Africans and the Triangular TradeA brief survey |
Three and a half centuries of immigration have injected ever-fresh doses of energy and tension into the American bloodstream. As diverse peoples learned to live together, they became a dynamo generating both creativity and conflict. One of the most diverse elements in American life was introduced when Africans were forcibly brought to the American colonies. The American experiment had begun and consisted mainly of white men with a European heritage . The African was of a different color, had a different language, a different religion, and had an entirely different world view. But perhaps the most striking contrast was that, while the European came voluntarily in search of greater individual opportunity, the African came in chains. Because the European was the master and thereby the superior in the relationship, he assumed that his heritage was also superior. However, he was mistaken, because the African had a rich heritage of importance both to himself and to mankind. When people interact intimately over a long period of time, the influences are reciprocal. This is true even when their relationship is that of master and slave.
In Africa
An African should not have to find it necessary to make apologies for his civilization. However, Europeans and Americans have come to believe, at least in their subconscious minds, that civilization can be equated with progress in science and technology. Because the Africans lagged far behind the Europeans in the arts of war and of economic exploitation, the Europeans believed that the Africans must be uncivilized savages. Africa, like the rest of the world outside Europe, had not made the break-through in science, technology, and capitalism which had occurred in Europe. Nevertheless, they had their own systems of economics, scholarship, art, and religion as well as a highly complex social and political structure. There are common elements which run throughout the entire continent of Africa, but to gain the best insight into the background of the American slaves, West African culture can be isolated and studied by itself.
Trade
West Africa (also) carried on a vigorous trade with the outside world. When the Europeans arrived, they discovered, as had the Arabs before them, that the West Africans could strike a hard bargain. They had developed their own systems of weights and measures and insisted on using them. Europeans who failed to treat the king or his agent fairly, found that the Africans simply refused to deal with them again. Trade was always monopolized by the king, and he appointed specific merchants to deal with foreign businessmen. As previously noted, it was by the control and taxation of commerce that the king financed his government and maintained his power.
The strength and weaknesses of the West African economy can be seen by a cursory glance at a list of its main exports and imports. West African exports included gold, ivory, hides, leather goods, cotton, peppercorn, olive oil, and cola. While some of these items were only exported for short distances, others found their way over long distances. West African gold, for example, was exported as far away as Asia and Northern Europe. Some English coins of the period were minted with West African gold. West African imports included silks from Asia, swords, knives, kitchen-ware, and trinkets from the primitive industrial factories of Europe as well as horses and other items from Arabia. Two other items of trade became all important for the future--the exportation of slaves and the importation of guns and gunpowder.
Art
The two forms of African art best known outside Africa are music and the dance. African music contrasts with European music in its use of a different scale and in concentrating less on melodic development and more on the creation of complex and subtle rhythmic patterns. Musicians used to view African music as simple and undeveloped, but now musicologists admit that African rhythms are more complex and highly developed than rhythms in European music. Africans like to sing and to develop songs for all occasions: religious songs, work songs, and songs for leisure. African singing is also marked by the frequent use of a leader and a chorus response technique. African dance, like its music, builds on highly complex rhythmic patterns. It too is closely related to all parts of the African's daily life. There are dances for social and for ritual occasions. The most common use of the dance was as an integral part of African religious rites.
Religion
African religion has usually been defined as fetish worship - the belief that specific inanimate objects are inhabited by spirits endowed with magical powers. While this view of African religion is partly true, it obscures more than it clarifies. The fetish is believed to have some powers of its own, but, in general, it derived them from its close association with a dead ancestor. Behind the fetish was the religion of ancestor worship, and the fetish is better understood as a religious symbol. Ancestor worship was also part of the African's strong family ties and his powerful kinship patterns. Behind the realm of this fetish and ancestor worship lay another world of distant and powerful deities who had control over the elemental natural forces of the universe. While this religion might be described as primitive, it cannot be viewed as simplistic. It involved a series of complex ideas about fetishes, ancestors, and deities which required a high degree of intelligence.
The Rulers
In an old Asante ritual, connected with the enthronement of a ruler, the people pray that their ruler should not be greedy, should not be hard of hearing, should not act on his own initiative nor perpetuate personal abuse nor commit violence on his people, While the right to rule was generally passed on from generation to generation within a single family, the power did not immediately and automatically fall on the eldest son within that family. Instead, another family had the power to select the next ruler from among a large number of potential candidates within the ruling family. If the ruler who was selected ruled unwisely and unfairly, he could also be deposed. Here was a distinct limitation on royal absolutism.
