What percentage of African slaves brought to the New World were already slaves in Africa, owned by Negro slavemasters? And then sold to the Arab slavetraders?
What percentage of African slaves brought to the New World were captured by neighboring tribes, for the reason of sale to the Arab slavetraders?
Did Europeans capture or kidnap negro slaves? Or were the negro slaves readily sold to then by African or Arab slavetraders?
Of all the countries in the New World to get slaves from Africa, did the U.S. treat it’s slaves any better of worse than other countries did?
Now the reason I ask all this , is because there’s a U.N. meeting in South Africa going on right now, with the topic of racism. It appears that most of the African delegation is blaming Europeans and Americans for slavery. The delegates are also demanding money for “reparations” from the U.S. taxpayers.
What I want to know is, since Africans share much, if not most of the blame for the trans-Atlantic slave industry, who are they to demand money from us. I’ve even heard that slavery still occurs in some countries in Africa.
You started off with a nice GQ. However, with you final statement, if you don’t find this thread in a while, check over in Great Debates.
Slavery among Africans tended to be of the “our group had a war against your group and we won so you have to do our manual labor” variety. Based on this relationship, the indigenous slavery was not based on a commodity of slaves. The concept of many slaves owned by an individual (other than a chieftan) working on some sort of plantation would have been foreign to them.
With the coming of Arab slave traders, follwed by European/American slave traders, a market was created in which groups deliberately went to war with the intention of gathering slaves for the purpose of using them as trade goods. In addition, the slave trade created a new economy in which groups that provided the most slaves to the outsiders were favored with trade goods that simultaneously made them more powerful than their neighbors (increasing their slave-catching abilities) while also making them more dependent on the outsiders so that they were easier to overwhelm and colonize, later.
While one can argue back and forth over the nature of intra-African slavery, it is pretty much a fact that slavery became more profitable (and, thus, expanded widely) after the advent of non-African slave markets and slave traders. It is this type of slavery, much broader in scope and much more debilitating to the population, for which current Africans seek reparations.
As with many questions, the answer is “That depends.” There were places throughout the Carribean where slaves were generally treated better. There were places where they were deliberately worked to death. On aspect that stands out against the U.S. is that the U.S. is one of the few places where slaves were condemned to be slaves for their appearance. Even among the worst slave-holding regimes, a slave who caught the favorable glance of an owner and was freed might eventually merge into society at some point. Outside Louisiana and some few parts of Virginia and South Carolina, that was pretty much impossible, even for a freed slave, in the U.S. In the U.S., even a freed slave (or a black person born free) who could not produce papers proving their freedm were subject to being re-taken and sold at public auction.
As to why some delegates may be singling out the U.S. for reparations: there is not much point in asking for money from Haiti or Cuba, is there? (If they come for us, I think they should go after Brazil, however.)
Also, what percentage of the African slaves coming to the New World were destined to the U.S.?
I have heard that it was only 5 percent, with the remainder going to such countries as Haiti, Jamaica and Brazil.
Although capturing people as prisoners of war and the like had been common in Africa, Europeans created a MARKET for slaves, strongly encouraging slave trading within Africa.
AFAIK, occasionnaly, europeans have captured slaves themselves.
Concerning the slave status, indeed there was wide differences (from near member of the family to worked to death), depending on the epoch, place, etc…But AFAIK, the extensive use of slaves for production only occured in the Roman Empire and in the New World (with some early failed attempts in muslim countries).
However, it seems to me there’s a flaw in the concept of reparation which would be granted by the US (or Brazil for that matter).
Though it’s undisputable that the African continent suffered enormously from this massive human depletion (up to the disappearance of empires and technologic regression), and that the receiving countries benefited a lot from it, the first victims were the slaves themselves.
So, does it make sense that the country in which their descendant currently live should pay reparations? If such reparations is required from european countries, there is some logic, but should a black american (or Brazilian, for that matter)tax payer gives money to an african country because his ancestor has been enslaved?
Perhaps the American reparation could be reduced by 10 % to account for the black population. And perhaps reparations could be further reduced by taking into account the Japanese,Chinese, German, and other ethnic origin americans whose ancestors had no role in the slave trade. My ancestors are Dutch (heavily implicated) but fortunately I live in Canada which had no role in the slave trade. Come to think of it neither did North Dakota.
I think that in the North, there were a number of free blacks. Certainly, after slavery was outlawed in Massachusetts in the 1780’s, there would have been a number of free blacks that didn’t have to worry much about producing papers.
Also, I’ve heard that the US was the only nation with a large slave population where the slave population was largely self-sustaining, while in the Carribean and South America, they had to be continually imported in large numbers. Whether this was due to the slaves being freed after a period of service or being worked to death I’m not sure.
What I’m wondering is why we would owe anything to the descendants of those we didn’t take into slavery. Unless it’s just Liberia asking.
Negro? Word of advice stoner, we’re in the 21st century now. Time to update one’s usage if you don’t want to sound incredibly backwards and antiquarian.
Else, as to the question, impossible to answer, records are not sufficient. Little to none of the New World slave trade passed through Arab/Berber hands, their slave trading routes were inland and they competed with the Atlantic routes. See Philip Curtin’s works as well as something like John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the making of the Atlantic world
First, lose the tribes thing, it’s inaccurate.
But then to the point, probably most slaves offered for sale were captured in inter-African wars of various kinds, be they interstate or inter-tribal or pure banditry. This varied over time.
Black, try using black or African to avoid irritating. Very little slave raiding was actually done by Europeans. Too dangerous for them, they got their asses kicked in general. Much better to set up trading relations with the coastal kingdoms.
Hard to say but it seems likely that the US slave holding regime with its segregationist bent was probably among the worst overall.
