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Nor can I imagine why they should be despised for their colour, being what they cannot help... I cant think there is any intrinsic value in one color more than another, that white is better than black, only we think it so, because we are so, and are prone to judge favourably in our own case”
The above line would seem to be written by some liberal thinker, a defender of rights, of the equality of people’s of all races. It refers exactly to the hypocrisies about one group of people seeming better than others.
It thus seems cruelly ironic that the line comes from Thomas Phillips, a captain of a slave ship, sailing between Africa and the Americas in 1694, when the trans-Atlantic slave trade was well-entrenched, but had not yet reached its peak.
I have been reading a lot about the trans-Atlantic slave trade recently – don’t know why – I got hold of some books and have always been interested in history, but what mostly stroke me were all the paradoxes, the hypocrisies, the contradictions inherent in this shameful chapter of human history.
In an evil, paradoxical way, the transatlantic slave trade was globalization, both commercially and culturally: through this horrible trade and practice, societies, economies, cultures were changed, blended, created, destroyed… all in a long period that completely changed the world, and was directly related to what we see today.
And the historical paradoxes abound: for instance, the slave captains, as Mr. Phillips above. To be a slave captain one had to be cruel, cool-headed and stubborn; never show weakness, in negotiation nor in punishment. And ironically, as in France, slave captains were therefore to be recruited from the highest of the intellectuals. And even more ironically, many read a lot of books, also about anti-slavery. And even more ironically, many slave captains, especially in the 18th century, went to become abolitionist – after they had made their fortune….
Opposition to the slave trade was not such a rare thing in spite of it all, even at its height. In fact, it can seem interesting that the initial opposition was won over: in states in southern France, it was declared that no man, no matter color, could be a slave, but that was later changed when the business grew.
In Northern Europe slavery had been destroyed in the 15th century, and was generally abhorred, but it resuscitated with the growth in the trade
In Spain and Portugal, no Christian was allowed to be enslaved: in fact a Papal letter of 1607 forbade enslaving anyone who had been baptized. Still, the Portuguese baptized all their on board the ships from even before that, and continued doing it until the 1800’s…. In fact, every official Portuguese slaver normally had a priest on board to provide Christian lessons to the captives.
This may be an example to us, to our time, that money does, indeed, take precedent over any moral imperative.
I think the known American slave trader Henry Laurens put the prevalence of money over morals very well in 1763: “
I have often wished that our economy and government differed from the present system, but alas, since our constitution is as it is, what can individuals do? Each can act only in his single and disunited capacity, because the sanction of laws gives the stamp of rectitude to the actions of the bulk of the community. If it were to happen that everybody… were to change their sentiments with respect to slavery, and that they should seriously think that the saving of souls was a more profitable event than the adding house to house and laying field to field… those laws which now authorize the custom would be instantly abrogated.”
I often fear that we are no better today…
Slavery was about money. In fact, there was a lot of money in the slave trade (otherwise it would never have taken off!), but it was also risky business: slave revolts, doing business in Africa, storms… the investments were enormous, and while the profits were also good if it went through, loss of a ship could cause serious damage. And in the first years of the slave trade, this was often the case.
Another highly ironic fact was that in many of the nations mostly trading in slaves, it was a highly regulated market, and not the liberalised market it may seem; governments were very involved. In fact, for countries like Spain or Portugal, the trade was a state monopoly, with huge duties and state support. The Spanish would usually sell its monopoly to a company, in a kind of franchise, but for many years such a company was unable to get a profit...
The government control, in particular in Spanish America, cases led to widespread corruption and smuggling.
But business it was, and so, the usual argument came in: goods had to be of good quality, and goods should not be damaged. While one should have no illusion of the barbarities, there was taken care of giving them food and water to survive the trip; in fact, in some of the major slaving countries (particularly Portugal) there was even legislation as to living-space, food and water rations for the captives.
It is thus in another ironic twist of history, that the Liverpool institute of tropical medicine, a leading institution in fighting tropical diseases, was set up because of the desire to equip every slaver with a surgeon, to keep the slaves alive during the journey (note that Liverpool was the biggest slaving port in the world for most of the Transatlantic slave trade and can trace much of its wealth to that period).
Note that this was done not for philanthropy, but for profit. Another paradox of the slave-trade…
This importance of keeping the “goods” in a condition for sales also had the consequence that many captains and officers on board of the ships were provided with “bonuses” for every slave brought in alive. This is another irony: for some years, because of the priority to bring in live slaves, the death rate among crews was higher than among captives. In fact, being among the crew of a slaver was a dangerous and badly paid job. Because of this, in Liverpool, crews formed some of the first unionized labor in the world, demanding better conditions for the workers on the slavers as well as better pay.
