posted                      

quote:

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Yea, but a lot of sold slaves were prisoners of war, it wasn't really a morality issues in most cases.

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I know what you mean but, I feel that's still wrong. Selling another human being is always a morality issue.

Posts: 2133 | From: Redneckland | Registered: Oct 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by sheba76:

quote:

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Yea, but a lot of sold slaves were prisoners of war, it wasn't really a morality issues in most cases.

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I know what you mean but, I feel that's still wrong. Selling another human being is always a morality issue.

---

Posts: 66 | Registered: Jan 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

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THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE
The First Slav[ing] Expeditions to [West] Africa
by Anthony A. Lee


Kidnapping [people] from the African coast was part of European
practice even before Portuguese ships had explored the coast of
the continent or discovered a new route to India. One of the
first expeditions to the Senegal River, led by the Portuguese
in 1444, brutally seized the black residents of severl off-shore
islands near the river and carried them off to be sold as slaves.
Other expeditions from Europe about this time did more or less
the same.

But it was not long before African armies became aware of the
new dangers, and Portuguese ships began to meet their match.

For example, in 1446, two years later, a ship commanded by Nuno
Tristao attempted to land in the Senegal region. It was attacked
by African fighters in canoes, and the crew of the ship was
wiped out. And in 1447, a Danish raider commanding a Portuguese
ship was killed, along with most of his crew, when local African
boats attacked.

Although African vessels -- mostly canoes -- were not designed
for high-seas navigation, they were fully capable of protecting
the coast, even in the 15th century. As a result, in 1456, the
king of Portugal dispatched his ambassador, Diogo Gomes, to
negotiate treaties of peace and trade with the African rulers
along the coast. From that point on, and for 400 years, the
African slave trade was conducted as a matter of international
commerce among equals. The notion of European sailors roaming
through [West] Africa at will, kidnapping as many [people] as they
wanted and shipping them off to America, is completely false
-- and an insult to Africans, who kept European armies off
their soil until the beginning of the 20th century.

Of course, this fact of history makes the Atlantic slave trade
a bit more problematic, from a moral perspective. It is not
simply a question of black and white. Slavery was well known
in [many] African societies, as much as it was a fact of life
everywhere else in the world during those times.

As soon as Diogo Gomes' diplomatic expedition to West Africa
had succeeded, the export of slaves began to number in the
thousands. During the bloody course, perhaps 10 or 15 million
Africans had been delivered as slaves to the New World, and
perhaps just as many more had died in the process. These [people]
were captured in Africa by Africans, shipped to the African coast
by Africans, and only then sold to European traders in trade ships
to begin the dreaded Middle Passage to America. African kings and
rulers were active and willing participants in the slave trade,
which made them rich[er], and which could not have existed
without their full cooperation and support.

Indeed, when African kingdoms decided to stop trading in slaves
-- for their own reasons -- there was no way for European nations
to force them to continue. The earliest example of this is the
Kingdom of Benin on the West African coast (in what is now Nigeria)
In the 1520's this state began to restrict the sale of slaves,
finally cutting it off entirely by about 1550. This was probably
not done for moral reasons, however. Records from this period show
that the kingdom was becoming wealthi[er] from the export of cloth
and pepper. Although it is only a guess, we can imagine that slaves
were needed within Benin itself to produce these valuable products
which could bring more wealth to the king than the sale of human
beings.

As uncomfortable as this aspect of black history may be, it
at least explodes the myth of a "dark," helpless and ignorant
African continent that was always at the mercy of European
greed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The more we
learn about African history, going back even to the middle
ages, the more we learn that Africans were full and active
participants in the world -- on both sides of the Atlantic.

---

Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

---

Originally posted by alTakruri:
What follows is a mostly, though not completely, accurate essay.
Bracketed words and hi-liting are my editing.
Otherwise it appears as originally presented on www.netnoir.com in 1997.

quote:

---

THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE
The First Slav[ing] Expeditions to [West] Africa
by Anthony A. Lee


Kidnapping [people] from the African coast was part of European
practice even before Portuguese ships had explored the coast of
the continent or discovered a new route to India. One of the
first expeditions to the Senegal River, led by the Portuguese
in 1444, brutally seized the black residents of severl off-shore
islands near the river and carried them off to be sold as slaves.
Other expeditions from Europe about this time did more or less
the same.