Distribution of Land
In a similar way, there were limitations on the centralization of economic power. While valuable land in Europe had been captured and controlled by private ownership and was the possession of a powerful minority, land in West Africa still belonged to the community. A powerful family had the right to control and supervise the use of the land for the welfare of the community, and, undoubtedly, this power could be misused. Such a family assigned land to its users along with certain tenure safeguards which operated to limit even the power of the family. Those using the land who did not fulfill their obligations to the community by utilizing it properly and wisely, could have the land taken away from them. It might then be given to someone else. Both in economics and in politics, historical custom and precedent has limited minority power and has protected the welfare of the community. Nevertheless, community power and wealth has come to be divided into two major divisions: the rich and powerful few and the poor and powerless majority. Though the elite ruled and the masses served, rights and obligations which limited the amount of exploitation were always in existence.
Asante
The Asante were a sub-group of the Akan. In Jamaica they were known as Coromantines and were prized as workers, although their haughty nature and skill in martial arts made them difficult to control.
The Asante built up a mighty empire in the area of the Gold Coast or present-day Ghana, an empire indeed which was larger than modern Ghana. To find out about the origin of Asante, historians have had to go back beyond written records, collecting information from oral tradition, stories handed down by word of mouth in much the same way as the well-known Anancy stories were handed down among the Akan people for many generations before anybody thought of writing them down.
The Asante nation was created by the fusion of a number of clans. A clan consists of a group of people who claim descent from a common ancestor.
The Coromantines from Asante, who were bought by Jamaican planters in large numbers, were hoe cultivators who farmed successfully as they came from a fertile area where maize, plantain, yam and other root crops grew
easily. Some of them were skilled blacksmiths or craftsmen used to working in gold. Others were weavers. Many were traders. The men were usually brave and disciplined soldiers. They were used to living under a government which was paternal rather than authoritarian. Their leaders relied on persuasion and political acumen rather than force to carry through their policies.
Coromantines who arrived in the West Indies were therefore by no means primitive, simple and unsophisticated savages. Their experience and their attitudes not only encouraged them to stage rebellions but also gave them the confidence and assurance that if they freed themselves from the control of their white masters, they could organize and conduct their own affairs on lines which would give personal freedom without destroying order.
Dahomey / Slave Coast
Dahomey, another famous West African state with a great military reputation, developed along very different lines from Asante. Slavers called it the Slave Coast because it supplied them with so many slaves. They were sold by the rulers of Dahomey, firstly, because they built up and maintained a very formidable army which took many prisoners and secondly because most of the king's revenue came from an export tax on slaves.
The Ibo
The stateless system of government
The Ibo people organized their affairs very differently from both the Asante and the Fon people of Dahomey. Iboland, which lay between Benin and Igala, the Cross River and the city states of the Niger delta, had an overall population density greater than anywhere else in West Africa. Yet the people never formed an empire. They did not even establish large towns. For purposes of government they lived in thousands of villages. Villages were associated in five main cultural groups. We could not describe these groups as tribes since they had no central government. Cultural groups were divided into clans made up of Ibo who traced their descent from a common ancestor. Clans, like cultural groups, had no political significance.
This does not mean that the Ibo had not developed a political consciousness. Indeed they fit Aristotle's definition of man as 'a political animal' better than any other West African people. They created egalitarian societies in which every man claimed a voice in running the affairs of the community. Since every man considered himself as good as anyone else, no man had the right to make decisions for or to give orders to another. Therefore competition was considered healthy. Wrestling, national sports and even mock battles emphasized competition between individuals, extended families and clans. Men who made money could buy titles which conferred social distinction. The fees paid for initiation into these title groups provided a kind of pension fund. All Ibo shared too in the practice so common among African peoples of showing respect for the aged. The elders were reputed to be experienced and wise. Their opinion was therefore sought on all matters affecting the public interest. Their advice was often followed. On the other hand, the elders were not permitted to dictate to the younger generation. On any important matters of policy they were expected and, in the last resort, compelled to explain and justify their decisions.
City States of the Niger Delta
The Niger Delta, known to generations of European traders as the Oil Rivers, lies between the Cross River in the east and the Benin River in the west. The low-lying land between the two rivers, which are 300 miles apart, is an area of palm trees and mangrove swamps, creeks and waterways. Here towns grew up and carried on trade by fleets of canoes. The inhabitants were known to the inland Ibo as the people of the Salt Water. They were drawn from various ethnic groups including Itsekiri and Sobo in the west, Ijo in the centre and coastal Ibibio and Efik people of Old Calabar in the east. Like the Ibo, the Ijo and Efik at first based political organization on the village unit. They did not create large states or powerful kingdoms.
