It's Always Worse Than You Think

This is my 20th African History article, and I've finally gotten around to writing about the slave trade or, as it's now often called, "The Black Holocaust." This is definitely a controversial and emotionally charged term but the writers and scholars who have been instrumental in circulating it are interested in the original use of the word: "a mass sacrifice by fire." It's argued that any time a group is singled out for dehumanization and extermination because of issues of race, that term can apply.

The history of the slave trade is still an open wound that must be probed carefully. As in all genocidal matters, just when you think you have arrived at the absolute limits of depravity, you learn that something happened that was even worse. For instance: In 1738, the crew of the Dutch slave ship "Leuden," facing a storm at sea, locked the hatches, hopped in the life boats, and left the 700 captive Africans below deck to drown. They couldn't even accord them the miniscule chance that they could brave the waves and survive. In 1846, 2000 slaves were murdered in Lagos so that their Italian captors could avoid litigation now that the slave trade had been declared illegal.

Why would a person suppress everthing caring and decent about themselves in order to work as a slaver? The answer, of course, is money. In its halicon years, the slave trade was extremely lucrative. In the year 1760, for instance, a male slave could be sold for 50 pounds, which, at that time, equalled out to about a year's salary. The institution attracted the worst kind of people, those who delighted in the opportunity to inflict physical and psychic injury on others.

I intend to follow up this week's article with an examination of slavery in Africa today, particularly as it applies to the Sudan. They say that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. As a unified world people, we can't even do something as basic as eliminating the presence of slavery from our planet. I want to scream, but instead I'll just sigh.