Transatlantic slave trade
Do the African suppliers of slaves bear as much responsibility for the horrors of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade as the European traders?The Trans-Atlantic slave trade is one of the most heinous of crimes committed against people in history. Many people including women and children were taken away from their homes and families forcefully to tend to the needs of the masters. Who should be blamed for such a terrible act? Many people are quick to place emphasis on the European slave trader's role in slavery because it is convenient to blame them but it must be remembered that African slave traders were just as involved in the capture and selling of slaves.African kings, rulers and elders provided the most slaves to the European traders and obtained a good profit from this. There were four types of people that were used as slaves. There were the criminals who were being sold as punishment by chiefs, there were Africans obtained from raids, domestic slaves who were being resold and lastly, prisoners of war. The majority of which were prisoners of war. This set a precedent where kings or chiefs would deliberately go to war with other tribes to keep up with high demand for slaves. Captain John Hall of the British Navy rep
Domestic slavery as it was called was flourishing and most of the slaves that were used were captured in battle, obtained by inheritance or forced into slavery because of the debts they had. A British official on the Gold Coast writing regretfully in 1853 wrote "it may be said that from our first settlement on the coast until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, we did not confer on lasting benefit upon the people. The Europeans in the New World were dying at an annual rate of 125-250 per 1000 whilst Africans would die an annual rate of 30 per 1000. There is a common belief amongst people that all was good and peaceful in Africa before the arrival of the Europeans. William Gray was horrified by the cruelty shown on the "grand pillage" when 'one young woman who had become a mother two days before she was taken, and whose child, being thought by her captor to young to be worth saving, was thrown by the monster into the burning hut from which the flames had just obliged the mother to retreat. The conditions that they were placed in whilst on the journey were horrendous. So we got ready to cut slaves heads of, and at 5 o'clock in the morning we began to cut slaves heads of, fifty in one day. This meant that Africans were an in demand commodity because they were more resistant to the diseases that were in the Americas and could work harder as well. The African traders were never short of excuses as to why to sell someone away. " This would not occur or at least be as widespread as it is if as John Newton wrote "the Europeans would cease to tempt them by offering for slaves. The African traders were as much a part of this as they too did profit from slavery. Francis Moore tells us that " their way of bringing them is, tying them by the neck with leather thongs, at about a yard distance from each other, 30 or 40 in a string, having generally a bundle of corn, or an elephants tooth upon each of their heads. The resulting deaths from these wars were looked at as casualties of war. However this theory called "Merrie Africa' is far from the truth. Indeed, the trade would have languished without their wholehearted cooperation.
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Acceptance Essays
