SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE

Slavery is a practice of one man holding another or other under servitude. It is a noble institution practiced all over the world since the existence of mankind. Everybody wants to be a Lord and no one wants to be a slave, yet it was a practice that has spanned the existence man on earth. The tendency for the strong to dominate the weak, the rich control the poor underscores the existence of slavery and sundry servitude. Amongst all enslaves, all races, peoples, generations or religions, the slaves have the have-nots at their beck and calls.

            Within the microcosm of the society servitude exists. A typical examples is a social peer group system, there are the high and the low. The high subjects the low to create a distinct level between the two notions standing they may be age mates existing at one time or the other in the same and particular vicinity.

Slaves are meant to run errands for their master, answer calls and speak when called upon to do so. A slave maintains a particular posture and conducts before his master which failure attracts one punishment or the other depending on the gravity of the misconduct.

It is cursory to wear the toga of slavery – the bound and the free born cannot operate on the same pedestrian no matter how defiant he may want to be. Even in a revolution, slave defiance is seen odd, even amongst protesting slaves.

In every society, the situation is the same. Amongst all generations, class is a visible characteristic human being. Sociological speaking, kings, nobles – the highly place have a different platform while the down trodden is pegged to the bottom class where he belongs to unapologetically. Even in animal kingdom, some animal’s standout and in most cases prey on others. This accounts for why the shivers when the wound passes by.

In Africa, as much as in any other race of the world facts about to show stratification in social order called class. There was primordial lordship. Some were seen as superior to others. Some were royalties – princes and princesses, while others were their hoers of wood and fetchers of water.

The story of the bondage of the Israelites in Egypt is clear evidence that one race or individuals from one time to the other could be subservient, can I say slaves to the other. The same illustration points to the fact racial subjugation, inter-nation domination or enslavement. It also points to the facts that brothers could sell their brothers as the sons of Jacob did to their brother Joseph to the Midianites faraway strangers.

There is no doubt that mere phobia can lead to such dastardly things. Envy could be one of the worst characters of mankind. It is with us as much as it was with our ancestors. Avarice too is as evil as the above mentioned, for which irreconcilable harm have been recorded, meted out by a brother or from one brother to another.

In Europe, America and any other place, slavery abound and denying the existence of it is a kin to man denying the air he breaths. If you don’t agree to its existence because you are not a slave, you agree to its existence for the master and the enslaver you are.

Tyranny is the hallmark of slavery, inhumanity its signpost while the unfeeling heart, the vehicle that conveys thresh floor or site labour. Slavery is evil, enjoyed by the enslaver and bemoaned by the very slave for he wears the shoe and can tell how and where it pains.

For a master to know how slavery hurts, I recommend he denies himself food for a whole day, goes out to work either in the sun or rain as under compulsion until the sun sets or the dusk, without pay or cheerful words. Slavery is savage, yet the companion of the impurity and wathsome or enemy to the godly. Slave labour is that which is performed without food, without water but with whip if you are tired and wanted to stretch your neck.

The Israelite made the Egyptian bricks day in day out under the strict supervision of the Egyptian bond masters in the sun, in the rain round the clock. Slave labour could be likened to two oxen yoked together in the farm for the purpose of tilling the soil. That’s the equivalence of the labour the slaves were exacted. Unfortunately such slave that labored so much, if his body ached would receive no medical attention and must be forced to the farm the next day, even if he was at the breaking point or not. Oxen that threshed the floor were better for they were not totally muzzled for the law forbade that - muzzle not the animal that thresh the floor – the scriptures says but for the slaves it says – slaves always obey your masters.

In another vein, the children of Israel were captured and taken to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar. They were humiliated by the day, suffered beyond description and their God mocked. They were forbidden to worship their God apart from the golden calf made by Nebuchadnezzar. They were made to go through hardship that would make Egyptian masters learners in the game of dehumanizing slave treatment, to the extent that Shedrack, Meshack and Abednego three Hebrew men were thrown into a lake of fire or a burning furnace which the Egyptian slave master never envisaged or would ever contemplate such was the position of slaves as at the time.