But it was not long before African armies became aware of the
new dangers, and Portuguese ships began to meet their match.

For example, in 1446, two years later, a ship commanded by Nuno
Tristao attempted to land in the Senegal region. It was attacked
by African fighters in canoes, and the crew of the ship was
wiped out. And in 1447, a Danish raider commanding a Portuguese
ship was killed, along with most of his crew, when local African
boats attacked.

Although African vessels -- mostly canoes -- were not designed
for high-seas navigation, they were fully capable of protecting
the coast, even in the 15th century. As a result, in 1456, the
king of Portugal dispatched his ambassador, Diogo Gomes, to
negotiate treaties of peace and trade with the African rulers
along the coast. From that point on, and for 400 years, the
African slave trade was conducted as a matter of international
commerce among equals. The notion of European sailors roaming
through [West] Africa at will, kidnapping as many [people] as they
wanted and shipping them off to America, is completely false
-- and an insult to Africans, who kept European armies off
their soil until the beginning of the 20th century.

Of course, this fact of history makes the Atlantic slave trade
a bit more problematic, from a moral perspective. It is not
simply a question of black and white. Slavery was well known
in [many] African societies, as much as it was a fact of life
everywhere else in the world during those times.

As soon as Diogo Gomes' diplomatic expedition to West Africa
had succeeded, the export of slaves began to number in the
thousands. During the bloody course, perhaps 10 or 15 million
Africans had been delivered as slaves to the New World, and
perhaps just as many more had died in the process. These [people]
were captured in Africa by Africans, shipped to the African coast
by Africans, and only then sold to European traders in trade ships
to begin the dreaded Middle Passage to America. African kings and
rulers were active and willing participants in the slave trade,
which made them rich[er], and which could not have existed
without their full cooperation and support.

Indeed, when African kingdoms decided to stop trading in slaves
-- for their own reasons -- there was no way for European nations
to force them to continue. The earliest example of this is the
Kingdom of Benin on the West African coast (in what is now Nigeria)
In the 1520's this state began to restrict the sale of slaves,
finally cutting it off entirely by about 1550. This was probably
not done for moral reasons, however. Records from this period show
that the kingdom was becoming wealthi[er] from the export of cloth
and pepper. Although it is only a guess, we can imagine that slaves
were needed within Benin itself to produce these valuable products
which could bring more wealth to the king than the sale of human
beings.

As uncomfortable as this aspect of black history may be, it
at least explodes the myth of a "dark," helpless and ignorant
African continent that was always at the mercy of European
greed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The more we
learn about African history, going back even to the middle
ages, the more we learn that Africans were full and active
participants in the world -- on both sides of the Atlantic.

---

---

Thank you alTakruri and I know exactly why you posted that _ _good timing . We are talking about black history and we automatically bring african-american's slavery up, and there also seems to be a an almost automatic catigorizing of europeans as evil kiniving-schemester's

{Wow, Xm chill is goin off right now! - - -
Tosca/ Gemma Gemma Dub - - is on right no} back to my post

/brutal oppressors flying arround. I myself use them in my posts sometimes as an appeal to emotion becaus I'm emotional about some issues. In no means am I trying to say that it's an african-american thing. An obsevation of mine is that 'whites' seem to be very sensitive to this (who wouldn't - this shows that they aren't just liars scared hateful and hostile, that they care/feel and are good people, I theorize that when they're treated as if they do not they then don't care (you know you've felt this we do it too w/ other issues about us- ooh, good example is eminem song("I am what you say I am")) and then it restarts as they are treated as if they don't -it's a cycle), heck, ON THIS site, NONE african-americans have expressed these feelings about europeans.

So it's not an african-american issue, I think it's an issue in western-culture.

Na How About That? A WestERN stereotype that doesn't involve african-americans and in-fact involves 'White'/european-americans!??

Now that's something to think-on.

Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

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Africans as having civilizations, some long before those in Western Europe

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quote:

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even the Europeans had to resepect the strength and power of these civilizations

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quote:

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taking war captives often was used as an excuse to cause Africans to fight each other

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quote:

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MUCH of Africas history has been distorted in the last 200 years as a RESULT of the colonial conquest of Africa

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quote:

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stereotypes and OUTRIGHT LIES perpetuated agains Africans by Europeans that was intended to JUSTIFY their oppression and exploitation. Therefore, the idea of the racial superiority of whites was PURPOSE BUILT to support European colonial and imperial ambition

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Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

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In concluding this lecture, let me reflect slightly on the nature of history that we inherited from colonial times. I went to colonial schools for my elementary and secondary school education. I am from a cohort of Nigerians who were fed from what was then labelled as History of the British Empire. It was a brand of history in which British imperialists could do no wrong and in which their enemies could do no right. History of the British Empire was severe on enemies of British imperialism, whether they be Americans victorious from their revolt against the British in 1776 or the Benin in West Africa defeated by the British in a vicious campaign of 1897. Nigerian historiography has fought back by seeking out fresh spots in our historical actors of the nineteenth century as being praiseworthy for their "resistance" to British imperialism. Unfortunately, Nigerian historiography will continue to be hopelessly indebted to the methodology of British imperial historiography for as long as it concentrates its attention on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in which Europeans set the agenda of historical events in the region.

The nineteenth century was cursed in African history. It was a century of which the Benin cannot be proud. One major value of Jacob Egharevba's historical scholarship is that he strongly scolded the behaviour of Benin policy makers in the nineteenth century (see Egharevba 1952: 14-15). Indeed, if we were to limit Benin history to the events of the nineteenth century the harsh judgement that British propaganda and arrogant imperial history have handed over to generations of Nigerians might have some degree of validity. But Benin history is much more than the nineteenth century. When the historian goes back to earlier centuries and then fairly assesses the achievements that elevated a small population to such great heights, then I am convinced that the historical judgement of Benin and its empire is liable to be positive.

In this lecture, I have gone behind the nineteenth century, which was dominated by the British and other Europeans in West Africa, to earlier centuries. What we have is a history of a people in West Africa that husbanded its cultural resources carefully, enabling them to value their culture internally and to gain strength therefrom for embarking on the risky business of empire-building. It is my conclusion that, on balance, the resulting empire did more good than harm to its region of impact in the western lower Niger. I have gone back to Ogiso times because the complex of cultures that resulted from dispersals in those distant centuries is historically significant, in the annals of the ancient world and in the surviving cultural and social ties that those dispersals generated.

These are conclusions that would be impossible to arrive at if we concentrated on the nineteenth century. I dearly hope that the result of this preliminary exploration of the history of what has been labeled as Edoid complex of cultures will encourage others to move behind the European presence in West Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to more distant centuries of our history and prehistory.

---

quote:

---

On the half-landing of the main staircase of the British Museum hangs a unique display of 50 bronzes, depicting small groups of African soldiers in militay gear. These are just a small percentage of the 900 magnificent bronze sculptures, dating from the 16th century, that were seized from the palace of Benin during a British imperial rampage in west Africa 100 years ago, in February 1897.

The campaign against Benin, a small city-state east of Lagos in what is now southern Nigeria involved the invasion and destruction of the state, the show trial of its king, the execution of its leading chiefs, the torching of the royal palace, and the burning of innumerable villages. Throughout the fighting, in which "friendly" black troops were put in the forward ranks, British forces were largely protected by the steady use of the Maxim machine-gun. These typical atrocities of the British colonial era go unmentioned in the museum's accompanying wall notice, a continuing indication of Britain's officiall reluctance to come to terms with the real cost of its imperial past. Now Bernie Grant, the Labour MP, is backing a campaign for the looted treasures held in museums in London and Scotland to he returned to the King of Benin.

---

Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

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The second puzzle of Benin history is no less intriguing. It concerns Benin's role in the Atlantic Slave Trade. That evil trade, spanning several centuries, devastated the Western African region. Unlike the Arab Slave Trade from eastern and central Africa, in which Arabs undertook the slave raids directly, the West African Atlantic Slave Trade by European traders relied on African states and African slave raiders for their human victims. Throughout the region, many states embroiled themselves in the slave trade. Asante, Oyo, Dahomey, the Rivers states of eastern Nigeria, were all involved in the evil trade. In the nineteenth century, the Sokoto Caliphate joined this train of West African states that traded on fellow Africans, causing the depopulation of the Benue Valley in this instance (see Dike 1956: 27).

