By John Amoda
THE ships involved were constructed to secure the chained passengers in the long journey from Africa to the Americas. On the auction blocks in the New World African captives were sold to their ultimate buyers still in chains.

Chains described them not as slaves but free men in chains. Africans did not leave Africa as slaves; they were prisoners sold to be transformed into slaves in the New World. Thus the visible enemy of the captives in chains were both the European buyers and the Africa sellers of prisoners taken in wars waged for that purpose.

But these visible enemies were agents of the invisible enemy whose New World economic designs had need of slave labour to complement that supplied by indentured servitude. On the “trade” side, therefore, those to be blamed included the European governments, the slave-dependent businesses, the New World colonial governments and the buyers of African captives.

Transforming captives into slaves took place in the plantation-better stated the plantation was an economic institution only because the colonial government back-stopped by their European home governments ensured security of ownership of African captives. Home governments were critical in the beginning of the establishment of African slave labour in the Americas and the Caribbean.

The European home governments helped settlers to develop the capacity to institutionalise chatted slavery. Making slaves out of free Africans kept in chains accelerated the development by colonies of state capacity which in turn enabled colonial buyers to secure control and exploitation of African captives. Slave labour emerged when the captives were compelled to obey the authority claimed by their captors; when captors became masters and captives became slaves, the commands of master were obeyed as rightful by slaves.

In the process of the emergence of master-slave relations of power from the military relations conquers and conquered, the pacification of rebellious captives was the function of the colonies backed by the home governments.

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”.

Continues next week