Start of European slave trading in Africa.
Start of European slave trading in Africa.
Conquerors: How Portugal Seized the Indian Ocean and Forged the First Global Empire with other Europeans..
First and foremost slavery in whatever form was and is a despicable act that has been thrusted upon humanity to this day.
Various forms of slavery, servitude, or coerced human labour existed throughout the world before the development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade as illustrated below, historian David Eltis narrates.
Before 1400: Slavery had existed in Europe from classical times and did not disappear with the collapse of the Roman Empire. Slaves remained common in Europe throughout the early medieval period. However, slavery of the classical type became increasingly uncommon in Northern Europe and, by the 11th and 12th centuries, had been effectively abolished in the north. Nevertheless, forms of unfree labour, such as villainise and serfdom, persisted in the north well into the early modern period.
In Southern and Eastern Europe, classical-style slavery remained a normal part of society and economy for longer. Trade across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic seaboard meant that African slaves began to be brought to Italy, Spain, Southern France, and Portugal well before the discovery of the New World in 1492.
1441: Start of European slave trading in Africa. The Portuguese captains Antão Gonçalves and Nuno Tristão capture 12 Africans in Cabo Branco (modern Mauritania) and take them to Portugal as slaves.
"Most studies and textbooks on the slave trade focused on the 18th and 19th centuries, a time when the slave trade had become the main activity in Black Africa (...) This historical approach has always avoided an analysis of the military and other means deployed by European slave traders in the 16th and 17th centuries to defeat African kings and elites who resisted, and to put docile and corrupt leaders in their place.
Thus, this image of Africa selling its own children has always been based on a lack of knowledge of the particularly brutal means put in place by Europeans to demolish empires that were prosperous, to exterminate any resistance to invaders ' Rosa Amelia Plumelle-Uribe “Traite des Noirs; Traite des Blancs”, pages 138-139.
Ancient Egyptian culture flourished through adherence to tradition and their legal system followed this same paradigm.
Many other places in Africa too had their laws under their own Kingdoms, some notable pre-colonial states and societies in Africa include the Ajuran Empire, D'mt, Adal Sultanate, Alodia, Warsangali Sultanate, Kingdom of Nri, Nok culture, Mali Empire, Bono State, Songhai Empire, Benin Empire, Oyo Empire, Kingdom of Lunda (Punu-yaka), Ashanti Empire, Ghana Empire, Mossi Kingdoms, Mutapa Empire, Kingdom of Mapungubwe, Kingdom of Sine, Kingdom of Sennar, Kingdom of Saloum, Kingdom of Baol, Kingdom of Cayor, Kingdom of Zimbabwe, Kingdom of Kongo, Empire of Kaabu, Kingdom of Ile Ife, Ancient Carthage, Numidia, Mauretania, and the Aksumite Empire.
In the 14th century, Arab traveller Ibn Battuta said about the city of Kilwa in Tanzania, in the black Swahili civilization, that it was the most beautiful city in the world. So that’s what Europeans found when they arrived in Africa.
The Swahili city-states steadily grew and prospered, and were a major world economic power by the 1400’s. Although the city-states were famous throughout Africa and Asia, no European countries knew of them.
In fact it was with these words that Pope Nicholas V confirmed; on 8 January 1454, the authorization given to Portugal to begin the European slave trade and the destruction of Africa.
His successor Pope Calixtus III, in 1456, specified “From the whole Guinea and beyond to India. It was therefore within the framework of an alleged evangelizing mission that the Portuguese entered a rich and civilized Africa with their missionaries. The Europeans thus left descriptions of the civilizations they were about to destroy.
In 1482, the Portuguese entered the Kongo Empire, which at that time was under the reign of Nzinga a Nkuwu. The King, through the legendary African hospitality, was not cautious enough about them. Thanks to the firearms that the Africans did not have, the Portuguese, then an emerging power after being re-civilized by the Blacks of North East Africa and the Arabs, brutally changed the course of the African history.
At the death of Nzinga a Nkuwu, his son Mpanzu a Kitima, hostile to Europeans and rejecting Christianity, was crowned Mwene Kongo (Emperor of the Kongo).
The Portuguese then mounted an insurrection to install his brother Nzinga Mbemba, converted under the name of Afonso I. King Mpanzu was killed on the battlefield as he faced this coalition. Afonso became Mwene Kongo.
The destruction of Kongo dia Ntotila commenced (the Kongo Empire).
You can imagine the surprise, then, of Portuguese captain Vasco da Gama when in 1498 he came upon bustling port cities such as Sofala, Kilwa, Mombasa, and Malindi as he sailed up the eastern coast of Africa. He and his crew were welcomed by most of the cities they visited, although neither his ships nor the European items they attempted to trade were of much interest in the East African city-states.
Vasco da Gama did eventually reach India with the help of an Indian navigator from Malindi named Kanji Mallam.
