Status Updates From Black Mother: The Years of ...

so cool to find out about the civilizations of the ghana/benin area and how differently they responded to and were affected by the slave trade.

-congo,east africa, and gulf of guinea all had vary different experiences of contact with europe and asia
-E. Af had well established commerce and cities trading w india arabia china etc. but fell into ruin when their trade routes were cut off and eventually portuguese actively attacked and invaded

-portuguese created alliance w/king of congo. amicable at first, later complacent, then fully abusive.
-congo civilization eventually fell, crushed by slave trade issues and unable to advance technologically because cut off by portuguese from other european trade
-chiefs/kings became wealthy themselves but never traded for things that benefit their people. Guns, luxury goods.

-chiefs sourced slaves from ~300 miles of the coasts but some areas were specifically heavily impacted.
-Enslaved peoples often were mislabeled at point of sale. ex. Yoruba —> Nagos
-European accumulation of goods was foreign to the avg African, typically didn’t try to amass personal property.

myths abounded
-Avg european began to think Af had never possessed civilization worthy of respect or investigation. thought all signs of civilization in Af were because of outside influence.
-truth was reverse. kingdoms preceded Europes influence. Eu helped destroy them
-Eu thought Africans ate people for taste. Ironically Africans believed same thing about europeans. thought they were being purchased as food.

-the “great circuit”, Europe brought goods to Africa to trade for slaves, took those slaves to Caribbean/N. America and got sugar/tobacco, which they brought back to Europe to sell at huge profit.
-First slaves came from raids, then war-alliances, then peaceful trade.
-African chiefs got advantage over one another by trading slaves for military goods. It became a case of participate or become enslaved.

notes:
-europe and africa both had systems of slavery before chattel slavery began. Included captured peoples of all colors and extended even to their own people.
-both had developed societies. Europeans even sought out partnerships with African societies at that time (circa 1400?)
-first major abuses came from raiders kidnapping Berbers/moors and bringing them back to Portugal to impress a king