However, instead of acquiring accurate information on the forest kingdoms and slavery, Gates encourages Africans to make admissions of complicity in slavery that he conveniently interprets as sole causal factors for the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. He left the impression that the bulk of the slaves who made the middle passage came out of the Gold Coast and the Whydah area because of the greed of the Ashanti and Dahomey kings, which is far from historically accurate. Those of us who have read Joseph Holloway s Africanisms in American Culture , or John Thornton s Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World , or Joseph Miller s Way of Death , know that the reality is far more complex and varied. 5 Slaves from the Guinea Coast of Senegambia, the rice coast of Sierra Leone, the Rivers areas of Nigeria, and more importantly, from the Congo-Angolan coasts, formed an enormous portion of the total numbers that made the middle passage to the Americas. Many were stolen by Western slave- traders and separated from families and communities, leaving them poorer than before.
Custom requires that they be called to a palaver to be accused and to explain their actions.
Copyright 2000 Africa Resource Center Citation Format Mikell, Gwendolyn. Many ASA members helped write the five theme papers that were the subject of debate in the regional meetings of the NSA during 1998 and 1999. Ibid p. 516.