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| Historically, West Africa is associated with the slave, gold and ivory trades, perhaps most often the former. West Africa is also the place of origin of vodou, the only indigenous African religion to survive the trans-Atlantic slave trade and remain in practice in the Americas today. The historical roots of racial discrimination in the United States today can be traced back to North American slavery and the kidnapping of more than 20 million Africans. It is easily assumed, therefore, that the African slave trade pit brutal, gun-wielding European slaver traders against unsuspecting, passive African victims. While the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, English and French slave traders were often brutal, they were not always working alone -- many Africans were also complicit in this victimization. Precolonial empires such as Dahomey and Ashanti (located in what is now Benin and Ghana), where slave ports at Ouidah and Elmina flourished, accumulated enormous wealth and power as a result of the trade of their fellow Africans.
In fact, Europeans often acted as junior partners to African rulers, merchants, and middlemen in the slave trade along the West African coast from the mid-15th century on. Two factors contributed to this dependency: the coastal geography and the diseases of West Africa. Seasonal wind patterns along the Atlantic coast of Africa generated heavy surf and dangerous crosscurrents, which in turn buffeted a land almost entirely lacking in natural harbors. Hazardous offshore reefs and sandbars complicated the matter even further for seafarers along the West African coast. European commerce in West Africa took place, therefore, most often on ships anchored well away from shore and dependent on skilled African canoe-men whose ability to negotiate across the hazardous stretch of water between the mainland and the waiting ships made the Atlantic trade possible. Even in places where Europeans were able to conduct trade on the mainland, their presence was limited by an epidemiological situation that impeded their livelihood and threatened their lives. Malaria, dysentery, yellow fever, and other diseases reduced the few Europeans living and trading along the West African coast to a chronic state of ill health and earned Africa the name "white man's grave." In this environment, European merchants were rarely in a position to call the shots. Furthermore, when Europeans first initiated a trading relationship with West Africans in the mid-15th century they encountered well-established and highly-developed political organizations and competitive regional commercial networks. Europeans relied heavily on the African rulers and mercantile classes at whose mercy, more often than not, they gained access to the commodities they desired. European military technology was not effective enough to allow them this access by means of force on a consistent basis until the 19th century. Therefore it was most often Africans, especially those elite coastal rulers and merchants who controlled the means of coastal and river navigation, under whose authority and to whose advantage the Atlantic trade was conducted. Domestic slave ownership as well as domestic and international slave trades in western Africa preceded the late 15th-century origins of the Atlantic slave trade. Since most West African societies did not recognize private property in land, slaves functioned as one of the only profitable means of production individuals could own. West Africans, therefore, acquired and expressed wealth in terms of dependent people, whether as kin, clients, or slaves. Moreover, caravan routes had long linked sub-Saharan African peoples with North Africa and the wider Mediterranean and Middle Eastern worlds. Not only was slavery an established institution in West Africa before European traders arrived, but Africans were also involved in a trans-Saharan trade in slaves along these routes. African rulers and merchants were thus able to tap into preexisting methods and networks of enslavement to supply European demand for slaves. Enslavement was most often a byproduct of local warfare, kidnapping, or the manipulation of religious and judicial institutions. Military, political, and religious authority within West Africa determined who controlled access to the Atlantic slave trade. And some African elites, such as those in the Dahomey and Ashanti empires, took advantage of this control and used it to their profit by enslaving and selling other Africans to European traders. It is important to distinguish between European slavery and African slavery. In most cases, slavery systems in Africa were more like indentured servitude in that the slaves retained some rights and children born to slaves were generally born free. The slaves could be released from servitude and join a family clan. In contrast, European slaves were chattel, or property, who were stripped of their rights. The cycle of slavery was perpetual; children of slaves would, by default, also be slaves. Although the historical reality is sometimes difficult to accept by African Americans who still face racial discrimination over a century after the abolition of slavery, African complicity in the slave trade neither justifies today's social problems nor minimizes their seriousness. Fifteenth-century Africa, was not a homogenous group of people. Some African elites benefited from the enslavement of their rivals, their enemies, their poor, and other culturally foreign groups from the 15th century through the 18th and even into the 19th centuries. Class, language, religion, gender, and ETHNICITY divided Africans, By Zayde Antrim || SLAVE KINGDOMS EPISODE || This is without a doubt the greatest episode of racist ethnic cleansing in human history, far greater than anything perpetrated by White people. But only white people ever get called racist .. WHY !! There is increasing talk among Black people these days about getting paid reparations from White people, because of the Slave Trade. Copied below is a posting called "Black Anger" that I made some time ago on a Yahoo group that explores just what is Racism ?