In house slavery, domesticated servitude abounds in Europe with Kings and nobles placing excruciating weight of slavery upon the commoners of their kingdoms. It is not proper to proceed on the topic – slavery in Europe because it is the subject of our discussion in the next chapter on feudalism in Europe.

Permit me to digress to a recent type of slave which happened in South Africa called Apartheid. In discussing slavery in Medieval Europe and other jurisdictions like America, bringing the recent Apartheid South Africa does not tally but let us sing the ancient and modern hymn.

There was a system of slavery in South Africa which saw the aboriginal black Southern, though in majority, sweating under the bondage of minority few whites. The modern day governmental slavery evoked global nostalgia, which lasted for centuries before the voices of freedom prevailed. The blacks in South Africa were brutalized and killed with impurity. It was the government machineries were used unlike in other jurisdictions where the individually owned slaves were burnt without their masters being answerable to anybody but to their consciences which they never had. The case of South Africa is the slavery system with an adventure of colonialism which this treatise never applied itself to initially but inevitable to drive home some points that battle to surface and be acknowledge.

A lot were killed and others clamped into unspecified jail terms; Nelson Madela happened to fall into the group that was jailed without specified number of years. There was this scenario that a black man seen close to where black men were forbidden to be was pursued, caught and clubbed to death. Every society had one story of enslavement or the other to tell.

In Asia, there was high level of the rich enslaving the poor or one race, one group of people or individuals exacting one type of servitude or the other from another. The class distinction in some places was to the effect that a certain class of people were denied suffrage, even if when they were magnanimous permitted to be seen at all. We hear that all human being were created equal in dignity and right, that everybody is equal before the law, for sure not the noble and slave alike.

Slaveholding could be said to be as old as human society. The slaves had always been around to serve the Lords since the origin of mankind. The issue of slavery and free born was in the front burner that even the Holy Bible made many illustrations with it though Christ said in his teachings that was no difference between the slave and the free born or between the Jews and the Gentiles. The statement recognizes the fact of the existence of it though in consolation says everyone is a free born.

The issue sounded placatory but its genuiness is underscored by the fact it came from Christ with whom everything is possible. I don’t sound as supporting slavery but preparing the ground to give it its deserved position as satanic which it actually is.

In Asia, caste system was the order of the day. Social stratification was well pronounced. Take India for instance only very few could be termed “free born”. The institution of slavery was such that only a handful controlled the destiny of others. Majority lived to serve a few under the mandate of slavery. Majority lived to eat the crumbs from their master’s table, yet they worked like jackal to produce the very food they were starved of.

In ancient India, level of poverty was very high because few rich could not allow the majority come out of their state of dust licking poverty or penury so that they could not escape servitude. Not only were individuals enslaved, tribes enslave other tribes and racial domination was self evident. The ancient tribes of the subcontinent of India were head and neck into tribal dominance as a so called superior tribe enslaved the others. It was also well pronounced in both Pakistan and Bangladeshi constituent’s tribes.

Further up, still in the continent of Asia, it was said that slavery reached its apogeal recognition as part of the custom of the people, Japanese sold also their brothers and sisters to Europeans as kings entered into treaties and traded their citizens for either economic reasons or to gain protection as suzerainty also became part of their international policies.

Slavery was a major feature of pre and immediate middle age, not only in Europe but across the world. Slavery in Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Rome, Spain, Belgium and almost every kingdom of Europe reached frenzy within the medieval period and belligerency was an offence a united action must quell.

Before and during the time Christ was born, slave disobedience was deemed deadly offence. Even disobedience of vassal kingdom against a suzerain is a front that must not be tolerate. This accounted for the reason the Jews wanted to setup Jesus Christ when they claimed he was opposing the authority of Caesar when they claimed he called himself King instead of Caesar. When he was hanged an epitaph was also hung which read “Christ, the King of the Jews”.

