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The
Atlantic Slave Trade
Initiated Globalisation and Its Legacy Lives
By Madge Dresser
President George Bush's
speech in Senegal about the evils of slavery last week has, as
one critic quipped, made Africa and its history
"sexy". About time, too, as Aids, drought, genocide
and poverty threaten not only the continent but the stability of
the world.
But how much of the blame
for Africa's present plight can be laid at the door of slavery?
After all, hasn't slavery in the Americas been illegal since the
1880s and haven't Africans themselves had slaves since time
immemorial?
It's true that African
slavery predates the Atlantic slave trade. However, traditional
systems of domestic slavery - brutal as they could be - were
transformed and intensified on an unprecedented scale as the
internal slave trade also generated an export trade, first
across the Sahara and then across the Atlantic.
As the Portuguese caravel
replaced the Arab caravan, the slave trade was continuously
rationalised for profit and thus made more ruthlessly efficient
than ever.
The history of the Atlantic
slave trade could be characterised as the first bloody essay
into globalisation. For it didn't just involve Africa, but the
Americas, Europe and Asia as well.
Goree, where Bush delivered
his speech, was among the first African slave ports to be drawn
into the Atlantic economy and exemplifies the inherently
international nature of the trade. Variously claimed by the
Portuguese, French, Dutch and British, Goree was supplied by
African warlords with slaves from an increasingly wide range of
peoples from the African interior. These captives began to forge
a more generic "African" identity as they plotted
uprisings against their new commercial masters.
The slave merchants
resident in Goree included both the sons of the business elite
of Bordeaux and the legendary "signoras" of
African-Portuguese descent. They in turn traded slaves and
provisions for East Indian cloth, Swedish iron ore, English guns
and French brandy with the European and American ships that
plied the west African coast.
By the late 18th century,
Goree island had lent its name to the main quay in Liverpool's
new harbour and to a parish of Bristol, Rhode Island, then an
important North American slaving port.
Enslaved Africans not
employed to cultivate crops or service the slave caravans coming
from the east into Goree were fated to be exported across the
Atlantic as plantation labour. It was this hunger for labour
which fed the demand for slavery in the Americas.
If Goree itself saw perhaps
only some 330,000 people cross the "gate of no return"
throughout the 18th century, the most recent estimates put the
total number of enslaved Africans forced onto the New World
between the 1440s and the 1860s at no less than 12 million. This
excludes the untold millions who died en route to the west
African coast nor those who died on the so-called "middle
passage" to America and the Caribbean.
Malcolm X conjured up the
dramatic image of a trail of blood across the Atlantic as slave
ships threw the rebellious and ill to the sharks. This may not
have been literally the case but it contains a metaphorical
truth. For though white crews also suffered from the harsh
discipline and high mortality rates of "the Africa
run," Africans also had to endure the often-unmentioned
horrors of being chained in holds awash with dysentery, and of
being subject to the casual reign of sexual terrorism endemic on
board slave ships.
Ferociously brutal
reprisals were inflicted on any perceived act of
insubordination, including not eating or dancing at the
captain's command. Nor should the psychological impact suffered
by those separated from their families to face a terrifyingly
uncertain future be discounted.
One of the Atlantic slave
trade's most insidious legacies was the way it racialised
slavery. In ancient times when "free labour" was the
exception, anyone from any people could be enslaved. Indeed, the
word slave is said to have come from the Greek word for Slav.
But by the 18th century, slave status was increasingly
associated exclusively with Africans. It was this association
which served to denigrate black people whatever their status.
The racist ideologies of
the early 19th century were thus rooted in the slave trade and
in turn materially affected the fate of Africans everywhere. The
prestige now enjoyed by Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell was
unthinkable until very recently, so enduring has slavery's
impact been on the status of black Americans.
The final charge to be laid
against the Atlantic slave trade is its impact on Africa itself.
Transatlantic slavery encouraged the armed, the predatory, and
the ruthless. It empowered regimes brutal enough to extort taxes
or slaves from their neighbours and engendered the spread of
domestic slavery as increasing numbers of people were needed to
grow crops to feed those slaves awaiting export. Mafia-style
regimes made strong through the arms trade and greedy by the
prospect of easy money flourished at the expense of the peaceful
peasant and communally-run village.
So though transatlantic
slavery is at the root of modern racism, it transcends race. It
epitomises a most exploitative form of globalisation, which has
since resurfaced in new forms. Will the Bush regime help redress
its legacy through fair trade practices and constructive
engagement? Or will Adam Smith's "invisible hand"
still hold the whip?
Madge Dresser is a lecturer at the University of
the West of England. Her recent publications include Slavery
Obscured: the Social History of the Slave Trade in an English
Provincial Port and Squares of Distinction, Webs of Interest.
Source: The Guardian (Thursday July 17, 2003)
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great
Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a
sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi
for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin
was falsely accused of stealing a white
man's turkeys and was almost beaten to
death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling,
a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem
after learning of the grove owners'
plans to give him a "necktie party" (a
lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for
the United States Army and couldn't
operate in his own home town." Anchored
to these three stories is Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's
magnificent, extensively researched
study of the "great migration," the
exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into
the novelistic narratives of Gladney,
Starling, and Pershing settling in new
lands, building anew, and often finding
that they have not left racism behind.
The drama, poignancy, and romance of a
classic immigrant saga pervade this
book, hold the reader in its grasp, and
resonate long after the reading is done.
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 30
October 2011
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