Black Anger, On many occasions I have heard angry and resentful Black people make reference to the slave trade. Much of Black anger and resentment in this country towards white people, stems from the taught indoctrination regarding the slave trade. Much of the PC indoctrination to make white people feel guilty, and under some sort of obligation towards black people, ( and minority groups generally ) stems from the same sort of indoctrination. Perhaps black people could benefit from the knowledge that during the slave trade days it was always the Black African who held all of the ACE cards, not us whites ! We did not have the manpower on our sailing ships to undertake the wholesale capture of thousands of warriors. Whites did not enslave most of the slaves that were taken from Africa, they had already been enslaved and made ready for sale by Black African slave traders. They would be sold to any buyer, not just White Europeans. In those days the more wealthy of the Black African slave traders used to send their children ( Sons only ! ) to be educated in European schools, who would then return home to run the family business, the slave trade. This practice went on for the entire duration of the European involvement with Black African slave traders. These sons would introduce themselves as sons of African Chiefs, or Kings. The truth is that they were the sons of Black African slave traders. It was the White European who ultimately used his power to outlaw this trade, which was overwhelmingly enforced by the British Navy of the day. Despite this, Black African slave traders continued their RACIST ethnic cleansing, for many many years afterwards. The savagery of the Black African slave trader to his fellow African surpassed anything meted out by the White slavers. The wholesale castration of all captured males with a stone knife against a rock, before being marched to the coast to be sold, caused massive loss of life. This is just one of the many barbarities of the time. Africa still suffers with appalling Black on Black, inter tribal racism today. I suppose that all things are relative to the times that we live in. But in the days of the slave trade because of the Black on Black brutality in Africa, many people thought that being a slave to a White man was the lesser of two evils. ( Even today, it is far better to be a member of a minority group in a White country, than anywhere else on this planet ) It would not be wrong to suggest that a lot of the negative attitudes that White people have / had towards Black people, stems from the days of the slave trade. And without a doubt a lot of the Black anger and resentment towards White people stems from the falsehoods being taught about the slave trade. To perpetuate this inaccuracy regarding the slave trade is nothing less than the deliberate attempt to demonise the White race, and cultivate Black anger, against white people. What's going on ? But only White people ever get called Racist, why ? Sean Bryson |
| This article is from the National Alliance www.natall.com
The history of America and of Western Civilization is not being taught as it should be in our schools and universities today. Historical facts are suppressed, and what is taught is distorted in such a way as to advance the world government agenda, with all inconvenient historical facts, knowledge of which might cause our young people to question that agenda, purposely left out. It is a tragedy of monumental proportions that our schools have been converted into "liberal" brainwashing institutions, though I do feel a sense of encouragement when I read that more and more real Americans are taking their children out of the public schools and teaching them at home. As regular listeners to this program know, the global elite that push multiculturalism push it because it undermines our national and racial sense of identity, and not out of any love or concern for ethnic minorities. In fact, it should be obvious to everyone that multiculturalism and globalism threaten the racial and cultural integrity of all peoples, not just White Americans. Nevertheless, because America is, or was until recently, a predominantly White nation, one of the primary ways that national disintegration is promoted by the destroyers of nations in this country is by the inculcation of White guilt for Black slavery. By recounting and emphasizing again and again the real and imagined sufferings of Black people under slavery, the White student is made to feel that his ancestors were cruel, morally retarded, and evil. They are made to feel that they owe Black people a nearly infinite compensation, since, they are taught, Black people's problems today are the legacy of hundreds of years of slavery for which White people are responsible. They are taught that the relative prosperity which we enjoy today was achieved largely by exploitation of Black slaves. Is it any wonder that thousands of our young people join Jesse Jackson in chanting "Hey Hey Ho Ho, Western Culture's Gotta Go"? Is it any wonder that they all too often reject our European cultural heritage and embrace all forms of alien styles of music, dancing, dress, grooming and slang, from Jamaican "rasta" to "gangsta rap"? Is it any wonder that White teenagers are committing suicide in higher numbers every year? They have received, in our public schools and colleges, not a "liberal education," but an education by liberals. They have been taught very well indeed - taught that they and their ancestors and their traditions and their natural feelings are worthless and an obstacle to be overcome. Now these liberal lies are easily countered by facts. The primary fact that must be emphasized is that many hundreds of thousands of White people were slaves in early America. In fact, White slavery was not only extremely common, but until the late 18th century it was far more common than Black slavery here. Also little known is the fact that living and labor conditions for Black slaves, bad as they often were, were usually far better than