In 1499, da Gama returned to Portugal and told the king and queen, who had sponsored his voyage, everything that he’d seen, including the shiploads of gold, ivory, porcelain, silk, and cotton being bought and sold in the port cities along the eastern coast of Africa.
In 1505; the Portuguese built a fort in Solafa (Mozambique). Like in Kongo, the strategy was to enter the Empire through religion. The first missionaries arrived on the banks of the Zambezi around 1560; and after a brief conversion to Christianity, the emperor - who had obviously understood what was at stake - had the missionary Gonzalo da Silveira killed. The Portuguese attacked the hinterland.
The destruction of the Mwene Mutapa Empire (Zimbabwe) had begun.
The organization of the slave trade was structured to have the Europeans stay along the coast lines, relying on African middlemen and merchants to bring their victims to be sold.
During the Age of Exploration, the Portuguese Empire was the first European power to gain control of Zanzibar, and kept it for nearly 200 years. Vasco da Gama's visit in 1499 marked the beginning of European influence.
Louise Marie Diop-Maes said that: “After looting ships around Zanzibar in 1503, the Portuguese attacked Kilwa in 1505 and began building a fort. The same year they threatened Mombasa, which resisted. With the help of African allies, the inhabitants fought against the Portuguese in the alleys of the city all the way to the King's palace. Having stormed the palace, the Portuguese forced the King to surrender. The city was ransacked and burned down. Further north, Barawa suffered the same fate in 1528.
The destruction of the Swahili and Somali Kingdoms were the targets.
In 1503 or 1504, Zanzibar became part of the Portuguese Empire and Slave trading in the area commenced on a commercial scale across the Indian Ocean and beyond as the Portuguese were now the force that was bulldozing all city-states and stealing all the wealth and resources of the region and the area, thus the introduction and the beginning of taxation emerged as it is known today.
The Portuguese government took immediate interest in the Swahili city-states. They sent more ships to the eastern coast of Africa with three goals: to take anything of value they could find, to force the kings of the city to pay taxes to Portuguese tax collectors, and to gain control over the entire Indian Ocean trade.
Mombasa was attacked again. After 4 months of occupation, the Portuguese razed the city to the ground. In 1569. Mombasa was repopulated.
In fact there is much more history between Oman and the Portuguese, The Portuguese took over Muscat on 1st April 1515, and held it until 26th January 1650. Portugal dominated the region around Muscat and beyond between 1507 and 1650 too.
Between 1500 and 1850, European traders shipped hundreds of thousands of African, Indian, Malagasy, and Southeast Asian slaves to ports throughout the Indian Ocean world. The activities of the British, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese traders… etc … who operated in the Indian Ocean demonstrate that European slave trading was not confined largely to the Atlantic but must now be viewed as a truly global phenomenon. Richard B. Allen’s magisterial work dramatically expands our understanding of the movement of free and forced labour around the world.
Drawing upon extensive archival research and a thorough command of published scholarship, Allen challenges the modern tendency to view the Indian and Atlantic oceans as self-contained units of historical analysis and the attendant failure to understand the ways in which the Indian Ocean and Atlantic worlds have interacted with one another. In so doing, he offers tantalizing new insights into the origins and dynamics of global labour migration in the modern world.
Turn of the 16th century saw all these International consortiums in East India Company, Austrian East India Company, Dutch East India Company and other European countries such as the Spanish, Portuguese, Germans, Belgians, Dutch …etc all traded commercially in Slave trade as well as other goods, …
Residual numbers too of the slaves ancestry is apparent in the Mediterranean world, especially in Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, Greece, Imperial Rome and the Islamic societies of the Middle East and North Africa”, India, Pakistan, Siri Lanka, China too…
What was so different about the Colonial legacy in terms of European Political and religious aspect that took shape at a latter part of period as time went by, adding larger conversion to Christianity at a significant scale happened and was part and parcel of turning them into conforming beings even though the very indigenous people were looked upon as second or third class citizens on their very own soil that they lived on, was it time that had changed the slave demographics and slavery trade was looked latterly inversely by the masters in a different light due to less call on demand by overseas shipments claims and to now re-strategize to look into colonizing Africa as they did India and many other?
Various forms of slavery, servitude, or coerced human labour existed throughout the world before the development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade as illustrated above. As historian David Eltis explains, and reiterated “almost all peoples have been both slaves and slaveholders at some point in their histories.” Still, earlier coerced labour systems in the Atlantic World generally differed, in terms of scale, legal status, and racial definitions, from the trans-Atlantic chattel slavery system that developed and shaped New World societies from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
In 1503 or 1504 seen Zanzibar became part of the Portuguese Empire as explained earlier and Slave trading as well as other mercantile trade commenced on a commercial scale across the Indian Ocean, South Africa and beyond, this had furthered introduced and added more scope to the already ongoing slave trade that was already in force in the Atlantic and therefore dove tailed into the existing slave trading now with the introduction of the East African region with the ongoing Atlantic Slave Trade on the other side of Africa, that continued commercially into the 17th century” in fact history further goes on and talks about 'The spice of slavery'
During the start of the 15th century Slave Trade between West Africa and across Europe, the North, the Atlantic to the Americas and West Indies had already started taking shape on a supply demand basis, distributing the growth and demands of the discovery of the New World in 1492.
