thoth:


You have clearly formed your arguments, based your conceptions, and has drawn your perceptions entirely from the European distorted history and this is exactly what GenBuhari was warning about, it is also evident in the way you patch your argument through, your choice of words and what those words MEAN to YOU which you dogmatically tries to impose on others as well.

Europeans outlawed Slavery eh? where did you learn that from ? the same Europeans i believe taught you that and you believed and celebrated it right ? Sorry Slavery was never outlawed rather it was instituted, the Europeans decided among leading families backed by their respective nations that in order to keep a helm on the mass exploitation that was going on that it was best to stop the export of labor resources and export resources instead since that is cheaper rest stressful and stupendously profitable so they organised and ENSLAVED THE WHOLE CONTINENTAL AFRICA!!!
God!! for someone who does not know his history you should not be in this discussion at all, have ever read about Congo under Belgium ?? the mass slaughter!! the amputations!! the extraditions !!! A whole kingdom turned into a PERSONAL PROPERTY of the sadist King Leopold!! A kingdom of slaves!!
You never heard of the area now known as Nigeria under the British domination ?? what really happened to the likes of Jaja of Opobo to name a few ?
Isn't this the same issue the OP was trying to raise, the whole European narrative does not make sense at all,we(i and you) need to dig deeper to the times before that or choose other narrative that at least is acceptable to common reason.

*sigh* Circles and zig-zags. We were talking about the transportation of millions of Africans to the New World and how that was effected - by European raiders or by African raiders who were trading partners with the Europeans.

All of a sudden it is now about the exploitation of African labour within an European colonial structure (which I agree was itself a form of enslavement). The slave traffic to Europe and the New World was what I meant when I said the major European powers outlawed slavery. If you disagree that the Atlantic slave trade was abolished by Britain and other former key players in the trade, then probably its time I left this thread because apparently I'm not dealing with realists here.

Circles and zig-zags. This is not how to hold a discussion. Like I said, you are conflicting issues. I didn't think the OP opened this thread to talk about the exploitation of Africans in Africa, but their transportation across the Atlantic. His owns words are: "Africans never traded slaves all slaves were kidnapped by the white man at gunpoint...Our people who are descendants of those stolen from Africa, must stop believing they were sold."


I should probably only observe this thread until someone who is able to have a clear-headed conversation and stay on topic comes along.

Radoillo:


I fail to see what your problem with my comment is. The OP and other people who have commented here have consistently said 'Africa' and 'African' in connection with slavery. Can you calmly explain to me why my using the same word(s) others have used has been particularly upsetting to you? Why single out my own comment?

Parts of West Africa, Central Africa and East Africa were sources of slaves to Europeans. If I should refrain from using 'African', can you suggest an alternative all-encompassing term for the parts of the continent that supplied slaves?

What are we even dragging here? I simply do not understand.

Am off your way.

OP, reference to Africa(ns) is misleading. Its a wide net. All races live here. And there is little love lost between tribes and races. This was the only form of political organisation. Stories about Chiefs selling their people are ridiculous. Villages, were made of relatives. And those traditional leaders ruled by concesus.

I never believed that Africans never took part in slavery, and that argument was not the same with the original argument which the OP presented, what i was trying to say was that slavery does not exist before the Europeans which is what i understood the OP was trying to say and that slavery was created and propagated by Europeans, that's why he was asking for writings which precedes the Europeans.

Just like the west through conscious efforts of arming and training radicals which could otherwise would have been curtailed by their respective countries have created terrorism in the middle east. tomorrow someone who is not well informed will offhandedly ascribe terrorism to Arabs. i know terrorism and slavery are not the same but they have a lot in common if consider their origins.

GenBuhari:
If they had admitted to all those atrocities against Native Americans etc., it may be because they have already succeeded in almost completely wiping those people out, so there is no political or economic risk in admitting the genocide against them.

However they are still in the process of trying to destroy Africa with neo-colonialism and economic exploitation and to achieve this, they need to keep us misinformed and divided.

Again everything you said about Africans having a tradition of taking slaves could have only have come from European historians.

Unless you can direct me to historical records kept by our ancestors that showed that they kept slaves before the arrival of the Europeans we would have to reject everything we heard about our ancestors trading themselves as slaves, it would have to be deemed unreliable seeing that it was written by Europeans who are known to be great liars.

Very mischevous people. They came as evangelistic spies.

thoth:
I never believed that Africans never took part in slavery, and that argument was not the same with the original argument which the OP presented, what i was trying to say was that slavery does not exist before the Europeans which is what i understood the OP was trying to say and that slavery was created and propagated by Europeans, that's why he was asking for writings which precedes the Europeans.