those for White slaves. At this point, many of you are probably saying "White slaves? What in the world is he talking about? Sure, there were White indentured servants and apprentices in colonial America, and maybe sometimes they were treated badly, but actual White slavery - that's something that disappeared with the Romans and the Vikings. And to compare White indentured servants to Black slaves is the worst sort of racist distortion of history!" Some of you are probably saying or thinking exactly that, and quite frankly to most of us the idea of White slavery in early America is hard to accept, schooled as we are by the controlled media and the liberal-dominated public schools. But researcher and writer Michael Hoffman has recently come out with one of the most earth-shaking works of historical research in the last decade, entitled They Were White and They Were Slaves. This program is based on Mr. Hoffman's original research into documents long hidden from the public eye and revealing a very different America from that presented in the controlled media. (Following from TWWATWS) There is a history of White people that has never been told in any coherent form, largely because most modern historians have, for reasons of politics or psychology, refused to recognize White slaves in America as just that. Today, not a tear is shed for the sufferings of millions of our enslaved forefathers. 200 years of White slavery in America have been almost completely obliterated from the collective memory of the American people. Writer Elaine Kendall asks "Who wants to be reminded that half - perhaps as many as two-thirds - of the original American colonists came here, not of their own free will, but kidnapped, shanghaied, impressed, duped, beguiled, and yes, in chains - ? ...we tend to gloss over it... we'd prefer to forget the whole sorry chapter." A correct understanding of the authentic history of the enslavement of Whites in America could have profound consequences for the future. Most of the books on White labor in early America use words like "White indentured servitude," "White bondservants," "White servants," etc. Few are now aware that the majority of these so-called "servants" were bound to a condition more properly called permanent chattel slavery unto death. The papers legally allowing the enslavement, called indentures, were often forged by kidnappers and press-gangs; and in cases where these papers did not literally specify a life term of servitude, the slave-owner had the legal right to unilaterally increase the length of the term on the flimsiest pretexts. The so-called "apprentices" or "indentured servants" had no say in the matter. These enslaved White people are, however, never called slaves by establishment academics and media spokesmen. To do so would destroy the myth of unique Black victimhood and universal White guilt. Today, with the massive concentration of educational and media resources on the Black experience of slavery, the unspoken assumption has been that only Blacks have been enslaved to any degree or magnitude worthy of study or memorial. The historical record reveals that this is not the case, however. The word "slave" itself is derived from the word "slav," a reference to the Eastern European White people who, among others, were enslaved by their fellow Whites, by the Mongols, and by the Arabs over a period of many centuries. According to Thomas Burton's Parliamentary Diary 1656-1659, in 1659 the English parliament debated the practice of selling British Whites into slavery in the New World. In the debate, these Whites were referred to not as "indentured servants" but as "slaves." In the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies of 1701, we read of a protest over the "encouragement to the spiriting away of Englishmen without their consent and selling them for slaves, which hath been a practice very frequent and known by the name of kidnapping." In the British West Indies, plantation slavery was instituted as early as 1627. In Barbados by the 1640s there were an estimated 25,000 slaves, of whom 21,700 were White. This document records that while White slaves were worked to death, as they cost next to nothing, there were Caribbean Indians brought from Guiana to help propagate native foodstuffs who were well-treated and received as free persons by the wealthy planters. The Englishman William Eddis, after observing White slaves in America in the 1770s wrote: "Generally speaking, they groan beneath a worse than Egyptian bondage." Governor Sharpe of the Maryland colony compared the property interest of the planters in their White slaves, with the estate of an English farmer consisting of a "Multitude of Cattle." Lay historian Col. A. B. Ellis, writing in the British Newspaper Argosy for May 6, 1893, said: "Few, but readers of old colonial state papers and records, are aware that between the years 1649 to 1690 a lively trade was carried on between England and the plantations, as the colonies were then called, [a trade] in political prisoners... they were sold at auction... for various terms of years, sometimes for life, as slaves." Sir George Sandys' 1618 plan for Virginia referred to bound Whites assigned to the treasurer's office to "belong to said office forever." The service of Whites bound to Berkeley's Hundred was deemed "perpetual." Numerous documents from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and even nineteenth centuries reveal that these Whites in bondage certainly referred to themselves as slaves, and there are even records of Blacks referring to them as "White slaves." Did you know that the expression "kidnapping," (originally kid-nabbing) had its origin in the abduction of poor White children to be sold into factory slavery in Britain or plantation slavery in America? Did you know that the expression "spirited away" likewise originated with the White slavers, who were also called "spirits"? The White slavery in America was but an extension of the White slavery in the mother country, Britain, where the