This theme appears to be a final realization of the goals outlined in the African Union’s Abuja Proclamation of 1993. At that time, the group (then technically the Organization of African Unity) stated: “What matters is…the responsibility of those states and nations whose economic evolution once depended on slave labor and colonialism, and whose forebears participated either in selling and buying Africans, or in owning them, or in colonizing them.”
Stirring, to be sure. However, the eager adoption of anti-slavery referenda by such states as Benin, Ghana, and Ethiopia in fact highlights the bizarrely complex nature of the human past. If those names did not give the ‘punch line’ away, most of the significant African powers demanding reparations in Current Moment are themselves former merchants of life – mass-scale traders in slaves, or the direct heirs either of states that were or the colonial powers that displaced them.
Most of modern-day Benin, for example, is composed of the former Kingdom of Dahomey – which was arguably the most legendary slave-trading society in history. A, if not the, “major source of slaves for the Atlantic Slave Trade,” Dahomey conquered the smaller slave-dealing kingdoms of Allada (1724), Porto Nuovo, and Wydah (1727), and consolidated these into a single-commodity mercantile empire. During the nation’s bloody prime, her King Gezo gave what may be the 2nd most memorable quote of all time about slaving (after Tippu Tipp’s “All men of all colors are welcome in my markets, as buyers or merchandise, depending on their fortunes in war). Quoth he: “The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and glory of their wealth. The mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery!”
Off the wave-crashing coast of Africa, the ruthless Gezo hardly manned the war-boats alone. Just down the – well – Slave Coast, the heavily-armed Aro Confederacy dominated much of modern-day Nigeria and served as “one of the leading exporters of slaves to Europe and the Americas, from 1690 to 1902 (!).” Per most Africanists in my discipline, these proto-Nigerians sold roughly 850,000 slaves all-time. For purposes of comparison, well under 400,000 total enslaved persons entered the United States before the slave trade was halted in 1808.
Near Nigeria, in Ghana, we find the still-legendary Ashanti Empire, whose King drank sweet palm wine from the skulls of his former enemies and held court on a throne of pure gold – and whose national economy was based almost entirely on trading in precious metals “and in slaves.” Per one public-intellectual resource: “The army (of the Ashanti Empire) mainly served as a tool to capture more and more Africans and force them into slavery.”
Down the (surprisingly long and well-built) road, the Kanem Bornu Confederation, which encompassed huge chunks of modern Chad, Cameroon, and Niger, was no kinder. From 900 AD on, “the principal commodity of the empire was in slaves.” Like most slave traders, pimps, and similar wastrels, the Kings of Kanem Bornu were not particularly picky about their customer base. At first, “the slaves were sold in the trans-Saharan slave trade,” to Arabs and other blacks, “but eventually they took part in the transatlantic…trade as well (-) with around two million slaves having walked through the slave route in their Empire.”
The even larger powers of Northern “white” Africa, which are AU members today as well, and often maintain direct governmental continuity with the historical past, obviously traded in slaves as well. Egypt didn’t build those pyramids with backhoes, and “was a major player in the Trans-Saharan and…Atlantic slave trade,” in addition to exploiting more standard semi-free serf labor, for millennia after they went up. Egyptian rulers and merchants moved human chattel overseas at least as far back as 641 AD, following the conquest of the ancient state by the Rashidun Caliphate, and went on doing so until clashes with Britain in the 1900s.
Algeria, both as legend’s Regency of Algiers and as a more mundane province of the Ottoman Empire, was also active in the Trade – operating some of Africa’s largest slave bazaars: “huge markets with thousands of slaves sold through the trans-Saharan…route. Their slaves were acquired through trade, through raiding, and through expansion wars.” And so on up and down the continent, through the Great Mali we associate with high King Mansa Musa – which ruled an entire fairly modern state, magnificently but very harshly, from 1235 to 1670 – the Songhai Empire, and many more.