The Yoruba
Yoruba people settled over a wide area of West Africa, stretching from the Niger in the north to the Gulf of Guinea in the south and from Benin in the east to Dahomey and Borgu in the west. This area is sometimes called Yorubaland but it never became a political unit ruled by a central government. Within it some of the Yoruba people created a powerful state known as the Oyo empire, one of the earliest states which rose in West Africa.
King Sugar makes his demands
Spain began to establish her vast New World empire and to demand labour to exploit its resources. Ovando's arrival in Hispaniola in 1502 marked the beginning of a drive to make the Indies profitable. Velosa introduced cane. The local Indians were easily worked to death. An official Spanish report of 1518 admitted that, whereas there had been over 1,000,000 Indians in Cuba alone when it was discovered by Columbus, the number had dropped to 11,000. Settlers began to import African slaves. In 1518 Charles V of Spain issued the first asiento, a licence to a foreigner to supply 4,000 slaves a year to the islands and the Spanish Main. This coincided with Las Casas' appeal to the king in which he suggested that, to save the Indians from extermination, every Spanish settler in Hispaniola should be allowed to import twelve African slaves. Spanish settlers were well pleased with this solution to their labour problem. As the chronicler Herrera wrote in 1601, one African could do the work of four Indians.
Increasingly the slave trade involved its victims in suffering. Elizabeth I of England registered horror when she first heard of John Hawkins's activities on his voyage of 1562. She declared that God would certainly punish him, but, having seen how much profit he made on his cargo of 300 slaves, she not only pardoned him but also invested money in his second voyage. Soon other English traders were heavily involved in the trade.
The best customers were settlers who had become sugar planters. They bought slaves on a scale which radically altered the structure of society in sugar colonies.
It was the 'sugar revolution' of the 1640s which did most to stimulate slaving. The Dutch pioneered the changeover from tobacco to sugar as the main cash crop of the region. When they were driven out of Pernambuco in Brazil just as they had developed a profitable trade in sugar foreign settlers were finding it increasingly difficult to make a living from growing tobacco. The Dutch provided capital or gave credit which enabled enterprising colonists to set up sugar plantations. They taught the British and French planters how to process sugar successfully. They provided a guaranteed market for all the sugar produced. Moreover, they expanded the slave trade rapidly to provide the labour force which was an essential feature of the plantation system.
Without this expansion of the slave trade, the sugar revolution could never have proceeded at such a pace.
Slaves became the majority group in the population of every sugar island. Once they were set free, social, economic and, eventually, political changes were inevitable. Among the changes which took place one of the most obvious is the decline of the sugar industry. It is not, however, safe to conclude that the end of the slave trade followed by the emancipation of existing slaves caused the decline of the plantation system and ruined the sugar industry. From the evidence available, one may argue that it was the decline of the plantation system which helped to create a situation in which it became possible at last to end both the slave trade and slavery.
African Demography and the distribution of slaves in the Americas
"In the 17th century, the population of Black Africa was comparable to that of China," according to the Senegalese historian Mbaye Gueye. " Today, it's half as many. " But the argument about depopulation through slavery persists, even if historians agree on the number of people deported: "between 11 and 15 million in the 18th and 19th centuries, " according to the French historian Jean-Michel Deveau. "Before that, we don't know, but the major industrial part of the slave trade began in the 18th century. "
And for every slave who made it to the New World, several others died on the way. Gueye estimates maybe eight to 10, Deveau between three and five. And yet more slaves died on African soil than at sea. "The death rate on the ships was 15-18%, " says Deveau, "but many were killed during attacks on their villages or while they were being marched to the coast. In some places, women about to be captured, killed their own children."
What happened to those who survived the atrocities of the Middle Passage?
"Actually, the smallest number of slaves was exported to North America, as compared to the Caribbean and South America. About ½ million slaves (out of approximately 15 million total) were sent to the southern part of the United States. Aboat half of the total slaves sent to the Americas went to the Caribbean, and about a third of them went to Brazil. Indeed, as a legacy of the slave trade, Brazil has the largest population of people of African decent outside of Africa. However, the population of slaves in the United States grew at a higher rate than it did in these other regions. Consequently, the African-American population in the United States today is second only to Brazil in the New World." (source)
Sources:
"The Immigrant Heritage of America" by Norman Coombs
"Canes and Chains - A Study of Sugar and Slavery" by Elizabeth M. Halcrow (ISBN 0-435-98223-0)
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