Wednesday, 15 January 2025

THE BEGINNING OF EUROPEAN TRANS-ATLANTIC SLAVE RAIDS

Europeans trans-atlantic slave taking began with the Portuguese first attempts at raiding to kidnap and enslave west Africans along the guinea (gulf of guinea) coast in 1485 CE. This compounded Africa's situation, with unrest from polity to polity, just  the way 'jihadists terrorism' had compounded security situation in west Africa today.

The Arab-islamic trade had began in the 4th century CE and intensified during the advent of Mohammedanism in 622 CE in the Arabian peninsula which spread to north Africa(in 634 CE), west Africa(in 672 ce), Iberia peninsula(in 711 CE) and in India in later centuries, beginning during the reign of Mohammed bin 'tugulo'.

In west Africa, Islamic propagation functioned through a 'slavery or the sword' modus operandi, with conversion to Islam a reason for exemption of a group ...or in some cases, some tribal groups warred against slave raiding and managed to keep their societies intact.

The European trans-atlantic slave trade compounded the security situation in West Africa by adding to the already ugly situations posed by Arab slave raids which was tearing Africa apart from the north to the Sudan(west African), the horn of Africa and to Zanzibar in the 18th century CE. Just the way Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, Niger and some other African polities are contending with Islamic terrorism today, it was a similar situation that was cased by Arab-islamic slave raids that had be we n going on for centuries before  the Portuguese arrived, peacefully at first, but after seeing how friendly and welcoming Africans were, took advantage of the Africans to start slave raids. This didn't work out for the Portuguese, what did work out sufficiently well was the use of a book, the bible as 'the word of god.'

According to historian, Dr Yosef Ben Joachanan, "Africans took in both the hook, the line and the sinker". Africa had not really recovered from this cultural onslaught since then.

Reacting to how few Europeans were able to penetrate African societies, Prof. John Henry Clarke stated; "no one would have expected that, the welcomed guest would enslave the man of the house and the woman who cooked the meal".

The downward trajectory of the African had just began.

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