In re Waterj’s question, I recall from my reading that the negative demography in the Carribean was largely connection tothe male female dichotomy. The Carribean had very few women iin its poputation. It also appears, however, that until a late period women did not have many children. It’s hard to say if this was due to poor nutrition, choice, other factors. The USA was forced into the situation by trading issues.
This has been done before. I’m not sure its most of the delegation in fact, only the loudest members. In any caseits more theater than anything. as for slavery still existing in some African countries, yes, it exists still in Mauretania and the Sudan. In each case it’s largely a case of a largely paler “Arab” or in Mauretania, Arabo-Berber elite and darker slaves. There’s little comparability between the two cases nor much connection with this issue.
What complicates that question is that a lot of slaves in the U.S. were imported from the Carribean, because that increased their value (if they could speak English, were familiar with slavery, were hard workers) etc. The slave trade was pretty risky and the prices could be extremely volatle, so a lot of slave traders shipped from the Carribean to the U.S. There was less risk, the trip was safer and shorter, so you didn’t lose as much merchandise, and in general, you had a better chance to make money.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. Most of the original 13 colonies went through longer or briefer periods of allowing slave-holding, however once the Northern states began to outlaw slavery, then most of the Southern states began to pass the laws allowing the re-sale of black people found without sufficient identification. It was very much a 19th century phenomenon limited to the South.
Collounsbury-Yes, I know we’re in the 21st century. And the blacks in Africa belong to the negro race, whether you like it or not. The blacks in America likewise are negros. In fact, all black people in the world belong to the negro race. Just as white people in the world belong to the caucausion race. Just as Asians belong to the mongoloid race.
Is there some reason you dont care to see black people refered to as Negros? It was’nt my intention to put people down on this post, just to ask questions about how much the peoples of Africa( Negros) were culpable for the slave trade. Is it now “politically incorrect” to refer to blacks as “negros”, even though thats what they are? You say I should refer to negros as blacks, does that mean I should also refer to Asians as “Yellows”?
Oh my, Rip van Stoner, where have you been? We haven’t seen you for twenty years! Where did you get that long grey beard, and that grey hair reaching to your feet?.. Actually, Rip, er, Gene old buddy, in the time since you last paid attention to this issue there have been quite a few changes in the standard definitions of concepts relating to “race” and their anthropological, biological, and sociological meanings. Look around on this board for past threads with the keywords “race” and “Collounsbury”, and you’ll get up to speed on how these concepts are now used.
This post has been brought to you as a humane attempt to keep Collounsbury’s head from exploding, not that that wouldn’t be dramatic and fascinating to watch. Well actually, maybe it wouldn’t.
But I’m not here to argue semantics. I was just watching this thing on the news where the African countries are trying to blame the United States and Europe for the sins of slavery. All this when I know damn well that slavery still exists on the African continent, and that the African people in the past played a major part in facilitating theAfrican slave trade to the New World.
N
OK, I am not a proponent of any reparation schemes (although I think there are efforts that the First World can make to improve the lot of the Third World, in general). However, to understand the rationale of the claims (which, as been noted, is a call by a loud minority, not by a majority), you need to look at some issues that several of us have already mentioned. Most notably, regardless of the numbers taken by any specific group or whether slavery continues (in some form) in Africa today, the fact is that enormous suffering and poverty was brought to Africa when the Christian and Islamic countries created a market that some Africans supplied using other Africans.
No society walks away from this discussion without some guilt, but the actions of the trans-Atlantic slave trade certainly caused immense harm to the people and societies of Africa.
As to the terms used: there is a reason for using particular terms at particular times. The current cultural reference to dark-skinned people from Africa is black (with a particular usage, limited to the United States, for one group as African American). Just as it would be inappropriate to refer to them as “darkies” or to lighter-skinned people of European descent as “whiteys”, it is also inappropriate to refer to any people using outdated terms with origins in ethnology that are no longer used by any scientists. The terms Caucasian, Negro, and Mongoloid have been dropped from scientific usage for a number of reasons, not least because they are ill-defined and lack the precision to truly describe anything meaningful about a person.
Using an outdated term for a group while appearing to challenge the opinions of some members of that group can be considered rather hostile. Hence, Col’s suggestion that we drop those terms from the discussion.
I’d just like to first say that I DID NOT WANT THE THREAD TO SPIN THIS WAY. My usage of the word “negro” was to give a correct definition of the type of person who were sold into slavery from the continent of Africa, or the type of person who sold members of thier own race from the continent of Africa.
The fact of the the matter is, there are several different races on the continent of Africa, and I decided to use the correct term to describe one of those races. Does anyone think that the word “negro” does not describe a race of people? Its too bad that so many people are brainwashed by the media into accepting false but politically correct terms for groups of people.
As an example, take the term “African American”. This term was invented by Jesse Jackson in the late 80s. Using proper English usage, the term would suggest a person born on the African continent who became an American citizen. However, its usually used to describe all Americans of negro descent. What about the white Zimbabwein who has been forced off his farm in Zimbabwe, and decided to emigrate to America? Should’nt he be called an “African American”? Not according to the racist media
The point is, that this is not the “correct term.” The word Negro harkens back to the days when ethnologists used words like Negro and Caucasian. No person in any science uses those words, today. Since they are not used in science and they are not used in culture, there is no point in using them at all.
As to your general question, I suspect that the numbers you originally sought are lost to the bad record-keeping of the 16th through 19th centuries, so getting an estimate of any of them will be only some person’s guess.
Given that we do not have actual numbers, you have probably already had all your original questions answered. I suspect that there are very few, if any, proponents of reparations on this MB, so I doubt that you will get an actual discussion on that point. (Regarding the whole issue of whether races even exist outside a cultural perception, you may want to check out the Reality of Race website that links back to a number of discussion that have already occurred on this MB.)