I have read a couple of historical notes about slavery and as an African whose forefathers are direct victims of slavery and slave trades, my stomach gets turned each time I read them. I mean, it is unimaginable that humans will capture fellow humans and utilize them as slaves simply because they have got more power (technological power, not physical) to subdue them.
This is why I usually say that technological inventions came at a cost to humanity and this has nothing to do with money. Just because a group of people is able to produce a weapon capable of annihilating many people at once, they feel they are superior and hence, others should be under them and always at their mercy.
Slavery started in Africa through wars and communal clashes as a result of trying to establish superiority long before the European slave trade started. During wars, humans are captured as one of the war bounties and such people become slaves to warlords or kings of victorious communities. Slave owners went as far as selling or exchanging slaves for various purposes.
With Europe being technologically more advanced than Africa, colonization began and the infamous European slave trade thrived. Thousands of humans, men, and women are shipped away daily and sold into slavery. Communities are ransacked and abled-bodied men/women captured while those that are not fit are eliminated.
The incursion into the various communities would not have been easy for the European slave masters without the connivance of some locals, especially the local leaders in the form of kings and powerful people. Powerful Africans became points of contact for slaves by the European slave masters.
The powerful among the Africans attack and colonize communities, capture those that are slaves worthy, and then exchange these humans for the most trivial of things such as guns, bottles of alcohol, mirrors, glass plates, and so on. The guns further increase the influence of these local warlords and their business thrived accordingly.
Many of those sold into slavery accepted their fate and worked according to the demands of their masters. Many who tried to regain freedom or went against the commands of their masters lost their lives or were severely punished. Generations passed and being slaves and owners of slaves became the normal thing for many people.
It became normal to be slaves or slave owners so much so that any slave trying to regain freedom from slavery was seen as being sick in the head. In actual fact, the desire to escape slavery was classified as a mental illness called Drapetomania at some point in the year 1851, about 50 years after the European slave trade has been abolished.
The term was coined by an American Physician Samuel Cartwright in one of his published papers where he called the attention of the scientific world to the new illness. Cartwright described the symptoms of drapetomania as the action of absconding from slavery works.
The author of the paper went ahead to state the cause of drapetomania as overfamiliarity and pampering of slaves by slave owners and recommended whipping as preventative and treatment. Although the paper received severe criticism from some quarters, many people bought into it.
Slavery might have ended but History will never forget it. Some of the slavery and slave trade paraphernalia still remain in many places. I visited the slave trade center in Badagry, Nigeria a few years ago, and below are some of the pictures I was able to snap along with their descriptions.
The slave trade port
Badagry Nigeria is famously known for its slave trade port. Being a coastal town in the boundary of Lagos, the port served the slave traders quite well. All captured or purchased slaves are shipped to Europe from this port. Today, the port has been preserved as an artifact of slavery. The port is famously known as the point of no return, a tag that depicts the fate of any slave that gets to that point. I was not able to get to the port itself but took the above image from a few distances away from it.
The slave relics museum
Just a few meters away from the slave port lies the slave relic museum. This mini-museum is a monument belonging to one of the famous slave traders in those days. His name is Seriki Abass and he specialized in capturing his fellow Nigerians and selling them to the European traders. He operated a slave cell consisting of few rooms and was purported to have kept nothing less than 40 slaves in each room.
Here lies the entrance to the slave cells. Some slave-depicting artworks were used to design the entrance.
Some of the objects (artified) that the European slave traders used in exchange for whole human beans. Cannon guns, kettles, mirrors, ceramic bowls, guns, bottles of alcohol, brass dish.
The cells. Each one measures nothing more than 10 x 12 meters and reported to have housed nothing less than 40 slaves each.
Here lies some of the chains used to subdue the slaves. The chains consist of different degrees of locks and metals depending on how strong a slave is.
Relics consisting of old camera lens, plates, lantern , etc used by the slave lords.
More chains
Some of the ceramic bowls collected in exchange for slaves.
Some old slave-related pictures found on the walls of the slave cells.
More pictures on the wall.
Herein lies the tomb of the slave trader, Seriki Abass
The tomb itself
An image of the man himself, Seriki Abass.
All in all, there was not much to be seen in the slave museum but the few relics preserved still showed the activities that took place back then. Hopefully, these relics would be preserved for as long as possible to tell the story of slavery and slave trades. As far as I am concerned, slave traders should not be celebrated but cannot be excluded from the history of the subject.
Unfortunately, there are still some activities that show that slavery is still ongoing in some parts of the world. In actual fact, slavery did not really go away but took another form - if you all know what I mean. However, the old form of slavery seems to still be in practice in some regions of the world.
Do you still think humans are the most advanced of all animals?