On the other hand, just to fuel the fires of negativity on the human condition…
…In the 1840’s, Asante king Kwaku Dua described slaves to a British visitor as “stupid and little better than beasts”…*
…When slaves died, all but a few were thought unworthy of burial. Instead they were thrown into a nearby river where there bodies were eaten by large fish…
Then again it really was somewhat different from the Americas…
…Slaves were usually reasonably well treated, but escape from a cruel master was permitted if the slave swore a powerful oath that bound him to another man. Slaves could also achieve sanctuary from a tyrannical master by claiming sanctuary at a temple…
Over time some became incorporated into Asante society as freemen and even achieved wealth and social rank…
…The impact of class and social distinction in Asante was mitigated somewhat by a law that forbade anyone to discuss another’s social origins, and this proscription was taken so seriously that Akan-speaking slaves easily became valued members of asante families…
So a rather complex situation. The above quotes are from The Fall of the Asante Empire,The Hundred-Year War for Africa’s Gold Coast by Robert B. Edgerton ( 1995, Simon and Schuster ). The Asante of course were up to their elbows in the slave trade ( their state corresponds roughly to modern Ghana ).
They were cheaper, at least initially. However the higher death rate was mostly disease. Two epidemics alone ( 1562, 1563 ) depleted the native population by 1/3 to 1/2, which intensified the labor shortage. Other big epidemics in 1624, 1644, and 1662 just compounded the devastation. In addition there were the moral qualms by the church and other individuals and royal edicts which made it more complicated to gather the shrinking pool of native labor as time went on. Since the African slaves were far more hardy ( disease resistant ) they were eventually valued at 3 to 4 times Indian slaves.
This is true. Purchased manumission was allowable in certain circumstances in Iberian tradition and this became more common into the 18th century.
I think you might be right. Slavery was cruel and horrendous, but many things in the past were cruel and horrendous to many ethnics in Europe as well as Asia. Many people of all races have been enslaved or did not live with individual freedom in the past.
No matter where we came from, if you go back far enough, many of our own ancestors were slaves, serfs, lived in dirt and poverty, had our lands stolen, and did not have individual rights and freedoms to vote or carry weapons, etc.
My families suffered thru many hard and difficult times and dangers to allow me to be born here, but it was a choice that they made. It does not affect me that my own ggg grand uncle was tortured and scapled by indians.
What is the difference to any of us today what our own ancestors might have, and DID, suffer thru?
Since none of us can change what our ancestors have done, or can change what the African slave traders and what the British and Spanish did to America, I would like for some black American people here to comment. If you only had one wish, would it be that slavery never existed which might mean your family had never left Africa ?
We have a saying here Susanann: “If my grandma had a dick she would be my grandpa”. I see that you are fond of “what ifs”, unfortunately we are not really good at devining the future, let along “alternative” futures. Would you please open a new thread about it? I’ll be most thankful if you are.
Tamerlane, the Spaniards instituted manumission in some of their colonies. They were called “Encomiendas” and indians were supposed to get food, shelter and education (Cathechism mostly) it doesn’t sound like “purchased” manumission. There was not pay involved. It is important to note that the “Encomenderos” were just as cruel anyways and that the first indian revolt in America (The Enriquillo revolt) that ultimately led to the Spanish crown granting “certain rights” to the indians were caused by an incident in which an encomendero tried to rape the wife of Enriquillo. Both Enriquillo and his wife were baptized, and thus were considered Christians.
Do they also get to wish that the European colonial powers and Middle Eastern slave takers had never interrupted the social development of Africa–which would mean that the 21st century Africa would probably not be the location of so much political instability, poverty, and disease as the Africa with which we are familiar?
Oh, now what could POSSIBLY be wrong with introducing industrialization, mass communication and the world market to a continent full of tribal societies that have not developed even remotely proper social, religious, or political systems, then leaving them completely to their own devices while funneling money and weapons in from two competing world powers?
I don’t mean to sound smart-aleky, but do you have any evidence that there was any such social development underway? If you took a look around the world 500 years ago, you might be able to to pick up on clues that Europe, China, Japan, and the Middle East would enjoy significant social development and be major actors on the world stage even a half a millenium later. What predictions could you make based on the state of Africa back then, assuming that the continent would remain unmolested?
