“As early as 1445, the Portuguese found it easier to buy slaves in Africa than to capture them; and although they did mount some military expeditions in Angola, they and all other European traders obtained the overwhelming majority of their slaves by purchase. The most common trade good was cloth, but in different times and places the currency was cowrie shells, alcohol, beads, lead, steel, copper, tobacco, horses, guns, gunpowder, and even gold. Slavery was well established long before Europeans began the Atlantic trade, but European interest gradually intensified African kings’ slave-raiding activities. Powerful West African kingdoms like Asante and Dahomey, with access to coastal traders, sought guns and gunpowder in order to enslave peoples more remote from coastal trade and without firearms.”
A sore spot for many African Americans, and a backup argument for white supremacists, is the notion that various African tribes sold slaves to the Europeans. Human nature is universal. There are good and bad people of every race. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that Africans sold other Africans to slavery. Here is how it happened:
“How were all these numerous unfortunate Africans enslaved and purchased? African scholars and politicians today must be honest and admit that the enslavement and sale of Africans from the seventeenth century onwards was done by the Africans themselves, especially the coastal kings and their elders, and that very few Europeans actually ever marched inland and captured slaves themselves. Africans became enslaved mainly through four ways: first, criminals sold by the chiefs as punishment; secondly, free Africans obtained from raids by African and a few European gangs, thirdly, domestic slaves resold, and fourthly, prisoners of war.”
TheStateOf. . .Greed. Greed is a mutha. Africans went way beyond “complicity.” How does this fact change your view of America? Of Africa?
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