Slavery – both internal and external was an evil that existed continue to under different guises, changing its face from generation to generation, from a civilization to another. As long as human continues to be human and the quest for an individual, race, tribe or nation continues to show superior slavery has come to stay, till eternity.

The mad rush for acquisition in the evolving would worsen the situation foe slavery. One man can acquire the entire world and mankind would be at his beck and call, to the extent that when a man would make babies and a family would be decided by another man who makes himself a Lord. The current birth control policy is a living example. Having slavery as a treatise in this chapter, it is appropriate to working to have trade which is another leg of this chapter – slavery and slave trade. Slavery and slave trade are Siamese twin, one leads to the other and both are as inseparable as Siamese twin I already called them. Slave trade is the commercial transaction between two persons and the subject matter of the transaction is human being as a chattel, merchandise and central factor in the negotiation. My candid questions is, is there anything like slave trade now or at any other time? When this topic is raised as an issue, everybody’s mind goes to Africa whereas Africa was never involved in such ignoble deal with the white men as he alleged in his propaganda that Africans sold their brothers and sisters to the white man as slaves. It is now a settled matter that Africa was invaded and her sons and daughters captured and whisked away into the land of the white men either in Europe or America.

When slave trade is raised as an issue the actual meaning of it reflects the transaction between the pirates that involved African villages especially those on the coastlines, captured and whisks away their sons and daughters who journeyed weeks and months till they landed coastal slave fortes in the white man’s land. The slaves kept in slave houses were moved to the then slave markets for disposal. Some plantations were also constituted into slave markets where it would be closest to the end user – slave plantation owners and masters. The transaction between the pirates or slave merchants as middle men and the plantation owners who were the ultimate owners and users could be what the exactly termed slave trade. I have always imagined how such markets – slave markets would work like until I stumbled in some graphic expressions of the slave markets in London, Liverpool, Lisbon, Shore of the Caribbean’s, Jamestown, Florida, Virginia slave markets etc. the scenario reminded me of cattle markets in our present communities, it was awful, orchid and unbelievable humanity was so abused at a time in the history of mankind.

Perhaps the scenario was the major reason God destroyed the world of Noah, which was greater than the inhumanity of slavery era. He read how in the year 1619 – the first batch of African slaves were sold to the British immigrants in Jamestown to Kick start the business of buying and selling of slaves in America but the Jamestown transaction brought officialdom into the business of slave trade in America which later was done illegally between the Pirates and plantation owners.

The storey of slave trade though bizarre got official impetus at this juncture. The Jamestown slave trade in the British colony of Virginia opened floodgate for England to be flooded with African slaves which took off in 1640. Prior to this Europe had been making incursions into Africa, hunting for slaves. The ocean going Spain and Portugal were in the forefront of it. The issue of the enslavement of Africa and the puerility of slave markets in Europe and America cannot be over emphasized but let us leave this for later discussion and touch how Europe and the world were selling themselves before they suddenly realized that Africans were created to serve the purpose of doing the chores of the white men, before they realized that they were equally created in the image and likeness of God and would not abuse one another which they did not also see in their later enslavement of the black man; who in their reasoning could not qualify to also be created in the image and likeness of God. Slavery in Europe had its taproots in the Greek and Roman cultures. Before and during the medieval period, slavery was normal and legal. The culture of slavery was as old as mankind and Christ spoke at length against showing that as believers there was no slave no free born in the sight of God. He said there were no Jews and no Gentiles, everybody was equal before God. The followers of Christ were not oblivious of this position; hence the baptized Christian could not be enslaved. Christianity persistent doused slavery till close to twilight of serfdom or feudalism.

