How much responsibility do African tribes share in the slave trade?

In My Humble Opinion
61

I remember an incident when I was living in Japan where something went wrong at work and someone sent out an angry email asking “Who is to blame for this!?” It’s a pretty common question in a Japanese workplace. People are expected to be perfect and to never mess up. The way you prevent issues is by getting rid of people who fail.

Of course, the reality is that everyone messes up. We’re not computers and we’re not able to control the wider world. Everything is a gamble, to some extent.

The better, non-Japanese way, of dealing with a problem is to investigate what happened and see if there’s a way to mitigate it. Yeah, there might be a person who is just a dumbass, and the solution might be to fire them or castigate them or whatever, but maybe the problem is that we need better lighting or better data or something else.

The problem of slavery is basically that people suck. The people in the North or in England or wherever else were pro-slavery so long as it was in their economic interest. Once they could live without it, morality kicked in. Humans have been enslaved and treated horribly throughout history.

There were probably instances in history where slavery and serfdom could have been knocked out, but (I think) a side effect of the belief in the divine is that it raises the potential that some people are better/holier/cleaner/etc. than others. Without divinity, you could have been born into any position in the world, with any arbitrary talents and capabilities. With divinity, if you’re born to a Lord, you are also a Lord. If you are born to a slave, you deserved it or the gods chose it for you out of some grand design.

Ultimately, the way to mitigate our humanity was the invention of paper and then the further invention of the printing press, which allowed smart people to debate and to publicize their ideas. A few people were able to make compelling arguments for humanist morality - where all people have a fundamental value that is equal between everyone. But even then, it took until market forces allowed a change to happen before the change could happen.

So who to blame? Who cares.

Let’s just be glad that it ended and focus on making sure that similar things aren’t happening in the world today.

Just in case you aren’t aware, Roots is effectively a work of fiction. The first generation in the book are inventions of the author (or his editor) and have no basis in reality. Later people in the book may be based on actual ancestors of the author.

Much of the work was plagiarized as well.

62

There are some offhand mentions in ancient writings that can be interpreted that way, but certainly the Ancient Egyptians were known for taking slaves from their neighbors during wars, and they invaded the Holy Lands several times. So, there’s little doubt they took slaves from that area.

63

Pretty much Santa Anna *was *a evil dictator, brutal and cowardly. Not saying that the Texicans were angels by any means, of course.

64

The Europeans and their colonies certainly bear the brunt of shame for the slave trade.

I want to see the whole story explained in school history classes and depicted more accurately in popular media like docudramas. The whole story certainly wasn’t taught in the history classes I took 35 years ago. The slave trade was aided and run by powerful groups in various parts of the world. The truth should be acknowledged, discussed and taught in our schools.

That’s the only desire I had for this thread. To suggest I wanted to deflect blame is incorrect and badly misunderstands my position.

65

There were almost certainly numerous clashes, and very probably some regular battles, between Egyptians and Canaanites (of various tribes). And it seems probable that both sides took some of their prisoners-of-war into serfdom.
And no land is more “holy” than another piece of real estate.

66

That’s the name for the area, like it or not.

67

Good to see that you’ve brought the same complexity and deep historical understanding to this thread that you brought to the other one.

68

“Santa Anna was an asshole. He was a self-aggrandizing despot, and in many ways he was opposed to the modern, Enlightenment liberal ideals that helped to write the Mexican constitution and construct the new Mexican nation.” …“… Santa Anna’s well-deserved reputation as a self-aggrandizing despot and a brutal leader…”

69

The formalized system of racism that developed out of a concerted intellectual effort to rationalize the European/American slave trade (and colonialism, for that matter) was not the fault of Africans.

One thing that sets apart the way American history treats slavery in the US now is that we are much more likely to actually listen to the slaves’ perspectives. There are still confederate apologists who cite laws on the books that were ostensibly to protect slaves, who argue that it made “economic sense” for slaves to be treated well, who dredge up anecdotes of slaves’ relationships with owners that seem positive, who claim that it was for the slave’s own good, etc., in order to distract from the dehumanizing reality that literally owning people creates. But, we have access to how slaves felt about their situations, and how the institution of slavery affected them, and mostly we actually prioritize their point of view in our telling of history.

Unfortunately, when Americans study slavery in other contexts, whether ancient Greece, Rome, China, or the Islamic empires, the perspective of the slaveholders is still prioritized, and the “confederate apologist” arguments I listed above are accepted more readily.

70

As to the Bible, slavery is just reality, you become a slave due to your turning your back on God.

The history proves that sinful people are in slaved in many ways and it all starts from this position and moves forward into being even more in slaved.

Holy Moses came to free his people from slavery, because they were a people of God and that idolatry makes slaves of people.

Our so called new age we live in now points to that we are on the path to become in slaved, much like communist were slaves as well and that’s what Political Correctness is all about, becoming slaves to a works of man.

71

I think we all feel better for reading that.

72

Fair enough. Personally, I’m getting a bit weary of all the demand-side condemnation that seems to happen around here and in society, without the appropriate corresponding supply side condemnation.

I mean, yes there was a huge demand for slaves, and the whole apparatus for buying, transporting, selling and enslaving them is a huge black mark on Western society’s history, but it doesn’t absolve the African slave catchers and sellers any more than the vast demand for illicit drugs somehow absolves the Mexican drug cartels, street-level drug dealers, or Colombian cocaine drug lords or whoever else involved in the drug trade and the associated violence. Both sides are culpable, probably equally so.

