Read Time: 5 minutes
Did you know that a slaver named John Hawkins made so much profit in his 3 trips to sell slaves that on returning to England after the first trip, became interested in directly sponsoring his next venture and provided a ship for him named the “Jesus”?
He brought so much dividends that Queen Elizabeth I made him a knight. Hawkings chose for his coat of Arms (flag symbol) an African in Chains!
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Let me quickly address this nonsense issue of Africans who shift attention from the atrocity of slave trade and colonization to make statements like “if not that some of our chiefs and leaders supported the slave trade, it would never have happened.”
One of the best ways to absolve a rapist is to shift attention from the rapist, to start asking the victim “what were you wearing?”
That is what many do unknowingly. And it is part of the Eurocentric brainwashing of Africans to ensure that Africans never hold Europe accountable for their atrocities.
Meanwhile the Allied Forces (France, Queen Elizabeth II’s Britain and USA) held Germany responsible for World War 2 and forced Germany to pay reparations of $23 billion from 1945 till date. Germany only recently completed the payments under Angela Merkel and $1 billion was paid to Israel holocaust survivors for what they did to the Jews.
Just last week Poland is demanding $1.32 trillion for the damage Germany did to them in Word War 2.
Africans are expected to forgive and forget and be polite and some historical illiterates actually admire their past oppressors; that is the tragedy of colonization- it comes with brainwashing.
It is as perverse as a Jew admiring Hitler for the efficiency of the extermination camps. And it starts from the fact that the ‘African’ is not really an African – he has been made into a second class European in mind and body; which is why even when he sees the victims of those atrocities, they seem like ‘other people’ not his people.
Sort of the way a Nigerian can say “Nigerians are very corrupt” and somehow mentally exclude himself. Or the way a woman can say “men are sc*m” and somehow in her head be excluding her father and brother.
When Germany carried out the Holocaust there were many Jews who helped the Germans carry out the genocide, however the Jewish nation and the rest of the world holds Germany responsible for those atrocities not the few Jews who were complicit.
Yet in Africa, European brainwashing makes some actually reach the conclusion that it was their own people’s fault; not the heavy artillery of the European gun fire or the constant ships coming to raid, rape and pillage the continent;
They are also left with the racist-European sentiment that there is just something wrong with the Africans or the black race. You know? they just can’t get their act together. Many Nigerians share this sentiment as well- as proof of the Eurocentric brainwashing.
For those who never studied history, let me tell you the actual accounts of some of the African kingdoms that fought hard to resist slave trade and were overcome by European force, craft, trickery and scheming.
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Did you know that in the 17th Century, Dahomey (current Benin Republic) had a great king named Agaja Trudo, who knew that European slavery was in conflict with Dahomeys development- and he wanted to trade in goods not slaves yet slave ships kept coming and kidnapping his people?
Historical accounts show that a significant amount of slave trading was done through kindnapping and creating internal conflict between tribes/ethnic groups (the same way Belgium stirred the conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda)
In 1724 to 1726, Agaja Trudo burnt European slave camps and ports, and reduced the slavery to a mere trickle by blocking the paths of the supply in the interior.
European slavers were very bitter and tried to sponsor people against Agaja Trudo, but they failed to unseat him or crush the Dahomian, but slave trading went on illegally.
Agaja Trudou later appealed to European craftsmen and sent emmissaries in the late 1720’s to tell Europeans that if any tailor, carpenter, smith, etc wanted to come they would be encouraged. He recieved no response.
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In 1600’s the Portugese brought in troops to seize power from Africans. Queen Nzinga (of Angola) established the city of Matamba to coordinate resistance against the Portuguese in Angola but Portugal gained the upperhand in 1648 and it left Matamba isolated.
Neighbouring states then isolated Angola as they had been forced into slave trading and stopped trading with Angola. In 1656 Queen Nzinga resumed business with the Portuguese and finally gave in.
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Congo asked for investment of industry but got no response.
The King of the state of Congo resisted the slave trade at the beginning of the 16th century. He asked for masons, priests, clerks and physicians but instead they kept sending slave ships from Portugal.
The Portugese overcame him by playing one part of the Congo kingdom against another. The King of the Congo was pushing for a mutually beneficial interchange but Europe only wanted human cargo- divide and conquer was the favorite tactic of European slave traders.
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Estaban Montejo reported that part of what allowed slavery was the fact that when the Portuguese came to Africa, they had red handkerchiefs and Africans liked the color red, so the people on the coast swam out to their boats and were taken as slaves.
In your spare time you can read the accounts of children and grand children of slaves who were interviewed in the 1930s to recount the stories of how their parents and grandparents were captured.
The most prevalent means was by kidnapping and by luring them on to ships through trickery. Link here: http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/freedom/text6/capturenarratives.pdf
Europe exploited different ethnic groups against each other e.g. in Guinea Bissau there were more than a dozen ethnic groups and it was so easy to set one off against another that they called it a Slave Traders Paradise.
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If you haven’t studied history, make sure you don’t end up with a version of history that excuses the rapist and shames the victim.
Yes some chiefs and kings were complicit, but unless you think slave trade was hundred people, instead of 10m+, you will quickly realize that all the chiefs/kings could not have supplied a significant volume of people without decimating their own population and losing their own kingdom as well.
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The human impact of the slave trade is equal to dropping 100 atomic bombs on Africa. That guilt still hangs over Europe and America but they would rather you forget about it.
Don’t forget it. You can forgive and heal, and focus on a cooperative future, but don’t forget. It is an insult to the blood of those that were slain to forget or to change history.
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- Would the author come forward to be duly credited? BLACK HISTORY MATTERS. Why? Because, Black History is the history of humanity – OUR ONE HUMANITY.
©Addai-Sebo
addaisebo1@gmail.com