Just like the west through conscious efforts of arming and training radicals which could otherwise would have been curtailed by their respective countries have created terrorism in the middle east. tomorrow someone who is not well informed will offhandedly ascribe terrorism to Arabs. i know terrorism and slavery are not the same but they have a lot in common if consider their origins.

I second the bit about undehand dealings to maintain their self given "world leadership" status. They call it the "world order". Five at the top, followed by a few and carried by the rest

GenBuhari:
All you have said, you got from history books written for you by the European historians.

All said about the Ooni descending from slaves is also meaningless without written historical records from our ancestors to verify this was before the arrival of the white man.

Sorry but oral history cannot be deemed reliable. Anybody could claim they heard anything also it does not record the dates of events. nothing passed down orally is verifiable evidence. That is why it is meaningless

Then by ur logic sub Saharan Africa has no history because any historical material u find predating white man is oral
So if u have a problem with written history, which began say 20th century by blacks on their ethnic groups and also have a problem with oral history from cults like Ifa and Ogboni then nothing can satisfy u nt even archaeological findings cus you would say it was planted recently

You have hatred for caucasians, hatred is good but u letting it take away ur sense of reason and human sanity which is very bad

You.only making a fool of the black race, funny you might be a white shiit lickee trying to embarrass black people indirectly cus ur comments are outright insults to the blacks since you ur implied we have no history

thoth:


my stance since creation of this thread is to observe and hopefully could learn and get new infomation from many whom are more enlightened on this particular issue ,but their are grave assumptions which cannot just be allowed to slide or else we will be trapped in that same quagmire which we are seeking to be free of.
First our forefathers were not barbarians, they built great societies and such cannot possibly play the role the Europeans ascribed to them.
Secondly slavery in African terms is different from slavery in European terms so it is important that the two never be considered the same and for clarity sake;factoring what the term "slavery" has come to mean(Entirely European concept) it is acceptable to say that MOST of Africa never practiced slavery and the concept is entirely European.

thirdly, that slavery in the real European context would have never been known in Africa if we never had any contact with Europeans , no market exists without a demand (2nd statement still applies), syllogically Slavery, the market, the sustainance was entirely a European creation and such systems never existed before the advent of Europeans.

now tell me among all the references you made that which did not agree with at least two of the above statements and by extension the OP.

So you don't deny slavery in Africa u jst oppose the European kind of slavery?

macof:


So you don't deny slavery in Africa u jst oppose the European kind of slavery?

You should read my earlier posts to understand my stand, i think the OP made a mistake by not defining slavery in the context which his arguments were presented, but if we are to cull our definition entirely from the European assault on continental Africa and therefore our conclusions formed thereof then i can say that slavery does not exist before the advent of Europeans.

thoth:


You should read my earlier posts to understand my stand, i think the OP made a mistake by not defining slavery in the context which his arguments were presented, but if we are to cull our definition entirely from the European assault on continental Africa and therefore our conclusions formed thereof then i can say that slavery does not exist before the advent of Europeans.

Still u nt clear.

Did slavery exist in Africa before Europeans came or not? That's wat I ask ur opinion on nt all this long yarns u posting

macof:

Still u nt clear.

Did slavery exist in Africa before Europeans came or not? That's wat I ask ur opinion on nt all this long yarns u posting

you know i can't really help if you don't understand that.

GenBuhari:
Just a question: are you a black African?

yes.

GenBuhari:
Why did the mods move this thread to the culture section?

This thread should have been left under the politics section where it was created.

What has culture got to do with subject matter of this thread?
mukina2, seun please reclassify this thread to a more appropriate section.

the most appropriate section should have been the forum's recycle bin
https://www.nairaland.com/recycle-bin

Nobody has answered these pertinent questions, that would go a long way to supporting European claims that Africans sold themselves to Europeans as slaves:

Which Kings did they purchase slaves from, the kings names and dates?
Where are the records of the transactions, numbers of slaves, dates of sales, amount paid?
Where is the evidence of the wealth that these African Kings accrued from selling slaves?

None of these details as far as I am aware have ever been supplied by the European historians that claimed whe sold ourselves to them as slaves.

There are two East African tribes reknown for their prowess in long distance trade in those days, the Kamba of Kenya and the Ngoni of Tanzania. They travelled deep into central Africa for various wares - Ivory, gold, e.t.c. and traded them with the coastal tribes, and with the coastal Arabs who had settled on the East coast. Some were hired as porters by Arabs who exploited their knowledge of the terrain to venture deeper inland, first as traders and thereafter, to capture slaves. After the invention of the gun, the villagers who were not carried away were dead or too injured. Slave raiding in the Eastern side of the continent was purely an Arabic affair. There is a historical record by a Brit of one such raids, where a handful of Arabs lay in wait for local traders on a market day. Once it was populated, they opened gun fire indiscriminately, killing all(most of them women) but a handfull that they bound for the slave market. Captives were sold to Portugeese traders who took them on to the New World.

