• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
 
The Ideology of Racial Hierarchy andthe Construction of the EuropeanSlave Trade
 
"THE ROUTE OF THE SLAVES"Sponsored by UNESCO, LISBON, PORTUGALDECEMBER 9-12 1998An International Conference
 Mr. President M'Bow, Dr. Doudou Diene, Madame Coordinator Henriques, permitme in the name of my ancestors and by the spirit of their legacies to simply saythat it is not racial difference that has been a problem in discovering theideological basis of the enslavement of Africans, but rather the idea of racialhierarchy, developed, refined and disseminated by Europeans who prosecutedthe slave trade for three centuries. All of us here are aware that the magnitude of the European forced migration of enslaved Africans has no peer in history(Haywood, l985). In its extraordinary reach into another continent and its equallyovercoming of horrendous obstacles on land and the high seas, the Europeanenterprise dwarfed all other examples of similar social and economicconstructions. The sea, more daunting in ways, than the desert, made the journey far more perilous than any other forced migration of peoples. Yet it is alsotrue that the magnitude of the so-called "trade" must be measured in terms of themultiplicity of legacies, historical and contemporary, that it created. In the wake of the most mammoth forced movement of people over a period of centuries we seethe very beginnings of the modern world, and indeed, the post modern world, isin effect, a creation of the same legacies (Tracy, l990).In one instance the spread of Africans and Europeans to continents other thanEurope and Africa helped to produce a world order that has reigned supreme intechnology, science, economics, law, and sociology for five hundred years. Itwas, however, a racist construction created out of stolen land, broken treaties,stolen labor and broken backs. Any interpretation of the post modern views of thepresent world has to take into consideration that the entire discourse on thefluidity of cultures, the notion of subjective identities, the instability of social andcultural space, and the interaction and interpenetration of peoples is a directresult of the most massive forced movement of people the world has ever known(Cohen, l982). It becomes impossible to speak of the Americas or Caribbeanwithout Africans or indeed Europe without Africa. One cannot speak intelligentlyabout Portugal and its history without Brazil or without Angola and Mozambique;this is an incredibly interconnected historical moment.
 
I am struck by two phenomena of the late twentieth century: the survival of theAfrican in the West and the decline of the doctrine of white racial supremacy,neither is yet a complete victory because Africans have not survived equally wellin all places, as this UNESCO project "The Route of the Slaves" has shown, andthe doctrine of white supremacy is expressed everyday on the Internet and inprivate circles of Europe and America. But the ultimate success of the African asAfrican in the West and the decline and elimination of any hint of racial hierarchywill be one of the great achievements of contemporary humanity. It is, of course,one of the fundamental thrusts of the Afrocentric movement with which I amidentified.The Afrocentrist, in positioning agency for African people, reasserts Africanhumanity against all objectifications. We are not on Europe's periphery; we areourselves historical beings and our engagement with Europe or Europe'sencounter with us must be seen in the light of Africa before Europe (Asante,l990). This is why we cannot have a fruitful discussion until we understand thatno African slaves were removed from Africa, only African people were removed.They were blacksmiths, farmers, fishers, priests, members of royal families,musicians, soldiers, and traders. They were captured against their wills and thenenslaved in the Caribbean and Americas.There remains, however, one nagging question, why were Africans the victims of the most massive enslavement in history? It is a question not to be taken lightlywhen one views the history of humanity. It was on the African continent thathumans originated and on the same continent that the most majestic civilizationsof antiquity arose in the Nile Valley (Diop, l991). It was also in Africa that the firstflourishing of religion occurred and even the naming of the Gods was said to bean African event (Herodotus, Book II). The mighty kingdoms of the West andSouth developed and maintained themselves for centuries without the presenceof either Arabs or Europeans. So the question to be asked is, why did Africansbecome the subjects of the European Slave Trade?When this question is asked a variety of answers are given and each answer hasa host of defenders. In effect the answer to the question has been hopelesslyproblematized to the extent that it will be difficult to arrive at an answer satisfactory to everyone. Indeed a prominent answer with a vocal cadre inAmerica places the burden entirely on the victims themselves, that is, that it wasAfricans who created the conditions of enslavement. This falls into the categoryof blaming the victim much like the person who beats a spouse and then claimsthat the spouse caused the violence. Of course, some spouses may not beblameless, as all Africans may not be, in the long engagement with the EuropeanSlave Trade. Yet it is not correct to blame the actions of the oppressor on theoppressed. No where in African history do I find any example where slavery wasthe principal mode of production of an African society. No such slave societieswere created on the continent and certainly no such societies where foreign labor was imported for the purpose of enslavement and hence, production. Africans
 
had no global interest in the movement of African people and saw in the "trade"no advantage of a strategic nature.I believe that it is more beneficial to seek the answers to the ideologicalfoundations of slavery in Europe itself. At least, it is in Europe where we discover the first initiatives for the capture and use of Africans in the Americas and theCaribbean. And here in Portugal we are near the beginning of the puzzle itself. Inan attempt to explain the relationship of racism and economics to the motivationbehind the enslavement of Africans, scholars writing in English haveconcentrated on two arguments and these arguments might be expanded as wecontinue to see the unfolding of the "The Route of the Slaves Project." I suspectthat the documents in Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch would extend our reachinto the history of the phenomenon of slavery.
A First Thesis
Eric Williams, whose book,
Capitalism and Slavery 
, written in l944, argued thatslavery was not caused by racism but that racism was the consequence of African slavery. This line of thinking has become one of the leading explanationsfor the cause of slavery. It is fraught with many problems but I believe it isnecessary for me to explain the principal characteristics of this argument before Ioffer my criticisms. For Williams, the answer to the question of why theenslavement of Africans must be found in economic rather than racial conditions.Starting from the premise that the color of unfree labor had been consecutivelybrown, white, and then black in the Caribbean, the economic argument, as I amcalling it, says that the first instance of slave trading and slave labor involved theIndian, that is, the Native American. According to this idea the Indians, that is,Native Americans quickly succumbed to the excessive labor demanded of them,an insufficient diet, the white man's diseases, and an inability to adjust to thewhite man's way of life. This idea was buttressed by the often repeated positionof the priest Bartholomes de Las Casas' l518 petition from Hispaniola thatpermission be granted to bring Africans, "a race robust for labor, instead of natives, so weak that they can only be employed in tasks requiring littleendurance, such as taking care of maize fields or farms." While Spain attemptedto restrict the enslavement of Indians to those who rejected Christianity or to theCaribs who were considered cannibals, in the end Spain found that one Africanwas worth four Indians. It is Williams' opinion that the New World, as he calls it—but we know that such designation is a misnomer since it was neither new nor were the ideas carried to the Americas new—demanded robust laborers whocould work in the cotton, tobacco and sugar fields.The economic argument contends that the immediate successors to the Indiansas slaves were the whites as indentured servants, at least in the Caribbean. Hecites considerable evidence to suggest that white servants, who signed contractsprior to departure to the Americas were indentured by law, binding them to
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...