From: jkgreen@function.mps.ohio-state.edu (Jere K Green)
Subject: Re: Sexist African Males
Organization: Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 04:33:34 GMT

In article <204993@unix.cis.pitt.edu> pmmst8@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Paul M Mweene) writes:
>In article <1992Apr15.181721.24596@zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu>
jkgreen@function.mps.ohio-state.edu (Jere K Green) writes:

*** Can you edit your text so that each paragraph is not one line? ***

>>
>>In the 7th century AD, Muhammad had a black African slave named Bilal
>>(whom he freed)
>
>There are obviously gaps in your (if infact your knowledge is not
>itself entirely a gap), the commonly accepted racial designation of
>Muhammad is ARAB, which is really nothing but another phase of
>caucasianess.

Let's go back to your original statement:

>And as for those who say that slavery was always prevalent in Africa,
>I challenge you to prove. I dispute it. Where and how did Africans
>enslave other Africans prior to the transantlantic trade ? True there
>were occasional wars, which resulted in people being colonised and
>assimilated in the process. However these were far and far between,
>Africa being more than adequate to provide for and accomodate all its
>citizens.  The demand for slaves in the new world was both the first
                                                                ^^^^^
>cause of African slavery and the fuel for the wars that came to ravage
 ^^^^^
>the continent.

Slavery has been "prevalent" in all known ancient societies--even
Ancient Egypt or Ethiopia (Do you deny this too?). You claimed that
slavery didn't exist in Black Africa before the Europeans came around
the 15th century or so ("first cause" from above). I gave an example
of a black African slave sold along the African East Coast during the
7th century AD, some 800 or so years before the Europeans began
getting slaves from Africa. You wanted concrete references. Here is
one. This example is one clearly established in Muslim "oral history"
among other places, and a source of pride (apparently) to the Black
Muslim author who wrote the book I read detailing this (along with a
diatribe against whites). Yet you dismiss this as "a gap in my
knowledge".  Essentially it contradicts your view, so instead of
addressing it, you attack my knowledge. I think this discredits your
honesty and scholarship.

Do you deny the existence of Bilal?
Do you deny that he was a slave of Muhammad?
Do you deny that he was sold along the East African slave route?
Do you deny that African slaves have been sold along a trade route
since ancient times?

>>  Blacks
>>have been sold into slavery along the east coast of Africa for
>>thousands of years, and is well-documented. Are you disputing this?
>
>This is a vague staement with absolutely no evidence. Please supply
>those documents, and they'd better be first hand eye witness accounts
>or references thereof.By making such statements in a manner as
>confident as you show you give some theimpression that you are
>speaking the truth you are not.

They'd "better be" first hand. Oooohhhh!!! You're a tough hombre.

West and Central Africans didn't have much of a tradition of writing
things down in ancient and medieval times, if my understanding is
correct, and in fact, when you go to the library most of the
scholarship is done by people who consult the original sources as best
they can (assuming they're honest) and distill it for those who aren't
devoting their lives to the study of that field.

Ok, you want documentation.

The Slave Trade: The Story of Transatlantic Slavery
Oliver Ransford
John Murray (Publishers) Ltd
HT1322 R35
1971
p. 25
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Domestic slavery flourished in Guinea long before the arrival of the
white men. People could be enslaved through debt, capture in battle,
or in the inheritance of the status. But generally speaking the slaves
were well treated: their only (though terrifying) hazard lay in being
sacrificed at their master's funeral. As one early visitor--Francis
Moor--pointed out `some of the Negroes have many house slaves, which
are their greatest glory', but he goes on to explain that they `live
so well and easy that it is sometimes a hard matter to know the slaves
from their masters or mistresses'. Equino, a chattel-slave who escaped
to write his autobiography, confirms the validity of this comment by
telling us that the domestic slaves in his own African village did `no
more work than the other members of the community, even their master;
their food, clothing, and lodging were nearly the same as ours (except
that they were not permitted to eat with those who were free-born)'.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Stand the Storm: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade
Edward Reynolds, Dept. of History, UCSD
Allison & Busby Ltd
HT 1322 R49
1985

p. 5
----------------------------------------------------------------------
It has been recognized that slavery was common in Africa before the
arrival of European slavers, and this has led to a strain of
interpretation that points to the readiness of African society to
participate in an international system.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The gist of these books is that slavery existed in Africa (it would be
quite suprising if it didn't) before the Europeans, but that it was
much more humane (for the most part) then the chattel slavery that was
to come.

