Before contemporary slavery in Africa, soldiers who lost battles or surrendered in tribal wars were taken as captives and sold to other African tribes or presented as gifts to Elites and Kings to promote allied relations.
In the game of Chess, a pawn is the piece usually moved first to protect the King and Queen and is always taken out, collateral damage. Due to debt accumulations people were sent out for slavery to work for masters until full or an agreed installmental payment is paid.But there are situations where such debts can not be paid,these victims become permanent properties to their master(s).The Akan people of Ghana,some Yoruba communities and later adopted by the Efiks, practiced this inhumane act.
Slaves were nothing but tools in the hands of their masters and to some of this masters death is seen as the best freedom.Human sacrifice along the coast and in the inlands was practiced by West African states before the 19th century. The Dahomeans sacrificed 500 slaves every year,The Benin Empire was big left out,parts of the Ashanti Kingdom sacrificed slaves as form of capital punishment.
Therefore,is it right to conclude that Africans were the architects of their misery,the promoters of the illusion that Africa is a dark continent, a scourge to the earth?
AFRICA AS THE STRENGTH OF THE WORLD
The beauty of studying the past allows for different people to have different perspectives on different issues. Thus, here is my supposed objective analysis on the uncalled for rape of the African continent by European countries.
Spain and Portugal were once the balance of power entities to the world. The had a say over almost everything in their control and yet to be in their control. And as such, Spain had as their possessions, many territories which span vast,farmlands that needed to be worked on and economy's to be groomed. Thus, the idea of using using "unfortunate or not-rich" as labourers.
Queen Isabella of Spain in an agreement with Henry the Navigator sought for more workers for these lands. First, he used the prisoners but when they served their given time,they were free to go and the land was left bare, again. The Red indians were then employed to work but with no coin for their pockets. Such a treatment will not go down well with nobody, any opportunity they had,they escaped. This caused a great influx of Ameri-Indians in Europe. Plus, these new set of slaves were weak and could not work for long hours. A waste of resources.
This is what brought Henry to Africa. He observed their harsh climatic conditions which seemed not to affect them in their daily doings. The sun was brutal, the soil hard but bountiful yield plus the muscular nature of their men, the dark silky skin of their women and the ability of their aged to till the ground endeared him to this race of people. He brought a handful of them back to Spain and to her territories and the experiment yielded great results. The greed and hate in men will continuously be their undoing. More Spanish ships stormed Africa and grabbed more men and women,separated them from their families,forced a life of slavery on them,thereby reducing the prospects of Africa. With this new discovery, Spain became the number one supplier of African slaves and this was an invitation honoured by many European countries in need of labour to compete for total domination of Africa and it's people.This stage of "development" was Africa's bane, it is known as The Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
In the limelight of being woke, the God forsaken interest in Africans as objects of slavery has glued a mentality of constant dependence on the Europeans for practically everything.
IMPACTS OF THE TRANS-ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE:A CRIMSON LEGACY
The effects of the trans-atlantic slave trade were far reaching and all round devasting to the Black race. It is important to understand that the effect of any circumstance could be positive or negative or even both. In this case it could be very hard to find any positive results concerning the slave trade in Africa. But if we squint our eyes a little bit beyond the anger and race support system we can see the positive outcomes of the slave trade.
There was a massive depopulation of Africans in Africa. Slaves were mostly transported from the West coast of Africa and shipped overseas through the ports on the Red sea to where ever the were needed. This demographic crises reduced the work force in Africa by 70%. Men were much more preferred as slaves than their opposite and this only existed in the trans-atlantic slave trade.
The trauma of slavery beckons on one when he or she is separated from a love one or family. This problem twisted the minds of many black people and caused them to see the Whites as monsters,monsters that reached for their inner being and sucked the life force out of them. These slaves were not allowed marriage rights. They couldn't wed their fellow slaves. Though such unions would increase the work force on the plantations but the idea of them being more than they could control provoked the law against marriage to be enacted. As human beings,we are made because of love,it is inevitable not to find love. Their love affairs were kept a secret from their masters.lll
There would be no America without black slaves. The New World was developed because of the existence of these slaves that toiled the land and caused economic growth to soar. This is a positive effect but beneath the veil a negative outcome presented itself as there were massive transfer of diseases, example, HIV and other Sexually Transmitted Diseases. The freed slaves that went back to Africa after the abolition of slave trade in 1803 took with them from the New World diseases which they were ignorant about.
What this entails is that every cause has an effect and these effect(s) affect the next generation and the generation after that and beyond.
CONCLUSION
A slave's face is always livid with the hue of death. Not knowing when death will come but will appreciate the cold hands of such inevitability. His palms rough,dark and scarred. Being enslaved be it mentally or physically, weakens the mind and limits one to constant dependence on a superior.
Slavery in Africa was a curse that poisoned the very root of the African culture, destroying the foundations of the once rich African tradition. While in bondage they were unconsciously injected with the White man's culture and with every dose that part of them that was once African faded away,slowly and replaced with a new way of life. When slavery was abolished,they awoke from the coma of thralldom but it was too late,like boiled okra the culture of the White man was stucked in their minds,forcing a new system of administration based on European system to be adopted. We suffer today because of that one virus,slavery. I bet we spout English law,we can recite by heart the French and American revolution,the bravery of Adolf Hilter but what can we say about the Ibibio legal system,the glories of the Oyo and Benin Empires,the tales of Mansa Musa and Dingiswayo.
The union between slavery and greed birth Racism. A belief that a race is more superior than another. In this case white superiority to black inferiority. The trade in Africans as slaves left an imprint that Africans are better off as the eaters of crumbs,the overcooked beef that nobody wants,the darkness to be avoided. Thus,should be excluded from any gainful prospect. We can see this in our football matches today,black players are booed and still they work the hardest to prove themselves to those "racist pigs." A true bane,don't you think so. Also,most players who are truly Africans refuse to identify themselves with a race that is classified as impure and over heated and thus,you find them playing for European nations.
In my stream of consciousness, I have come to realize that despite the grace of Christianity,the introduction of new cultures and the birth of Western education, slavery is and will continuously be a bane,a nemesis to the development of Africa. But the beauty of our Black skin is that we are tough, relentless and growing. I believe that is no Champion sound much greater than the sound of Freedom.
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