Another irony of the slave trade: a shameful trade in humans led to the organization of other men to seek labor justice.
And well, race is always brought forward as the main part of the slave trade: of whites seeing black people as sub-humans. This is indeed how it developed, particularly in the United States, but that is not how it was: just the fact that the Portuguese were baptizing their slaves is an irony to show that they indeed considered them humans souls worthy of a “Christian salvation” through baptism (in spite of the Pope having prohibited baptized Christians from being enslaved), but just not of human freedom….
In fact, slavery had for generations prior to its sickening climax of the transatlantic slave trade, been considered a normal part of life: up until the 16th century slaves were also purchased from Eastern Europe, as well as Moors from Northern Africa, and regularly kept in households in Spain or Portugal. Some were even brought to the Americas. A few of these were blacks, but also some free blacks took part alongside the invasion of the Americas; one of them going with Hernán Cortes on the conquest of the Aztec Empire, even became one of the main landowners in New Spain.
Up until the 19th century Europeans were also kept as slaves in Muslim countries (mainly in the Ottoman Empire), but this just never happened in the systematic “industrialized” way it did in the Americas.
Spain was at first weary of bringing Africans to the Americas. A small authorization was provided for some invaders, but otherwise the locals, the "Indians", were to be used as slaves. Two things influenced this though: one is the well-known Bartolomé de las Casas, who influenced that Indians should not be enslaved (must be mentioned that they were anyway but in name, and in many parts of South America, people who could not afford black slaves, would more or less openly enslave Indians instead), but the other was also the massive death rate of the Indians, and the apparent efficiency of the Africans.
This last is an important factor: the invaders, the Europeans, were looking for profit, and thus, an efficient workforce for their plantations. The "Indian" natives were, besides lack of physical resistance, not comfortable with domestic animals nor as knowledgeable of European agricultural techniques as many of the Africans (of course, depending on where in Africa they came from, but an example is how many Africans from the Senegal-Gambia area were experts at handling horses).
Thus, with time, the horrible industry developed into racial segregation.
Still, many slavers were partly crewed by slaves, as well as freed African. In some countries like Angola or Brazil, trade with time became a monopoly of mulatoes, fruit of white slave captains and slave women, who were raised into cruel experts of the trade. In fact, the entire trade in Angola became a monopoly of mulattoes in the 18th century, and these traded directly with Brazil.
Here must also be mentioned that many Africans became immensely rich from trading their co-Africans for slaves. One worth mentioning was Dahomey, in today’s Benin: The King of Dahomey was at one point estimated to be the richest man in the world, and regularly sold even members of his family to whoever would pay.
Africans must have seemed everything but too eager to sell each other in corrupt bargains or go raiding each other’s families. Seldom did European slavers have to do the “dirty” job of actually capturing people, as plenty of Africans were eager to trade.
Entire empire-states surged in today's Angola, Congo, Senegal, Mali, Ghana, and Nigeria, purely based on selling their fellow African prisoners of war, common criminals and whoever ran out of favor. Ironically, after the slave trade was prohibited by the British, some African leaders complained of the loss of trade, among them the aforementioned King of Dahomey: “
Nothing will compensate me for the loss of the slave trade (…). If I cannot sell my captives taken in war I must kill them, and surely the English would not like that?”
It is an irony of the transatlantic slave trade that immense wealth was created in Europe, Africa and the Americas. While many countries benefitted from the inhuman commerce, Africans and Europeans, only in Europe did the slave trade to what economists would call “economies of scale”.
Some European slavers created quite warm interracial trade relations with their African counterparts to continue this horrific trade. Still, many Europeans, way into the debate on prohibition of the slave trade, tried to justify slavery of Africans with the argument that the Africans were far better off in slavery in the Americas than in the “wretched African freedom.”
Not even the many revolts and suicides on board slavers could convince them otherwise.
Giving altruistic reasons to continue the all-out dehumanization of human beings is something we should perhaps remember today when we want to talk about infringing people’s freedom and rights or accepting torture, “to protect freedom”…
In spite of the before mentioned interest to keep slaves alive and reasonably healthy for subsequent sale, one must never forget that this was a trade on human beings, based on capturing people against their will, and subject them to extreme physical and psychical violence to break their will; to make them docile slaves.
Most slaves were captured in the interior of Africa (In much of the interior it was rumored whites ate blacks: why else would they need so many captives…?), and made to walk to the coast to be traded with Europeans. The treck with these slave caravans could take years, and was where most captives died.
The stronger ones who did survive to be sold to cross the Atlantic ocean were most often already weak and broken…
When this was not the case, rebellious slaves were most often put down with extreme cruelty. Inflicting horrible and painful punishment as an example was widely practiced on every slaver.
“Everyday” life was also full of cruelty: in many plantations in the Americans, and even more so in the mines of Brazil, Perú and Bolivia, slaves were only expected to survive a few years. Children, not deemed a good labor investment were often put to death immediately.
Slaves were all branded with hot irons and beatings, mistreatment and rapes were the order of the day….
The Danes were the first to forbid the slave trade, and the English forbade it shortly after in 1807, which had great importance for the subsequent trade.
Howeverm while they forbid the trade, they didn’t forbid slavery (Britain was the first European power to actually forbid slavery in 1833), and this led to cruel consequences: trade increased! With huge growth of plantation in Cuba, Brazil and the southern USA, demand for African slaves grew, and so did smuggling, although the British tried to put up their fleet to capture slavers.
Another irony was that all seemed to be involved: while the British were prosecuting and putting their fleet after slavers out of business, British traders were eagerly providing cloth for exchanging slaves and banks and insurers were investing on new slave trips from the USA, Cuba and Brazil.
Merchants contributing to the trade is surely something we have learned nothing about today, as multinational companies continue exploiting trade ahead of human rights. These are the direct inheritors of the slave trade.
The British government’s crusade against the slave trade after 1807 also led to fascinating conflicts in international diplomacy, which in many instances resonates today: while some countries continued trading, the British tried to persuade them not to, by threats and incentives. This led to great bitterness of British intervention in other countries' affairs, in some instances worked against the stopping of the trade.
Britain was seen as hypocritical country (everyone knew they still made money on the trade) that wanted to intervene in other countries' affairs behind the smokescreen of stopping slavery.
In spite of some countries associating themselves with the British blockade against slave trade, problems on the sovereign rights of ships emerged: in particular the US was adamant that no ship sailing under US flag should be searched by British - even if these ships were found to be flying the US flag
illegally to avoid British search.
The US flag was more holy than cooperating with other nations in stopping the horrific trade (something the US otherwise agreed on), even if evil men were taking gross advantage of this. Does this sound somewhat familiar today…?
While countries increasingly cooperated on stopping the illegal trade, it took many many years to stop the trade in human beings from Africa to the Americas: Brazil and Cuba only forbade slavery in 1889 and 1886 respectively, and until then, although they had officially stopped trading, smuggling still continued until the end of slavery itself, in particular from Angola to Brazil.
Also, while the transatlantic trade was eventually reduced to be stopped, new markets emerged for the enterprising slave dealers: In the last half of the 19th century, slave trade grew a lot in East Africa, as the Middle East was becoming a lucrative market as trade to the Americas decreased.
Markets have it, also today, with emerging in new places.
The emergence of new slave markets were a contributing factor to a new episode of European imperialism, this time hidden behind the good intentions towards the Africans they had enslaved for centuries: with the American colonies gone and the invention of new medicines making Europeans more resistant to African diseases that had previously held them outside of the continent, Europeans turned their heads to Africa…
While the previous humanitarian argument had been that Africans were better off in slavery in the Americas, the new argument became that Europeans should bring “civilization” to Africa and stop the intra-African slave trade and the trade to the Middle East.
This led to a new era of European conquest and imperialism in Africa (and Asia), where the locals were slaves in everything but in name.
As Rudyard Kipling would famously say arguing for colonialism,
“
Take up the White Man’s burden, Send forth the best ye breed, Go, Bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need”
It must here be added that Kipling said this arguing for US annexation of the Philippines. But it shows the hypocritical excuse of conquering “to save the wretches from themselves”…)
This led to many, many atrocities, killings, continuing the “proud European traditions” from the transatlantic slave trade. Perhaps the most extreme examples of this was the Belgian King Leopold in Congo; while being praised as a philanthropist in Europe, who had taken Congo to bring “civilization” and stop slavery, he in fact largely enslaved the entire country as “indentured labor”, and grossly murdered, destroyed and robbed the Congo’s resources.
Thus, a new era of atrocities was created with the excuse of terminating another atrocity.
And maybe that is also something we should think more about today.
Some countries only forbade slavery very late: Saudi Arabia in 1964 or Mauretania in 1980…
Today, I think everyone agrees on the stopping of slavery, of the shameful horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. This is fine, it was horrible, and should be remembered as such.
But if we are to learn from it and not simply state “it was evil and done by evil people”
It was a system people lived under.
And we must remember this as a system with all its ironies, hypocrisies and contradictions, because this is what we can truly learn from today: these ironies, hypocrisies and contradictions are surely alive and well today.
We need to know and identify them, and maybe our past history can teach us something to help to change them.
