# How much responsibility do African tribes share in the slave trade? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 17, 2016, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019 "2016-05-17T18:35:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/41 "2016-05-18T18:27:29Z")
The point of the OP is the African side of the slave trade isn’t / wasn’t? commonly taught in many history courses. Or even discussed much in popular media or TV documentaries. They prefer to focus on the Europeans that bought the slaves and shipped them to their colonies. Like any subject there is a body of writing about the colonial slave trade that can be researched and studied. I simply find it surprising that the subject doesn’t get more attention. Yes, I’m aware many of the tribes unified into powerful kingdoms. Once again that’s the point of the OP. The slave trade required the assistance of these powerful kingdoms. Slave traders on their own could have never gotten enough people without the help of powerful African partnerships. A lot of money was made in the slave trade ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2016, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/42 "2016-05-18T18:27:45Z")
> [@Totenfeier](#): > > I know next to nothing about African/African slavery, and essentially nothing about slavery as practiced anywhere else in the world now or say within the last 200 years. Having said that, isn’t the consensus that large-scale White/African agricultural slavery as it was practiced on Southern plantations was a unique example of personal, racial, cultural, and religious degradation? Didn’t Romans, for example, want their Greek slaves to be highly literate and capable of administering their masters’ affairs? And besides, that was Southern European/Southern European. Wasn’t Southern slavery in America “virtual” genocide? It would seem, therefore, that whatever might have been the motivations of African slave traders/hunters, the whites who took advantage of it were more morally culpable. Slavery in the American south was unique among new world slavery in its non-genocidal nature. The America imported about 5% of the total slaves brought to the new world but ended up with the largest population of slaves. This is because slaves died so quickly in the rest of the new world that the population could not grow. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/43 "2016-05-19T12:37:21Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Yes, I’m aware many of the tribes unified into powerful kingdoms. e Again ignorance. it is not “tribes” but kingdoms. What you are calling ‘tribes’ are simply the language ethnic groups - no more unified tribe than saying the Germans are a tribe - and it was not an entire language group uniting, just like in the european case, it was specific dynasties taking the specific actioins. the tarzan movies are not documentaries. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/44 "2016-05-19T12:58:02Z")
> [@Bridget\_Burke](#): > > Thank you. That use of “tribes” reveals a lot about the OP. Not really. Probably the majority of people are unaware of the existence of kingdoms and empires in Africa before colonization. This use of tribe makes him a pretty regular person, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/45 "2016-05-19T13:10:47Z")
> [@mascaroni](#): > > They were not nation states and the word “tribe” is not by default derogatory. The use of the words “empire” and “kingdom” by yourself could also be interpreted as ignorance. No. What you just wrote just demonstrates that you have no clue what pre-colonization west Africa was like. If the African states were “tribes”, then the one hundred years war was fought between the French tribe and the English tribe and Cyrus the great was a famous tribe chieftain. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/46 "2016-05-19T13:21:48Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Not really. Probably the majority of people are unaware of the existence of kingdoms and empires in Africa before colonization. This use of tribe makes him a pretty regular person, IMO. Sorry, sometimes I get impatient. As it says on the top of the page “it’s taking longer than we thought.” If I’m curious about something that may or may not have been taught me so many years ago, or that I may or may not _remember_–I look it up. Even fucking Wikipedia is better than nothing–check the references, move on from there. To me the OP has a flavor of “concern”–“Just asking questions.” ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/47 "2016-05-19T13:30:11Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > The point of the OP is the African side of the slave trade isn’t / wasn’t? commonly taught in many history courses. Or even discussed much in popular media or TV documentaries. They prefer to focus on the Europeans that bought the slaves and shipped them to their colonies. > > Like any subject there is a body of writing about the colonial slave trade that can be researched and studied. I simply find it surprising that the subject doesn’t get more attention. Discussions of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in US schools on the primary/secondary level tend to occur in US History class. As a US history class (as opposed to a World History or Regional Studies class), the focus tends to be on the history and impact of slavery in the United States. The African side is certainly interesting, but isn’t quite as directly pertinent to understanding the history of the United States. There is a lot of fertile ground here for a World History class. But the reality is that US student only study World History for a year or two, and there is a lot of World History to cram in that space. As evidenced in this thread, we barely learn about Africa at all. I think in my schooling I got maybe a few paragraphs-- perhaps a chapter at best-- covering the entirety of African history and culture. We walk out of school pretty ignorant about basic facts about Africa (like, for example, much of pre-colonial Africa was organized into powerful kingdoms), much less with a detailed understanding of specific topics. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/48 "2016-05-19T14:00:48Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > The point of the OP is the African side of the slave trade isn’t / wasn’t? commonly taught in many history courses. Or even discussed much in popular media or TV documentaries. They prefer to focus on the Europeans that bought the slaves and shipped them to their colonies. > > Like any subject there is a body of writing about the colonial slave trade that can be researched and studied. I simply find it surprising that the subject doesn’t get more attention. > > Yes, I’m aware many of the tribes unified into powerful kingdoms. Once again that’s the point of the OP. The slave trade required the assistance of these powerful kingdoms. Slave traders on their own could have never gotten enough people without the help of powerful African partnerships. A lot of money was made in the slave trade I think the notion that African kingdoms rounding up slaves and selling them like so many cattle doesn’t fit into the popular narrative, which seems to assign all blame to the slave traders, ship captains and slave-owners, who were all white for the most part. In fact, the slave trader captains just pulled up to huge slave markets and bought them on the open market; they didn’t go scrounging through the bushes with nets and lassoes grabbing random Africans. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/49 "2016-05-19T14:26:09Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > No. What you just wrote just demonstrates that you have no clue what pre-colonization west Africa was like. > > If the African states were “tribes”, then the one hundred years war was fought between the French tribe and the English tribe and Cyrus the great was a famous tribe chieftain. The Mali Empire in particular was renowned for the sheer amount of gold and other wealth (including salt) it had at its peak. It eventually crumbled, as empires do, due to internal dissent and external invaders but it certainly wasn’t just a tribe of savages living in grass huts in the jungles as some seem to think. As for blame, well…plenty to go around and I don’t think there’s anything to gain by trying to divide it up somehow. Slavery was a fact of life in the region, but the demand from America ramped it up immensely. It was all bad. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/50 "2016-05-20T05:20:29Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I think the notion that African kingdoms rounding up slaves and selling them like so many cattle doesn’t fit into the popular narrative, which seems to assign all blame to the slave traders, ship captains and slave-owners, who were all white for the most part. > > In fact, the slave trader captains just pulled up to huge slave markets and bought them on the open market; they didn’t go scrounging through the bushes with nets and lassoes grabbing random Africans. History channel is running a new docudrama series based on Roots. Supposed to start Memorial Day. > **[Watch Roots Full Episodes, Video & More | HISTORY Channel](https://www.history.com/shows/roots)** I’ll be very curious to see how they depict the capture of the African people. Assuming of course they don’t skip it all together and just show them at American ports and being lead off the slave ships. Wouldn’t be surprised if they do show some sadistic, grinning white guys running through the jungle and randomly grabbing people. :smack: That seems to be the popular perception of what happened. Rather than showing the Slave Traders buying shiploads people at the African slave markets. It’ll be interesting to see how the \*Roots \*series starts. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/51 "2016-05-20T07:04:27Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Wouldn’t be surprised if they do show some sadistic, grinning white guys running through the jungle and randomly grabbing people. :smack: That seems to be the popular perception of what happened. Rather than showing the Slave Traders buying shiploads people at the African slave markets. You know, I’ve been wracking my brain and for the life of me I can’t think of a single “white guys pops in to a jungle and grabs him a slave” depiction. The only depiction I can really think of at all is the children’s novel “My Name is not Angelica”, where the protagonist is capture by a rival chief at a dinner party. Where might I find all of these depictions, outside of your clearly quite fertile imagination? ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/52 "2016-05-20T07:46:40Z")
i was speculating on what might be depicted in the first episode of this new Roots series on History. We’ll find out for sure on Memorial Day. Seems reasonable to expect the first episode will focus on the first generation of Alex Haley’s ancestors that became slaves. I hope they show it accurately. Make it clear that this was a cooperative effort by slave traders and powerful Africans looking to cash in. This was a horrible and shameful enterprise in the world/s fairly recent history. It needs to be shown accurately. Have to wait and see. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/53 "2016-05-20T08:09:30Z")