A look into the word of a slave...

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/slavery/source-1/

Once bought, their names were changed. Thats why we cant know their origins. All we need to place them in their bloodline is their African name.

A look into the world of a slave...

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/slavery/source-1/

Once bought, their names were changed. Thats why we cant know their origins. All we need to place them in their bloodline is their African name.

Okay

which wan be all this grammar una de talk here,are our leaders not selling us into slaavery today,instead of fashioning strategies for gettin out of this predicament you're here insulting urselves going round in cicles while they are rewriting more of 'our' history. sheesh what a bunch of learners

muafrika:
A look into the world of a slave...

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/slavery/source-1/

Once bought, their names were changed. Thats why we cant know their origins. All we need to place them in their bloodline is their African name.

Do you know that the historical awareness of Nigerians are soo low that more than 98% of them has never ventured to read the National archives ,even for once, and more than 85% does not know what methods the colonists used in capturing and dominating their respective nations ?

thoth:


Do you know that the historical awareness of Nigerians are soo low that more than 98% of them has never ventured to read the National archives ,even for once, and more than 85% does not know what methods the colonists used in capturing and dominating their respective nations ?

Very sad. Subjects like history should be compulsory, or else we'll find ourselves in the same problems as our forefathers. There is alot of mischief out there against Africa and her people. Our people did not know until it was too late.

Jomo Kenyatta wrote about the colonial takeover in one of his books;

"We closed our eyes to pray(with the missionaries) and when we opened them, the land was gone."

We better pray with our eyes open this time round with Africom, China and Economic Partnership Agreements(EPAs) suspiciously hovering over our heads. Those people came in the name of trade as they spied out the land.

The bolded again shows the source of the information you presented. African history that was written by the white man can not be used to justify accepting the white man's version of African history.

Is it difficult to understand the concept?

We should not accept any African involvement in the shipment of Africans unless there is independently verifiable evidence that Africans were keeping or trading slaves prior to the arrival of the first white man.

Until we see with our own koroko eyes, the manuscripts where our ancestors recorded their involvement in enslaving and selling themselves to Europeans we would be doing their honour a great disservice to start accepting a version of history written by the same people who committed genocide against us, without learning our ancestors version of history.

Otherwise what we are doing is accepting the version of the criminal in a criminal case.

If police catches an armed robber with belongings of the victim whom he had murdered, 99% of the time the suspect would deny the murder and would claim that the victim had sold him the belongings that he was caught with.

This is exactly the same thing that is happening with the white man unable to explain why he had stolen Africans from their land, so being the criminal that has been caught red-handed, the white man is claiming that Africans sold him their people to be used as slaves.

muafrika:
There are two East African tribes reknown for their prowess in long distance trade in those days, the Kamba of Kenya and the Ngoni of Tanzania. They travelled deep into central Africa for various wares - Ivory, gold, e.t.c. and traded them with the coastal tribes, and with the coastal Arabs who had settled on the East coast. Some were hired as porters by Arabs who exploited their knowledge of the terrain to venture deeper inland, first as traders and thereafter, to capture slaves. After the invention of the gun, the villagers who were not carried away were dead or too injured. Slave raiding in the Eastern side of the continent was purely an Arabic affair. There is a historical record by a Brit of one such raids, where a handful of Arabs lay in wait for local traders on a market day. Once it was populated, they opened gun fire indiscriminately, killing all(most of them women) but a handfull that they bound for the slave market. Captives were sold to Portugeese traders who took them on to the New World.

We have to do both.
We need to device strategies for moving forward into the future and at the same time, we need to know our history so as to not repeat our mistakes.

mikolo80:
which wan be all this grammar una de talk here,are our leaders not selling us into slaavery today,instead of fashioning strategies for gettin out of this predicament you're here insulting urselves going round in cicles while they are rewriting more of 'our' history. sheesh what a bunch of learners

You do understand we only started writting the other day. Arabs had their own records though, and did not shy away from recording their exploits.@GenBuhari

Has Africa's own ancient historical manuscript confirmed that Arabs invaded Africa? Or was it because the white man said they had in their history books?

Does the Arab's own ancient historical documents confirm this?

We need to start getting into the mindset of questioning anything that has not been confirmed by our ancestors in their historical records.

The history that we have allowed others to write for us without any way of confirming its validity is one of shame and dishonour.
Shame and dishonour is hard to accept when it is true, but we should only accept it if it confirmed to be 100% true and you cannot do that without concrete evidence.

White man told you that we only started writing right?
What research have you done to establish that Africans were not writing before the white man came?

There is evidence that Africans had been writing as early as 800 AD.