During the Age of Exploration, the Portuguese Empire was the first European power to gain control of Zanzibar, and kept it for nearly 200 years. Vasco da Gama's visit in 1499 marked the beginning of European influence in or around whole of African coastal regions.
By this time “The transatlantic slave trade that had begun in or around the 15th century was in full force by 16th Century and was already shaping New World societies at a phenomenal rate across the Atlantic and towards the West and into the Americas. Historically the Portuguese and other Europeans who already had vested lucrative interests in exploring the West Coast of Africa and later in the 16th Century expanded into not just the Kongo, East Africa but India, Malabar Coast, on the South East African coast at Delagoa Bay, and at the Nicobar Islands and beyond.
Although at first the number of enslaved Africans taken was small. In about 1650, however, with further development of plantations on the newly colonised Caribbean islands and American mainland and other occupied colonization, the trade grew and expanded along the coasts of the Zeng (East African coasts), many Islands in the Indian Ocean as well as South Africa.
East Africa was now a focal point of the Indian Ocean and beyond...with now the emergence of Portuguese dominance (1500-1698CE) as per article… African Democracy Encyclopaedia Project clearly states…… Conquerors they wanted to be, Portugal seized the Indian Ocean and forged the First Global Empire.
Various forms of slavery, servitude, or coerced human labour existed throughout the world before the development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade as illustrated above, when the issue of who was the primary seller of Africans in the slave markets is discussed, majority of us are often in denial, embarrassed to admit that their ancestors especially the clan chiefs sold people for a song-as cheap as possible. As historian David Eltis explains, and reiterate that “almost all peoples have been both slaves and slaveholders at some point in their histories.”
Still, earlier coerced labour systems in the Atlantic World generally differed, in terms of scale, legal status, and racial definitions, from the trans-Atlantic chattel slavery system that developed and shaped New World societies from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
Ansu Datta (From Bengal to the Cape - Bengali Slaves in South Africa 2013) p 19 - "...studies of transoceanic trade suggest that slaves hardly played a part in the export trade from Bengal at that time [1665-1721]. As far as Africa is concerned, it seems that Bengali slaves who were brought to the Cape came mostly by way of Batavia." the East Indies (31.47%), Ceylon/Sri Lanka (3.1%), Mozambique, Madagascar and the East African coast (26.65%), Malaya (0.49%) Mauritius (0.18%)…etc
One does not need to look too deep, it is evidently clear….South America, North America, West Indies and all over and across the Atlantic Ocean slaves were shipped in millions, not just from India, East Indies, West Africa, East Africa, North Africa but many other places too that were under colonialism or of foreign occupancy.
Western Europe not only corrupted the slave/servility systems in Africa they also caused the Arab slave boom in the 19th century (Arab' is not a racial group), this was mainly due to the fact in 1698, two years short of the 18th century, Zanzibar fell under the control of the Sultanate of Oman, which started and developed an economy of trade and cash crops, with a ruling Arab elite and a Bantu general population.
Slave trade and other commercial trade carried on, it was now a residual number to the norm that was already two century old trade and proportionally of other trade as well as Slave trading that was commercially started by the Portuguese in the region.
And most critical was Europe’s continuation of the African Holocaust up through colonialism, apartheid, neo-colonialism and the current exploitation of Africa’s resources. These events are not disconnected, although attempts are made to dichotomize these realities.
Zanzibar became part of the overseas holdings of Oman, falling under the control of the Sultan of Oman.
The Omani set up trading companies in Zanzibar in the 18th century, ending nearly 200 years of Portuguese dominance on the island and also nearby smaller islands that were used as holdings.
In 1832 the greatest Arab ruler, Said bin Sultan bin Ahmed, better know as Seyyid Said, a grandson of Ahmed bin Sa’id, the founder of the Al-Busa’id dynasty, decided to make Zanzibar the capital of his dominions in the place of Muscat. He was mainly concerned to extend and to consolidate the influence and the commercial interests of Zanzibar along the coast of East Africa and inland to the Great Lakes, these were un-renowned and seen as pioneers of exploration in East Africa and thus the Europeans explorers followed their trails and to seek beyond them.
As far back as 1822 Seyyid Said had already signed a Convention with the British government for “the perpetual abolition of the slave trade between the dominions of His Highness and all Christian countries.”
