Posted on 05/08/2002 10:19:59 AM PDT by Dick Bachert
CALLS FOR REPARATIONS are all the rage among our contemporary "civil rights" crusaders. These shrewd individuals have chosen to direct their extortion efforts toward such American corporations as Aetna, New York Life, and Chase Manhattan Bank – which are charged with having profited, in one way or another, from slavery more than 137 years ago. They understand that such companies’ deep pockets and fears of bad publicity make them likely to eventually cough up some cash in exchange for the privilege of not having their names perpetually smeared.
What the moral icons of the "civil rights" establishment never mention, however, is that many African societies also profited handsomely from selling slaves to the West, and thus strongly supported the transatlantic slave trade. As one historian points out, the stronger black states of the coastal regions "managed to monopolize the traffic with the hinterland [and] prospered amazingly." Numerous African kingdoms gained their might and prosperity entirely from slaving. It is likely, in fact, that the transatlantic slave trade actually created more employment for African dealers than for their European counterparts. Though the slave trade is generally described as having uniformly demoralized all Africans, the slave-dealing societies of the Gold Coast that prospered because of slavery bitterly opposed Britain’s abolition efforts. Tribal leaders in Gambia, the Congo, and Dahomey actually sent delegations to London and Paris to argue against abolition. The rulers and merchants of Senegal demanded that their territory be classified as a French "protectorate" rather than a "colony," so they could legally continue dealing slaves.
During the middle third of the nineteenth century, African demand for slaves increased tremendously. As Western purchasers dropped out of the market, there was a profusion of African people left vulnerable to slavers in their own homelands. Because of this surplus, slaves became available at sharply reduced prices, thereby making their ownership more attractive to African buyers. Thus, after 1830 vast stretches of the continent saw a dramatic rise in the enslavement of blacks. In the 1830s the slave population of Zanzibar alone exceeded 100,000. In western Sudan, slaves became so numerous that they comprised a majority of the area’s population in the second half of the nineteenth century. As of 1870 in one southern Nigerian city, 104 families owned a combined total of more than 50,000 slaves, an average of almost 500 per family. Overall after 1850, black African purchasers acquired more slaves than were exported to the Occident and Orient combined. The typical African purchaser of the period was determined to squeeze from his slaves all the labor he could, forcing them to work excessively long hours and making their lives almost unbearable.
East Africa’s plantation economy peaked between 1875 and 1884, when the Kenyan coast had some 45,000 slaves – 44 percent of its total population. The Ethiopian highlands and the areas east of Lake Chad, where slaves had comprised only 4 percent of the region’s inhabitants back in 1820, were one-third slave by 1900. Also by the end of the nineteenth century, slaves constituted between one-third and one-half of all people living in the vast Sahelian grasslands stretching from the Atlantic coast of Senegal to the shores of Lake Chad. Near some commercial centers the proportion reached an astounding 80 percent. As of 1900, northern Nigeria’s Sokoto caliphate – an area roughly the size of California – contained at least 2.5 million slaves.
Those who criticize the West for its historical participation in the transatlantic slave trade never mention that abolition was a uniquely Western idea originating in Great Britain, the largest slave-trading nation of its time. In one of the great achievements of human history, Britons united to pressure their own government to legislate slavery out of existence by 1807. Members of Parliament were amazed to find themselves inundated by petitions demanding slavery’s abolition. One particular month, in fact, saw the delivery of more than 800 petitions containing some 700,000 signatures. It was not slavery, but rather this unprecedented moral impulse to ban it, that was truly unique in human history. The fact that the African kings of the nineteenth century shared none of the West’s moral imperative for ending human bondage is somehow dismissed as irrelevant by our "civil rights" messiahs. They focus exclusively on the sins of white society – demanding all manner of payments and apologies – while the black societies that willingly co-created the slave trade escape all moral condemnation.
John Perazzo is the author of The Myths That Divide Us: How Lies Have Poisoned American Race Relations. For more information on his book, click here. E-mail him at wsbooks25@hotmail.com
Reparations is a shakedown by Jesse Jackson and his scumbag liberals anti-american NUTS!
well, following the reparations argument, doesn't it follow that all African assets in the US be confiscated and paid out as reparations? Doesn't it also follow that any grants to Africa's so-called developing nations ought to have reparations deducted before one dime goes to Africa?
What about debt forgiveness? When debt is forgiven, then all of the funds that comprised the debt become "income" (ask the IRS if you don't believe me). So doesn't it follow that to the extent Africa has been enriched by the assets no longer treated as debt, then Africa ought to be assessed reparations for its profit from slavery?
Most important, recognition of Africa's complicity certainly deflates the moral high ground argument of the third world about having been exploited by the uniquely evil western societies.
I see your point, but the author is just playing by rules which he didn't set up. This article doesn't mention the trans-Meditteranean and Saharan slave trade which the Moors and Arabs had established well before Colonialists even entered the picture...
If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know.
I've been against any more "welfare" reforms based on RACE since this whole notion raised its ugly head.
The Africans who were brought here.. whose ultimate freedoms were fought for by MANY WHITE people, are very lucky to be living in this country. If they don't believe it.. then maybe we should offer them ONE KIND OF REPERATION.. "A FREE ONE WAY TICKET BACK TO AFRICA".
Otherwise..shut up!! Then try to eek out a living like all the rest of the decent hard working people in this country!!
HECK!! If I hadn't lost Ancestors who fought for Abolition of Slavery.. I might be richer too!!! GEE!! Maybe all of us need REPERATIONS TOO!!!
Hey.. (ka ching.. ka ching.. visions of George Washington with a green background) come to think of it, I'm also CHEROKEE and IRISH!!!! (Hmmm.. a house on a Lake, a Big RV..) let me rethink my position a while!!!
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