Two hundred years after Britain's abolition of the slave trade, Africans blamed the modern-day problems of their continent on the crippling legacy of the trans-Atlantic traffic in human beings.
- A Pseudo-Random News Source
Maybe the intent is to make the West feel guilty and send more money. More money wouldn't hurt, but it's wasted if root causes aren't understood honestly.
European need for labor to develop profitable sugar and other plantations on islands in the Atlantic and then in colonies across the New World created a boom in a pre-existing African slave trade, it is true. The weapons and other goods that Europeans gave to African kings in exchange for their prisoners certainly impacted African economies and culture significantly. But Africa's current problems have little to do with the slave trade.
Africa is still in culture shock from being brutally colonized by the French, the English, the Portuguese etc. The desire of Westerners to control African resources propped up countless post-colonial dictators. Floods of aid have provided little incentive for Africans to generate viable economies. Tribal dislocations created stresses that continue to play out. Modern geopolitics, from drilling oil to chasing terrorists and everything else, continue to screw around with the place.
But the sorry state of much of Africa is not due to the slave trade. That is to blame for the unhappy circumstances of countless people on this side of the Atlantic.
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Don
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11 comments:
Oh dear. Maybe you should stick to your reflections on jogging.
The slave trade had a catastrophic effect on Africa, Don. Yes, the trade pre-dated the European arrival there, but it was part of the normal intercourse of tribes, not what it would become. With the arrival of the Europeans, it became the predominant factor in the economy of western and some of central Africa, warping societies and cultures. It's true to say Africa has not recovered. You should note that the British colony in Ghana, the country noted in the article you cite, was founded to control the slave trade from there. The disruption to Ghana was enormous. If you think a place can lose huge numbers of its most economically productive citizens and not suffer, you do not understand how economies work.
As for "brutal colonisation", it is you who is inventing the facts here. Portugal, of the three you mentioned, was closest to "brutal", but really lethargic would be closer to it. Its disengagement was brutal and it is distinguished by the ruin it left its colonies in.
France's colonial model is something you need to learn more about. It was not exactly enlightened but it was certainly not brutal. Neither was Britain's. We weren't there to do good, true, but we weren't vicious or even particularly burdensome. The mistakes we made were not outcomes of brutality but of administration. Learn some history, man.
This:
"Floods of aid have provided little incentive for Africans to generate viable economies."
is simply wrong. It's a disgusting thing to say and not even close to true. It implies that you think aid is handed out to people like welfare. It isn't. Nothing like it.
I don't even know what you think "tribal dislocations" are. The only tribal dislocation of any significance that I can think of is the Mfecane (go and look it up).
Africa's problems are not simple, and they are not restricted to outcomes of the slave trade. But although it might make you feel better about our past to downplay its effects, they were massive and still are.
"There is no price, no price for what has been done."
SOLD!
I find it difficult to believe that anyone who needs to go back 200 years to find someone to blame for their troubles is actually trying to solve them. Suppose that was where the problem began.... who is responsible for it now? "The west"? Exactly who is that, after 200 years of immigration?
How many people currently residing in the countries that had slavery, most notably (because they're always the most noted) the US and England, had slave owning or selling ancestors? The only ancestors I had in America during slavery were Cherokees, and they weren't exactly living high off the hog.
Sure, put the blame wherever you want it. Then tell me how that helps solve the problem.
Maybe some things can't be fixed. And I'm not saying that to get out of spending money - I'm fine with aid, even more aid, higher taxes for the privilege of living in the West, etc. But does it actually do any good or just provide useless bandages for people's consciences?
Zen, your corrections are well noted. Thanks to a liberal public school education my understanding for years was that "white" sailors hoofed it into the forest and captured people directly. This lie has been replaced with knowledge that's still forming.
My statement that the trade "impacted African economies and culture significantly" was an understatement, but I was counteracting the article's simplistic viewpoint. My point stands that the slave trade was not by itself the source of blame for Africa's current troubles. I would say the secondary effects -- colonization, the warping of local economies as you say, of the incentives for local kings to preserve rather than kill male captives etc -- were far more significant.
