needless to say, the attitude that the slaves were less than human was a requirement of such practices.
When slaves were first sold in Virginia that military society was already obvious in the Caribbean, and was also the way slave ships and markets were run. But when they got to Virginia in the early 17th century, there was no real distinction between slaves and indentured servants. Both were low-social-class labor whose transportation was paid for as an investment by the plantation owners who were getting rich meet the European demand for their products.
But there was one big difference between indentured servants and black African slaves. If the indentured servant walked off and headed west, no one knew he or she was breaking a contract. But if a Black person left, it was obvious that a slave had escaped.
The dehumanization required to suppress slaves was thus transferred to Black Africans primarily, because plantation owners who bought non-Black indentured servants quickly found their investments walking away and not being returned.
The other characteristic of Southern American slave society is its militarization. Slave revolts occurred regularly, usually on a cycle of about every three decades. The result was that every White male was trained to belong to the militia, and the college students all had mandatory military training. (This accounts for the general military superiority of the South in the Civil War, by the way.) Every Southern city had a curfew and regular patrols enforcing it, as well as military barracks and redoubts in the main part of the city. This is also, I personally suspect, the source of the primarily Southern gun Rights movement that afflicts us in America even today.
The other effect of this militarization was that the White working class was given a status much higher than the black slaves. The financial elite (mostly plantation owners) used this to keep the workers from uniting when they were treated badly. This was reflected as late as the 60’s in the separate Black and White unions. Since worker solidarity is the only power that competed with that of the owners, unions have never done well in the South. Racism is the basis of the Right to Work Laws in all the states of the Old South.
So the reason for our slave society in the South was international trade, which (with the cannon-based iron and coal technology) led to the industrial revolution in Great Britain. The reason why Black persons are expected to become criminals is because of the traditional fear of slave revolts. That has led to the fear of the “Angry Black Man” that has motivated the endless loops of Rev. Wright giving his sermon right after 9/11. It has also led to the overrepresentation of Blacks in prison. Remember Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell angrily blaming America’s sins for 9/11 at the same time? Where are the endless loops and the demand that McCain, as a White Man, disavow them and Rev. Hagee? That’s traditional racism, left over from the society that was required to suppress as much as 40% of its population in perpetual bondage based on tradition, economics and the fact that Black skins made escaped slaves stand out.
I am White, and graduated from an all white segregated high school in Texas. Then I entered the military where racism was minimized. So I recently started reading some history, and this is what I have learned.
I think that racism is slowly leaving us. The kids attracted by Barack simply don’t seem to understand what the fuss is about. The Civil Rights movement made great progress, but the defenders of racism realized they had to concentrate into one political party, giving us Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Racism has been a major element of the conservative movement and the Reagan Revolution for three decades.
If we are lucky, it will die off with those of us old enough to remember legal segregation and miscegenation laws. I’m hoping that is part of Obama’s message.
I’m not historian, but this is what I have recently concluded. This seemed like a good place to share it.
Thanks for sharing, it was a damn fine comment.
I agree with all of your ideas.
Before the Civil War, the North had industrialized and the Captains of Industry living in New York, Philly and Boston were not going to build a factory a thousand miles to the south, they were going to build it where they could keep a daily eye on their investment.
Another thing about the southern economic strategy is that the Confederacy was planning to open up cotton trade with Britain, but that is the same time Britain seized the Egyptian cotton trade thus robbing the Confederacy of their primary source of income.