actually the root had a huge series of articles on this in the past couple years or so and you had the impression that no one was particularly innocent from the top to bottom but some of the players involved were surprising … with orgins to match ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/54 "2016-05-20T08:34:13Z")
here ya go found it … [http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/10/mulatto\_slave\_traders\_who\_were\_they.html](http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/10/mulatto_slave_traders_who_were_they.html) this will tell ya how it all worked , ---
**Author:** ![davida03801](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@davida03801](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davida03801)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/55 "2016-05-20T11:37:59Z")
1/3 IMO 1/3 for the African kingdoms that sold them. 1/3 for the business men that acted in the middle and 1/3 for the buyers. ---
**Author:** ![Ignotus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecc23a/32.png) [@Ignotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignotus)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/56 "2016-05-20T12:49:02Z")
> [@davida03801](#): > > 1/3 IMO > > 1/3 for the African kingdoms that sold them. 1/3 for the business men that acted in the middle and 1/3 for the buyers. What if there were several middle men (as seems likely in most cases)? Are their individual responsibility diluted to a smaller part of the 1/3 ? And who bears the responsibility for a whole kingdom? The king alone? ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/57 "2016-05-20T13:27:33Z")
It’s just not the kind of thing you can apply numbers to. There’s a legal term, jointly and severally responsible that I think applies here, though IANAL so I’m not positive that’s correct. ---
**Author:** ![zweisamkeit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zweisamkeit/32/4360_2.png) [@zweisamkeit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zweisamkeit)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/58 "2016-05-20T16:43:55Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > You know, I’ve been wracking my brain and for the life of me I can’t think of a single “white guys pops in to a jungle and grabs him a slave” depiction. The only depiction I can really think of at all is the children’s novel “My Name is not Angelica”, where the protagonist is capture by a rival chief at a dinner party. Off topic, but I LOVED that book when I was a kid! ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/59 "2016-05-20T17:25:06Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > In his defense the most popular depiction of slavers is from Roots which had a bunch of white people using black minions to capture slaves. Since most of history taught in this country is American or European history and african history is not taught much, most people probably do not think of the slave trade as being controlled by powerful African kingdoms who grew rich off the slave trade. I understand that. Believe me, as someone who teaches US history to university students, and who also takes more than a passing interest in popular representations of history in movies and other areas of cultural life, i am grimly aware of the fact that many Americans walk around with a rather simplistic version of history as part of their worldview. On the one hand, this is not the end of the world. Despite the fact that i love history, and think it has important things to teach us, i’m not self-centered enough to believe that everyone should share my level of interest. Also, despite the fact that we historians often argue that historical understanding makes for better citizens, i’m also willing to concede that most Americans can get probably through life just fine with the unsophisticated understanding of history that they get from high school and TV shows. On the other hand, though, i think that a more complex and sophisticated understanding of history is a good thing, because it not only makes us better informed about how we got where we are, but develops the critical thinking and analytical skills that help us become more productive and thoughtful people. My main concern with this thread is not just with the question itself. It comes from my own historical experience with this question. And in my experience, while this question is often couched in ways that suggest that the main aim of the exercise is to arrive at a more sophisticated and accurate historical understanding, the actual aim behind the question is very simple: it is usually an effort to de-emphasize, and deflect from, the historical role of Europeans and European Americans in the Atlantic slave trade. That’s it. The OP of this thread is a perfect example. He starts a thread complaining about one particular (alleged) imbalance or inaccuracy in the historical scholarship, but in making his points, he demonstrates a set of historical understandings that are just as imbalanced and inaccurate as the thing he supposedly concerned about. The simplistic and misinformed nature of his posts about the African kingdoms suggests that it’s not so much historical inaccuracy as a whole that is important to him, as it is to correct this one aspect of historical understanding that paints white Americans in a less-than-flattering light. It’s an exercise in self-serving selectivity. The OP blames popular historical representations of slavery for misinforming