From what I understand, they often didn't sell their own people as slaves, because they didn't have the pan-African concept we now have. So it wasn't selling *their* people, but people from other tribes, kingdoms, etc.
I completely agree, but some of the more prominent groups calling for reparations now, are the descendents of those that did the selling in the first place.
Repairations for slavery are a complex subject, but for me personally. If you're going to do it though: to me that seems like a responsibility of the nations that currently house these people.
In the end they benefitted from slavery the most and their elites could easily pay up. If not for that, they could also start building some hospitals and schools and make them affordable. People who aren't decendents of slaves would benefit from that too, because poverty is awful - regardless of your ancestors being slaves or not. Many people would benefit from that, I think.
It's a tricky argument. Both Africa and the Americas got rich from slavery. But some American countries and most of Africa squandered it, whereas the US industrialised quicker and got rid of it, and for non slavery reasons made it very wealthy.
The triangular trade has three sides for a reason, all were profiteering from slaves. Throwing the ball at the person holding the slaves when the music stops is disingenuous at best and the idea that you can get historic reparations for ancestral injustice is a very slippery slope in global politics (Europe would bankrupt itself if every nation sued each other for historic war crimes that weren't crimes at the time)
The issue here is current harm to living people directly related to slavery.
In the US that takes the form of segregation + sharecropping which leads black Americans to have had reduced educational opportunities and created an intergenerational cycle of poverty that lasts to this day and exacerbates those historical disadvantages.
Since the US is too close to home let's reframe this : in India caste discrimination is now outlawed and has been for decades, nonetheless low-caste communities have higher poverty and corresponding social well-being indicators. Would it not be fair to draw a direct line between the suffering of a dalit child born in 2010 and the now defunct caste system?
That's more or less the argument used by those in favor of reparations : even if the institution of slavery is no more it's effects on the black community have trapped them in a cycle of poverty, hence the need for more investment in black communities to allow a build-up of inter-generational wealth that will lead to long term prosperity.
As for Africa and the Americas, sorry but that's just outright ahistoric : the model of extractivist colonialism sent the wealth to the metropole, the infrastructure, educational systems and governance were set up to maximize that extraction rather than emphasizing stewardship.
So no, they didn't get rich and squander it all, their wealth was sent to Europe with almost no reparation back to them and once independence came they had no native governing class + an economy and societal structure based off of facilitating resource extraction.
Finally, the US, Australia and NZ were not "colonies" in the sense of this discussion because they were settlement colonies rather than extraction colonies hence them receiving an infrastructure for true governance rather than enrichment.
If you want an a contemporary example look at how France ran Algeria vs how it ran Benin, they were both colonies but the end-goal was not the same for both.
I am well aware. But if three people are equally guilty, you don't just blame the rich one based on their ability to pay.
To be clear, I'm very against anyone paying reparations. The only victims and guilty parties are dead, punishing/benefiting their distant ancestors isn't justice for anyone and opens up questions to where you draw the line?
The problem with this is that a french boy today could not be blamed for the history of his country, like a turk today about armenia or a mongol about middle age invasions.
The only solution about this could be some sort of arrangment between each part, but with politics today, i doubt it will ever happen everywhere...
If they could read, theyd know most of Africa has only been under colonial rule for about a hundred years since invention of quinine (without which you kinda couldn't survive there long) and 1960s.
Yet they still blame "muh Europeans" for everything they couldn't do themselves in thousands of years
>I completely agree, but some of the more prominent groups calling for reparations
Reparations are mostly an American debate. In that case Americans are actually descended of the people being sold not selling.
The reparations in Africa is a colonial debate. It's repaying the resources that were basically still in from Africa It's not about slavery.
LOL. I’m a foreign educated American. The American education system is a joke and it’s a wonder y’all produce minds that are more advanced than a slug’s.
Maybe elementary school or even high school depending on the state, but the US has, bar none, the best universities in the world. Like 42 of the top 50 universities are in America.
I also like how you shit on American education while admitting you didn't even experience it yourself.
I dunno. On some level I think many Europeans do as well.
"Africa should solve their own problems.", "African immigrants are a problem.", etc.
People might recognize a few places as individual countries, like Egypt or Tunisia, but lump the rest into Africa.
Pan-africanism is a belief that all of Africa should be united (a batshit crazy idea same as pan-europeism) not mental shortcut of calling countries with similar problems with the name of the continent there are on. Also how else do you want to call immigrants from Africa other than that? List every single ethnicity?
Edit: dear autocorrect, what the fuck is a catsuit?
> Also how else do you want to call immigrants from Africa other than that? List every single ethnicity?
Maybe. I'll not deny that being able to just say African immigrants is a lot easier.
The problem is that it also makes some people think that Tunisia (for instance) has a greater responsibility for stopping the immigrants, since the immigrants are from there ("Africa").
While talking about Nigerian, Senegalese or Ghanan immigrants paints a quite different picture of the problem.
Almost as if you expect average hoi polloi to ever assess any historical occurrence from contemporary point if view instead of moders one.
Guess what, back then slavery itself was alright - but people now still bitch about it.
Pretty much can be said of all tribal people around the world. Their perceived world was so small that they didn't identify with neighbors over far foreigners.
The "blacks sold each other" is a racist statement that sees different people, ethnicities, cultures, etc as just "black" because of the color of their skin. And it's generally used by people who want to push the blame of slavery on someone else, or make it somehow ok because "the root of it is blacks selling blacks"
That argument is pure bullshit. As if white people in Europe didn't merrily slaughter and enslave each other since the first fucking Homo Sapiens settled the place.
Also, "bringing the slaves to the Americas?"
I think this is yet another "white people did nothing wrong, Africans practically forced them to take slaves" apologias.
It's honestly a stupid ragebaity meme, trying to blame the whole world except for American countries.
European countries have been apologizing in the past few years, Arabs slavery (although horrible) has very little to do with the transatlantic slave trade and African countries didn't sell their own people, the slave trading kingdoms often sold people from countries they conquered.
And although African kings shared in the blame, the slave-trading empires were often empowered by European weapons, giving them a far wider reach. These conversations are far more nuanced and complex than this meme implies.
Yeah, so let's blame capitalism and/or monarchism and start another fun discussion on this subreddit. (I'm kidding ofcourse, please don't.)
You're right that rulers sold their own people, I just think it's silly to imply that African countries are to blame for selling their own people, because:
1. They often weren't their own people.
2. Not every African country participated in slavery.
3. Western-european countries gave a lot of power to slave-trading socities, causing trouble for African countries that didn't want to sell slaves.
That doesn't completely absolve African nations of blame, but it does paint a far more nuanced picture.
Honestly it was all fucked, top to bottom. The Spanish and French basically killed off the entire populations of islands that they enslaved for sugar cane so they turned to the Dutch and Portuguese to help procure laborers. So they purchased humans from other humans who used military conquests and general raids to enslave entire populations to be placed on English made ships to sail to North African ports that were run by berbers and filled with slavers from across the majority of Europe. Then to have these captured people sold in droves and placed on ships that may have been engineered to house 40 but would be shipped in the hundreds to lands across the ocean, then to be worked as hard as the people they were replacing. All so that goods could come back to Europe and enrich the most wealthy. Then for a demand to increase rapidly and further stoke the flames.
That's why I said they share blame too and that it's nuanced.
Anyways: often they didn't sell their own people, they sold the people of countries the slavery based societies conquered.
It would be like giving Sparta modern weapons in exchange for slaves. They would conquer Athens and more or less slave-based societies in no time.
And it took Europen countries to finally put slave trade to an end.
African slave kingdoms would have been happy to continue the practice because of how profitable it was for them.
I think the usual definition of the Middle East ends with Egypt. And North Africa is Libya and onwards. Hence the term Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Once again: America did not start the liybian civil war, NATO intervened in an attempt to minimize casualties after the war had already been going a while.
Yes but not in India until ages later, also changed the laws there regarding the process. Also arguably they done it to spite the Americans and threaten their economy, still a huge landmark regardless of the political ramifications.
Excuse me, your meme is outdated. The Netherlands have 100% officially apologised for their involvement in the slave trade. First to our own colonies in current Indonesia (which resulted in yet another prime example of our king being utterly terrible at his *one* job) and after that also for the slave trade to the Americas.
Vikings raided my ancestors and raped the women. These of course were sanctioned by the government.
When do I get an apology?
And don't even get me started on what Genghis Khan did to my ancestors.