After Britain and Oman had signed the Moresby Treaty in 1822, two British ships under the command of Captain William Fitzwilliam Wentworth Owen were dispatched to the Indian Ocean to survey the East African coast and Arabia.
The captain's mandate was to monitor and stamp out any slave trade activity in the region. Owen was a man so fervently committed to the cause of ridding the world of slavery, that he sailed to Muscat on his ship, HMS Leven, to harangue Seyyid Said about the horrors of slave trade.
The other ship under his command, HMS Barracouda, paid a visit to Mombasa to stock up on supplies. The Barracouda sailed into Mombasa harbour on December 4th 1823.
Yet, it is baffling that King Leopold in the Congo amassed a huge personal fortune by exploiting the natural resources of the Congo through brutal enslaving and was obviously allowed to carry on without any intervention or by means of any type of humanitarian meeting as the Berlin Conference had done, that had started it all.
The initial task of the Berlin conference was to agree that the Congo River and Niger River mouths and basins would be considered neutral and open to trade.
Despite its neutrality, part of the Kongo Basin became a personal Kingdom (private property) for Belgium’s King Leopold II and under his rule, over half of the region’s population died or were they killed? The Belgium king Leopold II turned a huge piece of Africa into his rural estate, enslaved its people, and left a legacy of misery that lasts until today.. The one difference is Leopold killed black men , women and children in Africa and the Western narrative has always been soft on people of colour and their deaths.
Estimates of the death toll ranged to fifteen million, innocent men, women and children. Leopold II (9 April 1835 – 17 December 1909), Colonization 1876–1885, Congo Free State 1885–1908, Belgian Congo 1908–1960… Read Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost for much more insight into this heinous crime and links the misery of the Congolese people of today to the horrors to which the tyranny of King Leopold subjected Congo in the not too distant past.
In fact the estimate of the number killed during the transatlantic slave trade alone varies anywhere between 6-150 million. The official UN estimate is 17 million (UN). However, we ourselves would be inclined to agree the figure of 60 million, given all the variables here, including the fact that during the entire period of the slave trade, Africa's population did not increase. Some may argue that this is because Europe had advanced medicine and technology, while Africans didn't. Yet during this era Asia wasn't exactly at a sophisticated, technological level either. But their population nearly doubled. We believe the stagnation of Africa's population is a by- product of the transatlantic slave trade. (World Future Fund).
European slave trading and abolitionism in the Indian Ocean also led to the development of an increasingly integrated movement of slave, convict, and indentured labour during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and into the 20th century, the consequences of which resonated well into the twentieth century.
Global demographics in people of African descent/Origin as in similarities to the Americas, West Indies, Fiji, Madagascar, Re-Union, Mauritius, …etc are in abundance to witness?
One can find the likes of JP Morgan and Lloyds of London …etc ”. The government certainly shelled out £20m (about £16bn today) in 1833. Not to free slaves but to line the pockets of 46,000 British slave owners as “recompense” for losing their “property”. Having grown rich on the profits of an obscene trade, slave owners grew richer still from its ending. That, scandalously, was what the taxpayer was paying for until 2015. Narrated by Kenan Malik of the Guardian
So what of other European Elite that benefitted and those that profited are all over the Western world as well as in Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand South America, West Indies….etc.
Right now you can look at millions of Brazilians, millions of African Americans, millions of African Caribbean; millions of broken communities in West Africa, millions of people in South Africa, every single one of them the product of European systems that has not stopped to this very day.
Indentured labour from South Asia (1834-1917) a form of slavery…
The slave trade was officially abolished throughout the British Empire in 1807. Britain's darkest secrets: a form of slavery ...After the abolition of slavery, newly free men and women refused to work for the low wages on offer on the sugar farms in British colonies in the West Indies. Indentured labour was a system of bonded labour that was instituted following the abolition of slavery.
Indentured labour were recruited to work on sugar, cotton and tea plantations, and rail construction projects in British colonies in West Indies, Africa and South East Asia. From 1834 to the end of the WWI, Britain had transported about 2 million Indian indentured workers to 19 colonies including Fiji, Mauritius, Ceylon, Trinidad, Guyana, Malaysia, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa.
The gradual abolition of the slave trade and slavery in European colonies was the source of new migrations of labourers throughout the world, notably during the second half of the nineteenth century. In order to meet the needs of a labour-intensive plantation economy or to build the central infrastructure of their colonies, the Europeans—for the most part the English, French, Portuguese, and the Dutch—called on free foreign labourers.
This was known as the indenture system (which means “contract”), or the coolie trade if the indentured labourers were from Asia (coolie being derived from the Tamil word for salary).
These new flows of indentured manpower were dictated by the colonial expansion of Europe, as well as by the difficult socio-economic conditions in the countries where the indentured labourers came from, which acted as a powerful factor for departure.
