Africa - Slavery
Slavery existed in Africa south of the Sahara long before the Europeans and Arabs arrived and that continued for some years after the slave trade was abolished. The actual enslaving was done by Arabs and, more usually, by the Africans themselves - sometimes for money, sometimes to increase their own power, and sometimes for fear that if they didn't subject their neighbors then they themselves might one day be enslaved.
Slavery delivered a "one-two punch" to traditional African kindgoms. First, the growth of the slave trade allowed local chiefs and village headmen to consolidate their authority and to establish their own independent political units. But then the state structure and the influence of these new aristocrats gradually dissolved as the European powers eliminated the slave trade. By the end of the 19th century most of the kingdoms had disintegrated.
The volume of the slave trade in West Africa grew rapidly from its inception around 1500 to its peak in the eighteenth century. After the trade was made illegal in the early nineteenth century, the volume in this area diminished. No reliable estimate is available of those who died while awaiting shipment or were killed in the course of slave trading. Philip Curtin, a leading authority, estimated that roughly 6.3 million slaves were shipped from West African slave ports, more than 4.5 million in the period from 1701 to 1810, that is, about 40,000 each year. Of the total, roughly 500,000 were shipped from the Gold Coast alone.
By another estimate, during the period of the Atlantic trade, about 8 million Africans were sent to the Americas in comparison to the 2 million sent to North Africa and the Middle East. From about 1600 to 1850, some 4.5 million enslaved Africans were taken to Brazil; this is ten times as many as were trafficked to North America and far more than the total number of Africans who were transported to all of the Caribbean and North America combined.
The competition among native states for shares in the proceeds led to ruinous wars, which distracted the people from trade of other kinds and agriculture. The reduction in population was probably substantially greater than the number actually enslaved. Families were uprooted, and entire tribes often relocated in an effort to escape the slaver. Such moves were often to less favored territories of poor soil and other natural handicaps, with resultant disease and famine adding to the already heavy burden.
The slave trade had an impact far beyond the most obvious effect of depopulation. It led, in many areas, to the destruction of villages and fields, to famine and to entire communal migrations; it led to increased internal strife and war, to shifts in political power, to political upheaval and fragmentation; it stimulated inter-tribal suspicions and hostility as well as fear and distrust of foreigners - especially Europeans, Americans and Arabs; it gave birth to an African elite whose wealth and power were built on foreign arms, rum and cheap manufactured goods. New food stuffs were introduced and soon became dietary staples in many regions.
Western medical knowledge was gradually applied to the control and later eradication of numerous diseases that often ravaged the continent. A trade which originally was only incidental to an indigenous institution that served primarily social and political purposes, the slave trade eventually became so complex and widespread that its continuance was by the mid-1800's an economic necessity for many. And it was this change that led directly to the European penetration of the interior of the continent and its subsequent partition.
Historian Walter Rodney argued that by removing the continent's most valuable resource — humans — the slave trade robbed Africa of unknown invention, innovation, and production. Rodney further argued that the slave trade fueled a process of underdevelopment, whereby African societies came to rely on the export of resources crucial to their own economic growth, thereby precluding local development of those resources.
Walter Rodney argued in his ground-breaking text "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" that capitalism was the main contributor to the stagnation of Africa’s economic development (see Chapter 4 – “Europe and the Roots of Africa’s Underdevelopment – To 1885). "…the peasants and workers of Europe (and eventually the inhabitants of the whole world) paid a huge price so that the capitalists could make their profits from the human labour that always lies behind the machine. That contradicts other facets of development, especially viewed from the standpoint of those who suffered and still suffer to make capitalist achievements possible. This latter group are the majority of [humanity]. To advance, they must overthrow capitalism; and that is why at the moment capitalism stands in the path of further human development. To put it another way, the social (class) relations of capitalism are now outmoded, just as slave and feudal relations became outmoded in their time."
Although some scholars maintain that the subsequent economic history of this region supports Rodney's interpretation, no consensus exists on this point. Indeed, in recent years, some historians not only have rejected Rodney's interpretation but also have advanced the notion that it is the Africans themselves rather than an array of external forces that are to blame for the continent's economic plight.
Rodney's interpretation fails the math test. Roughly 100,000 slaves were shipped from Africa to the America's each year, at a time when Africa's population was probably about 100,000,000. That is, each year, Africa lost one tenth of one percent of its total population.
Africa did not fall to Europe as a result of military defeat. Nor was possession of its land given in return for money. It was, instead, taken in most subtle fashions by scores of European government officials, commercial agents, individual traders, military men and even settlers. In less than one generation, about 30 years, the continent changed from a land of free African states and kingdoms to one of colonies and imperial holdings under the notional control of European powers.