us about the role of Africans in the Atlantic slave trade. He might be right. Popular historical representations like TV and novels and movies often over-simplify history, sometimes because the producers lack the right sort of historical understanding, and sometimes because (as entertainers) they understandably focus on the need to create a compelling and exciting narrative. I understand that a TV show or a movie is not the same as a historical monograph, and i’m willing to give popularizers some leeway in their portrayal of history. So are many other historians. One of the best-known scholars of the way that history is represented on film is [Robert Brent Toplin](http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/57hsn7hf9780252076893.html), and all of his essays and books demonstrate an understanding that we can’t always hold popular media up to the same standards of historical rigor as we do scholars and historians. But if the OP really is concerned about historical accuracy, and about popular portrayals of history getting it right, then why is he so selective in his concerns? Here is a [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=758343) he started about a year ago, on the TV show _Texas Rising_. In this thread, he demonstrates a complete willingness to swallow whatever feel-good version of the Texas revolution that Hollywood is willing to throw at him. When people point out that the simplistic, Americans=good guys and Mexicans=bad guys representation in the show is historically inaccurate, he basically poo-poos their concerns, saying: > [@Anyone Watching Texas Rising? It Continues this week.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-watching-texas-rising-it-continues-this-week/721382/51): > > I guess my expectations are much lower. Texas Rising is a mini-series created for mass entertainment and some historical education. They paint a large picture reasonably accurately. I don’t expect every scene depicted to be accurate down to the finest pixel. Heck, I’ve seen academics nit pick high school history books. Freaking out over the most tiny details. Put 10 historians in a room and get the popcorn ready. There will be some very intense arguments. Or go to a school board meeting when they are arguing over new textbooks to buy for the schools. No one is ever entirely happy with a textbook. They can’t include everything because they are trying to summarize several hundred years of history or maybe even a thousand years of history into a few hundred pages. “They paint a large picture reasonably accurately.” It seems to me that, if you replace “Texas Rising” with “Roots” in the above paragraph, it would work just as well. Why is the OP willing to give such a pass to a TV show that portrays Anglo-Americans as the heroic good guys, the Mexicans as a bunch of evil cowards, and the Indians as blood-thirsty savages? And why doesn’t he give the same historical leeway in the case under discussion in this thread? It’s because the main purpose of the question in this thread is not really about “historical accuracy,” _per se_; it’s about the reallocation and deflection of responsibility. Personally, as a historian, i’m less interested in assigning “blame” or “responsibility” in history than i am in understanding what happened, in all its complexity. For that reason, i do think it’s important that we understand the role of West African kingdoms and empires in the Atlantic slave trade. But if your main agenda, in focusing on these things, seems to be to minimize or downplay the responsibility of American slaveholders, i will probably find it hard to take your argument very seriously. Leaving aside the history for a minute, and focusing on moral culpability, here is how i would allocate the blame if i were forced to make a ruling on the subject: everyone responsible for the slave trade is 100 percent responsible. The catchers; the traders; the agents; the buyers; the final owners. The culpability of any one person or group is in no way mitigated or diminished by the involvement of other persons or groups. And if that means that responsibility adds to more than 100 percent, it’s a mathematical conundrum that i’m willing to live with. ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019/60 "2016-05-20T18:47:34Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > The OP of this thread is a perfect example. He starts a thread complaining about one particular (alleged) imbalance or inaccuracy in the historical scholarship, but in making his points, he demonstrates a set of historical understandings that are just as imbalanced and inaccurate as the thing he supposedly concerned about. The simplistic and misinformed nature of his posts about the African kingdoms suggests that it’s not so much historical inaccuracy as a whole that is important to him, as it is to correct this one aspect of historical understanding that paints white Americans in a less-than-flattering light. It’s an exercise in self-serving selectivity. > > … > > Why is the OP willing to give such a pass to a TV show that portrays Anglo-Americans as the heroic good guys, the Mexicans as a bunch of evil cowards, and the Indians as blood-thirsty savages? And why doesn’t he give the same historical leeway in the case under discussion in this thread? It’s because the main purpose of the question in this thread is not really about “historical accuracy,” _per se_; it’s about the reallocation and deflection of responsibility. > > . Yes it is clear. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-responsibility-do-african-tribes-share-in-the-slave-trade/755019.md?page=4)