I was speaking specifically to the Brazilian situation ;).
I’ll note that in regards to Spanish encomiendas, that they weren’t a manumission system but rather a compromise between the crown and the conquistadors in the way of allocating Indian labor. Less onerous than open slavery ( the Indians retained plots to grow on and in exchange for production labor were allowed to live on the land and were given relgious instruction ), but you’re right it wasn’t exactly freedom. More serfdom - It in face derived from Spanish practices of granting the rent and labor of newly conquered Moors in Spain to Spanish nobles. However it didn’t apply to African slaves ( who were imported to replace the falling Indian populations ) and the encomiendas declined as the source of their wealth, Indian labor, died off in many areas ( also the crown regarded the landlords, the encomenderos, as over-powerful as began to limit inheritance and re-taking encomiendas back into crown land ). After the mid-16th century the naboria system, a sort of indentured wage system for Amerindians, began to take its place.
GD territory :). We’ve had this discussion at least once or twice before there, it might be worth searching for.
In general built in geographic limitations would help put a lid on certain facets of African development, though if we posit peaceful exchange with Europe, this would gradually melt in the 20th century due to our increasing globalization and cultural exchange.
However there were a number of stable, reasonably sophisticated civilizations ( no less so than European ) in Africa before colonization and exploitation. The aforementioned Asante are just one example. I find it a reasonable speculation to say that they these states would have less internal contradictions and maladaption than what the Europeans created.
I can see that political instability might not have been such a big factor if the Europeans weren’t there to set arbitrary boundaries, but “poverty and disease” (as stated by tomndeb)? From what little I know of the region, large swathes of Africa were pre-industrial, pre-demographic transition well into the twentieth century (i.e., high birth rates accompanied by high death rates). And aren’t the jungles of the Congo and thereabouts one of planet’s major disease factories, with or without human intervention?
Further evidence that some African slavers cared no more for the suffering of the slaves than did the European and American slavers: some kingdoms (specifically Dahomey, if I recall rightly) used their slaves for human sacrifice.
American academics have often tried to downplay the horrors of African slavery in order to promote a mythical vision of black “brotherhood.” But this concept of “brotherhood” between black people would have been utterly alien to the Africans of the time. The average Asante and Yoruba no more thought of each other as “brothers” merely because of their skin color than the average Englishman and Frenchman saw each other as brothers because of their skin color. Like the Englishman and the Frenchman, the Asante and Yoruba lived in different places, spoke different languages, practiced different religions, and owed allegiance to different kings.
That said, we shouldn’t imagine that the Europeans and Americans made the African slaves’ situation no worse than before. As Tamerlane and others have said, the slaves’ living conditions in the American colonies much more brutal on average than in Africa. But I think it is even more important that the arrival of the whites also expanded the volume of the slave trade immensely, because they made it so much more profitable than before. African slavery had been a disgusting but fairly small instution in the Middle Ages; with the arrival of the whites and the ships, it almost emptied a quarter of a continent. More than 11 million people were shipped off across the Atlantic, and that doesn’t include the people killed in the slave wars or kept for servitude in Africa.
Poverty, at least subjectively, I would suspect would be less. How much is hard to say. But certainly a certain percentage of that poverty today derives from that very political instability ( and resultant corruption ).
Disease? Even harder to say. Depends a lot on how much, if any, the distribution of disease in Africa has been promoted by European tinkering ( for example, it’s outside of the zone we’re talking about, but just as a “for instance”, incidence of schistosomiasis in Egypt sky-rocketed after the building of the Aswan Dam ). Also corruption has held back disease-fighting efforts as well ( i.e. diversion of funds ). However this, I admit, is a much dicier guess.
Many areas, yes. Industrial society would rather harder to naturally develop in many areas of Africa, for a whole host of reasons.
Not so sure about that - the major disease factories tend to be areas of high population density, something lacking in the Congo Basin. But I certainly wouldn’t call the Congo the healthiest place in the world either.
Like I said, Africa has a lot of geographic disadvantages. I wouldn’t expect the equivalent of the United States to rear up in the 20th century out of an unmolested Africa. However that’s not quite the same as saying it wouldn’t have been better off uncolonized ( but STILL with increased European contact and cultural exchange - only on a more peaceful model ).
