17th Century French Catholic Priests rescue Christian slaves from their Mohammedan captors.
There are some very strange ideas about slavery abroad in the world today. Dominant amomg these is the narrative developed by American social activists that slavery is about race. That it is all about European peoples oppressing African (and essentially African - American) people. This is not borne out by the facts.
I have many African friends and many of them take this American narrative to heart and feel some share in the victimhood of their ancestors. This conviction becomes crystallised in an absolute attribution of blame for slavery to European slave traders. This is of course psychologically satisfying given the sorry state of almost every country in Africa today. This is particularly so when we consider the absolute horrors many European colonisers inflicted on Africa.Among these perhaps for absolute horror the Belgians were the worst, the French continue to be appalling and the British were and long continued to be systematically horrendous.
Nevertheless, it is obligatory , if inconvenient, to consider all those who properly bore the blame.
Slavery was a feature of human life since the beginning of time. It was NOT about race, but rather about defeat in battle. The defeated were, at the whim or need of the victor, liable to death or slavery.Defeat made one contemptible, inferior, death was seen as fitting, but slavery offered the victor value, service or, if traded , valuable earnings. These earnings were achieved by the sale of the slaves to slave traders who ran slave markets. The race of the slave being offered for sale was of no doctrinaire concern.All that mattered was value realised.
But , in the favourite game of today we have to ask :who was to blame? One thing is certain in Africa, one cannot avoid laying initial blame on the victor in battle.These were the Chiefs of the many warring tribes or the Kings of the aggregating Kingdoms. Thus it was the African leaders who sold their captive brothers and sisters.Having first enslaved them, they sold them to traders.
The Order of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Captives, also known as the Trinitarian Order or the Trinitarians, is a Catholic religious order founded in Cerfroid, outside Paris, in late 12th century. It was founded by Saint John of Matha on 17th December 1198. It thrives even today, adapting its raison d’etre to modern circumstances. Among the signs of its vigour is the book “Image of God: Give Man His Dignity “by the young Brother Augustine Ikegwu O.S.S.T. The work is being widely hailed for championing the dignity of man with particular reference to Africa.
Brother Augustine IKEGWU OSST Author
before statue of Saint John of Matha.
For a long time these traders were themselves African people We do not know the "hows" of this business, but we do know that there were some African slaves in ancient Rome. But the slave trade becomes regular and systematic after the invention of Mohammedanism in the 7th Century, North African Mohammedan Arab Slave Traders came to West Africa across the Sahara and to East Africa by sea.This trade prospered for 900 years , supplying the North African slave markets. These slave traders wanted a steady supply of slaves : approx 75% female and 25% young male, to supply - in the case of the women the harems of the Mohammedans - and in the case of the young males, to provide eunuchs to oversee the harems. It is estimated that 90% of those suffering the horrendous castration operation died in the process.The remaining 10% of survivors were sufficient for the purpose.
In the 16th Century beginning with the Portugese, the potential of the slave market expanded greatly as the possibility of oceanic navigation made possible the plantations of the Americas. The Portugese were in due course followed by the French and the British. The plantation needs were quite the reverse of the North African market - they wanted 75% Males for their muscular strength and only 25% of females for domestic duties.The North African trade withered as the trans Atlantic trade expanded. But again, the European slave traders relied on African suppliers - the same Chiefs and Kings. There was no way that the Europeans, like the Arabs before them, could afford to become engaged in battle to obtain slaves - they did not have the time or the crews to engage in such efforts.
We can clearly see that there has been a political advantage in promoting the idea of the European villains and obscuring the role of the African suppliers. Even where the latter became outrageously obvious - as in the case of the ASHANTI Kings- - their role has been more or less ignored. It did not fit the "narrative" being developed.
The American media narrative has been so powerful that African -Americans have "owned the narrative" and the fact that far more African slaves went to the Caribbean has been obscured.
SURPRISED
But I was truly surprised lately when I started reading a history of Venice. We have had the book , written by Peter Ackroyd, for decades but I had not "gotten around to reading it". But I was always interested in learning about the history of Venice. My wife and I had paid three brief visits to the remarkable city in 1956, 1993 and in 2009. Each visit had been too brief to do more than the typical tourist highlights. But in my reading, especially in naval history, I kept "running into" mention of "La Serenissima Republica" as she called herself, and her much vaunted Navy of galleys.
The book is very unusual. It reminded me of the biography of Saint Thomas Aquinas by Chesterton - reputedly the best on the Angelic Doctor but written without mention of any dates. Ackroyd's "VENICE" is also very short on dates but also on personalities. In fact it reads more like the type of commentary which follows upon a Historical Review of a country.
But I was greatly surprised to come across this:
"There was a thriving trade in human flesh.By the twelfth century the slave trade in Venice far surpassed that of other cities and other countries.The Venetians were incorrigible slave traders and the markets of the Rialto and S.Georgio were centres of slavery.They were eager for this particular source of income since the profit on each item was said to be 1,000 per cent they sold Russians and even Greek Christians to the Saracens. Men and women and children were bought or captured in the region of the Black Sea - Armenians and Georgians among them- before being despatched to Venice where they were in turn sold on to Egypt and Morocco and Crete and Cyprus. They sold boys and young women as concubines.One Doge Pietro Mocenigo had in his seventies two young Turkish men in his entourage.
Many of them were consigned to Venetian households.No patrician family was complete without a retinue of three or four slaves; even Venetian artisans owned slaves and used them in their shops or workshops. Venetian convents possessed slaves for domestic service. The galleys were stocked with slaves. But the city always needed a fresh supply; servile status was not inheritable Many slaves were freed in the wills of their masters or mistresses.Marco Polo manumitted one of his slaves, Peter the Tartar , before his own death in 1324. In 1580 there were three thousand slaves in the capital. The black gondoliers in Carpaccio's paintings of Venice are all slaves." p 113 para 1 and 2.
So we can see that slavery , even when it flourished was not about race.(The final reference to gondoliers in Carpaccio's paintings fits perfectly wth the theatricality of Venetian life - these gondoliers would have been seen as part of that spectacle loving approach - and they were obviously few in number.
SUMMARY
Yes the Slave trading across the Atlantic was horrendous. But there is hypocrisy in ignoring the blame which should be shared by the African enslavers and marketers to the slave traders.
Also, we need to see that the attitudes of societies of every colour of skin has evolved and still needs to evolve. Britain abolished slavery in 1807, the Royal Navy and the United States Navy and the French, worked throughout the Nineteenth Century to destroy the slave trade. BUT even today in Africa, in several Mohammedan countries , there are believed to be 600,000 LEGAL slaves. Where is the outrage?
We "enlightened" people deplore slavery as an offence against the rights of man as a child of God. But many of us are adept at maintaining the rage of condemnation, whilst turning a "blind eye" to inconvenient realities.
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