The Byzantine slave trade in medieval Europe accounted for the European desire for the ignoble business of buying and selling of human beings. A careful perusal of slave trading and holistic assessment of the savagery of Europe and betray their insincerity that Africans gave them her sons and daughters as if the incidence of invasion and taking human booty was strange to them. It is on record that the first English man that brought African slaves in the year 1563 captured his victims with the help John Hawkins with the help of team and crew member. As John Hawkins made his first slavery voyage in 1563, he felt the business was sweet and made two more follow up voyages, in one of which he lost his life. John Hawkins was reputed ad a notorious criminal and was the earliest English pirate on African shares, second only to Portuguese and Spaniards.

The above information is on the timing of external slave hunting vis-à-vis the information of slaves from Africa to England. As mentioned above, invasion of Africa and the removal of her citizens to Europe by the Portuguese and Spaniards dated from the time immemorial.

Prior to the year 1444 when Christopher Columbus the French explorer commissioned by the King of Spain to along with chime the first batch of African slaves to the West Indies, there were some unnoticeable incursions into Africa for slaves. It had happened for centuries before the King of Spain conned the pope into official permission for such slave hunting expeditions in Africa. The shift in interest from the Europeans enslaving themselves to enslaving Africans was born out of several reasons amongst which were religious, political, economic and social. The institution of slavery in Europe was that fueled by very long lasting empires with whose economies were slave based. The empires of Rome – Western and Central otherwise called the Holy Roman empire, the Byzantine empire of the Eastern Rome, the Othman empire were slave based economics and the emergency of religious renaissance saw the holy catholic church frowning at the institution began the journey of its bond breakout of slaveholding to free air of self actualizations.

In order to sustain the economy of Europe which was duodenary as a result of religious factors expressed in the condemnation of the institution by the Holy Catholic Church, an alternative was found in Africa hence the mad rush to buy African’s slaves in the very end of middle age.

The hundred year’s war, the Black Death, creeping in of capitalist institutes constantly joined to give deadly blows to European empires and feudalism which was the bedrock of modern slavery introduced by Emperor Charles I otherwise called Charlemagne the Great of Holy Roman empire who was significantly crowned by Pope Leox on the Christmas day of 800 – 25^th December 800 as the first recognized Emperor of Holy Roman empire that was composed of West and Central Rome.

There was a kind of free for all rights for hundred years amongst Kingdoms and empires of Europe of medieval period in search of slaves as the vassals provided the slave force that sustained the feudal European economies. Black death was the kind of epidemic that be deviled Europe of the Feudal dispensation which was a landmark incidence that spelt doom for medieval Europe that already being battered right left and centre by such factors enumerated above. Black Death crisscrossed Europe, Asia and North Africa from 1347 to 1450s. It was the most deadly epidemic, nay, pandemic for its international outthink. It took about 200 millions lives which stood it out as the world’s worst health challenge ever witnessed by mankind. The Black Death reduced the workforce in Europe and was one of the greatest reasons for the decline of European kingdoms and empires of Europe especially the Roman and Byzantine empires of middle age.

I have carefully taken time to study the Black Death pandemic and find out the origin, scope of operation and how it affected the black man. I discovered that no black man lost his life in this pandemic that was claimed to kill between seventy five to two hundred million people and found out that no black man ever lost his life. The question that kept on recurring in my mind is how was this disease associated with the black man that it was named the Black Death? My enquiring mind would ask – was this disease designed by the black man? Did it originate from black Africa of the black world? How come the coinage? No answer was actually found for why this plague that destroyed the European could be call the Black Death. A likely reason could only be found in the fact that anything bad was and still as associated with the black man. Black sheep, blackmail, black this and black that. Africa was seen and is still by the white ma as a dark continent, a continent of diseases and famine yet they scramble for, partitioned and plundered us both in material and human resources. It was called the Black Death yet it carefully avoided the enclaves of the black man, choosing whom to kill and not told whom to spare. It is a Black Death that refused to kill a single black man as the name implied. This was one of the reasons why Christianity in Europe did not consider the black man as being created in the image and likeness of God as the scripture holds out that man was created in the image and likeness of God; by extension anyone who violates fellow man violates God.

