Who is responsible for slavery

In addition, the slave trade contributed to the growth of banking and insurance in Europe and provided the finance to develop European capitalist economies further. Africa may have supplied the human labour that was central to these developments in Europe, but it didn't benefit from them itself.

Instead, it lost millions of people, many of its societies were ravaged and it placed itself in an enduring unequal relationship with Europe that created the conditions for colonial conquest and its legacy.

While the slave trade had a major impact on the economic development of the modern world, it also contributed to the emergence of a new African diaspora, particularly the spread of people of African origin to the Americas. Today there are tens of millions of people of African origin who, as a consequence of the forced removal of their ancestors, live in the Caribbean, the United States, Brazil and other countries in the Western Hemisphere, as well as elsewhere outside Africa. When these millions of people were physically removed from their homelands, they took with them their languages, beliefs, craftsmanship, skills, music, dance, art and other important elements of culture.

As a result, today we're surrounded by the legacy of the slave trade in a multitude of forms. Another legacy of the slave trade is the continued existence of a body of ideas initially formulated to justify it and which now underpins modern anti-African racism in all its forms. These harmful ideas have no basis in fact but were and are designed to suggest that Africa and Africans are inferior to Europe and Europeans in a variety of ways.

These views permeated the centuries of the slave trade and the enslavement of Africans and continued to be expressed during the post-slavery colonial era. They still exist today in the form of racial stereotypes and prejudices and racist violence, as well as Eurocentric views about Africa, its peoples and their cultures. The slave trade finally came to an end due to a variety of factors, including the protests of millions of ordinary people in Europe and the United States.

Its abolition was also brought about by millions of Africans who continually resisted enslavement and rebelled against slavery in order to be free. Resistance started in Africa, continued during the so-called Middle Passage and broke out again throughout the Americas. The most significant of all these acts of resistance and self-liberation was the revolution in the French colony of St Domingue, now Haiti, in It remains the only successful slave revolution in history and led to the creation of the first modern black republic.

Haiti's constitution was the first to recognise the human rights of all its citizens. First Denmark in , and Britain in , and then other countries in Europe and the Americas abolished the transatlantic slave trade for a variety of reasons including changes in their economic requirements. However, an illegal trade continued for many years, and slavery itself was not abolished in some countries until the s.

In Brazil for example, slavery continued to be legal until On the eve of the transatlantic slave trade, France had a large and growing population: between the early 17th and midth century it increased from 24 million to 26 million. I was immediately handled, and tossed up to see if I were sound, by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me.

Their complexions, too, differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke which was very different from any I had ever heard united to confirm me in this belief. Indeed, such were the horrors of my views and fears at the moment, that, if ten thousand worlds had been my own, I would have freely parted with them all to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country.

When I looked round the ship too, and saw a large furnace of copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. When I recovered a little, I found some black people about me, who I believed were some of those who had brought me on board, and had been receiving their pay; they talked to me in order to cheer me, but all in vain.

I asked them if we were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces, and long hair. They told me I was not: and one of the crew brought me a small portion of spirituous liquor in a wine glass, but, being afraid of him, I would not take it out of his hand. One of the blacks, therefore, took it from him and gave it to me, and I took a little down my palate, which, instead of reviving me, as they thought it would, threw me into the greatest consternation at the strange feeling it produced, having never tasted any such liquor before.

Soon after this, the blacks who brought me on board went off, and left me abandoned to despair. As every object was new to me, every thing I saw filled me with surprise. What struck me first, was, that the houses were built with bricks and stones, and in every other respect different from those I had seen in Africa; but I was still more astonished on seeing people on horseback.

I did not know what this could mean; and, indeed, I thought these people were full of nothing but magical arts. While I was in this astonishment, one of my fellow-prisoners spoke to a countryman of his, about the horses, who said they were the same kind they had in their country.

I understood them, though they were from a distant part of Africa; and I thought it odd I had not seen any horses there; but afterwards, when I came to converse with different Africans, I found they had many horses amongst them, and much larger than those I then saw.

We were not many days in the merchant's custody, before we were sold after their usual manner, which is this: On a signal given, as the beat of a drum the buyers rush at once into the yard where the slaves are confined, and make choice of that parcel they like best. The noise and clamor with which this is attended, and the eagerness visible in the countenances of the buyers, serve not a little to increase the apprehension of terrified Africans, who may well be supposed to consider them as the ministers of that destruction to which they think themselves devoted.

In this manner, without scruple, are relations and friends separated, most of them never to see each other again. I remember, in the vessel in which I was brought over, in the men's apartment, there were several brothers, who, in the sale, were sold in different lots; and it was very moving on this occasion, to see and hear their cries at parting.

O, ye nominal Christians! Learned you this from your God, who says unto you, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you? Is it not enough that we are torn from our country and friends, to toil for your luxury and lust of gain?

Must every tender feeling be likewise sacrificed to your avarice? Are the dearest friends and relations, now rendered more dear by their separation from their kindred, still to be parted from each other, and thus prevented from cheering the gloom of slavery, with the small comfort of being together; and mingling their sufferings and sorrows?

Why are parents to lose their children, brothers their sisters, husbands their wives? Surely, this is a new refinement in cruelty, which, while it has no advantage to atone for it, thus aggravates distress; and adds fresh horrors even to the wretchedness of slavery. If you get time try to watch the movie 'Amistad' in class. Picture source: history. There was a great deal of resistance to slavery, even while it was still thriving. Many slaves themselves resisted capture by escaping or by jumping overboard from slave ships.

The abolitionists and humanitarians in Europe and America were mostly Christian groups who saw the slave trade as a crime against God. They also believed that they could better spread the word of Christianity among free Africans.

Hardly passive victims of a grand imperial plot, Africans participated in the slave trade for the same reason that Europeans did: They thought they could profit from it. And they were right, alas, no matter how wrong it looks in retrospect. Even as they portray Africa as a victim of the slave trade, meanwhile, Ghanaians also emphasize they do not descend from slaves themselves.

It conjures the millions dragged away in the ships, never to be seen again. But they loom heavily in the Ghanaian conscience, nevertheless, a lasting reminder of a complicity that becomes ever more apparent whenever it is denied. None of this suggests that Europeans and Africans should bear equal responsibility for the enormous tragedy of trans-Atlantic slavery. Colonialism converted a small-scale, family-centered practice into a hellish global network for the transport, sale, and exploitation of human beings.

White people did. But many different peoples—of many different colors and cultures—got their hands dirty with slavery. In Africa, for example, an estimated , children are sold by their parents into unpaid servitude. They are, in essence, slaves.