In school, as a youngster, the slaves stories never sat with me well. I always thought to myself, so the Euros just came into Africa and took mugs without them putting up a fight? Man, Africans must of been really gullible or defenseless. Then later, i grew up and start doing some research and came across a few sources that said practically the same thing as this: Negro involvement in the enslavement of their fellow Blacks was extensive: “...in Africa... down to the 1930s, the various tribes continued to raid one another to capture slaves both for domestic use and to sell to outsiders. Moreover, in spite of the picture presented in Alex Haley’s Roots, white slave traders almost never entered the interior in pursuit of prey but rather purchased their cargo from Afri- cans at the ocean front; coastal Africans would not allow Europeans either into or through their own countries... Before the appearance of the (Suzanne) Miers and (Igor) Kopytoff and Meillassoux vol- umes (Slavery in Africa: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives), some scholars claimed that slavery in Africa was a response to the international slave trade, but it is now obvious that (Black) slavery was an old domestic institution that was adapted for supplying the international market when it developed.” (Hellie, pp. 22 and 24). Only question i have, is why do they still teach the watered down version in Schools?
Posted on: Thu, 17 Apr 2014 01:05:38 +0000