18 Apr 2007: ISS Today: Lest We Forget: The Origins and Motives for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

18 April 2007: Lest We Forget: The Origins and Motives for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

 

On the bicentenary (1807-2007) of the abolition of the slave trade, diplomatic and media attention was rekindled on a subject that arguably has scarred the conscience of human kind in history. As expected, the controversy over who bears the ‘greatest’ responsibility for the obnoxious trans-Atlantic slave trade raged on from both sides of the discourse, with arguments and counter arguments oscillating between the responsibility for starting the trade, for fuelling it, reaping huge economic dividends to the discomfiture of African societies, and the kudos credit for halting it.

 

Among a number of Western countries that got into the act of the commemoration, the UK was particularly noted for its offensive on the diplomatic and media fronts. Notably, while the BBC, for instance, launched several days of radio, television and internet debates on the slave trade, Mr. Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, chose no better place of historical significance than Ghana, its former Gold Coast colony, to express his ‘deep sorrow’ for Britain`s role in a slave trade that he also characterised as ‘profoundly shameful.’ But why would a Prime Minister, on whose Union Jack the sun never set largely as a result of the huge economic dividends of the slave trade, fall short of a full apology, even when the Church [of England] had apologised for the trade?

 

It is perhaps not so important to dwell on the failure of societies who reaped socio-economic benefits from the slave trade, if such societies persistently refuse to do so, with appropriate reparations. What is more important, though, is the argument of who bears the greatest moral responsibility for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It is precisely this argument that this piece seeks to examine in brief.

 

Yes Britain initially did not officially approve of the slave trade as part of its exploration and colonial project. But the fact remains that soon after it joined the Portuguese exploration of the west coast in 1553, followed by the French in 1554, it dramatically changed its trade policy with an Act to ‘legalise the purchase of Africans in 1562/1563.’ Thus even though the Queen of England had previously condemned the slave trade by Englishmen, she took part in the trade in human commodities when she lent one of her ships, the Jesus, for a slave voyage in 1564, only 12 years after pursuing what Britain termed trade exploration. Such royal approval led to the entrenchment of the English slave trade by 1660.
From this period onwards, Britain and other Christian European countries had a field day scrambling for a piece of the African lebensraum [economic living space] for the human commodity trade, among others. Fifteenth Century European states therefore bear the first responsibility for the slave trade in terms of its initiation.

 

Beyond initiation, the next crucial denominator of the slave trade industry and project relates to the supply of European guns — muskets, rifles, machine guns and rockets — as the coercive means for indigenous wars whose object gradually shifted from that of the defence and protection of tribes and kingdoms, to that of the subjugation of weaker tribes and kingdoms, for the capture and sale of slaves. Certainly, the European forts and castles that litter the west coast of Africa were largely meant as staging posts for the bulk lading and shipment of slaves. To that extent, even European [political] officials also took part in the trade in human commodities, as Colonel George Torrane, the Governor of Cape Coast, for instance, did when in 1765 he shamelessly betrayed the trust of two coastal tribes, Assin and Fanti, by dividing some refugees between him and Ashanti and selling some of his share of the Assin people. But the subtle inducements for indigenous wars went beyond merely arming African for what may be called slave wars. In the environment of European hostilities over the African lebensraum, metropolitan European states, with or without the involvement of the trading companies, sowed the seeds of enmity between and among African tribes by offering monetary prizes for Africans who produced the decapitated heads of members of the opposing tribe. Such powerful subtlety was tantamount to European subterfuge for the entrenchment and self-perpetuation of the slave.

 

It stands to reason to reckon that the strategic sea lift capacity of the slave commodity from the west coast to the New World, was largely owned by Europeans, and protected by respective European sea power, to supply the plantations that were also owned by European businesses, some of which had been granted specific commissions for the slave trade. Had slaves been domesticated in Africa, as was the case in the trans-Saharan slave trade before European exploration, Africa would not have been so traumatised and denuded of its people as by the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

 

To argue, as some have sought to do, that Africans also participated in the slave trade does not reflect an objective understanding of history. Yes African kingdoms, such as Ashanti and the Fon kingdom of Dahomey — today’s Benin — were key instruments of slave wars on the west coast. But they were induced into it by force of the dynamics of the trade. Among others, Ashanti largely rose as a kingdom in the 17th Century in resistance to its vassalage to the Denkyira kingdom — in Ghana — which was already engaged in the slave trade at the coast. Subsequently, the Ashanti kingdom came into a head-on collision with the Europeans, particularly the English, when it sought to obviate the middleman role of the Fanti people (in Ghana) and deal directly with Europeans on the coast. But European states preferred a balance of indigenous power devolving on weaker coastal tribes and powerful hinterland kingdoms to fuel the supply of slaves at the coast, as well as to prevent local threats to their colonial project, which went hand-in-hand with the scramble for far-flung economic living spaces.

 

Thus, in terms of the critical denominators of initiation, and the economic and technological capacities for the sustainment and shipment of slaves from the west coast to the New World, as well as the cheap labour capital, including child labour, accruing for the building of empires, Europe bears the greatest responsibility for the slave trade. While there was indeed active African participation in the trade, the participation was consequential to the need for tribal integrity, and the powerful dynamics of European exploitation.

 

While there can be no denying the fact that the abolishing of the slave trade owed to such European anti-human trafficking campaigners as William Wilberforce, it was Europe which had the moral obligation and the politico-economic means, coupled with its superiority in technology, to bring it to an end. However, having attained the economic objectives of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Europeans insisted on its abolition, but made no effort to provide rational alternatives for the indigenous economies that for more nearly three centuries had been dependent on the slave trade.

 

Therefore, even though Dahomei, for instance, was able to diversify its economy with oil palm plantations, it was able to do so as a result of soil suitability and its demand abroad. The Ashanti kingdom could neither diversify with plantation of kola nut that was not a commodity in demand by Europe — beyond its limited localised consumption — nor with plantation rubber since its soils were not suitable. On termination of the trade in humans, considerable economic dividends of the slave trade, combined with the industrial revolution, accrued to European states. To the contrary, the indigenous African states and their economies were left in limbo. If Ashanti, one of the west coast kingdoms involved in the slave trade, made that much economic capital from the trade, why was it not able to pay the outrageous reparations re-imposed on it by Governor Hodgeson in 1900, following its final subjugation in the Yaa Asantewa War, named after the legendary Ashanti Queen Mother. On the basis of documented historical evidence of Ashanti nationalism, it is plausible to argue that had considerable economic capital accrued to Ashanti from the slave trade, it would, without a doubt, have obliged the payment of the reparations and not allowed its king and about 54 other royalties to be exiled to the Seychelles Island In 1900. If Ashanti had so much gold from the slave trade, why did it have to make part payment of the preposterous reparations in trinkets and not in gold?

 

Nonetheless, could it be mere coincidence that of all the African countries that were colonised on the west coast, not many, if at all, boasted of any substantial legacy of development infrastructure. Given that such infrastructure were largely established to support the extractive economies imposed on these countries as part of the European colonial project, Is it not the case that Africa’s loss has been the gain of Europe and the West?

 

Lest we forget, Europe owes it as a moral duty to apologise and make substantial appropriate reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, or just shut up and stop expressing ‘deep sorrow’ for a ‘profoundly shameful’ fact of world history and a blight on our common global conscience that it does not owe up to. Enough for the so-called ethical foreign policies of today.

 

Festus Aboagye, Training for Peace Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)