My great-grandfather, Nwaubani Ogogo Oriaku, was what I prefer to call a businessman, from the Igbo ethnic group of south-eastern Nigeria. He dealt in a number of goods, including tobacco and palm produce. He also sold human beings.
"He had agents who captured slaves from different places and brought them to him," my father told me.
Nwaubani Ogogo's slaves were sold through the ports of Calabar and Bonny in the south of what is today known as Nigeria.
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More than 1.5 million Africans were shipped to what was then called the New World - the Americas - through the Calabar port, in the Bight of Bonny, making it one of the largest points of exit during the transatlantic trade.
A lot of the 'equity' and '1619' clowns really don't like the fact that most African slaves brought to the New World were sold to the European traders by Africans; it really messes with the Preferred Narrative.
She hits on another important point:
It would be unfair to judge a 19th Century man by 21st Century principles.
Assessing the people of Africa's past by today's standards would compel us to cast the majority of our heroes as villains, denying us the right to fully celebrate anyone who was not influenced by Western ideology.
Igbo slave traders like my great-grandfather did not suffer any crisis of social acceptance or legality. They did not need any religious or scientific justifications for their actions. They were simply living the life into which they were raised.
And it was a life that predated their contact with Europeans. Also an inconvenient fact.*
It's an interesting piece. I'm sure the Usual Suspects will give her hell for daring to write it.
*Like pointing out that the First Immigrants to the Americas had practiced war and slavery and torture and cannibalism long before their contact with modern Europeans.
3 comments:
As I recall the original, the slaves were collected not captured. Capture could lead to an expensive war. This was "business". All the tribes used "the trade" to get rid of non-productive, non-cooperative individuals. Workers and warriors were valuable. Lay abouts were a drain on the tribe, so those were traded for brightly colored cloth, steel implements, and/or rum. The slave trade was a trash clearance operation. Only a small proportion were captured "normals". Like father, like son, through the generations. The experience of slavery didn't form the "ghetto people". The violent urban failures are the descendants of those selected because of failure. Thus it isn't "race" that is the problem, it is the result of the selection of the least fit for the use in the "slave trade".
The West Africans didn't build with stone. They had little iron or steel. Thus there were no "prisons". If an individual wasn't useful, or if they were dangerous, they got a "boat ride".
If you have some enthusiasm and energy, in America you can prosper. "Jim Crow" is long gone. Many, however, have inherited the deficits of that founding slave population and have ended up in the urban desolation. The outcome is no surprise considering the selection process that created that slave population. School and a regular job select for the "normals". Race and the fantasy of "racism" no longer matter. "Racism" is just an excuse for failure. There is no "need" to judge the old "slave trader" any more that we might judge the police or a current prison guards. They are all just dealing with the violent and the defectives so we can survive in peace.
Don't get distracted. The old man made a good living "picking up the trash".
I remember when I was at school (about 50 years ago) we were shown a "documentary" on the slave trade.
They showed a fort, built on the coast of Africa, by the British. I noticed that the gun emplacements were all pointing out to sea. I asked why this was? surely if as the narrator of the documentary (and the teacher)remarked that "The British slavers were constantly fighting the indigenous people and capturing slaves in the process", there would be gun emplacements facing inward to the land.
I then mentioned one African tribe whose sole means of survival was trading in slaves. Their main town was the only source of water for miles, so slavers would stop their and trade a couple of slaves for water, etc.
I was sent to the Headmasters' (Principals') office lol.
When most of the slaves were transported from Africa to Europe and European colonies (before 1808 when the British and Americans began trying to suppress the trade), only the coast had been explored by white men. During this period, no white men went far into the interior of Africa and survived to tell about it - whether they were on a peaceful mission or seeking to attack and kidnap people. Aside from raiding a few coastal villages before the natives learned to move their homes out of sight from passing ships, white slave traders were utterly dependent on Africans and Arabs to collect slaves and sell them at trade ports.
The native slavers were eager to sell slaves to white traders; this must have been much more profitable than bringing slaves north across the Sahara to sell to the Muslims. European ships had much lower transport costs and fewer deaths en-route than camel caravans, and may have also got a better price at the end of the voyage.
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