The workers, the majority of whom were men, were directly recruited by the colonial administration or by immigration agents. For example, Javanese, Japanese, Tonkinese, Africans, Madagascans and especially Chinese and Indians left their native land to go and work, in exchange for a salary, in the colonies of the Americas and the Indian Ocean, or in the territory recently conquered by the imperial powers in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Between 1834 and 1920, approximately 1,500,000 indentured labourers, of whom 85% were from India, were sent to British colonies, one third to Mauritius, one third to the British West Indies, and the rest to Natal. Tens of thousands of Indian workers emigrated to the French colonies of La Réunion, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana.
750,000 Chinese left for Malaysia, Sumatra, Cuba, the British West Indies, or La Réunion. This is not to mention the tens of thousands of African workers who went to the West Indies, French Guiana, La Réunion, Mauritius or Natal. Those who went to the Indian Ocean came from Mozambique or Zanzibar, and those who went to the Atlantic region were from the Congo and Senegal. Experiments were also made with European workers (Maltese, Irish, French), but without success.
1813/15: Although it is described as Gradual emancipation adopted in Argentina. An academic in the history of Slaves in Argentina narrated: How Argentina Killed Millions of Her African Population To Become a Purely Caucasian Nation
"So although they abolished slavery in 1815 in Argentina, it continued until 1853, after that the main preoccupation of the leaders was how to get rid of the black slaves and their descendants. Our president who ruled us from 1868 to 1874, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, wrote in his diary in 1848, this was long before he became president and slavery ended that - 'In the United States… 4 million are black, and within 20 years will be 8 million…. What is to be done with such blacks, hated by the white race?' - It shows that he was already thinking of how to eliminate black people before he became President and when he became President, he succeeded."
"Didn't the world say anything?"
"No. They ignored it. I am sure most of them wanted to do the same thing but failed. At that time, they admired them. I remember when I will go to Brazil as a child, my father's friend will say in disgust as he looked at the black Brazilians - we should have had your guts and finished them off. All of them. Make Brazil white just like Argentina."
1814: Gradual emancipation begins in Colombia.
Slavery was practiced in Colombia from the beginning of the 16th century until its definitive abolition in 1851. This process consisted of trafficking in people of African and indigenous origin, first by the European colonizers from Spain and later by the commercial elites of the Republic of New Granada, the country that contained what is today Colombia. (Wiki)
1823 Slavery abolished in Chile. Chile abolished slavery in 1823. Article 19.2 of the Constitution expressly states that “There are no slaves in Chile, and those who tread its soil shall be free”.
1824 Slavery abolished in Central America.
1829 Slavery abolished in Mexico.
1831 Slavery abolished in Bolivia.
1833 Abolition of Slavery Act passed in Britain. Slavery Abolition Act, (1833), in British history, act of Parliament that abolished slavery in most British colonies, freeing more than 800,000 enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and South Africa as well as a small number in Canada. It received Royal Assent on August 28, 1833, and took effect on August 1, 1834.
Britain ..The slave trade was actually abolished in 1807. The 1833 Slavery Abolition Act abolished, as the name suggests, slavery itself. A Treasury so loose with its facts might explain something about the state of the British economy. Worse, however, was the claim that British taxpayers helped “buy freedom for slaves”. The government certainly shelled out £20m (about £16bn today) in 1833. Not to free slaves but to line the pockets of 46,000 British slave owners as “recompense” for losing their “property”. Having grown rich on the profits of an obscene trade, slave owners grew richer still from its ending. That, scandalously, was what the taxpayer was paying for until 2015. Kenan Malik
Even where the Abolition of Slavery Act did end slavery, it did not end slave like conditions. Slave owners were handsomely compensated for the loss of their ‘property.’ Some £20 million (about £16 billion, or $22 billion, in today’s values) was set aside by the British government to recompense 46,000 slave owners. Not only did the slaves themselves receive no reparation, but, under the Act, they were compelled to provide forty five hours of unpaid labour each week for their former masters, for a further four to six years after their supposed liberation. ‘In effect,’ writes David Olusoga, ‘the enslaved paid part of the bill for their own manumission.’
1842 Slavery abolished in Uruguay.
1848 Slavery abolished in all French & Danish colonies.
Proclamation of the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies, 27 April 1848, 1849, by François Auguste Biard, Palace of Versailles
1851 Slavery abolished in Ecuador.
1854 Slavery abolished in Peru and Venezuela.
1863 Emancipation Proclamation issued in the U.S.
1863 Slavery abolished in all Dutch colonies.
1865 Slavery abolished in the U.S. as a result of the end of the Civil War.
Thank you to http://www.friendsofmombasa.com/slave-trading/
http://www.friendsofmombasa.com/british-empire-in-east-africa/
https://www.zambianhistory.com/european-slave-trading-in-the-indian-ocean
https://kenanmalik.com/2018/01/26/the-great-british-empire-debate/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/11/lets-end-delusion-britain-abolished-slavery
The East India House, Leadenhall Street, after the rebuilding of 1729
Slavery & the Bank
Explore the Bank of England Museum exhibition ‘Slavery & the Bank of England’.