Although this has been Intentionally Forgotten, many or most of these states sold whites as well as black Africans – and a few preferred to do so. Algeria in particular was the home base of the legendary Barbary Pirates, who were “huge players in the (global) slave trade, enslaving both Africans and Europeans.” Indeed, the scimitar-waving corsairs of Algeria and Libya ranged so far afield that they ended up inspiring the most famous line in the American Marine Corps Hymn: U.S. leather-necks traveled “to the shores of Trip-o-li” specifically to avenge Caucasian countrymen who had been enslaved or press-ganged by Muslim raiders from Northern Africa. This historical fact is not contested.
Similarly, Morocco – a somewhat smaller player not even much mentioned thus far – was more than willing to hog-tie and sell an almost impressive list of “Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Greeks, Portuguese, Italians, the Irish, Scandinavians, Russians, Georgians, and any other nationalities sailing in inadequately armed seafaring vessels.” The historians behind the Let Africa Speak project mention in passing that the “largest group of Europeans enslaved by the Moroccans” were light-brown Spaniards: the historical Moors gleefully seized whites, blacks, and even passing Chinese ships from Cathay. All told, perhaps two million white Europeans were enslaved over the centuries by Muslim and black Africans.
An even more fascinating and awkward point regarding historical slavery is that most civilized (in this context, “developed” might be more appropriate) black and Muslim African states STOPPED trading in slaves largely because Europeans made them do so. This point recurs throughout the academic and popular sources utilized for this article. In Great Mali, fer example, hereditary caste-like slavery and bond-servitude was finally abolished “by the French,” after the whole place was conquered and “colonized.” In Algeria, similarly, “the trade lasted until 1830 – when war with the Frenchmen led to the end of Ottoman rule.”
Britain – although a sometime customer until the early 1800s – became even harsher on slavers. In mighty Dahomey, slavery ended abruptly in 1852, when the British Empire frankly “forced…the Kingdom into ending the slave trade.” This ‘and-the-same-thing-over-here’ style of writing can get a bit repetitious, but much the same thing happened in Egypt. By calling in some debts and showing up to discuss the matter armed, the Tommies made sure the Peculiar Institution, in the land of Sphinx and Nile, “ended in the 1900s after intense pressure.”
While white European countries were no better than any others for most of history, as regards the universal institution of “human bondage,” the scope of their unique and solitary commitment to cleaning up this ancient vice during the past two centuries should never be under-estimated. By 1808, Britain had already established an entire naval force – the West Africa Squadron – specifically dedicated to doing battle with slavers and freeing slave captives, who were obviously mostly Africans. Over the decades, the Squadron freed at least 150,000 men, women, and children, and lost almost 2,000 British soldiers in battle or to disease.
In contrast, far from the tread of the colonizer’s boot and the shine of the pith helmet, no similar attitudes manifested until much later – if they ever did. Slavery was not banned in free India until 1954, in Nigeria until 1961, in never-colonized Ethiopia until 1969, and in Mauritania – at least at the level of criminal penalty – until 2007. At multiple points over the past 200 years, various Kings and lords from the “LDC” world met with European ambassadors to their continent, or even traveled to London or Westminster, and pitched the necessity of open slave trading as critical for the economic betterment of their realms.
If we look with a cold and honest eye at the African Union’s demand for reparations from the European Union, it looks a lot like the folks who ran the supply side of the slave trade asking the folks who ran the demand side of the trade – but also ended all of it – to pay them apologetics for the entire trade. American Blacks could, very theoretically, petition either side of this foreign great power debate for a check. But, at this level of substantial and quarreling nations – i.e., today’s South Africa ($426,380,000), Egypt ($393,782,000), Algeria ($288,091,000), Nigeria ($285,091,000), and Morocco ($197, 610,000) have GDPs on par with major European states – “Who owes who?” seems like much more than a theoretical question?
In the world’s REAL super-power, we have the luxury of watching our friendly rivals spar over the answer!
Wilfred Reilly is a professor, author, and Pacific Research Institute senior fellow.
