Sixty Little Known Historical Facts About the Atlantic Slave Trade From 1440 to 1890

Sixty Little Known Historical Facts About the Atlantic Slave Trade
From 1440 to 1890
Jerry D. Kaifetz, Ph.D.

It has been my experience that the basis of many of the sentiments toward Whites that have come out of the Black community in my lifetime have their origin in the colloquial and anecdotal presentation of slavery in America. With that in mind, I have sought to study the available historical data on the slave trade across the Atlantic from the 15th to the 19th century. What I found was not at all what one would logically use to support the anti-White sentiment and the virulent racism of some in the African-American community in the 21st century in the United States.

The participation by African monarchies willing to sell their neighbors into slavery was beyond widespread in Africa going back to the fifteenth century and even well before that time. In fact, the historians who have chronicled those eras tell us in unmistakable terms that African participation and profiteering from the Atlantic slave trade was in fact universal on the continent of Africa going back to perhaps Egyptian dynasties.

This should bring the issue of Reparations and perhaps Affirmative Action into an entirely different perspective for the rational and honest individual, as will the fact that the United States was far down the list of nations participating in the slave trade. Along with Great Britain, the United States was first to champion the cause of abolition to the point of fighting a civil war over it resulting in 490, 309 deaths by the Union forces seeking to end slavery.

There is no purpose to this research and the presentation of its results other than to give an honest historical perspective on the Atlantic Slave Trade. Jerry D. Kaifetz

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1. The “Royal Families” of Africa in countries like Benin, the kings of Ashanti, Congo and Dahomey and the Viti rulers of Longo sold a great many slaves over many generations.

2. Even the African rulers who at first declined to participate in the Atlantic Slave trade eventually succumbed and played the same role as all the other African rulers.

3. Participation in the Atlantic Slave Trade by African rulers was nearly 100%.

4. The Azanaghi were one of the most important clans of the African Tuaregs, a tribe that had been conducting slave raids for countless generations on such cities as Timbuktu and other settlements on the Niger River. They adopted Islam as a result of their contacts through “The Sea of Sand,” the Sahara Desert. This was long before the arrival of the Portugese.

5. Islam came to Africa and promised an end to fighting and tribal fragmentation through barbarity, violence, and brought with it a moral condoning of slavery through the Almoravid Movement.

6. The seizure of slaves was a common practice in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. This was called the “Razzia.” This was practiced by Muslims and Christians. There was no major culture that was not engaged in slavery.

7. It was both a Christian and Muslim belief that the descendants of Ham had been turned black. According to the historian Zurara, who himself was influenced by the historian Egidio Colonna. Colonna taught that if a population did not live peaceably under formalized laws, they were no better than animals and thus could be legally enslaved. This influence prevailed in the 15th century.

8. Slavery was a major institution in antiquity. Prehistoric graves in Lower Egypt suggest that Lybian people many centuries before Christ made slaves of African bushmen and the Negrito tribe.
9. At the peak of Hellenist glory, Greece had about 60,000 slaves.

10. Romans made great use of slaves, with up to four hundred to be found in a single household.
The slave population in the Italian peninsula may have been as high as two million.

11. Aristotle reflected the world’s view of slavery in his first book, “Politics:” “Humanity is divided into two: the masters and the slaves.”

12. Cicero believed that the enslaving of conquered peoples was moral if those poeple were unable to govern themselves.

13. There were many slaves in Visigoth Spain who had deliberately sold themselves into slavery to achieve a better life. The historian Gregory of Tours wrote of this practice in the sixth century.

14. In 651 A.D. Egypt made a contract with Nubia by which the Nubians would deliver 360 slaves a year to Egypt.

15. The trans-Sahara slave trade began around 1,000 B.C..

16. African kings in West Africa collected and sold slaves long before the arrival of Islam.

17. At Bornu, just beyond the Songhai Empire in Africa, the historian Leo writes in the 16th century that slaves were regularly exchanged for horses at the rate of fifteen slaves for one horse. The slaves came by Africans raiding their African neighbors to the south.

18. In what is now western Nigeria, the Oyo kingdom of the Yorubas procured thousands of slaves to work in agriculture.

19. In the 1450’s the Venetian Alvise Ca’da found that kings on the Senegal River tributaries, and before them the mali had a well established slave population.