The exhibition traces the connections between the history of the Bank of England, the business of the City of London at large and transatlantic slavery.
You can find the exhibition in the Rotunda at the back of the museum. When you enter the space, take left to start the tour and look for audio guide symbols on the exhibition cases.
Full text of "Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines' Friend November-December 1906: Vol 26 Iss 5"
CONTENTS. ay THE SLAVE TRADE IN PORTUGUESE WEST AFRICA. ... and besides raiding the Chief used to.sell slaves to the Mombari (Portuguese slave-dealers), ...
Mombari (Portuguese slave-dealers)
CONTENTS...THE SLAVE TRADE IN PORTUGUESE EAST/CENTRAL AFRICA. ... and besides raiding the Chief used to.sell slaves to the Mombari (Portuguese slave-dealers),
Val Gielgud and the Slave Traders.docx
Microsoft Word document [4.1 MB]
The Tragedy of French Colonialism... The Congo Ocean Railroad
We were unrelentingly made to believe that the Slave trade was over, through “The Slavery Abolition Act 1833” was repealed in its entirety by the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1998. The repeal has not made slavery legal again, with sections of the Slave Trade Act 1824, Slave Trade Act 1843 and Slave Trade Act 1873 continuing in force.
Slavery continued even after 1833 in many parts of the colonization overseas, this continued even through the heinous indenture labour (form of slave trade) in the 20th century.
Abolition Act abolished, as the name suggests, slavery itself. A Treasury so loose with its facts might explain something about the state of the British economy. Worse, however, was the claim that British taxpayers helped “buy freedom for slaves”. The government certainly shelled out £20m (about £16bn today) in 1833. Not to free slaves but to line the pockets of 46,000 British slave owners as “recompense” for losing their “property”. Having grown rich on the profits of an obscene trade, slave owners grew richer still from its ending. That, scandalously, was what the taxpayer was paying for until 2015.
Going back to 1833 and after the 1880s some nearly half a century after, as the European powers were carving up Africa, one part of the story about King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian.
Narrated from page 1-11 in the book “In The Forest of No Joy”..by J.P Daughton an award winning historian….
Download file to read :
Artice by United Africa
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RWANDA COMMEMORATES THE 1994 GENOCIDE AGAINST THE TUTSI ??
Today marks the 28'th commemoration of the Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsi. The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were k.illed by armed militias known as the Interhamwe.
What you are looking at in this picture are clothes carefully folded on benches. These clothes have been sitting on these benches since 1994 . These clothes belonged to the Tutsi people of Rwanda who were k.illed in the 1994 Rwanda genocide. They were k.illed by rival tribes people, the Hutus.
Now, these clothes didn't get there by accident. They are there because that exactly was where the owners of the clothes were when they were killed- in a church. They ran to the church because ideologically its suppose to be a place of refuge. But the Hutus found them there, r.aped, b.asterdized & k.illed them there; men, women, children, old & young.
They were chopped like minced meat, majority of them were h.acked in the head with machetes. Their clothes are sitting on the church benches where they sat & laid, waiting for salvation as a memorial till date. The genocide saw to the killing of approximately 1 million Tutsi lives.
#rwandagenocide1994
NEVER AGAIN!
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History of Rwanda is like nowhere else that has ever happened in the 20th century amongst and within its own people, the Rwandan genocide is something that should never ever be forgotten for many reasons and to now know/understand what and who gas lighted the region, as well who could have helped avoid this heinous crime.
In fact it was not based on religion nor culture, it was simply based on wealth, aggravated through colonialism awaiting a spark to ignite this beautiful small region with the most heinous of crimes that brings, tears, shivers upon hearing the details to this genocidal in the making that could have easily been avoided.
Going back to the history of the region, Hutus arrived in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa a few thousand years ago; they were mostly farmers. About 400 years ago, the more nomadic Tutsis arrived, and settled amongst the Hutus. Before long, however, economic differences arose. The Tutsis mostly herded cattle, while Hutus tilled soil. Cattle were more profitable, and over time the minority Tutsis attained positions of power over the Hutus. Other than that, they were the same people.
It all started with the Germans, these Colonials invaded the region in around 1884, later on the Belgians took over after WW1 defeat of the Germans in 1917.
The two groups were separated further making them carry identity cards, and only permitted Tutsis access to higher education and positions of power. Classic divide-and-conquer move that has always been the hallmark of the West and USA .
The region was split into two new nations in 1962 by Belgians during its Independence; there was struggle between both groups in trying to take control in Rwanda, Burundi and skirmishes flowing into Uganda.