What about Benin and its empire? Clearly, Benin had important trade connections and political ties throughout the region that would have put it in a place of considerable advantage in the competition of the slave trade. How much did Benin press its advantages in pursuit of the Slave Trade? The puzzle is that Benin did not press its advantages to engage in the Slave Trade. Indeed, Benin's role in the Slave Trade was minor. It seems fair to say that Ryder=s (1969:198) conclusion on this score has been well accepted by historians. He says: "There is no evidence that Benin ever organized a great slave trading network similar to that which supplied the ports of the eastern delta, or that it ever undertook systematic slave raiding . . . Benin either could not or would not become a slave-trading state on a grand scale" (also see Davidson 1971:65). Don Ohadike, the Anioma historian whose region of western Igbo would have been grievously impacted if Benin had played a large role in the slave trade, concurs with Ryder: Slavery was neither an economic necessity nor a vital component of the entire political and social life of [Benin] society . . . even after the rise of Benin as a large kingdom, its involvement in slavery was limited. Ryder has demonstrated that Benin's participation in the Atlantic slave trade or the European trade generally was minimal. Ryder's thesis is confirmed by the fact that the Edo political structures were not particularly affected by the European trade as was the case with Dahomey and the Gold Coast (Ohadike 1994: 42; also compare Igbafe 1979: 27).

Benin's policies forbidding any large commitment to the slave trade is a puzzle for two main reasons. First, it makes Benin the sole exception among West African states in their full-scale participation in the European Slave Trade. Second, Benin had a strong institution of slavery in its culture and internal social organization. Benin's abstinence from the evil trade could not fairly be attributed to some humanitarian inhibition on its part. How then does one explain this rare phenomena in African history?


The Caribbean scholar Walter Rodney offers one good clue that will help us to solve this puzzle of Benin history. Rodney argued that many African states craved to refrain from the slave trade but were afraid to do so. They were so weak that the European traders could imperil their power and survival if they failed to participate in the slave trade (see Rodney 1972: 80-82). The reverse logic in Rodney's postulate was that only strong African states could make deliberate decisions to participate in the evil trade or else to refrain from it. Benin was a strong state that could say no to European powers and not be threatened with punishment that would destroy it. Apparently, from the outcome of history, Benin took the calculated decision not to involve itself in the slave trade in the manner of other states and not to encourage slave raids such as those for which the Aro were notorious in the Igbo hinterland in eastern Niger Delta.

But why did the Benin decide not to involve the resources of its kingdom in slave raids and slave trade, as so many other African states did? This is where to bemoan the absence of literacy in the civilizations of Benin and the other areas of tropical Africa. How one wished there were written records to reveal the arguments that were advanced for and against Benin's involvement in the slave trade, with menacing pressures from European traders and rival state organizations all across West Africa to cope with. But no such records exist. However, from its history, we can offer two speculative strands of reasoning for Benin's abstinence in the Slave Trade. First, it was entirely possible that policy makers saw the futility of the slave trade. The payback to the participating African states was miserable. But its disruption in their social structures was horrendous. Such was the fate of Oyo that destroyed its state institutions and civilization from the slave trade and a catastrophic civil war that the slave trade instigated in Oyo. A second reason is that Benin needed growth in its population for the management of its state affairs and for its external imperial engagements during the centuries of the Atlantic Slave Trade. There is always the temptation to believe that a large Empire, such as the one that the Benin managed, was being run by a huge population. But that was not the case. Benin was a nation with a small population who ran a big empire -- just as a small Songhai nation sustained a huge empire in the Western Sudan. Involvement in the slave trade would not help in the battle against population decrease that various Obas of the House of Eweka fought to reverse. The policy of abstinence that resulted on this score of the slave trade accords with the imperatives of Benin history of that time.