20. In West Africa, slaves were the only recognized form of private property or expression of wealth.

21. The individual most responsible for European participation was probably the portugese monarch,
Henry the Navigator

22. The Catholic Church also participated in the African slave trade. In 1446 the Bishop of the Algarve fitted out a caravel for the purpose of slaving the West African region. The church of Rome expressed great interest in acquiring slaves.

23. Ca’da Mosto recorded that the king of the African Wolofs supported himself mainly by slave raids on his African neighbors, and then selling his captives to Moorish and Azanaghi slave merchants.

24. The Portugese slave traders did not introduce slavery to West Africa. It had been well established there going back to antiquity. The Tuaregs, for example, had been raiding their southern neighbors for centuries up to the nineteenth century.

25. There was no sense of kinship between African tribes. Many hated each other. The slaves captured were looked upon as the lowest form of people. Historians such as Ca’da Mosto described the reigning monarchs and castes as despots.

26. There was some salve raiding by Europeans, but in 1458 Prince Henry sent Diogo Gomes with three ships to negotiate treaties with African rulers that established the purchase or barter of slaves from which the African leaders derived a steady stream of wealth. One African king, Nomimsana even became a Christian in the process.

27. The African tribal leaders were most content to receive European good such as knives, hatchets, swords, iron bars, Conch shells, candles, striped woolen shawls called lambens from Tunisia, such wines as Malmsey wine, rum, and especially copper rods.

28. Some slaves were destined for African ports. Slaves from the “Slave Rivers” and estuaries were often taken to Elmina where they were traded for gold. The African gold merchants paid higher prices for slaves than could be fetched in Lisbon.

29. The African people known as the Ijo and the Itsekiri in the Guld of Benin bought their slaves at inland slave auctions for sale to save traders in coastal ports.

30. Many slaves were purchased by Antoniotto Uso di mare from Genoa in his dealings with African slave traders on the River Gambia in the 15th century.

31. The first cargo of slaves to cross the Atlantic were sent by Chritopher Columbus in a west to east direction. He sent a group of Taino Indians from Santo Domingo in Hispaniola to his friend Juanotto Berardi. The Taino were cannibals. (The word Caribbean derives from “cannibal.”)

32. The beginning of the slave trade to the Americas was the gold of Hispaniola.

33. Spain was the licensing agent for the slave ships destined for the Americas. By Americas, Brazil and the Caribbean is what is meant the majority of the time.

34. The overwhelming majority of educated Europeans believed that the rampant starvation and constant tribal warfare in Africa meant that a slave was most fortunate to be taken from Africa to European colonies. The punishment for disobedient slaves was often a return to Africa.

35. Many families sold their children to the slave captains, believing that any life would be preferable to starvation and conquest bu warring African tribes. Many African walked great distances to offer themselves to the slave ship captains.

36. By 1535 “great caravans of blacks” would find their way to African slaving ports at the hands of their African captors.

37. The African Pangu and Lungu tribes in the River Congo area were raiders of tribes to their south to capture slaves. King Alfonso complained in 1526 that these raids had a genocidal effect on his country’s population. He testified that the raiders were Congolese, not Portugese.

38. The Emperor of African Songhai on the Middle Niger offered a gift of 1,700 slaves to Cherif Ahmed Es-Segli.

39. The Christian King of Congo, Diogo I contracted with Portugese slave traders (Fernando Jimenez, Emanuel Rodruigues and Manuel Caldiera) to purchase around 10,000 slaves a year. There were more slaves than there was room on the ships leading to overloading and some slave revolts.
In 1567, the new King of Congo, Alvare, continued the slave contract with the Europeans.

40. The slave trade became the mainstay of not just the economy of the Congo, but also Angola under the African leaders there. Most of these slaves went to Brazil.

41. In 1567 Frei Garcia Simoes wrote, “ Here [West African Angola] one finds all the slaves that one might want and they cost practically nothing. . . almost all the natives here are either born into slavery or reduced to that condition without the least pretext . . . After their victories, the [African] kings give over entire villages . . . with the right to kill or sell all the inhabitants. One could by three slaves for the tail of an elephant. ” Between 1575 and 1592 over 50,000 slaves were taken from Angola.