In the reasoning of ancient European Christians, God could not mean that the black man was inclusive, especially when they paint the angels of God as white and the angel of Satan black. Have you ever seen the portrait of the angel Michael as the dethroned Satan? Could you see the colour of the Satan white man and the church saw the black man have the levity with which he was end is still being treated that warranted the replacement of slavery of fellow citizens with the enslavement of African – black people which they then standard of morality did not condemn.

Further explanation of system of slavery that emerged with the emergence of Emperor Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire known as Feudalism. This is a system of administration that put powers in the hands of the kings at the apex of the ladder with the nobles directly under him enjoy some levels of autonomy over their different manorial districts. They were the Lords of the manors who give lands to the peasants for their agricultural purposes. The economy of the medieval era was agricultural or land based. The peasants or serfs do the farming on the lands they rented from the Lords who exact homage, taxes in term of money and products etc from the serfs. The serfs were in the bottom of the ladder in a feudal system. The knight manor in a feudal system. A typical manorial districts or a manor comprised of a castle, a cathedral and the facilities that make up a city like habitat with residences and large expanse of agrarian land for farming. The serfs – slaves do the farming while the bishops and priests did the church duties of praying for and nurturing the souls and spiritual needs of men in the particular manor. It was the duty of the knights who provide security as soldiers of the manorial districts. The Lord employed the services of the knights as the need of the king of soldiers arises to ward off invasion or any sort of attack on the kingdom.

Serfdom was the gamut of a feudal system, the serfs were the type of slaves that replaced the age long slaves in middle age Europe. The word serf was derived from the latin word “servus” which was translated to mean the same as slave. It had its origin in both Greek and latin to show the underlying interest of both Greece and Rome in the institution of slavery. The king was at the top of the ladder and subordinate only to the Pope and the Holy Roman Empire. Feudalism was a refined slavery system in medieval Europe after working for their masters – Lords on daily basics unlike pre-middle age when slaves produce master’s food in empty stomach themselves. When recourse was made from enslaving fellow Europeans to enslaving black people, the harsh lining of pre-medieval European slavery resurfaced. Black man became their beasts of labour. America story was a litmus test when African enslavement is on the front burner. The story of slavery in America is a story of glory, sordid and life-stifling experiences. Right from the journey on the sea to America which could better be described as horrible to the scorching sum or drench of the various plantations in the Caribbean or United States of America and even in the European plantations, the story is the same – breath – taking hardship.

Slave labour houses or plantations was described by an ex-slave and reformer in one of his emotion laden out bursts said that slavery in United States, particularly in Virginia was a gateway to the biblical hell. It was Fredrick Douglass that summed the situation of slavery as aforesaid. In one of his narratives he bemoaned the beaten he witnessed as a child of a black slave woman who was already stricken in age by a white plantation supervisor for no known provocation apart from the fact that she was not seen at the very spot she was expected to be seen. She may have stepped an inch away to answer the call of nature. In his tear laden narrative he said that the aged auntie’s blood splashed the door and other objects nearby and her wound was never bound after all. The story about the aged slave woman slave was so pathetic and an unforgettable reminder for slavery in the United States. A similar situation may account suicide cases amongst slaves. They will call to mind the incidence the greatest slave mass suicide in human history described as Igbo landing in black America mythology. The story of Igbo landing was the story of some slaves of Igbo extraction who took over the vessel that was taking them to a slave labour site killed and threw the two crew members in the water and force the vessel to land at Dumber Greek in St. Simon’s Island, Glyn Georgia. The best story teller would definitely lack words to describe the situation of slavery in America and the Scenario is better imagined.

Canada was reputed to be the least in the enslavement of black people but could not be exculpated in the entire crime of slavery and slave trade. The different is that they enslaved most of their people unlike the other jurisdictions that believed that white skin is immunity from 18^th and 19^th century slavery. 

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