Whether these explanations for the absence of Benin from large-scale participation in the slave trade are correct or not, the policy forbidding such involvement paid handsome dividends for Benin. Its social structure and political system did not suffer from the destruction which the slave trade wrought for Dahomey, Asante, Oyo, and a host of other African states in the centuries of the slave trade. Moreover, out of the total area of the West African Atlantic coast impacted by the slave trade, the region of the western lower Niger Delta, in which the Benin Empire held sway, was the least disrupted.

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Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

---

al

quote:

---

Doug:
taking war captives often was used as an excuse to cause Africans to fight each other

---

Giving the white man his god complex when I make
Africans too stupid to see through whiteman designs
as if Africans never internal disputes worth going
to war about just like any other folk on earth.

---

True, but doug wasn't saying White men tricked anyone, he was saying africans were being greedy, LOL.

Other than that, I agree that Doug, in historical topics you need to just present, instead of defend (off the bat). I mean, a good fighter know how to attack and defend, so it'd be good to get that latch un-stuck from defend mode!

Other than all that-

quote:

---

Originally posted by meninarmer:
So, I see both points of view, and both have some validity, but like Obama, no solutions are being offered by what we learn.

---

quote:

---

Men In Armor:
Let's dream here...a big dream, accomplished by the new generation of black activists.

Example of a dream;

Is there the possibility of an organization built and designed to consolidate the resources of the world's wealthiest blacks to once, and for all, do for ourselves?
Is there the possibility of the formaltion of an "black dream" organization with the primary goal of acting as the cohesive bond to accomplish what no other organization since Martin Luter King has succeeded in accomplishing on a wide scale, black unity?

Considering the number of black millionaires in just America and Africa, it should be possible to achieve amazing advances. Oprah thought small with her South African school, but this is a dream scenerio, so let's think big.

A partial list of black multimillionaires, that spend 1,2,3 million dollars on 2nd/3rd homes, cars, jewelery, and other consumer goods, so a $1-2 Mil dollar tax deductible donation should be no problem.
1.Micheal Jordan
2.Shaq
3.Bill Cosby
4.Eddie Murphy
5.The Robert Johnson Family (Jet/Ebony)
6.Robert Johnson (BET)
7.The Murphy Family (Afro-American news)
8.Oprah Winfried
9.Louis Farrankhan
10.T.D. Jakes
11.Micheal Jackson
12.Samuel Jackson
13.Spike Lee
14.Harry Belafonte
15.Quincy Jones
16.Barry Gordy
17.Stevie Wonder
18.Prince
19.Kobe Bryant
20.The Reggie Lewis Foundation (Beatrice Foods)
21.Muhammed Ali
22.Paul Mony
23.Jamie King
24.Denzel Washington
25.Dave Chappelle
26.Loyld Trotter (CEO-GE Industrial, $24Mil/yr)
27. Martin Luther King Family
28.Jessie Jackson
29.Don King
30.Floyd Mayweather
(based on $1Mil/each donation, this is approx. how much Oprah will spend on S.African school. Tax donation returns 50-70% to contributor?)
These are just a small fraction of the nations multimillionare blacks that could easily, if they found value, donate $1mil to such a fund.

---

quote:

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Men. ,say:
Everyone can continue to contribute to this list using additional millioniares. [...]

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I was just thinking of doing so.

quote:

---

Since I've barely really touched on sports, business or international, I expect there are many thousands, if not tens of thousands of candidates.

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quote:

---

One thousand x $1,000,000 = ???

---

^alot of money, according a course to your estimate.

ThousandMillion.
Nah, just jokin. One billion. (1,000,000,000$) Don't know about Ya'll, but I know what I'd do with all that doe.:Spend it on some girls, new Cd's and a nigga gotta have some dope, + free B.E.T. for a life-time, and maybe some dope ass cars. and hmn...

Psych!

On a serious note, I would try to use my monetary gain to enflate the middle class in certain countries in africa. I'd have it used for indigenous owned businesses.

... and the list continues... maybe some ice, I'd move my family to Hawaii or somewhere, or to a ghetto-faulous side of my town, + blow it on tonz a booze (liquor). Oh, and don't let me forget, some booze for da' kids too. (This ain't from TV, I wouldn't do that, it's actually from real-life by the way..)

Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by alTakruri:
Unfortunately none have come to fruition though
those of the Honorable Marcus "Mosiah" Garvey
and the Honorable Elijah Muhammed were, for a
time, very successful.

---

Posts: 3595 | From: Moved To Mars. Waiting with shotgun | Registered: Dec 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

---

Other than that, I agree that Doug, in historical topics you need to just present, instead of defend (off the bat). I mean, a good fighter know how to attack and defend, so it'd be good to get that latch un-stuck from defend mode!

---

So let me get this straight. Saying that Europeans used deception and lies to distort the history of Africa and Africans is an attack? An ATTACK is when you pick up a stick and hit somebody. What I said was a FACT. Everything I said was a FACT. Not ONCE was it an attack on Europeans. European imperialists of the 19th century DID create racist doctrines in science and anthropology to justify oppression and exploitation, as Hitler did in WWII. Telling the FACTS is not an ATTACK, unless someone is NOT AWARE of the facts in the first place. Then it is an ATTACK on ignorance or the results of brainwashing. In that case, MAYBE you are correct. In history the only goal is to report the FACTS accurately. If you are suggesting I should NOT do that and only report the GOOD stuff and not the BAD stuff, then that is not telling history, that is telling FAIRY TALES.

Or maybe because I use BOLD words sometimes makes it seem like an attack..... Surely I am not ATTACKING anyone here. Unless you WANT to be.... which obviously is a whole another issue.

Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

^Damn there is always so much **** about zionism. X-rays?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M.:
So let me get this straight. Saying that Europeans used deception and lies to distort the history of Africa and Africans is an attack? An ATTACK is when you pick up a stick and hit somebody.

---

quote:

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[...]Then it is an ATTACK on ignorance or the results of brainwashing. In that case, MAYBE you are correct.

---

quote:

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In history the only goal is to report the FACTS accurately. If you are suggesting I should NOT do that and only report the GOOD stuff and not the BAD stuff, then that is not telling history, that is telling FAIRY TALES.

---

, but no.

quote:

---

Or maybe because I use BOLD words sometimes makes it seem like an attack.....

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no. no attacks.

Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by What Box Wasalu Emeagwali (spellin?:
^Damn there is always so much **** about zionism.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug M.:
So let me get this straight. Saying that Europeans used deception and lies to distort the history of Africa and Africans is an attack? An ATTACK is when you pick up a stick and hit somebody.

---

lol, no, I was saying it was a defense. A defense is reactionary, like when you react an attack.

Posting as if someone, like a hore lets say, made all kinds of falliscious assinine comments about africa or whatever.

I like the counter-attack style best just as well on the internet. On the internet, you present evidence to the contrary (which helps render their point moot) and in addition you then {optional} go on the attack and make them look stupid (I KNOW you know attacks do not have to be pphysical!). You can then lay off if they haven't really did anything to harm you, because if you (in general n' case anyone's wondering) go on a ravenous spree you might leave us wondering about you. (in general again in case anyone's wondering)

Personally I know many of us do have VICTOM complex, and it makes me slap my hand on my forhead.

But I don't think you(Doug) have a victom complex.

I think you, like me Doug have a bull-****[ed] /lie\truth complex, thus we sort feel the need to be always in reaction mode.

People with victom complexes are not totally reactionary, they're still liable to be fooled and believe a lie (who isn't).

THEY DO however make themselves (and 'US') look stupid by accusing anything of being racist without reason.

---

Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

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A forum like this cannot begin to adress all solve these issues

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Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

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Originally posted by What Box : carLos manGuiNGez:
"If I speak The Unpopular Truth, does that make me a liar?"

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Posts: 5555 | From: Tha 5th Dimension. | Registered: Apr 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by alTakruri:

Young Horus
The only enemy strong enough to sabotage nation
building is the enemy within, or as the quote goes,
"I've seen the enemy and the enemy is us."

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Posts: 3423 | From: the jungle - when y'all stop playing games, call me. | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

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posted 28 February, 2007 09:56 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by alTakruri:

Young Horus
The only enemy strong enough to sabotage nation
building is the enemy within, or as the quote goes,
"I've seen the enemy and the enemy is us."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So true... it's how our leaders keep betraying us in Nigeria. In the 70's (my mother) recalled it as a glorious time in Nigeria, we were really getting somewhere... then President Babangida came in and ruined everything - he was a simple minded Hausa man who wanted to get rich... so many of our parents are colonial minded... it's sooo sad.