Do you have any evidence of Arab ancient writing that confirms their invasion and enslavement of Africa?

muafrika:
You do understand we only started writting the other day. Arabs had their own records though, and did not shy away from recording their exploits.@GenBuhari

GenBuhari:
Has Africa's own ancient historical manuscript confirmed that Arabs invaded Africa? Or was it because the white man said they had in their history books?

Does the Arab's own ancient historical documents confirm this?

We need to start getting into the mindset of questioning anything that has not been confirmed by our ancestors in their historical records.

The history that we have allowed others to write for us without any way of confirming its validity is one of shame and dishonour.
Shame and dishonour is hard to accept when it is true, but we should only accept it if it confirmed to be 100% true and you cannot do that without concrete evidence.

Their presence confirms. In my country, we started recording our history just over half a century ago. Omani Arabs had a sultanate along the East Coast after the coastal cities fell. Portugeese did too in the 1450s. This is confirmed by oral history And archeology.

That confirms nothing. You are jumping to conclusions there.
What is your country?
Oral history is unreliable you need to search for written manuscripts

muafrika:
Their presence confirms. In my country, we started recording our history just over half a century ago. Omani Arabs had a sultanate along the East Coast after the coastal cities fell. Portugeese did too in the 1450s. This is confirmed by oral history And archeology.

GenBuhari:
That confirms nothing. You are jumping to conclusions there.
What is your country?
Oral history is unreliable you need to search for written manuscripts

Which Africans? In between migrating and conquering new lands, my people and most other Africans had no time for writting classes. Even in Europe, writting was a preserve of the nobility untill the Industrial revolution when the same nobility decided increase their supply and choice of labour. They created labour production factories that we now call school and take pride blindly in. So, Ancient Africans, writting for what purpose?

Yemen still has African slaves. Just like Morroco, Sudan, and India.

GenBuhari:
White man told you that we only started writing right?
What research have you done to establish that Africans were not writing before the white man came?

There is evidence that Africans had been writing as early as 800 AD.

Do you have any evidence of Arab ancient writing that confirms their invasion and enslavement of Africa?

My grandparents and great grand parents and their entire age group could not put down their names in any form of writting. Not even hierogliphs. My local King was made to put a silly stroke of ink on a useless piece of paper, next thing the Kingdom was evicted to a small reserve, and were paying rent. But our entire history is written in our minds.

The quran appraises Arabs as a superior race that should not be enslaved while giving them a right to own.

As for history written by Non Africans;
http://www.zanzibar-travel-guide.com/bradt_guide.asp?bradt=1813

http://www.angelfire.com/ak/tanzania/

Whats Your version..?

BTW first and foremost, you have not told me what country you are from.

I reiterate we cannot rely on oral history as it is not reliable. Written documents created by Africans should be found and referred to.

If we cannot find our written history we should leave that part of our history blank or write in what information we could muster together by ourselves independent of foreign historians.

There is evidence that Africa had it own writing system as several centuries before the advent of the Caucasians.

I am guessing that just like you say is the case for Europe, writing was probably the preserve of the African elite.

You say Yemen, Morrocco, Sudan and India has African slaves; but how does that prove whether Arabs enslaved Africa before the Europeans or even whether Africans enslaved and sold themselves toEuropeans.

muafrika:
Which Africans? In between migrating and conquering new lands, my people and most other Africans had no time for writing classes. Even in Europe, writing was a preserve of the nobility until the Industrial revolution when the same nobility decided increase their supply and choice of labour. They created labour production factories that we now call school and take pride blindly in. So, Ancient Africans, writing for what purpose?

Yemen still has African slaves. Just like Morroco, Sudan, and India.

macof:

Oral history is meaningless. you fool in ur bid to make blacks look good and ridicule caucasians u jst embarrassed the entire sub-Saharan Africa that strives on orally told history to preserve our legacy and heritage

Ever heard of the Timbuktu manuscripts? It comprises 700,000 manuscripts written by black Africans from as early as the 11th century. Other manuscripts exist on the continent. Kindly retract your ignorant comment.

Because your grandparents, their peers and your town's King couldn't write does not mean that there wasn't an elite group of Africans who could write and keep records

Any history written for Africa by non-Africans is not valid without concrete proof.

muafrika:
My grandparents and great grand parents and their entire age group could not put down their names in any form of writting. Not even hierogliphs. My local King was made to put a silly stroke of ink on a useless piece of paper, next thing the Kingdom was evicted to a small reserve, and were paying rent. But our entire history is written in our minds.

The quran appraises Arabs as a superior race that should not be enslaved while giving them a right to own.

As for history written by Non Africans;
http://www.zanzibar-travel-guide.com/bradt_guide.asp?bradt=1813

http://www.angelfire.com/ak/tanzania/

Whats Your version..?