I sacrificed being clear for being concise. That was a fear among some slaves. A connection made between the large numbers of slaves going on each ship and the huge cauldrons also on the ships.
I see this headed to GD as there’s no real way of making a scientific answer to the questions. FWIW, here’s an anecdote:
I have a close friend who was born in Nigeria. He was in the Junior high school age range during the Biafran revolution. He moved to the United States during the 70s.
He has told me that racism in the United States is nothing compared to tribalism in west Africa. He said that a common joke was that if a Biafran encountered someone from northern Nigeria on the road and killed him, you might as well eat him because he’s just an animal.
And he said that even at the time, he could not relaibly tell tribal membership by physical appearance, only by speech.
During the Biafran revolution, he had to hide out in his uncle’s basement to escape involuntary conscription by the Nigerian army. One day he snuck out of the basement & was captured by the army. At the age of 13 he was forced into combat against the Biafran rebels with no combat training. 13. I don’t know if he escaped or was allowed to go home after the end of the conflict, but it still sounds kinda like slavery to me.
How much of the attitude that lead to these events is due to european slave trade & colonialism & how much is due to human selfishness is IMO impossible to answer.
I do not want to overlook this comment because it introduces one very important distinction in the development of the particular brand of racism (against blacks) that is the norm in Latin America. In introducing this line of discussion I might provoke that this thread be kicked to GD, and that is bad. Dude, people like me should not be allowed in GD
Apparently the fact MaryEFoo exposes above ultimately made mulattos both in Spanish colonies and Portuguese colonies less discriminated at than blacks. Racism in Latin America is less vicious (but not less pervasive) than racism in former English colonies. The “one drop of black blood” rule doesn’t apply here. Racist mulattos despise darker mulatos with the same conviction than white people despise people of darker skin.
In countries where there still exist a large indian population blacks occupy the pit of the scale. In countries where there isn’t an indian population (Spanish Caribbean) people revere the memories of their indian ancestors (however minimal their influence were) and consider people of dark skin to be inferior. All this apparently an inheritance of our Spanish ancestors.
“Depends a lot on how much, if any, the distribution of disease in Africa has been promoted by European tinkering ( for example, it’s outside of the zone we’re talking about, but just as a ‘for instance’, incidence of schistosomiasis in Egypt sky-rocketed after the building of the Aswan Dam ).”
Other examples of European tinkering in Africa: the eradication of smallpox, the near eradication of polio, the near eradication of dracunculiasis, dramatic reductions in sleeping sickness, leprosy, and river blindness.
“Not so sure about that - the major disease factories tend to be areas of high population density, something lacking in the Congo Basin. But I certainly wouldn’t call the Congo the healthiest place in the world either.”
I agree that the major disease factories tend to be areas of high population density. The Congo basin, being sparsely populated, isn’t especially unhealthy. It’s true there is yellow fever, malaria, schistosomiasis, filariasis, sleeping sickness, onchocerciasis, cholera, and some other bad things, but I don’t think that the health of the average Congolese is particularly bad by subSaharan African standards.
Yeah, perhaps I’m mistaken, but I seem to be sensing a slight sarcastic sneer in your post ;).
You will note that I didn’t push the disease angle much and said in fact it was the dicesiest speculation - Your rebuttals are perfectly valid. Nor did I say the Congo was particularly healthy - Quite the contrary if you read between the lines. I was merely pointing out that I don’t think the Congo would take first in a disease-breeding contest, which is what DR was asking. While insect-vectored disease can sometimes function perfectly well without a dense population to support them ( if they have a significant zoonosis ), human-to-human vectored diseases tend to benefit from a continuous zone of contact. While I’m sure Kinshasa is just as much, if not more of a squalid hellhole as Calcutta, I’m guessing the Ganetic Plain as a whole, compared to the Congo as a whole, would be more vulnerable to a mass flu epidemic for instance.
At any rate, even if European colonialism, was unrelentingly positive in terms of the impact on disease, it still wouldn’t be sufficient for me to judge said colonialism as a positive thing. Especially as we can surmise European ameliorating medicines and techniques being applied in my fantasy peaceful contact as well :).
