Interesting addition to the conversation.

[vetran]

'My Nigerian great-grandfather sold slaves' - BBC News

Nigerian journalist and novelist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani writes that one of her ancestors sold slaves, but argues that he should not be judged by today's standards or values.


My great-grandfather, Nwaubani Ogogo Oriaku, was what I prefer to call a businessman, from the Igbo ethnic group of south-eastern Nigeria. He dealt in a number of goods, including tobacco and palm produce. He also sold human beings."He had agents who captured slaves from different places and brought them to him," my father told me.
Nwaubani Ogogo's slaves were sold through the ports of Calabar and Bonny in the south of what is today known as Nigeria.

Buying and selling of human beings among the Igbo had been going on long before the Europeans arrived. People became slaves as punishment for crime, payment for debts, or prisoners of war.The successful sale of adults was considered an exploit for which a man was hailed by praise singers, akin to exploits in wrestling, war, or in hunting animals like the lion.
Igbo slaves served as domestic servants and labourers. They were sometimes also sacrificed in religious ceremonies and buried alive with their masters to attend to them in the next world.

[ladymuck]

This was well known. How else do you get the people from the centre of a huge continent to the sea ports without local help? Someone had to go around and sell the dream of a better life, who else than someone that looks the same as you? This is what happens in modern day slavery too.

The motivations for what they did could well have varied - either felt pressured to do it or just damn greedy and happy to ignore the consequences.

The second quote is also very true. I would however caution that it's not directly comparable to the scale of slavery that the white folk imposed. The British, for example, moved millions of people out of Africa and into Jamaica to fuel their obsession for sugar. It was on an order of magnitude larger than slavery for 'local' reasons.

[vetran]

This was well known. How else do you get the people from the centre of a huge continent to the sea ports without local help? Someone had to go around and sell the dream of a better life, who else than someone that looks the same as you? This is what happens in modern day slavery too.

The motivations for what they did could well have varied - either felt pressured to do it or just damn greedy and happy to ignore the consequences.

The second quote is also very true. I would however caution that it's not directly comparable to the scale of slavery that the white folk imposed. The British, for example, moved millions of people out of Africa and into Jamaica to fuel their obsession for sugar. It was on an order of magnitude larger than slavery for 'local' reasons.

."He had agents who captured slaves from different places and brought them to him," my father told me.

Its not come to Britain to be a waitress and find you get locked in a cellar as now, they captured their countrymen and sold them.

I agree the scale of transport was new but the volume not that unusual.

Slavery and Israel - Brit-Am / Hebrew Nations

In 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas. Maize (corn) and the potato were natives of the New World. They had not been known of previously. [Maize may have once been harvested in India but it had disappeared]. Subsequently, the potato was introduced to Europe and maize to Africa. This resulted in a population explosion in Africa and in parts of Northern Europe. The Africans lived in different states of their own. Between a third to two thirds of the Africans were slaves to other Africans. African slave traders sold other Africans as slaves to Arabs and to Europeans. The slaves were mainly taken from central west and southwest Africa.
Up to five out of every six slaves taken by Arabs died before reaching the places they were being taken to. It also appears that there not that many children of Slaves in Arab countries who survived.
About one out of every six slaves taken by Europeans died on the journey. In other words the death rate of African Slaves taken by Arabs was FIVE TIMES AS BAD as that of slaves taken by Europeans!

History of slavery - Encyclopedia Britannia

In Senegambia, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the Western Sudan, including Ghana (750–1076), Mali (1235–1645), Segou (1712–1861), and Songhai (1275–1591), about a third of the population was enslaved. In Sierra Leone in the 19th century about half of the population consisted of slaves. In the 19th century at least half the population was enslaved among the Duala of the Cameroon, the Igbo and other peoples of the lower Niger, the Kongo, and the Kasanje kingdom and Chokwe of Angola. Among the Ashanti and Yoruba a third of the population consisted of slaves. The population of the Kanem was about a third slave. It was perhaps 40% in Bornu (1396–1893). Between 1750 and 1900 from one- to two-thirds of the entire population of the Fulani jihad states consisted of slaves. The population of the Sokoto caliphate formed by Hausas in northern Nigeria and Cameroon was half-slave in the 19th century. It is estimated that up to 90% of the population of Arab-SwahiliZanzibar was enslaved. Roughly half the population of Madagascar was enslaved.^{[22][23][page needed][24][25][self-published source?][26][27]}
The Anti-Slavery Society estimated that there were 2,000,000 slaves in the early 1930s Ethiopia, out of an estimated population of between 8 and 16 million.

[ladymuck]

Fair enough. Maybe it was the context in which I heard what I said - it was specifically referring to shifting people out of Africa to a different continent. Whereas maybe slaves still within Africa are 'counted' differently. Still doesn't make any form of slavery any more palatable.

[woohoo]

Fair enough. Maybe it was the context in which I heard what I said - it was specifically referring to shifting people out of Africa to a different continent. Whereas maybe slaves still within Africa are 'counted' differently. Still doesn't make any form of slavery any more palatable.

In the future I'm sure they will look on this time when people are forced to sit at desks for most of the day, so they could feed and house themselves in much the same way as slavery.

Well that's how it feels on a Monday morning

[vetran]

Fair enough. Maybe it was the context in which I heard what I said - it was specifically referring to shifting people out of Africa to a different continent. Whereas maybe slaves still within Africa are 'counted' differently. Still doesn't make any form of slavery any more palatable.

It is the story that is promoted, the reality is the evil of slavery was endemic and industrialised in most countries until the west banned it.

Now in my opinion we should all just say thank <deity> that is over and get on with being equal. However it seems a pay out is expected specifically from the west.

[Old Greg]

In the future I'm sure they will look on this time when people are forced to sit at desks for most of the day, so they could feed and house themselves in much the same way as slavery.

Well that's how it feels on a Monday morning

Wage slavery - Wikipedia

[Colour Sergeant Bourne]

The British, for example, moved millions of people out of Africa and into Jamaica to fuel their obsession for sugar.

That's an interesting figure as all the articles I have seen suggests the figure to be sub-million - between 5-600k

But using "millions" is a much more emotive statement in these interesting times

[Whorty]

'My Nigerian great-grandfather sold slaves' - BBC News

Don't fall into the trap that just because a person of colour who says that their ancestor traded in slaves and shouldn't be judged, is OK, and therefore by the same argument we shouldn't judge a white person for doing the same.

No one who traded in humans as slaves, irrespective of their skin colour, should be looked on positively and they should not be revered in today's society.

[Whorty]

That's an interesting figure as all the articles I have seen suggests the figure to be sub-million - between 5-600k

But using "millions" is a much more emotive statement in these interesting times

Wrong. But then, given your attitude I'm guessing your 'sources' are right wing and not very accurate

The slave trade was huge – British ships transported 2.6 million slaves.

Consequences of the slave trade - The triangular slave trade - KS3 History Revision - BBC Bitesize

Others suggest an even higher figure

Historian, Professor David Richardson, has calculated that British ships carried 3.4 million or more enslaved Africans to the Americas.

British Involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade: The Abolition of Slavery Project

From government archives

Britain was the most
dominant between 1640 and 1807 when the British slave trade was abolished. It is estimated that Britain transported 3.1 million Africans (of whom 2.7 million arrived) to the British colonies in the Caribbean, North and South America and to other countries.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/s...-the-trade.pdf