Around 200 million people identifying themselves as being of African descent live in the Americas. Many millions more live in other parts of the world, outside of the African continent. People of African descent live in many countries of the world, either dispersed among the local population or in communities. The largest concentration can be found in Latin America and the Caribbean where estimates reach 150 million. Whether descendants of those Africans that were displaced to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade many generations back, or more recent migrants who have journeyed to the Americas, Europe, Asia and within Africa itself, people of African descent throughout the world make up some of the most marginalised groups. They are a specific victim group who continue to suffer discrimination as the historic legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. Even Afro-descendants who are not directly descended from slaves face the racism and discrimination that still persists today, generations after the slave trade ended. In 2001 the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA), adopted at the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, acknowledged that slavery and the slave trade, were appalling tragedies in the history of humanity, because of their barbarism and also their magnitude, organized nature and their negation of the essence of the victims. It also acknowledged that slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity and should always have been so and that they are among the major sources and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. Africans and people of African descent were victims of these acts and continue to be victims of their consequences. The factors that lead to poverty among people of African descent are mainly structural. Discrimination is apparent in the unequal access these groups have to basic services. People of African descent are often disadvantaged, for example, in access to education, healthcare, markets, loans and technology. The right to adequate, effective, prompt and appropriate remedies, including reparation for victims of violations of human rights, is enshrined in international and regional human rights instruments.37 According to the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law, remedies for gross violations of international human rights law include the victim’s right to adequate, effective and prompt reparation for harm suffered, Under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, States parties have positive obligations to take special and concrete measures to ensure the full and equal enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, including people of African descent. The Convention also provides for the right to remedies and reparation for victims of racial discrimination. On Dec. 17 2007, the United Nations’ General Assembly passed a resolution that made March 25 the annual commemorative International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The neocolonial states in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are interested in reparations as a way to deal with their balance of payment, budgetary and development challenges as seen in the call for debt cancellation, technology transfer and a formal apology and not statements of regrets in this regional body’s Ten Point Action Plan for Reparatory Justice. CARICOM’s ten-point reparations proposal is implicitly using the societies in the global North as the model of social and economic development.
It has been estimated that Britain’s reparations payment to Africans in the Caribbean could be in the region of £7.5 trillion. The UK Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2021 was estimated at about £2.52 trillion. So Caribbean reparations alone would be three years of the entire UK economy, or 10% of the British economy fo three decades, that is, about £250 billion. The GDP of the Caribbean region in 2022 was $128.17 billion, or just a shade over £100 billion. The United Kingdom's government spending as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) was 45.6% in 2022/23, compared with 44.5% in the previous year. The average value for the United Kingdom from 1960 to 2022 was 19.29%. The government spending to GDP in the United Kingdom reached an all time high of 62.20% in 1943 and a record low of 11.60% in 1907.
The £20 million paid to the enslavers of Africans after the 1838 abolition of slavery in the British Empire would be worth about £200 billion in today’s currency.
CARICOM presented its ten-point plan for reparatory justice in 2014, which is aimed at achieving reconciliation, truth and justice for victims of slavery, genocide and racial apartheid and their descendants. In 2019, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the fundamental rights of people of African descent in Europe, in which it calls for European Union institutions and member States to take steps towards meaningful and effective redress for past injustices and crimes against humanity.35 In December 2022, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights adopted its first resolution on Africa’s reparations agenda and the human rights of Africans in the diaspora and people of African descent worldwide The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights noted that delineation of State responsibility and the design and financing of effective reparations programmes that address the temporal and material scope and possible beneficiaries are challenging to define and negotiate and raise complex issues, notably regarding financial compensation claims. In the context of historical wrongs and harms suffered as a result of colonialism and enslavement, the assessment of the economic damage can be extremely difficult owing to the length of time passed and the difficulty of identifying the perpetrators and victims. On 28 June 2021, OHCHR released the High Commissioner’s groundbreaking report on racial justice and equality, pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 43/1, adopted by consensus in June 2020 following an urgent debate on “current racially inspired human rights violations, systemic racism, police brutality and violence against peaceful protests”. The report introduces a four-point agenda to end systemic racism and human rights violations by law enforcement against Africans and people of African descent. The High Commissioner calls upon States and the Human Rights Council to:
- STEP UP: Stop denying and start dismantling
- PURSUE JUSTICE: End impunity and build trust
- LISTEN UP: People of African descent must be heard
- REDRESS: Confront past legacies, take special measures and deliver reparatory justice
Lloyd’s of London, a British insurance company, had announced a £52 million ($63.8 million) investment in a reparation program after research revealed that it had played a “significant role” in facilitating the 300-year slave trade. The Guardian newspaper’s owner apologized in response to a report that discovered a historical link between the media group’s 19th-century founders and slavery. The Scott Trust, the British company that owns The Guardian, announced a ten-year restorative justice program worth more than £10 million (US$12.3 million).
On 18 August 2023, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres published a report [A/78/317] advising Western countries on an array of measures, including financial compensation, for colonialism and the enslavement of people of African descent despite the length of time that had passed. UN human rights chief Volker Türk, who called for strong leadership and political will from States to heed the call of people of African descent for accountability and redress. The proposed measures, which must be guided by people of African descent themselves, include public apology, education and awareness raising, restitution and compensation.
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo hosted a global summit to facilitate dialogue and produce an African-led action plan to seek reparations for historical injustices dating back to the slave trade and colonialism eras. The four-day Accra Reparations Conference began on 13 November 2023 in Ghana’s capital with the president demanding financial restitution from the West, which he argued is long overdue as compensation for the horrors of the slave trade.
“It is time for Africa, thirty million of whose sons and daughters had their freedoms curtailed and sold into slavery, to also receive reparations. No amount of money can restore the damage caused by the transatlantic slave trade and its consequences... But surely, this is a matter that the world must confront and can no longer ignore,” Akufo-Addo said. “And even before these discussions on reparations conclude, the entire continent of Africa deserves a formal apology from the European nations involved in the slave trade,” he added.
For decades, African and Caribbean governments and activists have advocated for monetary compensation and other forms of accountability for slavery and the colonization of their countries. More than two million Africans are estimated to have died en route from their countries to the Americas, where slaves were used for forced labor between the 15th and 19th centuries. The transatlantic slave trade has been labeled by the UN as the largest ever forced migration.
Ghana’s president, blamed the current economic and social problems of African nations on colonial exploitation and slavery, has called on African leaders to unite with Caribbean nations that are leading the campaign for reparative justice for descendants of the victims of slavery. “We in Africa must work together with them to advance the cause,” Akufo-Addo said at the conference, which brought together heads of state and governments from the continent and the diaspora, as well as African Union leaders.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
