By John Amoda

AS the colonies became able to assume the pacification function, they could also assert their independence from the home governments; this they could not do so long as revolts of African captives, organised escape by the same and defence of their freedom endangered the colony and its economy.

Only as control of captives was institutionalised through the transformation of the colonies into “police states” through “slave codes” and “black codes” and “slave-making instruments of terror and violence” were legalised disciplines to compel African captives to obey the authority claimed by their buyers, was enslavement of African captives economically viable.

The institutionalisation of slave labour created the demand for more captives as the plantation as the process for transforming captives into slaves was being perfected. The development of the plantation as an institution of terror implied also its development as an economy.

Prior to the New World invention of the technology of transforming captives into slaves, “trade” in captives was fraught with risks, for the capital invested in the buying of captives could not be realised as slaves. With the ability to make slaves out of captives the “trade” in prisoners of war became highly profitable. The colonial governments and the home government that facilitated the making of slaves out of captive Africans are therefore parties to what Louis Gates called a “heinous Crime”.

With the demand side problem solved, the commensurate development in the process of meeting the regular and continuous demand for captive Africans followed. African prisoner-taking kingdoms were the economic complement of the slave-making-colonies.

There were no slave trading kingdoms in Africa; those historians have described as slave trade kingdoms were kingdoms specialising in prisoner-taking wars; as demands for captives became both profitable and supportive of the consolidation of military power, prisoner-taking predatory states made prisoner-taking military objectives.

Regular demand had to be met with regular supply for captives. Prisoner-taking wars had to be organised on business basis. For over 350 years prisoner-taking wars became a business to meet the labour needs of New World slave making colonies secured by slave making states. It is not difficult to define the victims of this Trans-Atlantic relocation of African captives by agents of European and colonial plantation colonies.

They are the captives relocated and their communities regularly sacked by African prisoner-taking kingdoms. It is also not difficult to ascertain the culpability of European home governments and their colonial governments and plantation owners. The difficult issue in this reparation exercise is claiming the portion of reparation due from the prisoner-taking kingdoms.

The colonisation of Africa following the abolition of slave trade has transformed both predators and victims into colonial subjects. That, however, does not prevent one apportioning blame due to African partners in the supply of captives to New World colonies. Gates is right when he says:

“But the sad truth is that the conquest and capture of Africans and their sale to Europeans was one of the main sources of foreign exchange for several African kingdoms for a very long time. Slaves were the main export of the kingdom of Kongo; the Asante empire in Ghana exported slaves and used the profit to import gold. Queen Njinga, the Brilliant 17th century monarch of the Mbundu waged wars of resistance against the Portuguese but also conquered polities as far as 500 miles inland and sold African traditional religious leaders into slavery, claiming they had violated her new Christian precepts”.

These African monarchs however participated in an economic process driven by the mercantilist interest of European Governments in their American and Caribbean settlements. But whatever their culpability of African middlemen might be, the independent variable, the causal factor in the reparatory campaigns is the European Governments that set in motion the process of the conquest, pacification and colonization of the New World of the Americas and the Caribbean.

It is sad that it could be said of their African counterparts that “slaves were the main export” of their kingdoms. It is saddest however when Henry Louis Gates could call “sale of captives” export trade. This is trivializing this rather complex collaboration between Africa’s Prisoner-Taking Kingdoms and European New World Slave Making States. It was Africa’s societies that were disrupted by prisoner-taking wars; captives from those societies were forcefully relocated to strange climes and there subjected to centuries long dehumanizing abuse in the delib
erate process whose outcomes were New World Slaves.

Reparation is due to those 50 societies that were continually sacked and their sons and daughters sold as captives. These societies are represented by those captives who as slaves contributed to the development of the New World. Eric Williams. Slavery and Capitalism remains the authoritative documentation of the indebtedness of the European Transatlantic New World to Africa’s captives forcibly relocated to the Americas and the Caribbean and there transformed into slaves.

The side comments made about the extent of the culpability of the African middle men, the counterpart of the European ‘slave traders’ may be relevant in the ‘black nationalist discourse’ on Afrocentricity-but the extent to which the learned Harvard Professor goes to make his points reduces the gravity of the subject matter. In conclusion, I maintain that his essay is more than about “Ending the Slavery Blame Game” but it is indeed a beginning of attempts at understanding the roots of poverty in the Americas and Africa and how it can be addressed.