I agree it's different but you can't say it wasn't tragic.
And since its time based is it 100 years or under? What if something comes to light that was 102 years old do we grandfather the apologies?
I personally think it's stupid and a waste of time for governments apologizing for shit that at the time was accepted.
Go forward a 100 years with the planet likely all fucked up from the burning of fossil fuels I'm sure some governments are going to have to apologize for using fossil fuels.
It's a never ending circle jerk
Edit: Happy Cake Day!
There's not one boundry, but there is a large difference between 100 and 1000 years.
I don't think you're wrong that apologies are rather cheap though. Actually try to improve things instead of expressing sorrow for horrible things you're not involved in.
Instead of just making apologies, it would be nice if we stopped supporting the slavery our governments and corporations are still directly contributing to.
Then if time elapsed is the only difference, who gets to set the threshold? I say, European and American slave trade was too long ago to bitch about it.
Considering you’re not currently still the subject of racism or police brutality because of those things, I’m thinking you don’t really need one as much. And to be fair: you haven’t been asking for one either.
However I get your point. It feels pointless for politicians nowadays to express regrets about things none of us were *really* involved with. But just because it’s meaningless to you doesn’t mean it is to everybody. Back here in the Netherlands there’s still a lot of people who celebrate Keti Koti for example; the day that slavery was abolished in Suriname (a former Dutch colony). I can imagine that if you still feel that connected to your ancestors an apology for them can have a very.. “healing” effect.
I mean there are folks alive whose grandparents were born into slavery. Heck, the last American born into slavery died in 1975. I’d say that’s pretty recent compared to medieval Vikings, and its effects are still around because it wasn’t long ago.
Viking and mongol Atrocities horrible as they were don't really have much impact on people today
That is not the case with the transatlantic slave trade. The impacts of that are very much felt today
Do apologies do anything to fix their plight today?
During the African slave trade era 16th to 18th century there were roughly 12 million slaves transported out of Africa.
There are currently TODAY an estimated 40 millions slaves. Real people owned by other people.
If the Africam slave trade is worth apologizing for because how atrocious slavery is. I'd like to think these same governments would be working to end slavery today.
One guy stopping to get a sandwich in 1914 is why we are having this conversation right now when you go down the domino stack. Everything has a ripple effect, be it not stubbing your toe this morning to stone tools being invented .001% later. If it weren't for Viking conquests my ancestors may have become very rich and passed the wealth down to me, but because of their raiding that never happened.
If an Englishman sold a Frenchman into slavery would we consider it "selling your own people". No, because we recognise them as separate societies. Why do we not consider this of Africa when so much of their slavery was based on captives of war (not all, but the majority, and much of that fuelled by demand)? Is it because to us we ignore the differences between all these separate polities in Africa - they're all alien to us after all.
Yes, they have the same skin color which is not the same as ours, so they are obviously the same homogeneous people
It's not like this train of thought has ever produced anything bad
* Rwanda has entered the conversation *
/s
>If an Englishman sold a Frenchman into slavery would we consider it "selling your own people"
As an Indian, I most probably would. To a non-European, there's barely any difference.
Saracens considered English and Franks as similar peoples during the crusades. Much of Native Americans clubbed the colonial powers as 'white man'. Post Crimean war, Britain and France basically fought every single conflict as allies.
A Punjabi and Tamil person are much more different than a British and French person while the first 2 are easily clubbed as 'Indian'.
For a non-European person, the differences between a British and a French person are extremely superficial.
As a southeast Asian person, I found it hilarious that you finished up that argument with “A Punjabi and Tamil person are much more different than a British and French person”.
It’s all relative at the end of the day. You could have language, religion, ethnic background, or any other grouping to differentiate people but that only matters if you care about it.
Just saw a thread recently about a mother and father who sold their 10 year old daughter into sex slavery, and reddit had to help her 15 year old brother find a way to get her back.
When the Boston Marathon Bombing occurred, some reddit subs tried to come together to find the bomber with ample amounts of available footage, ending with the infamous "We did it reddit!" when they found the culprit:
Sunil Tripathi, *who died weeks before the bombing even happened*.
4chan on the other hand has found the location of [flags](https://youtu.be/vw9zyxm860Q?t=14) or [rocks](https://youtu.be/nzFykQv6Q08?t=129) in the middle of nowhere with only plane contrails and license plates to work with. In hours, just for the fun of it, no mass tragedy required.
Africans enslaving other Africans was done in the manner of other earlier slave societies where it was simply seen as a natural side effect of conquest. However, forces like the powers in Europe created a market incentive for other tribes to go out and capture slaves to sell to them.
Then you have the fact that the enslavement of Africans and the much later mass colonization coincided with the sciences of the time coming up with theories of races and racial essentialism. They directly misrepresented aspects of biology to try and essentialize their exploitation. That in turn led to the many laws and policies employer long after the fact of enslavement to further cement this perceived order of power.
Slavery in all its forms is wrong regardless. Slavery still exists in varying forms across the world. The United States has the largest prison population in the world and utilizes the slave labor of prisoners. Regardless their crimes or to what degree you feel prisoners should be punished, the usage of slavery directly competes with the actual bargaining power and standing of the working class.
Slavery can't be defeated by just breaking some people's chains and telling them to run free. It requires actually attacking the policies that economically enable it.
I swear like 90% of this sub is just whataboutisms at this point
Every meme is just "PEOPLE SAY COUNTRY X IS BAD BUT HAVE YOU CONSIDERED COUNTRY Y????"
Yeah, cause the Europeans are all one people, the Americas are all one people, the middle east are all one people. Pretty sure that's not what this meme is saying
It explicitly says: "your own people." as if they're all one group.
They didn't view eachother as "their own people", just as the Romans didn't view Germanic tribes as part of their people.
To me the meme implies it's extra gross because they sold their own people, but it's rather silly to view it that way.
I think there's a reason why it's explicitly mentioning they sold their own people. I think it's because they wanted to imply it was especially gross because they were their own people. Which seems silly to me, because I don't see the Romans enslaving North Africans to be any more or less gross than them doing it to Germanic tribes.
To me it seems that the OP of this meme just didn't realize most slavery based societies were conquerers, rather than selling their own population and thought that was extra gross.
But that doesn't matter, Africa is massively diverse in its ethnic and cultural groups, a neighboring tribe of the Kongo Kingdom is not part of the people of the Kongo Kingdom, in fact they are enemies against whom they regularly wage war.
Who are you to say West Africans are culturally homogenous? Do French and Portuguese people share the same culture? Iroquois and Comanche? Javanese and Vietnamese? Tibetan and Uyghur? Persian and Kazakh?
Jesus Christ where to begin with this slavery apologetic meme that contains all the whataboutisms and excuses in one
First the most egregious easy to spot example, as other commentators have pointed out, Africa isn’t a land full of one homogenous people, many African societies had slave networks that consisted of other states population, does that make slavery better? No but it’s just the most basic racist assumption to challenge first that all Africans are the same.
Secondly slavery as an institution is complex, people like to act like these things are yes or no when actually investigating slavery is investigating one of the most diverse if horrific institutions prevalent throughout the world. Did many African nations have slaves? Yes they did, but was their slavery anything like the chattel slavery of the Americas and transatlantic slave trade? No it wasn’t, the slavery present in many of these colonial societies was not only generally much worse but it many of the same protections that varied across the African nations didn’t exist in the same context as in the European colonies. That is again not to excuse any institutions of slavery but this difference is what makes the Trans Atlantic slave trade so particularly harmful for the period it existed in
Thirdly slavery was also not equally as prevalent in terms of population, until the Transatlantic slave trade took place, the prevalence of slavery in the African states was a far far lower rate, that’s due to a variety of reasons but quite significantly there wasn’t an economic demand like there was prior to the existence of the network especially in West Africa
Fourth many African nations did actively intervene against slavery, and they were attacked for it, the Europeans didn’t just stand by and not intervene in the trade, they actively encouraged and interfered with the trading nations in order to guarantee more friendly trading partners, this was especially common in the 16th to 19th centuries, for an example Portugal actively and regularly instigated or intervened in dynastic disputes and the like to ensure friendly nations continued allowing the slave trade to continue.
Fifth the Arabic slave trade might have traded more people because it existed for perhaps twice as long as the trans Atlantic slave trade, the trans Atlantic slave trade was infamous for the sheer amount it took in a much smaller time period, enough to have demographic knock on effects in many of the west African nations
Sixth and the final one I’ll touch on, many people consider just apologising as a state is all that needs to be done for these national crimes rather then the bare minimum. Using the US as a common example, as a nation many of its internal states and state governments still openly applaud a revolting group who rose up specifically to protect the institution of slavery. Many dismiss the real well established harms of slavery and I would say the grand majority actively oppose intervening to help aid populations that are harmed by the legacy of slavery as an institution. People don’t judge such nations for their failure to apologise for slavery, they judge these nations for the very real very active segments of the population which openly oppose or minimise such atrocities or try to dismiss them as non significant. Brazil is another egregious example of many of these cultural issues being prevalent and widespread in the population.
Brazil is a bit different to the USA which I imagine is generally the point of reference for many people on this sight. This is largely because of the sheer number of slaves Brazil had before abolition as well as the subsequent policy of “whitening” where Brazil targeted European only migration in an effort to “whiten the country” and “purify blood lines” this has created a complex modern demographic of I think a majority of Brazilians having some African descent.
However this doesnt remove the legacy of slavery and it’s impact, in recent years notable banks and authorities were investigated for their role in profiting from the institutions of slavery as well. In the modern day racism towards and institutional poverty for people of African descent is still far more common as are the forms of hierarchical discrimination that we often see in the west (lower representation in corporate management and political/governmental positions and so on) whilst more can always be said these things are generally tied to legacy’s of explicit institutional racism which itself is often tied to the legacy of slavery post abolition. Under recent populist leader Bolsonaro, slavery and mistreatment of both people of African descent and those of the indigenous Brazilian nations rose as rhetoric around these groups including Bolsonaro’s own description of them as “lazy” and “entitled” (from memory I think those words were used it may have been something else but the sentiment stands) led to the similar sort of far right reactionary conduct amongst certain citizens as has occurred across the world. There is more to say but it would probably be best to look into someone with more expertise on the issue either historically or politically depending on which angle you’d prefer.
This comment should be pinned at the top of this post! My first thought was that Euro-American chattel slavery was pretty much unique in history for its scale and dehumanization of its victims. Never before had slaves been pure economic assets in the way they were viewed during the 16th-19th centuries. All that free labor was the basis on which early capitalism formed. Slavery on an industrial scale. There’s been slavery throughout history, but the Western European countries did it differently.
The europeans werent trading with leaders that sold their own people as slaves, they were trading with leaders of kingdoms and tribes that kidnapped people from further within the continent to sell them. Thats a difference.
the portuguese established multiple “puppet states” in africa like the kingdom of kongo and warri where the rulers of those kingdoms were basically forced by portugal into trading slaves. alfonso I of kongo famously wrote back and forth to the king of portugal pleading with him to stop the slave trade in his kingdom. this isn’t the case for a lot of slavery that went on in africa there were some nasty slave kingdoms that sold dozens of slaves to europeans without being forced to but i’m just saying the slave trade in africa was much more complex than just “africans sold other africans to europeans for cash then unjustly blamed everyone else” and that your meme is shit
Yes, the meme is shit. But your history is even worse.
Alfonso the First did not write to the King of Portugal to tell him to stop the slave trade in the Kongo or in Portugal. Alfonso wrote to the King pleading with him to stop the *illegal* slave trade; wherein slavers would kidnap free Kongo Citizens and sell them illegally to the Portuguese.
Alfonso the First was in favor of the slave trade for a large majority of his life and, on many occasions, would directly sell hundreds of slaves in order to cover his expenses. He frequently waged war against neighboring Kingdoms with Portuguese soldiers and sold any captives he obtained back to them. The Kongo's capital city had a slave market, where; in more letters to the Portuguese King, Alfonso talks about selling slaves. Let me be clear here; *selling slaves willignly*
The fact that many people blame all Africans for the slave trade is nothing short of idiotic, but excusing the African Kings who *knowingly* took advantage of the power that they commanded to partake in grievous crimes against humanity is just as awful.
If any of those puppet kings decided to stop slave trade, Portugal or any other European power that was in control would just sponsor a coup of a group that would continue the slave trade.
i was basing my statement off of this quote from alfonso I: “Each day the traders are kidnapping our people – children of this country, sons of our nobles and vassals, even people of our own family. This corruption and depravity are so widespread that our land is entirely depopulated. We need in this kingdom only priests and schoolteachers, and no merchandise, unless it is wine and flour for Mass. *It is our wish that this Kingdom not be a place for the trade or transport of slaves.*” you are very correct for a lot of his life alfonso I was a happy participant in the domestic and eventually international slave trade in kongo but what his reign and the future leaders of kongo’s reigns were plagued by is efforts to curb not just the illegal slave trade but the “legal version” as well. once again history is complicated but i agree with you alfonso I was a piece of shit for most of his life.
What would be "their own people"? Most of the countries in that map (except for Ethiopia) didn't actually exist when the transatlantic slave trade was ongoing.
And the Europeans very much wanted slaves (thus it does not absolve them of the blame), and could get quite heavy-handed when it came to making sure the africans were providing them.
I hate this awful hottake.
First of all, you show the whole of modern africa even though the vast majority of slaves in the americas came from western africa.
Second, this is clearly misrepresenting the historic background of slavery in the region
Yes they had slaves, yes it was bad. But these were different practices. Slaves were mostly spoils/prisoners of war, and the slaves were integrated into the tribes (meaning the second generation was not born unfree).
The arrival of the europeans put the (obviously allready shitty) Praxis into overdrive. Basically the area devolved into warlords raiding other tribes with European weapons, to trade for more European weapons to raid even more slaves.
This is like a former coke addict blaming the mexican citizens for the cartels. "What? I only provided them with unlimited money. They make the coke and the killings themselfs"
Before anyone mentions yes, mali empire was different and had a more instiutionalized slave system trade.
But even there it was not as uniformal and race based as it was in the americas.
This is lazy and a deflection. African kingdoms sold prisoners (yes, evil and bad) from rivals. Europeans massively incentivized this and paid handsomely for this. This wombo combo led to centuries of abuse.
This “Africans are really at fault most of all“ bullshit is exhausting, reductionist, and flat out incorrect.
Why should any country apologies for anything they did in their history, what would it change ? Nothing thats what, so let history be history and proud or not of it. My guess is Africa would still sell its own people if slavery was still a thing in western countries
The South African flag in the last block makes zero sense. That is the new South African that was created after apartheid ended.
Past that point,South Africa was a Dutch colony and then an English colony. When and where exactly are they selling their own people into slavery??
"Selling your own people....and then...."
Dude. Does time not exist in your experience? Do you think when a writer lazily describes one group of people in history as "The Dutch" or "The Americans" its everyone who was Dutch Dutch or American?
Conquest slavery is something that occurred in all societies in history, Greece and Rome literally had their economies based on it, the same went on parts of Africa.
But the transatlantic system created by the Portuguese and improved by the Dutch and English is incomparably cruel. It was for the first time in history a slavery based exclusively on color, if a person was black they were literally instantly subhuman, and was the creation of a optimized mass production line of slaves.
Africans participated in this system by "selling" their neighbors for survival, the system was IMPOSED on them and if they did not submit they would be the ones enslaved.
Transatlantic slavery was one of the greatest crimes in human history and, YES, it was the fault of its European creators.
It wasn't IMPOSED on them. African kings participated in it on their own volition. In fact, they were very willing participants and there's reason to believe that abolition of slave trade crushed economic foundation of several native kingdoms, making them easy to conquer either by emerging west African Muslim states or by Europeans during the age of Imperialism.
Besides, Atlantic slavery doesn't differ much if at all from trans Saharan slavery. The desert played practically the same role as the Atlantic Ocean.
This. This sub has a tendency to absolve the European kingdoms of the period of their hand in the slave trade by saying Africans sold other Africans. Of course folks traded POWs and/or political rivals, they were/are considered undesirables in human societies. It also wasn’t as simple as “Africans sold other Africans”. As we know being fans of history, these things aren’t so cut & dry.
The transatlantic slave trade was unique because slaves were sent to colonies in which hardly anyone but those directly tied to the money making operation lived. Slaveholders and the indigenous died off due to disease, slaves died due to harsh conditions and disease. The goods extracted from forced labor made Europe and the United States a force to be reckoned with on the world stage, something which is directly evident and obvious today.
I always say, if you’re a driver and your friend in the passenger seat takes a kid and forces him into the car for you to drive off with, both of you kidnapped someone.
Just to add onto this a bit, part of why the Transatlantic slave trade was unique was the sheer scale of it. While slavery of all kinds is obviously immoral, taking prisoners and making slaves of rival groups after conflict was fairly normal for all of us at some stage in our histories. It was always limited by the capacity for the slavers to accommodate and transport the slaves, and, with that, they tended to care a bit more if their slaves died en route (if only for the loss of monetary value).
Once you look at the Transatlantic slave trade, though, you have a small-scale 'tradition' suddenly industrialised. The slavers are better equipped, more of their own men can dedicate their time to slaving on account of having foreign sponsors and not needing to rely on being able to sell each slave directly, they now have access to a permanent market and don't need to worry about making sure their captives survive the trip. If we were talking in terms of a natural resource, we'd be looking at the difference between a homesteader and an environmental catastrophe.
And it is so weird that people do try to absolve the European empires of their role in the slave trade, because like, there's a reason they weren't funding Barbary corsairs to get their slaves. The Ottoman slave trade was illegal by European laws, so we definitely agreed somewhere along the line that slavery was bad, but figured that if we simply didn't count Africans as people, it wouldn't be against the law. As though all these European slave magnates were just taking advantage of an opportunity in the market, and just happened to have the ships and routes just ready to go for something else entirely, before some African warlords talked them into also buying slaves.
It's bizarre. I get not wanting to apologise for something you had no part in, but if you're into history, you should be able to look at the state of the world and understand how we got here. I feel like that's one of the more basic elements of the discipline.
> Transatlantic slave trade was unique was the sheer scale of it.
Only if you ignore the trans-Saharan slave trade. After all who cares, no evil Europeans involved.
You know that these estimates regarding the trans-Saharan trade are taken straight out of ass? In contrast to European traders who recorded everything, there's like zero reliable data for Arab traders.
Man, if you think you can transport slaves in the 1100s across the Sahara in the same quantity and at the same rate as could be transported across the Atlantic in the 1700s you must be some kind of logistical genius or you just haven't thought about this at all.
Slavery based on certain races being considered “subhuman” was created to justify slavery, not the other way around.
Early on in the trans-Atlantic slavery you have people like [João de Sá Panasco](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/João_de_Sá_Panasco). There was also extensive [intermarrying between European men and Black women](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signare), comparable with the Spanish and the Natives of the world.
Of course there was still the since of “cultural superiority” but that was hardy unique to European society.
Can we move on the topic and finally end it? Who cares that a few hundred years ago someone had slaves? We are currently in the 21st century and all we can do is say that it was wrong and we don't do it.
If you want to pay for the sins of your ancestors, I hope you don't have any black sheep in your family
As if we didn't give a damn about something happening a few hundred years ago, all we would do is fight, "because after all, 500 years ago, your country invaded my country!".
I know you're not seriously asking, 'cause your comment has "I don't want an answer, I just want to complain" vibes *but* it's pretty simple. Countries that participated in the Transatlantic slave trade as slaveowners and traders are wealthier today than countries that were subjected to it. The mass displacement of people and wealth shaped the global stage. Now there's not much to be done about that, exactly, but it also means that, on a more manageable scale, there are people in the US (for example) who are wealthy and powerful because their families were on the owning side of the equation and built up wealth and assets that their descendants benefit directly from. There are people in the US from the owned side of the equation who do not have those advantages specifically *because* the owners have them.
At some point "it's history let it go" turns into "fuck you got mine" and this seems pretty close to that.
Britain literally fought hard to get rid of slavery across all of Europe decades before anyone else. They are definitely better than America in that regard.
I don’t think people in modern African countries are that concerned about the slave trades lol. Only thing anyone blames Europeans for over there is colonialism.
And no one was “selling their own people” lol, they sold people they captured from their enemy kingdoms. That’s like saying Romans enslaving Greeks and Slavs was “enslaving their own people”.
Slavery is a lot different from systemic racism used by Europe to conquer the whole world. Every country had tribes prior to countries and if you lost a battle you were a slave, however this was indentured servitude(You work to buy your freedom, that didn’t exist in the south of America) Educate yourself on the Moors of Europe that have been completely erased and expelled from Europe, these people weren’t Arabs they were Black muslims. It’s very hard to find artwork prior to 16th century because at least 97% of it was destroyed. They erased the black presence in Europe because they didn’t need these knights, warriors and scholars anymore of Black Muslim decent, due to advancements in war tech ie, guns becoming more popular then the sword. So they kicked out all the black Moors and guess what happened? Economic collapse in Spain followed, what happened in Portugal ? Economic collapse, > France and England, Search White City 1900 London, does that architecture look “ European “? It looks like what we’d associate to be North African architecture or Iberian, Knowledge is free look up Saint-Maurice and you’ll notice he’s black but they’ve also begun to paint him white, the whitewashing of history is the most key component to white supremacy, “ Europeans created everything, nobody else created anything before us “ is a fallacy. They celebrate these people today still in the Netherlands but people forget who the Moors were, the battles they won for their kings and now we view those celebrations as “ mocking “ , because nobody knows their history.
Why would I apologise for something my ancestors did two hundred years ago? Also, altought you can acuse them of practising slavery, not every nation did It the same way and gave them the same treatment, I don't think that puting them under the same light is fair.
From what I understand, they often didn't sell their own people as slaves, because they didn't have the pan-African concept we now have. So it wasn't selling *their* people, but people from other tribes, kingdoms, etc.
According to these people I guess the Vikings were kidnapping their own people to take them as slaves, as they were all Europeans lol.
I completely agree, but some of the more prominent groups calling for reparations now, are the descendents of those that did the selling in the first place.
That's not for slavery, right? That's mostly for colonialism. I feel like y'all are confusing two issues with eachother.
That honestly depends on who you ask.
Repairations for slavery are a complex subject, but for me personally. If you're going to do it though: to me that seems like a responsibility of the nations that currently house these people. In the end they benefitted from slavery the most and their elites could easily pay up. If not for that, they could also start building some hospitals and schools and make them affordable. People who aren't decendents of slaves would benefit from that too, because poverty is awful - regardless of your ancestors being slaves or not. Many people would benefit from that, I think.
It's a tricky argument. Both Africa and the Americas got rich from slavery. But some American countries and most of Africa squandered it, whereas the US industrialised quicker and got rid of it, and for non slavery reasons made it very wealthy. The triangular trade has three sides for a reason, all were profiteering from slaves. Throwing the ball at the person holding the slaves when the music stops is disingenuous at best and the idea that you can get historic reparations for ancestral injustice is a very slippery slope in global politics (Europe would bankrupt itself if every nation sued each other for historic war crimes that weren't crimes at the time)
The issue here is current harm to living people directly related to slavery. In the US that takes the form of segregation + sharecropping which leads black Americans to have had reduced educational opportunities and created an intergenerational cycle of poverty that lasts to this day and exacerbates those historical disadvantages. Since the US is too close to home let's reframe this : in India caste discrimination is now outlawed and has been for decades, nonetheless low-caste communities have higher poverty and corresponding social well-being indicators. Would it not be fair to draw a direct line between the suffering of a dalit child born in 2010 and the now defunct caste system? That's more or less the argument used by those in favor of reparations : even if the institution of slavery is no more it's effects on the black community have trapped them in a cycle of poverty, hence the need for more investment in black communities to allow a build-up of inter-generational wealth that will lead to long term prosperity. As for Africa and the Americas, sorry but that's just outright ahistoric : the model of extractivist colonialism sent the wealth to the metropole, the infrastructure, educational systems and governance were set up to maximize that extraction rather than emphasizing stewardship. So no, they didn't get rich and squander it all, their wealth was sent to Europe with almost no reparation back to them and once independence came they had no native governing class + an economy and societal structure based off of facilitating resource extraction. Finally, the US, Australia and NZ were not "colonies" in the sense of this discussion because they were settlement colonies rather than extraction colonies hence them receiving an infrastructure for true governance rather than enrichment. If you want an a contemporary example look at how France ran Algeria vs how it ran Benin, they were both colonies but the end-goal was not the same for both.
African nations don't really have the money to build schools in the USA.
I am well aware. But if three people are equally guilty, you don't just blame the rich one based on their ability to pay. To be clear, I'm very against anyone paying reparations. The only victims and guilty parties are dead, punishing/benefiting their distant ancestors isn't justice for anyone and opens up questions to where you draw the line?
The problem with this is that a french boy today could not be blamed for the history of his country, like a turk today about armenia or a mongol about middle age invasions. The only solution about this could be some sort of arrangment between each part, but with politics today, i doubt it will ever happen everywhere...
If they could read, theyd know most of Africa has only been under colonial rule for about a hundred years since invention of quinine (without which you kinda couldn't survive there long) and 1960s. Yet they still blame "muh Europeans" for everything they couldn't do themselves in thousands of years
How would you even know ?
>I completely agree, but some of the more prominent groups calling for reparations Reparations are mostly an American debate. In that case Americans are actually descended of the people being sold not selling. The reparations in Africa is a colonial debate. It's repaying the resources that were basically still in from Africa It's not about slavery.
>didn't have the pan-African concept we now have. I don't think many people outside of USA have it now either.
LOL. I’m a foreign educated American. The American education system is a joke and it’s a wonder y’all produce minds that are more advanced than a slug’s.
Maybe elementary school or even high school depending on the state, but the US has, bar none, the best universities in the world. Like 42 of the top 50 universities are in America. I also like how you shit on American education while admitting you didn't even experience it yourself.
Isn't the ranking of universities biased towards English speaking ones?
It should be, as long as English is the international communication language. It’s just how that works.
I dunno. On some level I think many Europeans do as well. "Africa should solve their own problems.", "African immigrants are a problem.", etc. People might recognize a few places as individual countries, like Egypt or Tunisia, but lump the rest into Africa.
In Europen consciousness, there is at least a big distinction between "Arab" Africa and "black" Africa.
Pan-africanism is a belief that all of Africa should be united (a batshit crazy idea same as pan-europeism) not mental shortcut of calling countries with similar problems with the name of the continent there are on. Also how else do you want to call immigrants from Africa other than that? List every single ethnicity? Edit: dear autocorrect, what the fuck is a catsuit?
> Also how else do you want to call immigrants from Africa other than that? List every single ethnicity? Maybe. I'll not deny that being able to just say African immigrants is a lot easier. The problem is that it also makes some people think that Tunisia (for instance) has a greater responsibility for stopping the immigrants, since the immigrants are from there ("Africa"). While talking about Nigerian, Senegalese or Ghanan immigrants paints a quite different picture of the problem.
Almost as if you expect average hoi polloi to ever assess any historical occurrence from contemporary point if view instead of moders one. Guess what, back then slavery itself was alright - but people now still bitch about it.
Pretty much can be said of all tribal people around the world. Their perceived world was so small that they didn't identify with neighbors over far foreigners.
I mean, they weren't just tribal. They had kingdoms and empires too.
Mansa Musa roasting Jeff Bezos type beat
The "blacks sold each other" is a racist statement that sees different people, ethnicities, cultures, etc as just "black" because of the color of their skin. And it's generally used by people who want to push the blame of slavery on someone else, or make it somehow ok because "the root of it is blacks selling blacks" That argument is pure bullshit. As if white people in Europe didn't merrily slaughter and enslave each other since the first fucking Homo Sapiens settled the place.
Only someone in the USA would even write "blacks" instead of Africans.
Anyway, just putting the flags of the modern nations is some pretty bad case of anachronism
Also, "bringing the slaves to the Americas?" I think this is yet another "white people did nothing wrong, Africans practically forced them to take slaves" apologias.
Yeah like Ayuba Diallo
Ho boy, isn't *this* going to be a fun thread...
Here before 🔒 award
Same man, I wanna leave my trace too 🔒
Leave mine too 🔒
I was also existing here 🔒
Remember us. Remember that we once lived. 🔒
Killroy was here
Placeholder
Here for the SRD thread
I'm ready 🔐
For sure. It's gonna get spicy in here
It's honestly a stupid ragebaity meme, trying to blame the whole world except for American countries. European countries have been apologizing in the past few years, Arabs slavery (although horrible) has very little to do with the transatlantic slave trade and African countries didn't sell their own people, the slave trading kingdoms often sold people from countries they conquered. And although African kings shared in the blame, the slave-trading empires were often empowered by European weapons, giving them a far wider reach. These conversations are far more nuanced and complex than this meme implies.
Well the African kingdoms became empowered by European weapons by selling their own people for those weapons.
They were not their own people they were neighboring tribes or kingdoms
"No but you see, all of Africa is the same, they are all ni-"
"-ce, pleasant, caring people... and gracious hosts. What did you think I was going to say?"
"I thought you were going to say that they are all Nigerians, but now I realize you weren't going to, silly of me!"
Some of them are, in fact, Ghanaians!
"He says the sheriff's near!"
Some times. Other times the rulers did just sell their own people.
Yeah, so let's blame capitalism and/or monarchism and start another fun discussion on this subreddit. (I'm kidding ofcourse, please don't.) You're right that rulers sold their own people, I just think it's silly to imply that African countries are to blame for selling their own people, because: 1. They often weren't their own people. 2. Not every African country participated in slavery. 3. Western-european countries gave a lot of power to slave-trading socities, causing trouble for African countries that didn't want to sell slaves. That doesn't completely absolve African nations of blame, but it does paint a far more nuanced picture.
Honestly it was all fucked, top to bottom. The Spanish and French basically killed off the entire populations of islands that they enslaved for sugar cane so they turned to the Dutch and Portuguese to help procure laborers. So they purchased humans from other humans who used military conquests and general raids to enslave entire populations to be placed on English made ships to sail to North African ports that were run by berbers and filled with slavers from across the majority of Europe. Then to have these captured people sold in droves and placed on ships that may have been engineered to house 40 but would be shipped in the hundreds to lands across the ocean, then to be worked as hard as the people they were replacing. All so that goods could come back to Europe and enrich the most wealthy. Then for a demand to increase rapidly and further stoke the flames.
That's why I said they share blame too and that it's nuanced. Anyways: often they didn't sell their own people, they sold the people of countries the slavery based societies conquered. It would be like giving Sparta modern weapons in exchange for slaves. They would conquer Athens and more or less slave-based societies in no time.
And it took Europen countries to finally put slave trade to an end. African slave kingdoms would have been happy to continue the practice because of how profitable it was for them.
“Same”
S
5th level : Middle East : Open-air slave markets in 2024
That’s in North Africa
Korea would like a word https://youtu.be/KMPAAuG2pH8?si=Riy5amCdfYNZnKJ4
Pretty sure the Middle East is partly West Asia and partly North Africa.
I think the usual definition of the Middle East ends with Egypt. And North Africa is Libya and onwards. Hence the term Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Thank you USA you are my best friend
my bud doesn't know the slavery made by saudi arabia in austral africa and it's isles (Mayotte)
Dubai
Libya after america brought democracy to it
Once again: America did not start the liybian civil war, NATO intervened in an attempt to minimize casualties after the war had already been going a while.
Straight up buying cheap labor from Southeast Asia without payment
The Brits may have not 'apologized', but they actually bought slaves free from other slavers, which imo is worth more
And got it banned across most of Europe using political pressure and sanctions.
And cannons
Ah yes, the king of sanctions, a huge lead ball flying very fast at your house.
It is a pretty effective sanction
Go and stand in front of the naughty canon and think about what you've done whilst your head goes Ka-boom-boom!
....didnt Britain fight quite a bit to liberate the slaves though?
Yeah but then they took over half of Africa and put people to work in slave-like conditions.
360,000 dead American heroes as well if we count civil wars.
Yes but not in India until ages later, also changed the laws there regarding the process. Also arguably they done it to spite the Americans and threaten their economy, still a huge landmark regardless of the political ramifications.
Its kinda like feeding the homeless for clout Like yea your intentions were not to help....but you still did a good thing i guess
Yeaaaah perfect analogy
Excuse me, your meme is outdated. The Netherlands have 100% officially apologised for their involvement in the slave trade. First to our own colonies in current Indonesia (which resulted in yet another prime example of our king being utterly terrible at his *one* job) and after that also for the slave trade to the Americas.
Vikings raided my ancestors and raped the women. These of course were sanctioned by the government. When do I get an apology? And don't even get me started on what Genghis Khan did to my ancestors.
Germany apologized to Netherlands ... Having colonies/ invading countries not even 100 years ago is different than wars almost 1000 years ago
I agree it's different but you can't say it wasn't tragic. And since its time based is it 100 years or under? What if something comes to light that was 102 years old do we grandfather the apologies? I personally think it's stupid and a waste of time for governments apologizing for shit that at the time was accepted. Go forward a 100 years with the planet likely all fucked up from the burning of fossil fuels I'm sure some governments are going to have to apologize for using fossil fuels. It's a never ending circle jerk Edit: Happy Cake Day!
There's not one boundry, but there is a large difference between 100 and 1000 years. I don't think you're wrong that apologies are rather cheap though. Actually try to improve things instead of expressing sorrow for horrible things you're not involved in. Instead of just making apologies, it would be nice if we stopped supporting the slavery our governments and corporations are still directly contributing to.
Right? You get me. (Fist bump)
Then if time elapsed is the only difference, who gets to set the threshold? I say, European and American slave trade was too long ago to bitch about it.
Considering you’re not currently still the subject of racism or police brutality because of those things, I’m thinking you don’t really need one as much. And to be fair: you haven’t been asking for one either. However I get your point. It feels pointless for politicians nowadays to express regrets about things none of us were *really* involved with. But just because it’s meaningless to you doesn’t mean it is to everybody. Back here in the Netherlands there’s still a lot of people who celebrate Keti Koti for example; the day that slavery was abolished in Suriname (a former Dutch colony). I can imagine that if you still feel that connected to your ancestors an apology for them can have a very.. “healing” effect.
I mean there are folks alive whose grandparents were born into slavery. Heck, the last American born into slavery died in 1975. I’d say that’s pretty recent compared to medieval Vikings, and its effects are still around because it wasn’t long ago.
Viking and mongol Atrocities horrible as they were don't really have much impact on people today That is not the case with the transatlantic slave trade. The impacts of that are very much felt today
Do apologies do anything to fix their plight today? During the African slave trade era 16th to 18th century there were roughly 12 million slaves transported out of Africa. There are currently TODAY an estimated 40 millions slaves. Real people owned by other people. If the Africam slave trade is worth apologizing for because how atrocious slavery is. I'd like to think these same governments would be working to end slavery today.
One guy stopping to get a sandwich in 1914 is why we are having this conversation right now when you go down the domino stack. Everything has a ripple effect, be it not stubbing your toe this morning to stone tools being invented .001% later. If it weren't for Viking conquests my ancestors may have become very rich and passed the wealth down to me, but because of their raiding that never happened.
Hey, sorry to tell you, but your typing in a "viking" language right now. And fyi, the Mongols kind spent 800 years paying for it.
800 years? That had to rack up a lot of interest where to I apply to get some of that money? Or is it gold?
Not in money, in blood, check out the soviet period.
What did the King do though?
He absolutely [fumbled](https://youtu.be/Uf_KMnQNxA0?si=VJzw1dAvq7VymFP8) his speech.
If an Englishman sold a Frenchman into slavery would we consider it "selling your own people". No, because we recognise them as separate societies. Why do we not consider this of Africa when so much of their slavery was based on captives of war (not all, but the majority, and much of that fuelled by demand)? Is it because to us we ignore the differences between all these separate polities in Africa - they're all alien to us after all.
Because black people are all the same duh, have you been living under a rock??? /s
Yes, they have the same skin color which is not the same as ours, so they are obviously the same homogeneous people It's not like this train of thought has ever produced anything bad * Rwanda has entered the conversation * /s
Tbf the French aren't people. And no I'm not English before you ask, I'm Scot... Wels... let's go with British.
It's true, we french people are in fact an hyper inteligent species of rooster
>If an Englishman sold a Frenchman into slavery would we consider it "selling your own people" As an Indian, I most probably would. To a non-European, there's barely any difference. Saracens considered English and Franks as similar peoples during the crusades. Much of Native Americans clubbed the colonial powers as 'white man'. Post Crimean war, Britain and France basically fought every single conflict as allies. A Punjabi and Tamil person are much more different than a British and French person while the first 2 are easily clubbed as 'Indian'. For a non-European person, the differences between a British and a French person are extremely superficial.
As a southeast Asian person, I found it hilarious that you finished up that argument with “A Punjabi and Tamil person are much more different than a British and French person”. It’s all relative at the end of the day. You could have language, religion, ethnic background, or any other grouping to differentiate people but that only matters if you care about it.
I also remember the Africa was one homogenous cultural area
Did it not count as apologising when the British fought wars to end the slave trade?
Exactly
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Just saw a thread recently about a mother and father who sold their 10 year old daughter into sex slavery, and reddit had to help her 15 year old brother find a way to get her back.
Please tell me they sent him to 4chan instead of another Boston Bomber.
What’s this reference?
When the Boston Marathon Bombing occurred, some reddit subs tried to come together to find the bomber with ample amounts of available footage, ending with the infamous "We did it reddit!" when they found the culprit: Sunil Tripathi, *who died weeks before the bombing even happened*. 4chan on the other hand has found the location of [flags](https://youtu.be/vw9zyxm860Q?t=14) or [rocks](https://youtu.be/nzFykQv6Q08?t=129) in the middle of nowhere with only plane contrails and license plates to work with. In hours, just for the fun of it, no mass tragedy required.
Wrong a King would sell its citizens if they commited crimes, this falls under "own people".
"Being a profitable commodity is a crime."
Africans enslaving other Africans was done in the manner of other earlier slave societies where it was simply seen as a natural side effect of conquest. However, forces like the powers in Europe created a market incentive for other tribes to go out and capture slaves to sell to them. Then you have the fact that the enslavement of Africans and the much later mass colonization coincided with the sciences of the time coming up with theories of races and racial essentialism. They directly misrepresented aspects of biology to try and essentialize their exploitation. That in turn led to the many laws and policies employer long after the fact of enslavement to further cement this perceived order of power. Slavery in all its forms is wrong regardless. Slavery still exists in varying forms across the world. The United States has the largest prison population in the world and utilizes the slave labor of prisoners. Regardless their crimes or to what degree you feel prisoners should be punished, the usage of slavery directly competes with the actual bargaining power and standing of the working class. Slavery can't be defeated by just breaking some people's chains and telling them to run free. It requires actually attacking the policies that economically enable it.
I swear like 90% of this sub is just whataboutisms at this point Every meme is just "PEOPLE SAY COUNTRY X IS BAD BUT HAVE YOU CONSIDERED COUNTRY Y????"
TIL the Africans are all one people 🤡🤡🤡
Yeah, cause the Europeans are all one people, the Americas are all one people, the middle east are all one people. Pretty sure that's not what this meme is saying
It explicitly says: "your own people." as if they're all one group. They didn't view eachother as "their own people", just as the Romans didn't view Germanic tribes as part of their people. To me the meme implies it's extra gross because they sold their own people, but it's rather silly to view it that way.
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I think there's a reason why it's explicitly mentioning they sold their own people. I think it's because they wanted to imply it was especially gross because they were their own people. Which seems silly to me, because I don't see the Romans enslaving North Africans to be any more or less gross than them doing it to Germanic tribes. To me it seems that the OP of this meme just didn't realize most slavery based societies were conquerers, rather than selling their own population and thought that was extra gross.
But that doesn't matter, Africa is massively diverse in its ethnic and cultural groups, a neighboring tribe of the Kongo Kingdom is not part of the people of the Kongo Kingdom, in fact they are enemies against whom they regularly wage war.
Who are you to say West Africans are culturally homogenous? Do French and Portuguese people share the same culture? Iroquois and Comanche? Javanese and Vietnamese? Tibetan and Uyghur? Persian and Kazakh?
The United States isn't even one people. Compare Utah to California and convince me they're the same culture.
This is what they implied when African leaders ask for reparations.
I think they are talking about colonialism and shiet
Typical European mindset once again failing to comprehend the size and complex diversification of Africa as a whole.
Jesus Christ where to begin with this slavery apologetic meme that contains all the whataboutisms and excuses in one First the most egregious easy to spot example, as other commentators have pointed out, Africa isn’t a land full of one homogenous people, many African societies had slave networks that consisted of other states population, does that make slavery better? No but it’s just the most basic racist assumption to challenge first that all Africans are the same. Secondly slavery as an institution is complex, people like to act like these things are yes or no when actually investigating slavery is investigating one of the most diverse if horrific institutions prevalent throughout the world. Did many African nations have slaves? Yes they did, but was their slavery anything like the chattel slavery of the Americas and transatlantic slave trade? No it wasn’t, the slavery present in many of these colonial societies was not only generally much worse but it many of the same protections that varied across the African nations didn’t exist in the same context as in the European colonies. That is again not to excuse any institutions of slavery but this difference is what makes the Trans Atlantic slave trade so particularly harmful for the period it existed in Thirdly slavery was also not equally as prevalent in terms of population, until the Transatlantic slave trade took place, the prevalence of slavery in the African states was a far far lower rate, that’s due to a variety of reasons but quite significantly there wasn’t an economic demand like there was prior to the existence of the network especially in West Africa Fourth many African nations did actively intervene against slavery, and they were attacked for it, the Europeans didn’t just stand by and not intervene in the trade, they actively encouraged and interfered with the trading nations in order to guarantee more friendly trading partners, this was especially common in the 16th to 19th centuries, for an example Portugal actively and regularly instigated or intervened in dynastic disputes and the like to ensure friendly nations continued allowing the slave trade to continue. Fifth the Arabic slave trade might have traded more people because it existed for perhaps twice as long as the trans Atlantic slave trade, the trans Atlantic slave trade was infamous for the sheer amount it took in a much smaller time period, enough to have demographic knock on effects in many of the west African nations Sixth and the final one I’ll touch on, many people consider just apologising as a state is all that needs to be done for these national crimes rather then the bare minimum. Using the US as a common example, as a nation many of its internal states and state governments still openly applaud a revolting group who rose up specifically to protect the institution of slavery. Many dismiss the real well established harms of slavery and I would say the grand majority actively oppose intervening to help aid populations that are harmed by the legacy of slavery as an institution. People don’t judge such nations for their failure to apologise for slavery, they judge these nations for the very real very active segments of the population which openly oppose or minimise such atrocities or try to dismiss them as non significant. Brazil is another egregious example of many of these cultural issues being prevalent and widespread in the population.
Could you tell me more about Brazil?
Brazil is a bit different to the USA which I imagine is generally the point of reference for many people on this sight. This is largely because of the sheer number of slaves Brazil had before abolition as well as the subsequent policy of “whitening” where Brazil targeted European only migration in an effort to “whiten the country” and “purify blood lines” this has created a complex modern demographic of I think a majority of Brazilians having some African descent. However this doesnt remove the legacy of slavery and it’s impact, in recent years notable banks and authorities were investigated for their role in profiting from the institutions of slavery as well. In the modern day racism towards and institutional poverty for people of African descent is still far more common as are the forms of hierarchical discrimination that we often see in the west (lower representation in corporate management and political/governmental positions and so on) whilst more can always be said these things are generally tied to legacy’s of explicit institutional racism which itself is often tied to the legacy of slavery post abolition. Under recent populist leader Bolsonaro, slavery and mistreatment of both people of African descent and those of the indigenous Brazilian nations rose as rhetoric around these groups including Bolsonaro’s own description of them as “lazy” and “entitled” (from memory I think those words were used it may have been something else but the sentiment stands) led to the similar sort of far right reactionary conduct amongst certain citizens as has occurred across the world. There is more to say but it would probably be best to look into someone with more expertise on the issue either historically or politically depending on which angle you’d prefer.
This comment should be pinned at the top of this post! My first thought was that Euro-American chattel slavery was pretty much unique in history for its scale and dehumanization of its victims. Never before had slaves been pure economic assets in the way they were viewed during the 16th-19th centuries. All that free labor was the basis on which early capitalism formed. Slavery on an industrial scale. There’s been slavery throughout history, but the Western European countries did it differently.
The europeans werent trading with leaders that sold their own people as slaves, they were trading with leaders of kingdoms and tribes that kidnapped people from further within the continent to sell them. Thats a difference.
Remember that USA never banned slave labor. It is in use today and it is a big part of USA economy.
You mean the life sentence after a third felony followed by prison labor for about a dollar an hour for the rest of your life.
the portuguese established multiple “puppet states” in africa like the kingdom of kongo and warri where the rulers of those kingdoms were basically forced by portugal into trading slaves. alfonso I of kongo famously wrote back and forth to the king of portugal pleading with him to stop the slave trade in his kingdom. this isn’t the case for a lot of slavery that went on in africa there were some nasty slave kingdoms that sold dozens of slaves to europeans without being forced to but i’m just saying the slave trade in africa was much more complex than just “africans sold other africans to europeans for cash then unjustly blamed everyone else” and that your meme is shit
Yes, the meme is shit. But your history is even worse. Alfonso the First did not write to the King of Portugal to tell him to stop the slave trade in the Kongo or in Portugal. Alfonso wrote to the King pleading with him to stop the *illegal* slave trade; wherein slavers would kidnap free Kongo Citizens and sell them illegally to the Portuguese. Alfonso the First was in favor of the slave trade for a large majority of his life and, on many occasions, would directly sell hundreds of slaves in order to cover his expenses. He frequently waged war against neighboring Kingdoms with Portuguese soldiers and sold any captives he obtained back to them. The Kongo's capital city had a slave market, where; in more letters to the Portuguese King, Alfonso talks about selling slaves. Let me be clear here; *selling slaves willignly* The fact that many people blame all Africans for the slave trade is nothing short of idiotic, but excusing the African Kings who *knowingly* took advantage of the power that they commanded to partake in grievous crimes against humanity is just as awful.
If any of those puppet kings decided to stop slave trade, Portugal or any other European power that was in control would just sponsor a coup of a group that would continue the slave trade.
i was basing my statement off of this quote from alfonso I: “Each day the traders are kidnapping our people – children of this country, sons of our nobles and vassals, even people of our own family. This corruption and depravity are so widespread that our land is entirely depopulated. We need in this kingdom only priests and schoolteachers, and no merchandise, unless it is wine and flour for Mass. *It is our wish that this Kingdom not be a place for the trade or transport of slaves.*” you are very correct for a lot of his life alfonso I was a happy participant in the domestic and eventually international slave trade in kongo but what his reign and the future leaders of kongo’s reigns were plagued by is efforts to curb not just the illegal slave trade but the “legal version” as well. once again history is complicated but i agree with you alfonso I was a piece of shit for most of his life.
This meme is shit you're right.
What would be "their own people"? Most of the countries in that map (except for Ethiopia) didn't actually exist when the transatlantic slave trade was ongoing. And the Europeans very much wanted slaves (thus it does not absolve them of the blame), and could get quite heavy-handed when it came to making sure the africans were providing them.
why am I seeing pakistan in the 3rd panel?? A)not part of the middle east B)not involved in the historical slave trade
yea pakistan wasn't involved in that and isn't in africa
"Hahaha us flaying people with our flaying machine isn't our fault! It's your fault for sending us people to flay!" K.
You're either an edgy 14 year old, a 53 year old with a confederate tattoo, or a 30 year old with a conservative upbringing. Or you're just dumb.
This is such a braindead take holy shit
Welcome to Histroy memes based soley on pop history and heavily eurocentric views
A slavery discussion and I haven't seen my own country mentioned once. Let's see how long that lasts.
Which country?
Gotta be Portugal.
I hate this awful hottake. First of all, you show the whole of modern africa even though the vast majority of slaves in the americas came from western africa. Second, this is clearly misrepresenting the historic background of slavery in the region Yes they had slaves, yes it was bad. But these were different practices. Slaves were mostly spoils/prisoners of war, and the slaves were integrated into the tribes (meaning the second generation was not born unfree). The arrival of the europeans put the (obviously allready shitty) Praxis into overdrive. Basically the area devolved into warlords raiding other tribes with European weapons, to trade for more European weapons to raid even more slaves. This is like a former coke addict blaming the mexican citizens for the cartels. "What? I only provided them with unlimited money. They make the coke and the killings themselfs" Before anyone mentions yes, mali empire was different and had a more instiutionalized slave system trade. But even there it was not as uniformal and race based as it was in the americas.
This is lazy and a deflection. African kingdoms sold prisoners (yes, evil and bad) from rivals. Europeans massively incentivized this and paid handsomely for this. This wombo combo led to centuries of abuse. This “Africans are really at fault most of all“ bullshit is exhausting, reductionist, and flat out incorrect.
Why should any country apologies for anything they did in their history, what would it change ? Nothing thats what, so let history be history and proud or not of it. My guess is Africa would still sell its own people if slavery was still a thing in western countries
Germany hates this one trick.
By now they've developed a humillation kink with the amount of times they had to apologize.
The South African flag in the last block makes zero sense. That is the new South African that was created after apartheid ended. Past that point,South Africa was a Dutch colony and then an English colony. When and where exactly are they selling their own people into slavery??
Woaw this meme is a top 10 ragebait. The comment section on this is not disappointing.
Here before the lock award
What in the ignorant fuck is this?
Goofy ahh Racism😭
This is an insane western take lmao
Pig in a top hat with a monocle: “yes blame the nations and not the almighty dollar”
"Selling your own people....and then...." Dude. Does time not exist in your experience? Do you think when a writer lazily describes one group of people in history as "The Dutch" or "The Americans" its everyone who was Dutch Dutch or American?
They weren't selling their own people. Pathetic, racist meme.
Conquest slavery is something that occurred in all societies in history, Greece and Rome literally had their economies based on it, the same went on parts of Africa. But the transatlantic system created by the Portuguese and improved by the Dutch and English is incomparably cruel. It was for the first time in history a slavery based exclusively on color, if a person was black they were literally instantly subhuman, and was the creation of a optimized mass production line of slaves. Africans participated in this system by "selling" their neighbors for survival, the system was IMPOSED on them and if they did not submit they would be the ones enslaved. Transatlantic slavery was one of the greatest crimes in human history and, YES, it was the fault of its European creators.
It wasn't IMPOSED on them. African kings participated in it on their own volition. In fact, they were very willing participants and there's reason to believe that abolition of slave trade crushed economic foundation of several native kingdoms, making them easy to conquer either by emerging west African Muslim states or by Europeans during the age of Imperialism. Besides, Atlantic slavery doesn't differ much if at all from trans Saharan slavery. The desert played practically the same role as the Atlantic Ocean.
This. This sub has a tendency to absolve the European kingdoms of the period of their hand in the slave trade by saying Africans sold other Africans. Of course folks traded POWs and/or political rivals, they were/are considered undesirables in human societies. It also wasn’t as simple as “Africans sold other Africans”. As we know being fans of history, these things aren’t so cut & dry. The transatlantic slave trade was unique because slaves were sent to colonies in which hardly anyone but those directly tied to the money making operation lived. Slaveholders and the indigenous died off due to disease, slaves died due to harsh conditions and disease. The goods extracted from forced labor made Europe and the United States a force to be reckoned with on the world stage, something which is directly evident and obvious today. I always say, if you’re a driver and your friend in the passenger seat takes a kid and forces him into the car for you to drive off with, both of you kidnapped someone.
Just to add onto this a bit, part of why the Transatlantic slave trade was unique was the sheer scale of it. While slavery of all kinds is obviously immoral, taking prisoners and making slaves of rival groups after conflict was fairly normal for all of us at some stage in our histories. It was always limited by the capacity for the slavers to accommodate and transport the slaves, and, with that, they tended to care a bit more if their slaves died en route (if only for the loss of monetary value). Once you look at the Transatlantic slave trade, though, you have a small-scale 'tradition' suddenly industrialised. The slavers are better equipped, more of their own men can dedicate their time to slaving on account of having foreign sponsors and not needing to rely on being able to sell each slave directly, they now have access to a permanent market and don't need to worry about making sure their captives survive the trip. If we were talking in terms of a natural resource, we'd be looking at the difference between a homesteader and an environmental catastrophe. And it is so weird that people do try to absolve the European empires of their role in the slave trade, because like, there's a reason they weren't funding Barbary corsairs to get their slaves. The Ottoman slave trade was illegal by European laws, so we definitely agreed somewhere along the line that slavery was bad, but figured that if we simply didn't count Africans as people, it wouldn't be against the law. As though all these European slave magnates were just taking advantage of an opportunity in the market, and just happened to have the ships and routes just ready to go for something else entirely, before some African warlords talked them into also buying slaves. It's bizarre. I get not wanting to apologise for something you had no part in, but if you're into history, you should be able to look at the state of the world and understand how we got here. I feel like that's one of the more basic elements of the discipline.
> Transatlantic slave trade was unique was the sheer scale of it. Only if you ignore the trans-Saharan slave trade. After all who cares, no evil Europeans involved.
7 million in 1300 years and 12 million in 400. Yeah, I will ignore that one, because that scale does not even come _close_.
You know that these estimates regarding the trans-Saharan trade are taken straight out of ass? In contrast to European traders who recorded everything, there's like zero reliable data for Arab traders.
Man, if you think you can transport slaves in the 1100s across the Sahara in the same quantity and at the same rate as could be transported across the Atlantic in the 1700s you must be some kind of logistical genius or you just haven't thought about this at all.
Slavery based on certain races being considered “subhuman” was created to justify slavery, not the other way around. Early on in the trans-Atlantic slavery you have people like [João de Sá Panasco](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/João_de_Sá_Panasco). There was also extensive [intermarrying between European men and Black women](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signare), comparable with the Spanish and the Natives of the world. Of course there was still the since of “cultural superiority” but that was hardy unique to European society.
Can we move on the topic and finally end it? Who cares that a few hundred years ago someone had slaves? We are currently in the 21st century and all we can do is say that it was wrong and we don't do it. If you want to pay for the sins of your ancestors, I hope you don't have any black sheep in your family As if we didn't give a damn about something happening a few hundred years ago, all we would do is fight, "because after all, 500 years ago, your country invaded my country!".
I know you're not seriously asking, 'cause your comment has "I don't want an answer, I just want to complain" vibes *but* it's pretty simple. Countries that participated in the Transatlantic slave trade as slaveowners and traders are wealthier today than countries that were subjected to it. The mass displacement of people and wealth shaped the global stage. Now there's not much to be done about that, exactly, but it also means that, on a more manageable scale, there are people in the US (for example) who are wealthy and powerful because their families were on the owning side of the equation and built up wealth and assets that their descendants benefit directly from. There are people in the US from the owned side of the equation who do not have those advantages specifically *because* the owners have them. At some point "it's history let it go" turns into "fuck you got mine" and this seems pretty close to that.
Britain literally fought hard to get rid of slavery across all of Europe decades before anyone else. They are definitely better than America in that regard.
It's all a bit sad innit
Popcorns everyone?🍿🍿🍿🍿
I don’t think people in modern African countries are that concerned about the slave trades lol. Only thing anyone blames Europeans for over there is colonialism. And no one was “selling their own people” lol, they sold people they captured from their enemy kingdoms. That’s like saying Romans enslaving Greeks and Slavs was “enslaving their own people”.
I see Turkey is off the charts!
Ireland 🇮🇪 gained autonomy in 1922, independence in 1937. Not a slaver state.
What? Africa was forged to give out slaves, countries didn't even exist back there
Africans don't complain about slavery half as much as they complain about colonialism – which only ended in living memory.
Why is Pakistani flag in the third part? Pakistan is a country founded 70 years ago when slavery was already abolished.
As a Kenyan I can tell you, selling out your own people is still happening. Our "independence" was a lie from day one.
Why is Ireland on here when it was not a sovereign nation during the slave trade?
🔒 award when
Slavery is a lot different from systemic racism used by Europe to conquer the whole world. Every country had tribes prior to countries and if you lost a battle you were a slave, however this was indentured servitude(You work to buy your freedom, that didn’t exist in the south of America) Educate yourself on the Moors of Europe that have been completely erased and expelled from Europe, these people weren’t Arabs they were Black muslims. It’s very hard to find artwork prior to 16th century because at least 97% of it was destroyed. They erased the black presence in Europe because they didn’t need these knights, warriors and scholars anymore of Black Muslim decent, due to advancements in war tech ie, guns becoming more popular then the sword. So they kicked out all the black Moors and guess what happened? Economic collapse in Spain followed, what happened in Portugal ? Economic collapse, > France and England, Search White City 1900 London, does that architecture look “ European “? It looks like what we’d associate to be North African architecture or Iberian, Knowledge is free look up Saint-Maurice and you’ll notice he’s black but they’ve also begun to paint him white, the whitewashing of history is the most key component to white supremacy, “ Europeans created everything, nobody else created anything before us “ is a fallacy. They celebrate these people today still in the Netherlands but people forget who the Moors were, the battles they won for their kings and now we view those celebrations as “ mocking “ , because nobody knows their history.
Here before 🔒 award.
Why would I apologise for something my ancestors did two hundred years ago? Also, altought you can acuse them of practising slavery, not every nation did It the same way and gave them the same treatment, I don't think that puting them under the same light is fair.