73

Without demand there would have been no reason for the trade. The same regarding drug lords, etc. Without dealing with the demand you’re always going to have someone trying to fill it. That’s why the war on drugs is essentially unwinnable whereas ending slavery was possible.

74

Sure, but it doesn’t somehow let drug dealers and African slave-sellers off the hook, just because some Europeans or Americans want to buy cocaine or slaves.

75

“Off the hook” for what? What exactly do you think we need to be doing, saying, and/or thinking about these nameless, faceless African kidnappers that will significantly change our historical view toward slavery?

The reason why so much focus in our discourse is placed on American slave-owners is because their role in the mess has direct bearing on our country’s history. The economy, the politics, the legislation, the culture wars, the racist ideologies, the atrocity of dehumanization and denial of basic civil liberties, the massive Civil War and its sequelae…all of this was born out of slavery in the States, and really has nothing to do with what evildoers did in Africa.

These people obviously have relevance to the slave trade, but since that was abolished in the 1810’s, it’s crazy to expect they should have equal billing with white Americans when we talk about the institution. It has nothing to do with who carries the most blame and responsibility, and all to do with how prominent their historical fingerprint was and how easily that fingerprint standouts from other fingerprints.

76

The OP’s question was specifically about how much responsibility African tribes hold in terms of enabling/perpetuating the slave trade, not about the institution of slavery in America. So slaves to Barbados, Brazil, and yes, the US all are part of the discussion. And so is the source of those slaves- other African tribes/kingdoms.

My point was that there seems to be a real desire around here (the SDMB) to blame the consumption side of the equation for all the ills perpetuated on the supply side, and I don’t think that’s right or fair at all. Just because I may want something and be willing to pay a lot for it, doesn’t absolve the person procuring it from normal moral and ethical behavior.

That’s all I’m trying to get at- just because there was slavery in the US, Barbados, Brazil and other Caribbean islands, doesn’t somehow also lessen the culpability of the African slave-suppliers.

77

The point of my post is to show why the “consumption side” gets discussed (which seemingly is conflated with blame) the most. It’s because their actions took place in the Americas and thus, shaped the evolution of entire nations in new and radical ways that the “supply side” did not. You’re talking about fairness, as if we’re talking about two kids getting whipped equally hard for being naughty. But historical discourse doesn’t care about fairness; it cares about relevance in the big picture.

I think your blame-equation for consumption vs supply is way too oversimplified to take seriously. It only takes a few armed monsters to effectively kidnap and sell people for profit. To keep this a sustainable business, they will need a steady supply of interested buyers. It is to their advantage to have a corner on the market, so a small supplier to buyer ratio is ideal. If the buyers dry up, then suppliers lose financial incentive to sell, and they’ll stop kidnapping. Thus, in a completely amoral universe, consumption influences the actions of suppliers. And numerically speaking, consumers can be much more numerous than suppliers. Should the 1 evil slave trader receive as much “blame” as the 20 evil customers he serves? Why?

If a man, desperate to feed his family, kills elephants for their tusks because he knows he can earn a lot on the black market for them, is he as much “culpable” as the rich people who pay handsomely for ivory, knowing good and well they come from poached animals? I don’t think we can conclude this. It’s ethically harder for a poor man to turn down easy money than it is for a rich person to give up buying ivory trinkets.

That isn’t to say that African slave-traders are necessarily analogous to the hypothetical elephant poacher. Just saying the whole concept of doling out blame without respect to scale and individual needs is faulty and unpersuasive.

78

Here’s the thing though; the evil of one side doesn’t affect the evil of the other. Nobody’s saying that the demand side is not evil, just that the supply side isn’t somehow less evil or less culpable.

Let’s use a hypothetical… if I’m a stupendously rich guy, and I let it be known that I’m interested in buying some sort of esoteric and legal object that’s extremely rare on the open market, but that someone could probably relatively easily rob someone for. Let’s say I put a post on a message board for this particular hobby saying I’d really love to have X object, and would pay 10 million bucks for it.

Now if someone decides to go robbing and stealing to try and sell these things to me, how am I culpable for his criminal activities? I never suggested he do anything illegal- just that I was willing to buy one if it was available. While the demand is there, and the reward is there, it doesn’t make the burglar somehow less culpable.

79

From my understanding, the slave trade wasn’t illegal. So, are you suggesting no culpability on anyone’s part? Actually, I think I can get on board with that.

80

Since it’s vastly unlikely the rich guy doesn’t realize the price he’s offering is incentivizing crime and immoral behavior, he doesn’t get to shrug off culpability just because he isn’t doing the dirty work. The burglar is culpable for his role and his customer is too; who deserves the harshest judgement depends on their individual circumstances.

Where your analogy falls apart when it comes to slavery is that the buyers perpetrated abuses on people that the traders had nothing directly to do with. Yes, the traders rounded up innocent people and sold them, probably killing many in the process. But if we want to be daft about it, how did they know those people would be subjected to lifelong brutality and oppression? It would have been no skin off their teeth if Americans were simply buying Africans to use as temporary, humanely-treated labor and then freeing them.

This is why moralizing this whole mess is stupid. Arguing whom was more evil than whom doesn’t do anything except mix facts with bias.