Majority significance of Hutus was taking shape in Rwanda and won power handily. Encounters and violence subsisted between Hutu and Tutsi in the region for the following three decades, but it was the events of April 6th, 1994, that transformed into genocide.
Evidently a plane carrying Rwandan President who was a Rwandan politician and military officer who served as the second president of Rwanda, from 1973 until 1994. He was nicknamed Kinani, a Kinyarwanda word meaning "invincible". Plane also carried the Hutu President of Burundi Cyprien Ntaryamira (6 March 1955 – 6 April 1994) was a Burundian politician who served as President of Burundi from 5 February 1994 until his death two months later. Violence had been escalating in the three years leading up to this, with the Hutu government fighting Tutsi rebels called the Rwandan Patriotic Front. President Habyarimana agreed to a peace agreement with the RPF, but then he got blown out of the sky, taking the peace along with it. It’s uncertain who shot down the aircraft, but what is not debated is who got the blame and what resulted.
Rwandan Hutu enraged saw this opportunity to carry out genocide against the Tutsi that they had been so longing for. This escalated the next day, makes one wonder how methodical it was structured in an orderly and in an efficient manner and in a mere three months nearly a million Tutsis were slaughtered.
With Hutu forces focused on massacres, by mid-July the Tutsi-led RPF seized control of the government, and the revenge killing of approximately 100,000 Hutus followed. Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, commander of a small UN observer force in Rwanda, saw the genocide coming months earlier and warned his superiors, but was told to stand down. The international community could have intervened and saved hundreds of thousands, but instead did nothing.
Below are articles links that will help you further read into what was going on that has just surfaced…..
Israeli Arms Exports to Rwanda During 1994 Genocide to Stay Secret, Supreme Court Rules
Upholding decisions by a district court and the Defense Ministry, justices find that state security needs outweigh public interest.
America’s secret role in the Rwandan genocide
The violence that shocked the world in 1994 did not come from nowhere. While the CIA looked on, its allies in the Ugandan government helped to spread terror and fuel ethnic hatred
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/12/americas-secret-role-in-the-rwandan-genocide?CMP=fb_gu
MIXED RACE
'Mixed Race'
is not a race of its own, Australia, South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) are good examples about race and ideology. Let's look at the root of where the word 'coloured' came from.
Let us not mistake race for ethnicity. Race is different from ethnicity, today's America mixes both of them as a campaign against categorising people by race and pretending the system does not see colour. So it came up with things like African-American to mean black but also to indirectly profile the history of immigration status. But, race is the colour of your skin.
Originally there where three main ones, Black, White and Brown. Most Africans fell under black, most Asians were brown and most Europeans were white. The countries that best paints a picture of race is South Africa and Zimbabwe - Where races were considered social classes. The whites were on top, the brownies in the middle and the black skinned at the bottom.
What about mixed race? That race did not exist, it was not meant to exist according to the founders of this race ideology, in fact it was a crime amongst the whites and a taboo amongst the blacks and brownies, where the parents were arrested for breaking the law of mixing races. Children born from these relationships were identified as coloureds... (Even Indian and white relationships went through the same and yet in India the scenario gave out a different name and identity. Anglo Indian there, never a coloured).
However, when a coloured was born, he had to belong to a certain side, black, brown or white. So a race test was taken, if she/he was so white with European features they would be branded and registered white, if they passed for a light skinned Khoisan South African or light skinned Ndebele Zimbabwean, they were considered black.
If the assessors were still confused of the colour, they would use the hair test, where a pencil was put in the hair to see how it would hold, if it stayed there, one was black, if it fell off one was white and if they, the assessors were just confused, then the child would be thrown in the Asian/brown neighbourhood. Often times parents where never found since many used to hide away in fear and these kids were given out or taken away to live in residential areas which were allocated according to what they were categorized as.
A white father, and an African mother, but a child with a white skin and straight hair meant the child was labelled white and was privileged to living a good life, its siblings if dark skinned, was sent to a different section and lifestyle, thus many families were separated in this way by the race test.
'Apartheid' it was known as to the world, and its forever etched in mind, it was Nelson Mandela and Robert Mugabe who ended it when they saw in the independence of a new South Africa and Zimbabwe.
But, unfortunately, skin colour still remained an obstruction, be it in society or in families. Let's be honest, many kids are still stigmatised for being darker than their siblings by family members. Right!
In America it was only in the later 20th century during the fight against racial discrimination, that the term mixed race came up to involve these children, this was not a race it simply meant a product of two different races. However you could be mixed race and still be of the white race depending on the lightness of your skin or you could be brown or black and still be mixed race.
And just because you share a black or white person in your ancestry does not make you their race, unless your skin tone falls in the same race as their's, now that is where ethnicity comes in. To avoid talking about race, they decided to use the term ethnicity which was broader, however the dilemma is that while race has nothing to do with ethnicity, your ethnicity has a lot to do with your race.