I am not going to type in these books, they should be available in the
library (if not locally then with a library loan program).

>If you mean that Arabs enslaved Aficans, please see my first answer
>above.

That's what I said. And Africans aided them in doing this too.

>If you mean negroes enslaved other negroes, the you are not
>telling the truth. When evr one nigro group defeated another, it
>assimilated it, period.  Any thing else is a figment of an active
>mind.

*irony on*
Well, if you define slavery as ownership of human beings (except if
the two parties are both black, in which case it's ok, because they're
brothers and they're just assimilating), then yeah, maybe you're
right. There never was slavery of Blacks by other Blacks in Africa
before the Europeans came...
*irony off*

I've shown clearly, through references, that there was slavery of
Africans by other Africans before Europeans started their slaving in
the fifteenth century. Many more references are sitting in the
library. I think YOU should post some sources we can find in a library
(that have some degree of credibility). If find it amusing that you
attack me for being vague and "having an active mind" (a phrase that
usually would be considered a compliment, but I think you intend here
to mean that I have an "overactive imagination"), yet that seems the
tone and content of most of your assertions. I suppose you think that
the more stridently you tout your "axioms", the more credibility they
have.
				   
>>
>>The primary reason that the South seceeded from the union was that
>>they thought they were losing a balance of power on the issue of new
>>states entering the union being free states or slave states
>
>And what have I been saying? The contradiction created by their being
>a slave economy competing with the infant industrial economy
>precipitated a war. Rather than hit the nail on the head, you
>seek to move in a round about manner. There was no longer need for a
>slave ecomnomy. Infact it was a bother in that it stifled the pace of
>industrialization by continuing to serve those areas of the econo my
>where mechanisation might have otherwise been used. This was a classic
>class struggle. Remember that THERE was never a class that yielde
>power in history without a revolution. Not even the communists in
>Eastern Europe, and certainly not the slave holder in America. Human
>society has always been advanced by the need to produce more,
>morallity might be one of the excuses invoked but never has it been
>the prime mover of improving mans material fortunes, and it has
>certanly not superceeded the urge for more and better production.

I'm sure that's what all the people were thinking when they fought the
Civil War. Sure, freeing the slaves wasn't the ONLY reason for the
Civil War, but it was definitely the primary cause of the sucession of
the South. You can explain this away with some Marxist
"contradiction-class war" rhetoric, but why do you refuse to
acknowledge that some of the participants fought because they believed
slavery was wrong?

>>
>>The industrial revolution occured primarily because of breakthroughs
>>in understanding nature (science) and using this knowledge for
>>practical applications (industry).
>>Jere
>
>I see. If we examine the text books of science, we will find that even as the
>industrial revolution was occuring the Germans and the French had better scie
>ntist than the English tand Americans. Why therfore did the revolution not
>occur in Germany which was at the same level of technical development?
>
>Makala
> 

They did develop, maybe not at exactly the same rate. I think the
continental Europeans eschewed industrial development in favor of
traditional methods, until the English (and Scots...) totally
surpassed them, forcing them to change their attitudes. Later, they led
in their technological developments (For example, the Germans
dominated the Chemical Industry).

Perhaps you'd like to explain where a slave making sugar on plantation
in the Caribbean has more relevance to the invention of the steam
engine, than thermodynamics or the various kinds of engineering
(materials and mechanical), which wasn't as sophisticated as ours
obviously, but still managed to capture some new insight into how
things worked. Or how the slave has more relevance than the creation
of factories where mass production allows the creation of high-quality
products with much less effort per product than before.

Jere.
     _______ ______  ____    ______
    /____  // ____/ / _  \  / ____/ * Jere Kavanagh Green
        / // /__   / /_/ / / /__    * Graduate Student
       / // ___/  /   __/ / ___/    * Department of Mathematics
 /\___/ // /____ / /\ \  / /___     * The Ohio State University
/______//______//_/  \_\/______/    * jkgreen@function.mps.ohio-state.edu


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