I want you African Americans to know, Nigeria has real hope, we have so much resources, so many bright minds going to waste, we just need a good leader, that's all...

And, the young generation of Nigerians today are suffering way more than their parents did. Everyone is desperate, everyone trying to get a crumb off our VERY HUGE national cake... so our moral values are just disappearing by the hour...

---

Posts: 5492 | Registered: Nov 2004  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                         

quote:

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THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE
The First Slav[ing] Expeditions to [West] Africa
by Anthony A. Lee


Kidnapping [people] from the African coast was part of European
practice even before Portuguese ships had explored the coast of
the continent or discovered a new route to India. One of the
first expeditions to the Senegal River, led by the Portuguese
in 1444, brutally seized the black residents of severl off-shore
islands near the river and carried them off to be sold as slaves.
Other expeditions from Europe about this time did more or less
the same.

But it was not long before African armies became aware of the
new dangers, and Portuguese ships began to meet their match.

For example, in 1446, two years later, a ship commanded by Nuno
Tristao attempted to land in the Senegal region. It was attacked
by African fighters in canoes, and the crew of the ship was
wiped out. And in 1447, a Danish raider commanding a Portuguese
ship was killed, along with most of his crew, when local African
boats attacked.

Although African vessels -- mostly canoes -- were not designed
for high-seas navigation, they were fully capable of protecting
the coast, even in the 15th century. As a result, in 1456, the
king of Portugal dispatched his ambassador, Diogo Gomes, to
negotiate treaties of peace and trade with the African rulers
along the coast. From that point on, and for 400 years, the
African slave trade was conducted as a matter of international
commerce among equals. The notion of European sailors roaming
through [West] Africa at will, kidnapping as many [people] as they
wanted and shipping them off to America, is completely false
-- and an insult to Africans, who kept European armies off
their soil until the beginning of the 20th century.

Of course, this fact of history makes the Atlantic slave trade
a bit more problematic, from a moral perspective. It is not
simply a question of black and white. Slavery was well known
in [many] African societies, as much as it was a fact of life
everywhere else in the world during those times.

As soon as Diogo Gomes' diplomatic expedition to West Africa
had succeeded, the export of slaves began to number in the
thousands. During the bloody course, perhaps 10 or 15 million
Africans had been delivered as slaves to the New World, and
perhaps just as many more had died in the process. These [people]
were captured in Africa by Africans, shipped to the African coast
by Africans, and only then sold to European traders in trade ships
to begin the dreaded Middle Passage to America. African kings and
rulers were active and willing participants in the slave trade,
which made them rich[er], and which could not have existed
without their full cooperation and support.

Indeed, when African kingdoms decided to stop trading in slaves
-- for their own reasons -- there was no way for European nations
to force them to continue. The earliest example of this is the
Kingdom of Benin on the West African coast (in what is now Nigeria)
In the 1520's this state began to restrict the sale of slaves,
finally cutting it off entirely by about 1550. This was probably
not done for moral reasons, however. Records from this period show
that the kingdom was becoming wealthi[er] from the export of cloth
and pepper. Although it is only a guess, we can imagine that slaves
were needed within Benin itself to produce these valuable products
which could bring more wealth to the king than the sale of human
beings.

As uncomfortable as this aspect of black history may be, it
at least explodes the myth of a "dark," helpless and ignorant
African continent that was always at the mercy of European
greed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The more we
learn about African history, going back even to the middle
ages, the more we learn that Africans were full and active
participants in the world -- on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Posts: 8179 | From: the Tekrur straddling Senegal & Mauritania | Registered: Dec 2011  |  IP: Logged | 

posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Tukuler:
[QB] Originally posted by alTakruri on February 14, 2007 05:57 PM


What follows is a mostly, though not completely, accurate essay.
Bracketed words and hi-liting are my editing.
Otherwise it appears as originally presented on www.netnoir.com in 1997.

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Posts: 42919 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged |