Date Posted:07:07:46 03/23/07 Fri Author: Pilot Author Host/IP: NoHost / 85.195.119.22 Subject: Re: Drake started the slave trade In reply to:
Martin
's message, "Re: Drake started the slave trade" on 03:37:25 03/22/07 Thu
>>> Let’s
>>>ignore the inconvenient fact that we suppressed the
>>>Atlantic Slave trade in the teeth of opposition from
>>>Black and Muslim Africa. After all acknowledging
>that
>>>would not be PC.
>
>Sorry to deflate your PC brigade conspiracies, but
>there was a radio 4 program about his the other night.
Sir Francis Drake did not start the slave trade. He was a slave trader as were many pirates, privateers, and merchants of the time but he did not start the slave trade. Slavery has been around since the beginning and it’s not limited to Europe. It did not temporarily end with the end of the Roman Empire, then suddenly reappear after the discovery of the Americas, and it’s not limited to only the Roman Empire or Europe. They have slavery in the pre-Columbian Americas, Far East Asia (Northern Asia and South East Asia), and Sub-Sahara black Africa itself. Slavery in the Middle East was thriving until it was “officially” abolished in the mid-20th century in Saudi Arabia.
Europeans were still enslaved by their own people as serfs and indentured servants even after the Roman Empire. In fact majority of the European colonists that came to the British and Dutch Americas were indentured servants and bonded apprentice. British people were also enslaved. When they invaded, the Vikings enslaved British (both Saxons tribes and British Celtic kingdoms). Some people in Iceland have medieval Irish heritage.
As for the slave trade in Africa during the Renaissance era/Age of Exploration (Sir Franics Drake’s time), the Europeans did not go into the heart of Sub-Sahara Africa and kidnap a whole village of black Africans. That is a myth. First off they could not go there because the African kings did not allow them into their country without their permission. Western Africa was a militaristic warrior state as European colonists found out later on in the 19th century. The African Kings set up war canoes manned by African warriors to guard their coasts from invaders. So the African Kings and African merchants set up trading ports/posts with the European merchants where they can trade goods for slaves. It was a good deal for both groups. The Europeans gave arquebusier guns, brandy, and other goods for African slaves and gold that the African King’s warriors captured in battle or a raid or the African slaves were enslaved by their own families to pay off debts. The Europeans could not go inside Africa during the African slave trade triangle (1500’s-late 1700’s) because they would susceptible to some diseases there like malaria as we’ve seen in the 19th century.
If the Europeans could go inside Africa and take all the Africans they would but their arquebusier and musket rifles during the Renaissance era were ineffective against large hordes of African warriors that could easily kept throwing javelins and spears at the European merchants and their European mercenaries. It was until in the 19th century, that they had better firearms and artillery like the repeating rifles, carbine rifles, shotguns, sidarms, and the gattling machine gun were the Europeans able to colonize all of Africa. But by that time in the 19th century, slave trade in the Atlantic was officially outlawed and the Europeans had no use for slaves because of the Industrial Revolution except as low paid westernized porters and servants or maybe miners.