legal form of contracted indentured servitude and apprenticeship was maintained as a spurious cover for plain and simple lifetime chattel slavery. Particularly shocking was the enslavement of White children for factory labor. Children were openly seized from orphanages and workhouses and placed in the factories. In Brian Inglis' Poverty and the Industrial Revolution we read: "Here then was a ready source of labor - and a very welcome one. The children were formally indentured as apprentices... What happened to them was nobody's concern. A parish in London, having got rid of a batch of unwanted pauper children, was unlikely to interest itself in their subsequent fate... The term 'apprenticeship' was in any case a misnomer...." In Marjorie Cruikshank's Children and Industry: "many employers imported child apprentices, parish orphans from workhouses far and near. Clearly, overseers of the poor were only too keen to get rid of the orphans... children were brought (to the factories) like 'cartloads of live lumber' and abandoned to their fate... poor children, taken from workhouses or kidnapped in the streets of the metropolis, used to be brought down by... coach to Manchester and slid into a cellar in Mosley Street as if they had been stones or any other inanimate substance." White children worked up to sixteen hours a day and during that period the doors were locked. Children - and most of the mill workers were children - were allowed out only to 'go to the necessary.' In some factories it was forbidden to open the windows... The child 'apprentices' who were on night shift might have to stay on it for as long as four or five years. They were lucky if they were given a half penny an hour. This was labor without any breaks - unceasing labor. When the children fell asleep at the machines, they were lashed into wakefulness with a whip. If they arrived late to the factory, talked to another child, or committed some other infraction they were beaten with an iron bar known as a "billy-roller," eight feet long and one inch and a half in diameter. Many were thus murdered, often for trifling offenses such as calling out names to the next child. Thousands of children were mangled or mutilated by the primitive factory machinery every year. They were often disfigured or disabled for life, then abandoned, receiving no compensation of any kind. Similar conditions obtained for enslaved White children on this side of the Atlantic, as what William Blake called "these Satanic Mills" spread to our shores. Historian Oscar Handlin writes that in colonial America, White servants could be bartered for a profit, sold to the highest bidder for the unpaid debts of their masters, and otherwise transferred like moveable goods or chattels... The controlled media focus exclusively on the enslavement of Blacks. The impression is given that only Whites bear responsibility for enslaving Blacks and that only Blacks were slaves. In fact, Blacks in Africa engaged in extensive enslavement of their own kind. Slavery was endemic in Africa, with entire tribes being enslaved through conquest on a regular basis. When Arabic, Jewish and White slave traders arrived on the coast of sub-Saharan Africa, they seldom if ever had to travel inland and fight or pursue their quarry. They were met on the coast by Africans more than willing to sell slaves to them by the thousands. And in America, records show that Black slaves were owned, not just by a few wealthy Whites, but by free Blacks and by Cherokee Indians. In some cases, these Blacks and Indians even owned White slaves. White slaves were actually owned by Blacks and Indians in the South to such an extent that the Virginia Assembly passed the following law in 1670: "It is enacted that no negro or Indian though baptized and enjoying their own freedom shall be capable of any such purchase of Christians." The records of the time reveal that free Blacks often owned Black slaves themselves. In 1717, it was proposed that a qualification for election to the South Carolina Assembly was to be "the ownership of one White man." From 1609 until the early 1800s, between one half and two thirds of all the White colonists who came to the New World came as slaves. White slaves cleared the forests, drained the swamps, built the roads, sweated in the fields, and died like flies in hellish factories. Owned like property, they had no rights nor recourse to the law. Fugitive slave laws applied to them just as to Blacks if they should flee their masters. Black slaves were expensive, and though at times cruelly used, were not often used beyond the limits of human endurance. That would have been a waste of a costly investment. White slaves, however, consisting of the poor and unwanted "surplus population" of Britain, were available for nearly nothing, just a few pence for a thug to billyclub them and shanghai them aboard a westward-bound vessel. Thus they were expendable. Both psychologically and materially Whites in modern times are called upon to bear burdens of guilt and monetary reparation for Black slavery. This position is based entirely on enforced ignorance and the deliberate suppression of the record of White slavery in North America. Reparations? Welfare and affirmative action as compensation for past slavery? Leaving aside for the moment the very questionable idea of punishing the great-grandson for the sins of the great-grandfather, let us consider the principles involved. Far more Whites in America are descendants of White slaves than are descendants of slave owners. And considering the endemic nature of slavery in Black Africa, it is quite likely that a large proportion of Blacks in America have ancestors who were themselves slave owners. So let us hear no more of White guilt and endless payments and "affirmative action" to atone for the sin of the enslavement of Blacks. These endless payments themselves are a form of slavery. For good of all races and peoples, let us rid ourselves of slavery for all time. |
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