Because most ethnic descriptions are still based on race. That is why when a white person from Angola, Morocco or Zimbabwe says that they are Africans, people remain confused because Americans generalised that Africans are of the black race, Asians are of the brown and European of the white race. Which is not often the case. In Spain, an African born here is considered Spanish and because I am born in Africa, in their eyes, I am African, never an Indu (Hindu) unless its referred to in a religious comparison. Race is the colour of your skin its not a nationality.
Race associates with your hair, skin colour, actually its more physical. Ethnicity goes with tradition, your ancestry, the language etc. Do not mix race and ethnicity, these days the Americans use the terms together to avoid categorising people by race or racial profiling. But you can be white and still be African-American and mixed race. Race is originally the physical appearance especially the colour of your skin. You can be mixed race of the white race. Meaning your parents are a mixture of white and black or brown. But your skin colour is white.
It is also possible for 2 black parents to give birth to a white baby and it has happened because their ancestry involves European genes some where. That does not make the baby black simply because the parents are, the baby is of the white race and they can be African or Asian depending on the ethnicity of the parents. Ethnicity comes from ethnic groups and these are so many in the world, and, some even share many people of the same race. (White + Indian in India referred to as 'Anglo-Indian' and White + Indian in South Africa and Zimbabwean referred to as 'Coloured') .
In short Meghan Markle is white, Trevor Noah is black, they are both mixed race. How? The race test, friends, the race test.
Mixed race is not a race of its own, its a description. Race is defined by the skin but ethnicity is your originality. Lately race is being forwarded more on the table for manipulation or save the day purposes. Honestly if you just look at Meghan without any explanation of her black ancestry you can't even tell she has any relations with the black community.
Race is like gender, you are either a man or a woman, you don't get to choose, you are either black or white, you don't get to choose. Society has already chosen for you. But lately it has changed and you get to choose, that's why racism will not end because one race will want to always be greater, and every one will want to chose that one, its time we acknowledge we are different races and the difference is beautiful, embrace the difference and decide that regardless of the difference we are equal. Not say we are equal and then say you get to chose which race works for you. That's like creating a rift of temptation, every race will want to be the chosen.
The Tragic Plight of Enslaved Wet Nurses
How Black mothers were systemically deprived of breastfeeding their own children
Since slavery, the dehumanization of black people has been entrenched deeply in the social pyramid. One such is the tragic case of black mothers who were forced to breastfeed their owner’s children at the expense of their own.
Some historians believe that the practice originated in the 1600s when Malaria claimed numerous lives of many white settlers.
The slave owners believed that feeding their babies with milk from their native slaves would provide them natural immunity towards Malaria. This had a trickle-down impact on not only racial but also the psychological, financial, and political fabric of the society throughout the Black community.
Eventually, the white mothers considered it below their social status to breastfeed since it was unfashionable, in the sense that it kept them away from wearing the trendy clothes of yesteryear. Having a wet nurse was seen as a status symbol and symbol of wealth.
"Wives of slave owners timed their pregnancies with that of their slaves and then forcefully separated enslaved new mothers from their infants to serve as wet nurses for their children."
The black mothers were often beaten and milked like cows to feed white babies.
https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-tragic-plight-of-enslaved-wet-nurses-b1c80b73f290
Mahatma Gandhi’s Move for the abolition of the Indentured Labour System –
the “Girmit”
Sheen Gurrib's five generations, that is mesmerising and a moving tale in terms of how and where this journey is picked up from, to where it currently is, meet her father who had one thing etched in his mind in what he wanted for his loving children and went out to make sure of it, in terms of educating his children with all his inner strength, no matter of the costs involved…fruits of his fulfilments and his devotion in faith instilled, that has now led him to tell us this story…. Beautiful people tell it all with a smile and attached with it the fragrance of love without any sort of bitterness…
Sheen, takes you on a journey with her to meet her ancestors and makes you understand a bit more of her roots and ethnicity! And Sheen has her dad as a special guest too :)
From Indian slaves to Oxbridge PhD - The journey of my ancestors
The History Of Black Women's Hair
Did you know women braided their hair and hid rice seeds as well as other grains in a style called cornrows. The braiding technique was very popular among the women. During the horrifying Slave trade, Africans that were captured and forced onto ships to be sold into bondage in the Caribbean, parts of Europe and the United States of America experienced some of the worst treatments ever. Mothers often braided the rice into their children’s hair to have something to survive on while on the slave trips or escaping from raided communities in Africa. Also hidden in hair are black eyed peas, small cassava cuttings, okra, maize and other grains depending on how thick the hair was.
‘With Grains in Her Hair’: Rice in Colonial Brazil, J U D I T H A C A R N E Y