42. The Manioc plant did much to diminish starvation in Africa, as did the maize brought from the Americas. One of the results was to produce even more slaves for sale by African leaders to the slave traders.

43. In a 1790 British inquiry, Sir George Young testified, “Purchasing slaves was much the cheapest method of keeping up their numbers; … for the mother of a bred slave was taken from the field of labour for three years, which labour was of more value than the cost of a prime slave or new negro.”

44. A similar British inquiry found that, “to cultivate 100 acres of cane requires 150 Negroes at least in the field. It is plain to demonstration that hot countries cannot be cultivated without Negroes.”

45. In the first quarter of the 17th century, the total number of African slaves was close to 200,000. Half went to Brazil, over 75,000 to Spanish America, 12,500 to Sao Tome, and just a few hundred to Europe.

46. Many fishing villages on the coast of West Africa in the estuaries of the Niger River developed economies that were almost entirely based on the slave trade. These cities developed as strong African monarchies.

47. The Dominican Friar Thomas de Mercado wrote in his Suma de Tratos y Contratos in 1569 that prisoner captured in African wars throughout history had been enslaved or killed and were undoubtedly better off in America. He also pointed out that the African monarchs continually raided each other’s lands to take slaves to sell to the Europeans.

48. Ethiopia was the country where slaving first began in antiquity.

49. Throughout modern history, blacks were especially sought after as eunuchs in the Muslim world for use as civil servants and the management of harems as illustrated by the famous painting by Levni around 1732.

50. The large labor force that was an important part of American agriculture in the mid 1800’s would not have been there had it not been for the participation of African noblemen and leaders. In 1842 the sultan of Morocco wrote, “the traffic in slaves is a matter on which all sects and nations have agreed from the time of the sons of Adam.”

51. “Most slaves carried from Africa between 1440 and 1870 were procured as a result of Africans’ interest in selling their neighbors.” Hugh Thomas, “The Slave Trade – The Story of the African Slave Trade 1440 to 1870″)

52. Voltaire made the comment, that while it was difficult to defend the conduct of the Europeans in the slave trade, that of Africans bartering each other was even more reprehensible and deserves to be better remembered.

53. The introduction of maize and manioc compensated for much of the population lost through slavery by substantially increasing the birth rate through the ability of Africans to now feed their populations. Rice and yams also played an important role in the burgeoning African agriculture.

54. The slave trade encouraged African monarchies to capture more prisoners in their constant tribal wars and to kill far less of them so as to be able to profit from the slave trade themselves.

55. The slave trade vastly increased employment in West Africa due to the great numbers of men needed in the entrepots as porters, canoemen, and guards.

56. The greatest opposition to the slave trade from any religious came from the Quakers, who had once participated in the slave trade themselves.

57. Nelson Mandela in a visit to Britain paid tribute to the Englishman Charles Wilberforce (1759-1833) as the greatest force in opposition to slavery. Benezet and Moses brown were his American counterparts.

58. Prior to the Amrican revolution, the British wre responsible for transporting large numbers of slaves to the American Colonies. Between 1721 and 1730, they brought well over 100,000 slaves. Only about 10,000 came to the mainland colonies such as South Carolina. The rest went to Jamaica, Cuba, Barbados and elsewhere in the Caribbean.

59. The participation in the slave trade by order of slave voyages and numbers of slaves by country:
COUNTRY VOYAGES SLAVES TRANSPORTED
Portugal 30,000 4,650,000
Britain 12,000 2,600,000
Spain / Cuba 4,000 1,600,000
France / W. Indies 4,200 1,250,000
Holland 2,000 500,000
N. America / U.S. 1,500 300,000
Denmark 250 50,000
Other 250 50,000

60. Origins of Slaves:
Senegambia (Arguin) / Sierra Leone 2,000,000
Windward Coast 250,000
Ivory Coast 250,000
Gold Coast (Ashanti) 1,500,000
Slave Coast (Dahomey, Adra, Oyo) 2,000,000
Benin to Calabar 2,000,000
Cameroons, Gabon 250,000
Loango 750,000
Congo / Angola 3,000,000
Mozambique / Madagascar 1,000,000
TOTAL FROM AFRICAN PORTS 13,000,000

The principal source for the material published in this report was the book, “The Slave Trade – The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440 – 1870″ by Hugh Thomas