The article I cited seems to suggest that today's slave trade -- "from illegal chattel slavery still practised in some nations in Africa's dry Sahel belt, to mafias which traffic African girls as prostitutes to the West" -- is to be blamed on the British. This is false, and for Britain to be asked to make reparations is absurd. The Arabs started the exportation of black slaves in quantity over a thousand years ago; and the Spanish continued the transatlantic trade for years after the Brits and Americans outlawed it, and that would have been impossible without the blessing of whoever was in control of the coast -- obviously not the Royal Navy. The British are an easy target today because they made enormous profits off it, are still a wealthy nation, have had continuity, and they accept blame. I don't see anyone bothering King Juan Carlos.
Joe: I recently learned that a small number of Cherokee, when displaced from NC to OK, took their own black slaves with them. This subject is just never as simple as we've been told.
Paula: Aid can make things worse or make them better. I've no problem if it establishes viable economies rather than just enrich the local warlords.
@joe
"I find it difficult to believe that anyone who needs to go back 200 years to find someone to blame for their troubles is actually trying to solve them."
Yeah, I'll bet you do. Arsehole.
Don, yes it's true that whites didn't catch their own slaves. You need to take care not to slide into a simplistic "they took slaves anyway" viewpoint. They did, but not millions, and they didn't generally send them away into bondage.
"I would say the secondary effects..."
You are splitting hairs. This is like saying that the trade in drugs is not responsible for the shootings on Moss Side because the killings are over turf. Yeah, but turf for what purpose? In any case, Don, you simply ignore the demographic impact of milions of mostly young men, the best of them, being taken away, and you ignore too that states came into being solely to provide slaves to the British and Portuguese.
It's true that today's slave trade is not easy to blame the Brits for. I think you want the Portuguese, not the Spanish, who mostly enslaved the Indians, and didn't bother with Africans so much.
Dude, the argument that slavery existed before and after the Brits doesn't absolve us. We were directly responsible for the worst of it, along with the Portuguese and Americans.
I have an open mind on reparations. I accept that great damage has been done to blacks and that it endures today. Whether the solution is to give them all cash is another question.
I can see the splitting hairs bit. I was mostly reacting against the simplicity, as if the troubles ALL root back to a rush for profits out of West Indies plantations. But given that the 1400s saw the Portuguese etc enslaving not just Africans but "white" people brought in from beyond the Black Sea (a practice that died out), and their discovery that profitable sugar plantations in the Canaries etc. could more than make up for the trades lost when Constantinople fell, and Barbary corsairs enslaving folks snatched from the shores of Spain and even England, and more besides, it seems the slave trade at least at the start was just more business as usual. The greatest disruption was the introduction of capitalistic mass-production entwined with a total dehumanization of the labor force. Well, that's slavery, whose brutality is illustrated by the sad stories out of Elmina. Maybe in trying to broaden the picture, I didn't broaden it so much as shift it, thus excluding other factors.
But the Spaniards did indeed enslave Africans quite a bit, as Indians proved not nearly so adept at mass agriculture, and less resistant to Old World diseases. Slavers continued to avoid the British and bring Africans into Cuba into the 1860s. Cuba's slave population never did achieve a replacement rate of growth.
You know, if you walked with your new enlightenment for a few more paces, you would come to a realisation that capitalism is slavery. An understanding of what slavery has been historically will help you see it. Capitalism fundamentally does not work. Institutionalising and prioritising greed lead to suffering; they don't alleviate it. It is my prime contention with your politics that you believe they do.
Yes, I've seen that coming. But not as inevitable. I don't see how suffering is inevitable, provided self-interest is principled enough to always see protection of all other persons' natural rights as crucial. But maybe that's another delusion. I have to concede to insufficient knowledge and an over-abundance of faith in humanity.
It's my good fortune not to be American, Joe, and much as I sympathise with your grandfolks, mine were digging up potatoes at that time and slaughtering no one. So I owe you nothing.
You probably should be paying me 100K pro rata, Joe, but luckily for you, I'm sticking it to you for free. A bit like when the navy's in town for the night, hey?
" mine were digging up potatoes at that time and slaughtering no one. So I owe you nothing."
THat was my point. Now you understand why I; and so many others here, owe no opologies to Africa. Even if someone's ancestors DID own slaves, they don't bear the shame. You cannot help what your father's father's father's father did.
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